Does anyone else think that paying $400 for 32GB of RAM or $200 for 512GB of SSD space is a bit expensive? Like perhaps four times what the parts should cost? I guess we will just have to upgrade them our... oh snap!
Tell you what, grab yourself some RAM and an SSD at any cost you choose, then try and put them in yourself. Let us know how it works out. The cost of parts isn't the whole story.
I’ll only address item #2: Xcode is no magic bullet to make using all these cores to useful advantage on the simplest applications, or even the most demanding ones. It doesn’t work like that AT ALL. Very few applications users use would be possible to make better by throwing more cores at them no matter what you do, beyond maybe a couple cores for most interactive applications, because most applications will use a single thread to handle all the GUI stuff, and then do other processing off the main GUI thread, with the observation most of those threads used off the main thread don’t run with other threads they interact with or do something truly parallel with beyond merely keeping the GUI main thread from blocking.
Question: how many threads are used for I/O? Answer: unless it’s an embarrassingly-parallel situation, often a single user-space thread can handle multiple I/O things at once, because it’s mostly waiting. The OS and in the user space level Grand Central Dispatch may keep more up and running, in concert with other applications, but the majority of the time, most threads in a thread pool are waiting with nothing to do.
For the vast majority of applications, there’s not even a reasonable way to use 4 threads at a time, let alone 4 cores for that application where you’d ever notice it. Note: some of the higher-end games can and will make use of more cores, as will developer tools like compilers and build systems, things that do a lot of processing. If you’re using something like Apple’s office suite, you’d have a hard time keeping 4 cores busy running all of those applications at the same time, let alone any single one of those applications: the most demanding application in that would be Numbers, if you push it hard enough. Perhaps one day when I have nothing better to do, I’ll do a test and see if Numbers was written in a manner to possibly make effective sustained use of multiple cores when processing a large spreadsheet: I’d wager the answer is they have not done so. Spreadsheet performance was a commonly used metric in the past, but it’s considered a ho-hum task these days.
Unless a user has special types of work they do that inherently uses a lot of threads and processor cores at the same time, the biggest use-case where people will bog down all the cores of an M1 Ultra involve their web browsers with a very large number of tabs open that are doing an unusual amount of computation in each one: even with a lot of ads going, it’d be very hard to use up all the cores, even though most web pages have no dependency on what other web pages are doing. The heaviest loads of the browser for each page would be dispatching a thread per object downloaded and decoded on the page, but short of constant media streaming, this is very short-lived and leaves the machine not working hard for any given page: how many pages do people have downloading and streaming at the same time? On average, not many!
Don't understand how the train of comments went from the Mac Studio is for people who know how to use it and can afford it, to the Mac Studio is not for most people. They really aren't saying anything different.
For the most part, people do indeed buy the things they need to do their job, up to what they care to spend. How much is really up to them and their desires. These aren't throw away items. The whole setup is going to cost $3000 to $10,000. People know what and why they are buying at those prices. The vast majority of sales are going to go to be used in content creation and STEM. They have applications and tools that will use every core, be it CPU or GPU or dedicated media hardware.
There will be a very very few that go to rich people, but we can pretty safely ignore those sales for the market that these products are in. The Mac Studio will be made or broken in the content creation and STEM markets, where its level of cost is actually pretty minor. Some of those folks have annual software licenses that cost more than the Mac Studio itself, or some other minor cost like paying a sub contractor for 2 weeks of work.
The biggest issue for Apple is going to be the usual the chicken or the egg market issue. They need properly optimized software to get more hardware sales, but software won't be properly optimized if they don't have enough hardware sales. This issue isn't cracked unless it is something else killer that sells the device and that can pull optimized software in, or they do a price/perf play which really isn't Apple.
Apple really should be making more software, instead of relying on 3rd parties. FCP sells Mac hardware. iOS app development sells Mac hardware. They are probably the biggest reason high end Mac hardware was kept alive for the past decade. They really need to have their own competitive CAD, STEM app like Matlab, and yes, their own games, to gain a foothold in more market niches, and thusly have more unit sales. Apple getting their hooks into Enterprise IT departments is also a whole other ball of wax to deal with.
