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Sure, I specifically said "a lot of buyers" because I don't think that it's most buyers, but I think it's enough that it influences Apple's pricing strategy. If they didn't have a substantial contingent of users who felt like they needed the higher specs, they wouldn't have such disproportionate costs on those upgrades.
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Mar 15, 2024 17:56
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Eletriarnation posted:But, in this case, they seem to be positioning it as a premium model - relative to Wal-Mart's other typical offerings, at least. I don't know if the goal is just "we want to try to sell these old M1 MBAs however we can", or if it's more of a long game ploy to attract customers who wouldn't normally consider Apple. Considering this is the first, and only, Apple computer to be sold directly through Walmart, the plan here seems to be "we want to try to sell these old M1 MBAs however we can," rather than having an expectation of it driving someone to go to Apple.com or another store. As mentioned, while there are competing Windows laptops in that same price bracket available from Walmart, I would absolutely suggest these are a premium option, even with it's lower RAM and storage capacity, for an average user shopping at Walmart. To top all that off, the person who ends up buying one of these is someone looking to spend $650-700 on a laptop, and not someone looking for a great deal on an Apple laptop. These are drastically different buyers and the former is going to see a MacBook in this price range and think "oh my god, I can get a MacBook!" while the latter is going to see it and think "Hmm, that's not a bad price, but I can probably find something with better specs for not terribly much more."
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Mar 15, 2024 18:00
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Yeah, I certainly think there's at least a very substantial component of "we just want to sell these" but I was wondering if there was more to it than that. To be clear, when I say "attract customers who wouldn't normally consider Apple", I don't mean savvy buyers who are trying to optimize for price/performance. I mean people who shop for computers at Wal-Mart because that's where they shop for other things and they don't have strong opinions about computers, and therefore would never consider Apple unless Apple sells models at Wal-Mart. This is not a hypothetical person, I have close relatives who live in a pretty rural location and don't feel comfortable with online shopping. They would probably never, ever consider a MacBook unless they saw one in person in their local Wal-Mart. e: I don't think that they would go "Wow, Apple! Neat idea!" and then proceed to buy a more expensive model off apple.com, but if they ended up buying this model and liking it more than their previous PCs they might well say "Hey, I want to get another Mac next time." Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 18:04
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Eletriarnation posted:e: I don't think that they would go "Wow, Apple! Neat idea!" and then proceed to buy a more expensive model off apple.com, but if they ended up buying this model and liking it more than their previous PCs they might well say "Hey, I want to get another Mac next time." I can absolutely see that happening because it's exactly what happened to my dad. He saw I had a MacBook and an iMac that I liked, and knew they had a reputation for being pretty long-lasting computers if taken care of, so he bought a 2012 iMac for my mother and then got the first retina MBP for himself and he's been 100% sold on Apple hardware ever since. It's a frictionless experience for him and he's made the computers last (my brother is still using that rMBP to this day). All his previous Windows PCs (generally Dell) he got maybe 2 or 3 years out of before they started making GBS threads themselves, running slow, having mechanical failures, etc. so he sees the longevity of the Apple products making them actually be cheaper over time than an equivalently priced Windows system from Dell or HP.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:15
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The Lord Bude posted:Apple knows this, it’s why they invest resources into stuff that actually makes a noticeable difference to the average person like energy efficiency (battery life) and having super fast SSDs. not going to dispute the core point but I suspect if you are the sort of user that can get by with 8GB RAM then you probably also can't tell the difference between a 600MB/s SSD and a 6000MB/s SSD
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Mar 15, 2024 18:22
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Eletriarnation posted:But, in this case, they seem to be positioning it as a premium model - relative to Wal-Mart's other typical offerings, at least. I don't know if the goal is just "we want to try to sell these old M1 MBAs however we can", or if it's more of a long game ploy to attract customers who wouldn't normally consider Apple. It’s both and also Mac sales have stagnated and plateaued since the boom of the pandemic and the introduction of Apple Silicon. Compatibility with Vision Pro is obviously not bringing too many new users to the platform either. Hopefully this is a portent of Apple more seriously competing up and down the market and adopting more of an iPhone/iPad-like range of expensive and cheap models.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:43
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UHD posted:not going to dispute the core point but I suspect if you are the sort of user that can get by with 8GB RAM then you probably also can't tell the difference between a 600MB/s SSD and a 6000MB/s SSD lol if you aren’t doing massive edit projects i don’t think very many people would notice at all actually this is a weird comparison mediaphage fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 19:50
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Costco also has that M1 air for $650
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Mar 15, 2024 19:54
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MarcusSA posted:Costco also has that M1 air for $650 And extra year warranty (via Costco Concierge I think though), and more favorable return policy for 90 days
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Mar 15, 2024 20:36
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UHD posted:not going to dispute the core point but I suspect if you are the sort of user that can get by with 8GB RAM then you probably also can't tell the difference between a 600MB/s SSD and a 6000MB/s SSD I dunno. I’m pretty sure it’s been tested and they’ve found that SSD speed is the number one factor influencing user perception of how fast and responsive a computer is. But different people are sensitive to different things. For eg I’m fussy about screen resolution but you could AB test me till the cows come home on 60hz vs 120hz and I’d fail every single time, I literally can’t tell the difference.
