wisey

The article demonstrates a singular lack of vision and imagination.  Many thousands of people work in control rooms with multiple screens and information input.  They are the people who would benefit most from an Apple vision pro.  For example, a busy news room, a person with a Vision Pro would be able to direct people, stories, videos, and other input from multiple sources.  The writer clearly has never been in a busy stock trading room or a cryptocurrency trading room, where many people are frequently watching three monitors at a time and talking on two phones.  An Apple Vision Pro could be used by airport controllers who may be directing 15 aircrafts taking off and landing at a time.  These are the people who would need a device like this, not construction workers.  Military use of the Apple Vision Pro will blossom.  I also think that the Apple Vision Pro will be used by serious gamers.  

I find this review to be disingenuous.  Instead of saying up front that Apple goofed and put a base SSD configuration that halved the speed of the M2 MacBook Air, that the one fan-version of the M2 MacBook Pro 13” did not provide sufficient cooling to prevent throttling of the computer after 15 minutes of hard usage, that differences of size and weight between the M1 MacBook Air/Pro, and the M2 MacBook Air/Pro at best minor, the review suggested that the 2022 Air and Pro hit the “sweet spot”.  The only thing that did hit the “sweet spot” was the longer battery life but that is not worth the price.  This is whether people should by an M2 Air/Pro laptop with several serious deficiencies.  I have a M1 MacBook Air with 16 Gb RAM and 2 Tb SSD that I bought in 2020.  An honest reviewer would have told me that upgrading my M1 Air to an M2 Air to 2 Tb SSD and 16 Gb RAM would  a serious mistake and that I would have seriously regretted investing >$2500 to buy a 14” M2 Pro with 2 Tb SSD.  

seanismorris, I agree with you that many of the inferences in the article are poorly justified and not credible.  The claim that a “glut” of exploits for iOS is responsible for the lower price of exploits being sold suggests that there is a limited budget for such sales and the prices fall when there are too many of them.  I don’t think that there is evidence for such market limits.  

One would also imagine that the more malicious and damaging the exploits, the higher price that organizations would pay for them, suggesting that Android exploits are more malicious and damaging.  

As you point out, the other reason why prices for Android exploits are high is because there are more Android users.  

More exploits for iOS is consistent with the greater wealth of iOS users.  The fact that Apple responds quickly to the presence of exploits and almost all iOS users upgrade their operating systems relatively quickly means that exploits are more rapidly and definitively neutralized, reducing their value.

Nightstorm said:

Has apple insider gone mental? This is the worse matchup, one is brand new and one is a whole generation ago. 7th gen cpu vs 8th gen’s latest? When comparing cpu’s This is like putting a 2019 corvette up against a 1999. You can justify this with cost all you want, it is still ludicrous.

I agree with this comment.  At the very least, the author should have compared a more expensive MacBook Pro that is of similar hardware vintage, to show that there are MacBook pros that are as good or better.  The extra price that Mac users pay Is for the reliability, the operating system, the frequent free upgrades and security of its operating system, the much lower incidence of malicious viruses, and long-term compatability with Mac programs over decades.  

If somebody has actual repair statistics of the Razer and MacBook Pro, that would be a worthwhile discussion.  I have had probably ten Macbook laptops for the last two decades and experienced a keyboard failure only once and never with the recent MacBooks.  I have had only one Macbook fail on me and Apple replaced free (under warranty) in less than a week.  I also know many people who have used their MacBooks for 6 years or longer.

I have a late 2016 Macbook with a 4-core Intel Core i7-6920HQ@2.9GHz CPU, 16 Gb 2133 MHz RAM LPSSE3, Radeon Pro 460 4096 Mb - Intel HD Graphics 530 1536 Mb, and 2 Tb SSD, running Mojave 10.14.1.  Its single and multi core performances are not that different from the Razer.  Interestingly, my 2018 iPad Pro 11” with an ARM 2.48 GHz 8-core (A12X) blows both the MBP 15” and the Razer out of the water.  The 2016 iPad Pro 12.9” with the A10X processor had lower single and multi-core Geekbench 4 scores.

                           Single Multi OpenCL

‘18 Razer Blade 4883 16017 47516

‘16 MBP 15”      4631 15614 20890

‘18 iPad Pro 11” 5014 18301 42209

‘16 iPad Pro 12.9” 3946 9496 29310

To tell you the truth, I am happy with my late 2016 MBP 15”.  I use my Mac to do a lot of word-processing, drawings, excel and statistical programs.  It is more than fast enough for my purposes.  It also has a 10-hour battery life, finger print detector on the on-off button, the color touch strip, a reliable keyboard, the beautiful bright screen, and the best safety of all laptops with relatively few malicious viruses.  It runs 95% of Mac software, including programs from 20 years ago.   I have used it for nearly 2 years and will probably continue using it for at least another 2-3 years.  By that time, the iPad will likely have a Finder-like app and may be able to replace the Mac.

I agree with Tim Cook.  He owns cryptocurrency but does not impose his views on others.  People who are interested in in cryptocurrency can readily find information on the web regarding how they can mine and trade cryptocurrency.  Apple does not encourage and should not be encouraging such activities.  The situation would be analogous to Apple encouraging gambling.