I’ll only address item #2: Xcode is no magic bullet to make using all these cores to useful advantage on the simplest applications, or even the most demanding ones. It doesn’t work like that AT ALL. Very few applications users use would be possible to make better by throwing more cores at them no matter what you do, beyond maybe a couple cores for most interactive applications, because most applications will use a single thread to handle all the GUI stuff, and then do other processing off the main GUI thread, with the observation most of those threads used off the main thread don’t run with other threads they interact with or do something truly parallel with beyond merely keeping the GUI main thread from blocking.
Question: how many threads are used for I/O? Answer: unless it’s an embarrassingly-parallel situation, often a single user-space thread can handle multiple I/O things at once, because it’s mostly waiting. The OS and in the user space level Grand Central Dispatch may keep more up and running, in concert with other applications, but the majority of the time, most threads in a thread pool are waiting with nothing to do.
For the vast majority of applications, there’s not even a reasonable way to use 4 threads at a time, let alone 4 cores for that application where you’d ever notice it. Note: some of the higher-end games can and will make use of more cores, as will developer tools like compilers and build systems, things that do a lot of processing. If you’re using something like Apple’s office suite, you’d have a hard time keeping 4 cores busy running all of those applications at the same time, let alone any single one of those applications: the most demanding application in that would be Numbers, if you push it hard enough. Perhaps one day when I have nothing better to do, I’ll do a test and see if Numbers was written in a manner to possibly make effective sustained use of multiple cores when processing a large spreadsheet: I’d wager the answer is they have not done so. Spreadsheet performance was a commonly used metric in the past, but it’s considered a ho-hum task these days.
Unless a user has special types of work they do that inherently uses a lot of threads and processor cores at the same time, the biggest use-case where people will bog down all the cores of an M1 Ultra involve their web browsers with a very large number of tabs open that are doing an unusual amount of computation in each one: even with a lot of ads going, it’d be very hard to use up all the cores, even though most web pages have no dependency on what other web pages are doing. The heaviest loads of the browser for each page would be dispatching a thread per object downloaded and decoded on the page, but short of constant media streaming, this is very short-lived and leaves the machine not working hard for any given page: how many pages do people have downloading and streaming at the same time? On average, not many!
Don't understand how the train of comments went from the Mac Studio is for people who know how to use it and can afford it, to the Mac Studio is not for most people. They really aren't saying anything different.
For the most part, people do indeed buy the things they need to do their job, up to what they care to spend. How much is really up to them and their desires. These aren't throw away items. The whole setup is going to cost $3000 to $10,000. People know what and why they are buying at those prices. The vast majority of sales are going to go to be used in content creation and STEM. They have applications and tools that will use every core, be it CPU or GPU or dedicated media hardware.
There will be a very very few that go to rich people, but we can pretty safely ignore those sales for the market that these products are in. The Mac Studio will be made or broken in the content creation and STEM markets, where its level of cost is actually pretty minor. Some of those folks have annual software licenses that cost more than the Mac Studio itself, or some other minor cost like paying a sub contractor for 2 weeks of work.
The biggest issue for Apple is going to be the usual the chicken or the egg market issue. They need properly optimized software to get more hardware sales, but software won't be properly optimized if they don't have enough hardware sales. This issue isn't cracked unless it is something else killer that sells the device and that can pull optimized software in, or they do a price/perf play which really isn't Apple.
Apple really should be making more software, instead of relying on 3rd parties. FCP sells Mac hardware. iOS app development sells Mac hardware. They are probably the biggest reason high end Mac hardware was kept alive for the past decade. They really need to have their own competitive CAD, STEM app like Matlab, and yes, their own games, to gain a foothold in more market niches, and thusly have more unit sales. Apple getting their hooks into Enterprise IT departments is also a whole other ball of wax to deal with.
I only addressed #2 because it’s important to not mislead people who get all giddy about “ooh, we’ll be able to make use of all of that, this poster says Apple has made it easy, WE NEED THIS SOFTWARE NOW!” The truth is, a tiny percentage of all software even has the capacity to truly benefit from more than 2 threads: one for the user interface, another for some background operation. The poster I responded to could very well persuade people that more is possible than actually is. As someone that started in the field 40 years ago and I’ve made my living developing software, I can’t in good conscience not correct misleading information like the original post I replied to.
Apple’s tools don’t make easy things that are outright impossible, but the post I was responding to could readily be interpreted that way. Not everyone else on these forums has my decades of multithreaded and multiprocessing software development to recognize BS when they read it.