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Mar 16, 2024 04:38
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The Lord Bude posted:For eg I’m fussy about screen resolution but you could AB test me till the cows come home on 60hz vs 120hz and I’d fail every single time, I literally can’t tell the difference. An iPhone Pro with ProMotion switching from 120hz to 60hz when low power mode is on is pretty jarring for me. It makes me never want to turn it on.
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Mar 16, 2024 05:30
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I’m a photographer, so for me my time in front of a display is spent retouching still images, I cant begin to explain how little high refresh rates matter to me, but I have spreadsheet driving friends who look at me like I’ve grown a second head when I mention it doesn’t matter.
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Mar 16, 2024 08:08
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smr posted:That is the exact cable I’m using. Sorry to bring this up again -- I was just about to put in the order in with my boss earlier this week for the G3223Q, but on further research I read that the display gets detected as a television and defaults to YCbCr in macOS. Forcing RGB causes some display issues apparently. Would it be possible to confirm if that's true? The creative work I'll be doing will benefit from color accuracy, so if the G3223Q requires some tinkering to get it working proper in RGB color format, then it might not be worth it for my use case. Fortunately, I did find that ASUS does make some 120+ Hz ProArt displays, albeit they're only available either in 1440p resolution or some ultrawide resolution (which I'm not super fond of).
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Mar 16, 2024 14:57
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I have a Dell Ultrasharp I use with a M2 Mac mini and it uses YCbCr by default. I think I remember tinkering around to see if I could get it to use RGB but I don't do anything needing color accuracy so didn't care enough to actually fix it.
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Mar 16, 2024 16:35
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The Lord Bude posted:I dunno. I’m pretty sure it’s been tested and they’ve found that SSD speed is the number one factor influencing user perception of how fast and responsive a computer is. But different people are sensitive to different things. For eg I’m fussy about screen resolution but you could AB test me till the cows come home on 60hz vs 120hz and I’d fail every single time, I literally can’t tell the difference. “ssd speed” is conflating multiple things here the ability of an ssd to access something is so much faster its responsible for most of that perceived speed increase. noticing a sustained throughput differences is going to be much less obvious if you aren’t spending your days transferring hundreds of gigs constantly i suppose a massive game level you might notice the difference but really i don’t think that’s that big of a deal these days
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Mar 16, 2024 16:38
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teagone posted:Sorry to bring this up again -- I was just about to put in the order in with my boss earlier this week for the G3223Q, but on further research I read that the display gets detected as a television and defaults to YCbCr in macOS. Forcing RGB causes some display issues apparently. Would it be possible to confirm if that's true? The creative work I'll be doing will benefit from color accuracy, so if the G3223Q requires some tinkering to get it working proper in RGB color format, then it might not be worth it for my use case. For some reason I thought that using a reliable brand USB-C to DisplayPort cable alleviated that issue under Sonoma (and possibly Ventura before it).
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Mar 16, 2024 17:13
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I am using a cable matters USB-C cable that's certified 10gbps Gen 2 by USB-IF and it still does it for what it's worth.
