atomic101

I've been an iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch guy for nearly two decades, but never made the transition with general computing.  On a whim, I picked up a MacBook Pro with M2 last month on a great deal.  Despite the learning curve and the need to customize a few options to better suit my tastes, I'm extremely impressed with how well the M2 functions, whether in responsiveness, energy efficiency, or general lack of fan noise.  My Intel-based laptops are obnoxiously loud under even medium load, which leaves a psychological impression that they are inefficient or just poorly balanced.  What really impressed me is the GPU performance... for an "integrated" graphics solution, the M2 is leagues above the Intel Integrated Graphics that I've had to deal with.  Even better, I purchased a Parallels license to get over any Windows "separation anxiety" as a first-timer, and it runs the OS and software better than my relatively new i7 machine.

Granted, the 24 GB of embedded RAM probably doesn't hurt things, but my initial impressions are very positive.

Updated last night and so far I'm seeing a huge improvement in battery life.  I was barely able to make it home from work on my Series 5, which is admittedly aging, but prior to the Watch 10 update, I was able to push through most of my day including a workout at night.  Even switching off the Always On display, which was an easy way to stretch the battery, barely helped.  Hopefully this is a firm fix moving forward.

Frustrating that battery drain issues crop up after major OS updates.  I was half convinced that the new OS was just that much more power intensive.

Saw this in theaters opening weekend.  It was an interesting story to tell, but not something I would recommend for its general entertainment value.  Especially given the overly long length, which I didn't think was necessary.

I don't know the budget but given the discussion of the film's high production costs, its opening weekend dollar intake wasn't much to write home about, and a falloff in the second week doesn't bode well.

I'm a big believer in the theater experience, especially some of the premium seating options that are available near me.  If this had been streaming only, it's unlikely I would have given it a chance.

This just goes to show that the honeymoon period of early A-series chip development is over.  Apple engineers have essentially perfected the fundamental designs of these chips such that there are no "easy" optimizations sitting out there as low-hanging fruit.  The days of 50%, 40%, or 30% year-over-year performance gains are over.... at least until some other paradigm shift in semiconductors arrives.

The Apple/ARM architecture has a great number of advantages over the legacy x86 line of processors, but any illusion of these things continuing their moonshot trajectories should be dampened by reality.

Still, gains and optimizations year-over-year are still very welcome.

I find the Battery Health function to be dubious.  I appreciate that it's there, but my personal experience with my iPhone 13 has been to watch the health indicator steadily decrease over two years until literally freezing at 80% for the better part of 9 months.  This same thing happened to my Series 5 Watch.  Just last week, the Watch finally dipped to 79% with the requisite warning of degradation, while the phone is still holding at 80%.

It's been over two years, so I'm satisfied with the battery performance as a whole, but the pegging of the health indicator at exactly 80% for such a long time makes me chuckle a bit.