The different front ports may affect which model you buy
I'd love to hear from someone who would lay down $2,000 extra just for a couple of Thunderbolt ports.
Seriously, not like a cable can't be plugged in the back and laying on the table for connecting things. Never really understood front ports on computers and other video equipment, etc. Seems like a left over idea from tower computers under a desk.
I would have preferred to see a clean front with no additional ports and the SD slot moved to the side but I get the convenance for those that use them a lot.
Front ports are useful to people in the video production world. Sometimes, a drive is shipped to you with all the footage from a shoot. You only use it to get the files into your RAID etc., then is is shipped back to the owners. Front ports make that very convenient. Also, maybe you shoot and edit your own stuff, same thing. You bring your footage in whatever device it got recorded on, plug it in the front ports and transfer to the RAID. Easy and no fumbling to find ports on the back.
Crazy thought..... all ports should be on the front!
Other articles have already posted the benchmarks for the M1 Ultra. Like all other M1 CPUs, the single core score is in the 1700 range. The M1 Ultra only excels with the multi-core score, over 20,000 in Geekbench 5. So unless your work specifically takes advantage of the multi-core tasks and video work, the Mac Studio would be a waste of money. The other difference between the base model studio and the Ultra CPU studio is the massive 2 pound heat sink required to keep the Ultra CPU cool. Shop wisely.
Everyone loves to claim how fast the M1 Macs are, but that is only the single core processes. Most Intel CPUs have faster multi-core scores than the M1, by a considerable margin. That is why Apple continued to sell the higher-end Intel Macs, also with dedicated GPUs that were faster than the M1. The M1 Pro and Max fix the limitations of the M1, and the Ultra has amazing multi-core scores. But if your work does not take advantage of the Pro, Max, and Ultra CPUs, you won't see any increase in performance because the single core score is the same as the M1 CPU. I wonder what the M2 will bring to the table?
That's a whole lot of wrong information to unpack.
1) Apple Silicon has been eating Intel's lunch for a long time. Even AnandTech has shown that Apple has had "desktop class" performance in tiny iPads for a very long time before the M1 was announced. This was inevitable and Intel has nothing on the board except a strong desire to best Apple Silicon at some future date.
2) macOS and Xcode make it very easy for even a simple app to work across multiple cores and this has been the case for a very long time.
3) And you din't even mention the power draw to compete with Apple Silicon. Besides the Intel i9 12900 costing $600 for just the chip, it uses many times the power to run it at the same speed as the M1 Ultra. This makes the Mac Studio a very economical buy not just in terms of time to compete jobs, but your TCO.
Apple is eating Intel's lunch and this will get people to switch and we could even see Apple move back into the server market because a 10,000 servers running a fraction of the power saves cost of energy and also allows for many more devices to be places closer together without needing to increase the power coming into the server room.
I’ll only address item #2: Xcode is no magic bullet to make using all these cores to useful advantage on the simplest applications, or even the most demanding ones.
What the fuck are you smoking? Not sure where you get your "magic bullet" from and your clearly sound like some old timey developers that has decided to not stay up to date with modern advancements but it has been over a decade since Apple first introduced GCD so it's inexcusable that you are not aware that it's possible to use multiple concurrent threads in modern systems. Is it as simple as checking a box? Obviously not, but it's leaps and bounds over what it used to be, but you go on thinking that it's " outright impossible" for developers to build apps that utilize multithreading. 🙄
I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
While this may sound outrageous to you, there is a market for these items you described above.
And we haven't even gotten to the lenses or the microphones or the other accessories.
Bottom line, none of the items you or I described are probably made for us. But there are "professional" studios out there that do make use of these, in fact their businesses depend on it. A $1000 stand isn't breaking their bank account any time soon.
I don't think the argument is that the Pro Display XDR is useless, or that there aren't studios who can afford it.
His exact words are: I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
My argument is about putting everything into context. Is being 6' feet tall considered a giant? Answer: Not if you're a human especially male, in fact it's pretty ordinary these days. However if you're referring to the height of a wolf at the shoulder, then yeah, that's being a giant.
Context is everything.
In those examples, sure. But just because there are people willing to pay for something, does not mean that it's reasonably priced, any more than because there are some 7' people around that it's a regular, commonplace height.