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Mar 16, 2024 18:40
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serebralassazin posted:I have a Dell Ultrasharp I use with a M2 Mac mini and it uses YCbCr by default. I think I remember tinkering around to see if I could get it to use RGB but I don't do anything needing color accuracy so didn't care enough to actually fix it. I’m curious if this is a Dell issue or an Apple issue. I have t actually checked on my LG to see if it’s doing RGB or YCbCr, but I can see Tim Apple wanting an inferior external display experience thinking it might push people to the $5000 6K Pro Display XDR.
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Mar 16, 2024 18:46
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I mean, I just checked my G2724D (the 27" 1440p "baby brother" of the G3223Q) and my AW3225QF that I haven't sent back yet, and both are reporting RGB in macOS. The AW3225QF can only get up to 120Hz though; I can try to force it to YCbCr and see if that lets me push the refresh higher. So I'm not sure it's an Apple issue either though? Though yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if they were inherently restricting it (or simply it's happening due to lack of care/incompetence!)
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Mar 16, 2024 19:11
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mediaphage posted:“ssd speed” is conflating multiple things here I don't think it's even that noticeable in games because they're not (yet) built to take full advantage of how fast large files can be read from high end SSDs (as that would result in terrible experiences for a large set of users that don't yet have drives with these sort of sequential read speeds yet).
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Mar 16, 2024 20:37
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It’s purely speculation, but does anyone think when the M3 Max/Ultra chips hit the Mac Studio we’ll get the same tiering of options they have in the MacBook Pros? Like will the ultra have multiple CPU core options or will they just do the one ‘good’ one with extra gpus I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the breakdown works
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Mar 16, 2024 23:15
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God drat it, Tim:  
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Mar 16, 2024 23:33
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The iMac comes with a 24” screen 
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Mar 16, 2024 23:49
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that can’t be the right price on that iMac
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Mar 16, 2024 23:52
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trilobite terror posted:that can’t be the right price on that iMac (All prices Canadian)
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Mar 16, 2024 23:53
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Mister Facetious posted:(All prices Canadian) I got $2058 USD for that loadout (which is still stupid loving high for an iMac like that) and $1999 for the MBP.
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Mar 16, 2024 23:57
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trilobite terror posted:I got $2058 USD for that loadout (which is still stupid loving high for an iMac like that) and $1999 for the MBP. $100 USD = ~$134 CAD Which means $2000 usd equals roughly $2700 Canadian
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Mar 16, 2024 23:58
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Yeast posted:It’s purely speculation, but does anyone think when the M3 Max/Ultra chips hit the Mac Studio we’ll get the same tiering of options they have in the MacBook Pros? There hasn't really been any rumors/leaks from what I've seen, so it's really hard to say. From what we've seen out of TSMC, etc, personally I think Apple might just go with the 16-core CPU Max variant, but bump the starting price of the Studio some amount. My own reason for thinking this is that I remember all the discussion that the M3 Max used in the MBPs was using TSMC N3E, but it was speculated that Apple would eventually move to the N3P node for the M3 Max and Ultra. There had been speculation that Apple went the way they did on the Max in part because of N3E yield issues, but it's never really been confirmed or more info provided from what I've seen. One option I'd like to see, but we won't, is to have that initial Max tier, move to the Mac mini, so there'd be the Pro-tier and an entry Max-tier. That'd probably pull off too many entry-level Studio sales though. I've been thinking of getting the M3 Max 16/40 option Studio when it comes out, but if the tiering does end up crazy and the upgrades end up like they did for the MBP, then a M3 Max 16c/40g option might end up being not much cheaper than a refurb M2 Ultra 24c/60c Studio, which then might be the better option regardless.
