Mike Wuerthele

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Mike Wuerthele
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  • 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 review: Incremental upgrade and unexciting

    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele
    y2an said:
    I think this review and others have missed what the likely market is for this model, which is enterprise. The rest of the product (especially the screen) may be a few years old but they are still good and still competitive against average Windows laptops, so in a sense were ahead of their time when they first came to market. Which today means they would be lower cost and give Apple considerable headroom for enterprise discounts on this model while maintaining margin. The M2 processor gives enough performance bragging rights to stay in the running for an enterprise bid. Why not list price this lower due to the other tech being older? That would be nuts, destroy the market for the Air which the rest of us would get. No, I’m quite sure this is deliberate - similar list prices to keep the Air more attractive to consumers, but be able to offer hefty discounts on the 13” Pro to enterprise customers.
    What you're saying is not consistent with the folks at Disney, Deloitte, IBM, and others that we spoke to. Most of their capital investment is in the M1 machines which they are not replacing. For the next year, they're looking at the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Studio for the folks that are on the higher-performing Intel machines that they kept.

    We'll see with time, of course. 
    dewmemuthuk_vanalingamlkruppPascalxxwatto_cobra

  • 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 review: Incremental upgrade and unexciting

    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele
    jdw said:
    I'm rather shocked that this article and the entire tech media isn't talking about what MaxTech found in his review; namely, that the SSD speed is HALF that of the M1 MBP!  To me, that is absolutely shocking and totally unacceptable.  You can see that at the 1:16 part of his video below:



    He shows you get faster SSD performance even with the $800 MacBook Air!

    Max also reports it hits 104°C during testing, which is insane.

    Add the 720p webcam to that, and this particular model is turning out to be an embarrassing disaster.  Honestly, it makes zero sense to me what Apple even has it in the lineup because the M2 Air looks to be better in many ways, if one wants a big step up from the Air, they just need to go with the 14" M1 Pro.
    SSD speeds at 256 and 1TB are addressed in the review. More specifically, Apple appears to have shifted to 256GB flash media, and there is one chip in the 256GB config and two in the 512, and two 512GB chips in the 1TB model.

    FTA: "Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test app on the 256GB model yielded a 1,636 MB/s sustained write speed and a 1,464 MB/s average read speed. The 1TB model was faster with about 2,400 megabytes per second write and 2,800 megabytes per second read speeds wholly gained through increased parallelization and the use of multiple Flash media chips in capacities larger than the 256GB model.

    Given what we know about the evolution of this particular MacBook Pro and the reality of the M2 processor as it stands today, these drive speeds are about what we expected and notably slower than the 14-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Studio."

    This is likely because 128GB chips are in tight supply right now, by the smartphone industry.

    Fwiw, this is one of the factors we incorporated into the score. It's also something that most of the target market won't see or feel.
    dewmenubusroundaboutnowwatto_cobra

  • 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 review: Incremental upgrade and unexciting

    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele
    jas99 said:
    OK, what part of the word “upgrade” is so hard to understand?

    It’s better than the previous version. 

    Great!

    If they hadn’t upgraded it, would you have written an article complaining they kept a “tired old machine around” ????

    Enough with the “not a big enough upgrade” pieces. If there’s nothing to write about, just don’t write. 
    Like your forum post, we get to have opinions and we get to write them.

    If they hadn't upgraded it, and kept it at the same price point versus where the new MacBook Air sits, we'd have absolutely talked about how it doesn't have a place in the lineup. Your point about "better than the previous version" is addressed in the text -- but I'm going to guess you didn't read to that part and posted anyway.

    And, as a reminder -- AppleInsider is for everybody, not just the Apple faithful. Not everybody has the same level of product lineup knowledge that you appear to have, and these reviews need to be addressed to them as well.

    And like you said, if there's nothing to write about, don't write a forum post about it.
    chasmavon b7williamlondoncanukstormMplsPmuthuk_vanalingamelijahgRogue01watto_cobragrandact73

  • Compared: AirPods Max vs Master & Dynamic MW75

    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele
    If you can't see your comment, review the commenting guidelines conveniently posted at the bottom of every post.

    If a post is labeled a "review" it will have opinions, if it is labeled a "compare" it has light opinions or none at all. Our spec-compares are not just our most trafficked pieces, but also our most requested.
    cornchipdewme

  • Hands on: Using the iPhone as a webcam with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura

    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele
    skippingrock said:
    Does it say anywhere which iPhones and Macs are supporting this feature?
    As far as iPhones, we've tested it on iPhone 12 and 13, and will test iPhone X, XR, and 11 later in the process.

    We haven't seen a cutoff on which Macs, other than what's required to run the OS.
    Alex1NStrangeDaysappleinsideruser