I’ll only address item #2: Xcode is no magic bullet to make using all these cores to useful advantage on the simplest applications, or even the most demanding ones. It doesn’t work like that AT ALL. Very few applications users use would be possible to make better by throwing more cores at them no matter what you do, beyond maybe a couple cores for most interactive applications, because most applications will use a single thread to handle all the GUI stuff, and then do other processing off the main GUI thread, with the observation most of those threads used off the main thread don’t run with other threads they interact with or do something truly parallel with beyond merely keeping the GUI main thread from blocking.
Question: how many threads are used for I/O? Answer: unless it’s an embarrassingly-parallel situation, often a single user-space thread can handle multiple I/O things at once, because it’s mostly waiting. The OS and in the user space level Grand Central Dispatch may keep more up and running, in concert with other applications, but the majority of the time, most threads in a thread pool are waiting with nothing to do.
For the vast majority of applications, there’s not even a reasonable way to use 4 threads at a time, let alone 4 cores for that application where you’d ever notice it. Note: some of the higher-end games can and will make use of more cores, as will developer tools like compilers and build systems, things that do a lot of processing. If you’re using something like Apple’s office suite, you’d have a hard time keeping 4 cores busy running all of those applications at the same time, let alone any single one of those applications: the most demanding application in that would be Numbers, if you push it hard enough. Perhaps one day when I have nothing better to do, I’ll do a test and see if Numbers was written in a manner to possibly make effective sustained use of multiple cores when processing a large spreadsheet: I’d wager the answer is they have not done so. Spreadsheet performance was a commonly used metric in the past, but it’s considered a ho-hum task these days.
Unless a user has special types of work they do that inherently uses a lot of threads and processor cores at the same time, the biggest use-case where people will bog down all the cores of an M1 Ultra involve their web browsers with a very large number of tabs open that are doing an unusual amount of computation in each one: even with a lot of ads going, it’d be very hard to use up all the cores, even though most web pages have no dependency on what other web pages are doing. The heaviest loads of the browser for each page would be dispatching a thread per object downloaded and decoded on the page, but short of constant media streaming, this is very short-lived and leaves the machine not working hard for any given page: how many pages do people have downloading and streaming at the same time? On average, not many!
Don't understand how the train of comments went from the Mac Studio is for people who know how to use it and can afford it, to the Mac Studio is not for most people. They really aren't saying anything different.
For the most part, people do indeed buy the things they need to do their job, up to what they care to spend. How much is really up to them and their desires. These aren't throw away items. The whole setup is going to cost $3000 to $10,000. People know what and why they are buying at those prices. The vast majority of sales are going to go to be used in content creation and STEM. They have applications and tools that will use every core, be it CPU or GPU or dedicated media hardware.
There will be a very very few that go to rich people, but we can pretty safely ignore those sales for the market that these products are in. The Mac Studio will be made or broken in the content creation and STEM markets, where its level of cost is actually pretty minor. Some of those folks have annual software licenses that cost more than the Mac Studio itself, or some other minor cost like paying a sub contractor for 2 weeks of work.
The biggest issue for Apple is going to be the usual the chicken or the egg market issue. They need properly optimized software to get more hardware sales, but software won't be properly optimized if they don't have enough hardware sales. This issue isn't cracked unless it is something else killer that sells the device and that can pull optimized software in, or they do a price/perf play which really isn't Apple.
Apple really should be making more software, instead of relying on 3rd parties. FCP sells Mac hardware. iOS app development sells Mac hardware. They are probably the biggest reason high end Mac hardware was kept alive for the past decade. They really need to have their own competitive CAD, STEM app like Matlab, and yes, their own games, to gain a foothold in more market niches, and thusly have more unit sales. Apple getting their hooks into Enterprise IT departments is also a whole other ball of wax to deal with.
I only addressed #2 because it’s important to not mislead people who get all giddy about “ooh, we’ll be able to make use of all of that, this poster says Apple has made it easy, WE NEED THIS SOFTWARE NOW!” The truth is, a tiny percentage of all software even has the capacity to truly benefit from more than 2 threads: one for the user interface, another for some background operation. The poster I responded to could very well persuade people that more is possible than actually is. As someone that started in the field 40 years ago and I’ve made my living developing software, I can’t in good conscience not correct misleading information like the original post I replied to.
Apple’s tools don’t make easy things that are outright impossible, but the post I was responding to could readily be interpreted that way. Not everyone else on these forums has my decades of multithreaded and multiprocessing software development to recognize BS when they read it.