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Mar 17, 2024 00:02
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Yeast posted:It’s purely speculation, but does anyone think when the M3 Max/Ultra chips hit the Mac Studio we’ll get the same tiering of options they have in the MacBook Pros? Things have been made less clear ever since a Japanese twitter account (@techanalye1, known for publishing lots of interesting die photos) published this image comparing decapped M1, M2, and M3 Max:  If you blow the image up, you can clearly see the UltraFusion interconnect strip on the bottom edge of M1 and M2 Max, but it doesn't exist on M3 Max. Either there's some new interconnect tech hiding in plain sight, or they've done a different tapeout for M3 Ultra. If the latter, who knows what its specs will be, how many of them they'll support stapling together, and so on. (I think the unique die design is the more likely option, FWIW. It would fit with them also not deriving Pro from Max in the M3 generation. The strategy of getting three products out of one tapeout may be over.)
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Mar 17, 2024 01:10
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Fascinating! Thanks both 
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Mar 17, 2024 01:23
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Canned Sunshine posted:I mean, I just checked my G2724D (the 27" 1440p "baby brother" of the G3223Q) and my AW3225QF that I haven't sent back yet, and both are reporting RGB in macOS. The AW3225QF can only get up to 120Hz though; I can try to force it to YCbCr and see if that lets me push the refresh higher. Guessing it's panel specific if you can get RGB color format just fine on the 27" QHD version of the G3223Q. Unfortunate! My dilemma now is if I want to get QHD ProArt displays with higher refresh rates (I honestly really just want a smoother macOS UI experience at work), or just settle for 60Hz 4K ProArt panels and not worry about any compatibility issues. teagone fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 02:19
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Eletriarnation posted:But, in this case, they seem to be positioning it as a premium model - relative to Wal-Mart's other typical offerings, at least. I don't know if the goal is just "we want to try to sell these old M1 MBAs however we can", or if it's more of a long game ploy to attract customers who wouldn't normally consider Apple. This is exactly how I became an Apple customer, I bought a low-spec 2012 MBA with 4gb ram / 64gb storage and it was good enough to convince me that I didn't want to buy another lovely HP laptop
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Mar 17, 2024 02:26
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https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/16/viewfinity-s9-5k-smart-monitor-discount/ FYI the Samsung M8 and S9 are on big sale this weekend. M8 can usually be had for like $500 so $400 is good but not huge despite the $699 MSRP, but the S9 is a steal for $900
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Mar 17, 2024 02:29
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teagone posted:Guessing it's panel specific if you can get RGB color format just fine on the 27" QHD version of the G3223Q. Unfortunate! My dilemma now is if I want to get QHD ProArt displays with higher refresh rates (I honestly really just want a smoother macOS UI experience at work), or just settle for 60Hz 4K ProArt panels and not worry about any compatibility issues. If you're open to 27" sizing, what about a good 27" 4K display, that you then just scale to 1440p? You'll get RGB, and yeah, it's not 2:1 pixel mapping like a Retina display, but I've been doing it on my M1 Max Mac Studio with a 27" 4K 144 Hz and it still looks really nice. As an FYI, it technically falls in the "Scaling may cause performance impacts" that people see in the Display settings section, but for a Mac Studio, that performance impact is negligible. For background: On a 4K display, you can either render at 2:1 pixel mapping and end up with a 1080p resolution that's Retina-class, or you can do 1:1 and native resolution, which generally looks fine. The issue that gets mis-reported/stated a lot, is the in-between scaling. In macOS, if you have a 4K display and want to use a scaled resolution in-between Retina and native, macOS will scale your native resolution up to 2x the target resolution, then pixel map it down to what you set it for. So as an example, I like running my 32" 4K display at 3200x1800, so macOS upscales the 4K resolution to 6400x3600, then maps it back to 3200x1800. This is where the performance impact potentially occurs, especially as you try to crank the frame rate up also. There can be some fuzziness along the UI elements, text, etc., but I've never noticed it because my vision sucks, and because I think as the PPI of a display gets higher, it becomes less and less noticeable, similar to how OLED's with non-standard RGB pixel arrangements have less issues as the pixel density increases. So that's a lot of text to say, I think you would probably enjoy having a high-refresh 27" 4K display that you scale to 1440p.