I don't think anyone buying a Mac Studio is being misled by performance claims. They will know how their workflows perform across all the compute engines in the Studio and what their memory and storage needs are. There are plenty of people performing test cases all over the place. They also know if their software has been optimized for ARM or not as well. This is the tiny sliver in the market that can take advantage of multiprocessing and dedicated hardware.
I do agree with you that the vast majority of the market, which is web browsing and office automation, doesn't need more than 2 to 4 p-cores, and that is born out in the market. Everyone loves to talk about the latest high end system - the same thing happens with luxury cars and hyper cars - but the vast majority of systems are Pentium, Core i3, Ryzen 3 series, and M1 systems. So, it is sorted out, just by the sheer force of the cost of the systems. And, I do think these people with an average user workflow know that having all these cores won't make their compute experience faster.
For the most part, we are all just fans talking about the latest super car around here, and it is implied or assumed that we have workflows that can take advantage of the hardware when discussing it, discussing their benchmark results so on and so forth. I don't even think the pro e-sport players, who can tax their GPUs, go around talking about their hardware on fan forums like we do. Those people are all talking about tools and technique in the craft, like how they use controllers, keyboards and mouse, not their specs and performance, or they are practicing. The people on these fan forums are fans of the hardware, the super car, not the games or the workflows. We just imagine that we have the means to drive it.
I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
While this may sound outrageous to you, there is a market for these items you described above.
And we haven't even gotten to the lenses or the microphones or the other accessories.
Bottom line, none of the items you or I described are probably made for us. But there are "professional" studios out there that do make use of these, in fact their businesses depend on it. A $1000 stand isn't breaking their bank account any time soon.
I don't think the argument is that the Pro Display XDR is useless, or that there aren't studios who can afford it.
His exact words are: I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
My argument is about putting everything into context. Is being 6' feet tall considered a giant? Answer: Not if you're a human especially male, in fact it's pretty ordinary these days. However if you're referring to the height of a wolf at the shoulder, then yeah, that's being a giant.
Context is everything.
In those examples, sure. But just because there are people willing to pay for something, does not mean that it's reasonably priced, any more than because there are some 7' people around that it's a regular, commonplace height.
And if Apple is selling as many as they can make? What does that tell you about the equilibrium in the market? Does that tell you that it's priced too high for the market simply because it's more than you feel is reasonable for your needs? The Mac Studio isn't for me as I prefer notebooks, but for the performance as well as performance per watt is seems like a bargain for people that could benefit from replacing their Mac Pro or even server and workstation solutions where the machine is working constantly.
I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
While this may sound outrageous to you, there is a market for these items you described above.
And we haven't even gotten to the lenses or the microphones or the other accessories.
Bottom line, none of the items you or I described are probably made for us. But there are "professional" studios out there that do make use of these, in fact their businesses depend on it. A $1000 stand isn't breaking their bank account any time soon.
I don't think the argument is that the Pro Display XDR is useless, or that there aren't studios who can afford it.
His exact words are: I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
My argument is about putting everything into context. Is being 6' feet tall considered a giant? Answer: Not if you're a human especially male, in fact it's pretty ordinary these days. However if you're referring to the height of a wolf at the shoulder, then yeah, that's being a giant.
Context is everything.
In those examples, sure. But just because there are people willing to pay for something, does not mean that it's reasonably priced, any more than because there are some 7' people around that it's a regular, commonplace height.
And if Apple is selling as many as they can make? What does that tell you about the equilibrium in the market? Does that tell you that it's priced too high for the market simply because it's more than you feel is reasonable for your needs? The Mac Studio isn't for me as I prefer notebooks, but for the performance as well as performance per watt is seems like a bargain for people that could benefit from replacing their Mac Pro or even server and workstation solutions where the machine is working constantly.
You are rather straying from the original opinion. Equilibrium in the market is not a factor in whether someone finds the pricing of a product to be reasonable. Though since the original claim is that Apple are price gouging, then Apple selling all they can make may be indicative of a captive market which would indeed be very vulnerable to price gouging.
I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
While this may sound outrageous to you, there is a market for these items you described above.
And we haven't even gotten to the lenses or the microphones or the other accessories.
Bottom line, none of the items you or I described are probably made for us. But there are "professional" studios out there that do make use of these, in fact their businesses depend on it. A $1000 stand isn't breaking their bank account any time soon.
I don't think the argument is that the Pro Display XDR is useless, or that there aren't studios who can afford it.
His exact words are: I am not trying to be argumentative but look at this. Come on $6000 and $1000 for the stand. Did the price of aluminum go up or something. Just acknowledge that this is gouging and I will concede to the rest of your argument.
My argument is about putting everything into context. Is being 6' feet tall considered a giant? Answer: Not if you're a human especially male, in fact it's pretty ordinary these days. However if you're referring to the height of a wolf at the shoulder, then yeah, that's being a giant.
Context is everything.
In those examples, sure. But just because there are people willing to pay for something, does not mean that it's reasonably priced, any more than because there are some 7' people around that it's a regular, commonplace height.
And if Apple is selling as many as they can make? What does that tell you about the equilibrium in the market? Does that tell you that it's priced too high for the market simply because it's more than you feel is reasonable for your needs? The Mac Studio isn't for me as I prefer notebooks, but for the performance as well as performance per watt is seems like a bargain for people that could benefit from replacing their Mac Pro or even server and workstation solutions where the machine is working constantly.
You are rather straying from the original opinion. Equilibrium in the market is not a factor in whether someone finds the pricing of a product to be reasonable. Though since the original claim is that Apple are price gouging, then Apple selling all they can make may be indicative of a captive market which would indeed be very vulnerable to price gouging.
I'm only responding to your comment, "just because there are people willing to pay for something, does not mean that it's reasonably priced," not the whole thread that days ago, I assume. As for price gouging, that has a very specific legal definition which seems to be one of the (few?) anticompetitive tactics Apple hasn't been lost in court over.
Comments
For the most part, people do indeed buy the things they need to do their job, up to what they care to spend. How much is really up to them and their desires. These aren't throw away items. The whole setup is going to cost $3000 to $10,000. People know what and why they are buying at those prices. The vast majority of sales are going to go to be used in content creation and STEM. They have applications and tools that will use every core, be it CPU or GPU or dedicated media hardware.
There will be a very very few that go to rich people, but we can pretty safely ignore those sales for the market that these products are in. The Mac Studio will be made or broken in the content creation and STEM markets, where its level of cost is actually pretty minor. Some of those folks have annual software licenses that cost more than the Mac Studio itself, or some other minor cost like paying a sub contractor for 2 weeks of work.
The biggest issue for Apple is going to be the usual the chicken or the egg market issue. They need properly optimized software to get more hardware sales, but software won't be properly optimized if they don't have enough hardware sales. This issue isn't cracked unless it is something else killer that sells the device and that can pull optimized software in, or they do a price/perf play which really isn't Apple.
Apple really should be making more software, instead of relying on 3rd parties. FCP sells Mac hardware. iOS app development sells Mac hardware. They are probably the biggest reason high end Mac hardware was kept alive for the past decade. They really need to have their own competitive CAD, STEM app like Matlab, and yes, their own games, to gain a foothold in more market niches, and thusly have more unit sales. Apple getting their hooks into Enterprise IT departments is also a whole other ball of wax to deal with.
Apple’s tools don’t make easy things that are outright impossible, but the post I was responding to could readily be interpreted that way. Not everyone else on these forums has my decades of multithreaded and multiprocessing software development to recognize BS when they read it.
I do agree with you that the vast majority of the market, which is web browsing and office automation, doesn't need more than 2 to 4 p-cores, and that is born out in the market. Everyone loves to talk about the latest high end system - the same thing happens with luxury cars and hyper cars - but the vast majority of systems are Pentium, Core i3, Ryzen 3 series, and M1 systems. So, it is sorted out, just by the sheer force of the cost of the systems. And, I do think these people with an average user workflow know that having all these cores won't make their compute experience faster.
For the most part, we are all just fans talking about the latest super car around here, and it is implied or assumed that we have workflows that can take advantage of the hardware when discussing it, discussing their benchmark results so on and so forth. I don't even think the pro e-sport players, who can tax their GPUs, go around talking about their hardware on fan forums like we do. Those people are all talking about tools and technique in the craft, like how they use controllers, keyboards and mouse, not their specs and performance, or they are practicing. The people on these fan forums are fans of the hardware, the super car, not the games or the workflows. We just imagine that we have the means to drive it.