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Mar 17, 2024 03:18
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trilobite terror posted:https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/16/viewfinity-s9-5k-smart-monitor-discount/ The main issue with the S9 is that I think it's still plagued with QA/QC issues, and I don't think it's selling well, so Samsung really doesn't have an impetus to address said QA/QC issues. But over the last few months, if someone has an EDU option (maybe others?), it's gotten down to as low as $600 or $650 I think, so if someone wants a 5K matte display with relatively decent build quality and multi-input flexibility, it's definitely worth taking a chance on it, especially since Samsung basically allows no-questions-asked returns for 30 days. I'm still not sure it's worth $900 though.
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Mar 17, 2024 03:20
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teagone posted:Guessing it's panel specific if you can get RGB color format just fine on the 27" QHD version of the G3223Q. Unfortunate! My dilemma now is if I want to get QHD ProArt displays with higher refresh rates (I honestly really just want a smoother macOS UI experience at work), or just settle for 60Hz 4K ProArt panels and not worry about any compatibility issues. Actually, I guess I hadn't really thought about it, but would the LG 32GR93U-B possibly be a candidate for you? It's a 32" 4K display also, 144 Hz, and I think it handles RGB format just fine. Generally around the same price too as the G3223Q.
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Mar 17, 2024 09:44
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Canned Sunshine posted:If you're open to 27" sizing, what about a good 27" 4K display, that you then just scale to 1440p? You'll get RGB, and yeah, it's not 2:1 pixel mapping like a Retina display, but I've been doing it on my M1 Max Mac Studio with a 27" 4K 144 Hz and it still looks really nice. As an FYI, it technically falls in the "Scaling may cause performance impacts" that people see in the Display settings section, but for a Mac Studio, that performance impact is negligible. Canned Sunshine posted:Actually, I guess I hadn't really thought about it, but would the LG 32GR93U-B possibly be a candidate for you? It's a 32" 4K display also, 144 Hz, and I think it handles RGB format just fine. Generally around the same price too as the G3223Q. Appreciate the deep dive on resolution scaling! I was kind of aware of how it worked, and figured the M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio I've been given won't have any performance issues in other applications (namely Premiere/After Effects) when upscaling/downscaling the display resolution ouput. I also read that apparently macOS changed how its font rendering works in recent version changes, so QHD resolution doesn't look nearly as good anymore (though I'm guessing everything I've read on that matter is purely subjective). But yeah, in addition to creative work, I'll be doing a bit of administrative stuff working in Excel and doing a fair bit of copywriting/copyediting, so text looking sharp and crisp would be nice. That LG looks like a good candidate yeah. Not a fan of gamer-y stand, but the office does have a few VESA desk clamps I can use.
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Mar 17, 2024 18:30
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I’ll just say as someone who got a S9 on the last major sale, it had a single stuck pixel that got unstuck after 4 days, and otherwise mine has been excellent. I’d get another and probably will next year when my office expense budget gets reset.
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Mar 17, 2024 18:45
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teagone posted:Sorry to bring this up again -- I was just about to put in the order in with my boss earlier this week for the G3223Q, but on further research I read that the display gets detected as a television and defaults to YCbCr in macOS. Forcing RGB causes some display issues apparently. Would it be possible to confirm if that's true? The creative work I'll be doing will benefit from color accuracy, so if the G3223Q requires some tinkering to get it working proper in RGB color format, then it might not be worth it for my use case. I’d be happy to check, but if you could tell me how I check for this, I’d be obliged. Doesn’t seem to be something under the default display options.
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Mar 17, 2024 20:05
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teagone posted:Appreciate the deep dive on resolution scaling! I was kind of aware of how it worked, and figured the M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio I've been given won't have any performance issues in other applications (namely Premiere/After Effects) when upscaling/downscaling the display resolution ouput. I also read that apparently macOS changed how its font rendering works in recent version changes, so QHD resolution doesn't look nearly as good anymore (though I'm guessing everything I've read on that matter is purely subjective). But yeah, in addition to creative work, I'll be doing a bit of administrative stuff working in Excel and doing a fair bit of copywriting/copyediting, so text looking sharp and crisp would be nice. I had a Studio Display before I got this G3223Q and yeah I can tell the diff in “crispness” or whatnot in the display rendering but honestly for my eyesight 4k res on the 4k monitor with 144hz is a much more pleasant experience than 5K 60hz was.
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Mar 17, 2024 20:13
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