rmoo

DAalseth said:

Taking our data without our permission, keeping dossiers on us and using it to harm us by flooding our in boxes, and web browsers with SPAM. FB using multiple unethical, if not illegal means to track our every move, even if we did not use FB or any of their services. and using that data against us. Google moving to control major parts of internet advertising, destroying or buying competition, something FB has done as well. 

No market share does not equal abuse. Abuse equals abuse and there’s ample evidence that G and FB have been doing many unethical things that need to be dealt with. None of which Apple has done.

1. The data thing is entirely legal. Everyone does it ... Google just happens to be better at it. I will believe that the anger at data collecting and tracking is legitimate when it is aimed at the many companies who do the same thing without creating products that compete with Apple's. Take Microsoft for example: they do the same sort of data collection and tracking, as do Yahoo. You don't hear about them only because Bing and Yahoo Search lost to Google and because Microsoft's mobile OS efforts failed. (Microsoft still collects/tracks via their very popular apps). If you offer a free service like search, email, social networking, video sharing, news aggregation etc. then you collect data to sell for ads because there is no other way to make money. As Google clearly isn't the only one with free Internet and web products - and were nowhere near the first - no sense singling them out. 

2. Google floods your inboxes and web browsers with spam? That is curious ... have been using Chrome and Gmail since the mid-2000s and don't experience that. I have also not seen anyone else blame Google for spam, adware or malware.

3.  "Google moving to control major parts of internet advertising, destroying or buying competition" all those acquisitions were approved by domestic agencies (under Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations) and by international bodies as well. And some attempted Google acquisitions have been blocked, with Google's attempt to buy Twitch blocked by the DoJ being the best example. A lot of people gripe over Google buying their main competitor in ads, but this was ages ago back when Yahoo was still a bigger company and Google was fighting tooth and nail to keep Microsoft from running out of business. 

GeorgeBMac said:

For gaming on a TV, the Mac's HDMI 2.0 port simply can't rival the HDMI 2.1 on the gaming laptop  because it cannot drive enough data to support 4K, 120+fps which seems to be the gold standard for gaming these days.

...  Otherwise, it should be fine.

But, there's another issue as well:  Will the M1 MacBook even load the game you want to play?

If it doesn't, then all this talk about specs is purely just academic, what-if discussion.

But there's yet a third point:

The M1 MacBook is primarily a high end general purpose laptop.  The fact that it could even compare to an upper tier gaming laptop for gaming says all you need to know about it:   IT IS POWERFUL AND FAST!

... It's a bit like comparing the performance of a Mercedes sedan to a Porsche 911.  If it even comes close to that performance it's a win for the Mercedes  -- but it doesn't mean you'd want to take it to road race.

In my very long post - which I deleted for obvious reasons - I was going to go with Ferrari versus 3/4 ton pickup. Both with high performance engines but the engine - and the automobile form itself as well as other stuff like weight, control/steering, tires etc. - designed for very different things.

I don't get the hangup with gaming laptops. Gaming laptops are not designed to maximize general performance or even computational heavy performance with high graphics. They are designed to maximize gaming performance. And this is a problem when games are very different from each other. Some games have bursting performance, other require sustained peak performance. A fast-paced first person shooter is totally different from a sim that aims for as much realism as possible. The shooter is going to have changing foreground action against mostly static backgrounds but the sim is going to have the backgrounds as detailed as possible. The shooter is designed to have changing (foreground) graphics very fast but that isn't an issue with Animal Crossing. Game engines vary a lot too. The upshot is that different games stress CPU, GPU, memory and I/O in very different ways. Gaming laptops are designed to handle that very wide variety with default settings as easy as possible. And the priorities are different. A keyboard with very low latency and oversized keys matters a lot more to this crowd than a bright screen. 

I guess the thing is that Windows and macOS are two different worlds. People who are in one camp really don't know much about the other. You have Windows folks who insist that Macs are ripoffs when Macs ran Windows on bootcamp better than 90% of enterprise laptops from Dell, HP and Lenovo do. And you have Mac people who believe that gaming laptops are the most powerful Windows machines when the pro devices offer better performance on a wider variety of workloads and often for less money. Yes, people buy gaming laptops for work, but only because they want to work from 9 to 5 then game from 5:30 to 10 (and on weekends) without wanting to spend a ton of money purchasing and maintaining multiple machines. But pros who don't care about gaming don't go anywhere near a gaming laptop. They buy Dell Precision and Lenovo Thinkpad, not Alienware or Legion. 

By the way ... I was wrong to when I claimed that "only Apple fans associate the XPS with the MacBook" and this article proves it: https://fortune.com/2015/10/14/dell-apple-competition/ so I sincerely regret the error and recant.

I guess it is more that Windows users and bloggers don't acknowledge this fact. But good grief, if you want a Windows workhorse, the "thin and light" thing doesn't cut it. Similar to gaming laptops, Windows and Linux powerhouses designed for heavy workloads look the part and are unapologetic about it. An effort is made to make Windows devices aimed at creators more aesthetically pleasing but that is about it. 

entropys said:

The LP5 pro goes up to a 3080 and a ryzen 9 and has the bright QHD screen. The LP5i pro is basically the same with an intel chip in it, up to i9.

But these are serious gaming devices that can also be used as productivity devices.
The MBP are serious productivity devices that can also be used for games. That is a quite meaningful difference. However, the power of the M1 family invites comparison to other laptop models with the greatest power, which happen to be gaming devices. That is why people are interested.

These gaming machines are better for games and game performance as they have the right hardware matched up with the right software.  They are lesser productivity devices as they also weigh a lot, are noisy, and power is downgraded on battery which also only lasts a couple of hours. (Legion 5 pros do minimise these drawbacks quite well compared to some other gaming laptops, but still).

The direct competitor to the MBP is the XPS, or maybe the MS Surface laptop studio, but a comparison there is almost mean.  It would be good if the comparison was the latest XPS rather than 10th gen, but from Apple’s marketing perspective, getting people to get all defensive and rant about some kind of fix being in, then publicly going off to find relevant benchmarks that still show the M1 Max taking on all comers, is all good publicity. You almost have to think it deliberate.

Look, my issue is not with the M1 Pro and the M1 Max. I opened my complaint with "The M1 Pro and the M1 Max are the best PC CPUs on the market right now." But your statement "However, the power of the M1 family invites comparison to other laptop models with the greatest power, which happen to be gaming devices" is objectively false. The laptops with the greatest power are workstations designed for content creation and scientific applications. For example, Nvidia has one line of GPUs that is designed for gaming - the RTX - and another line that is designed for the raw calculations used in content creation and other pro work: the Ax000 line. AMD does the same: their Radeon Pro line is for calculators and creators, not gamers. They have a different architecture - Ampere - and they also lack the DLSS, AI and other software used to enhance gaming performance. A software engineer, 3D animator or video editor will only buy a gaming laptop if they don't know any better. The Lenovo Thinkpad 15 Gen 2 has an Nvidia A2000 card and costs about what the average gaming laptop does. 

It would be one thing if the M1 Max was actually slower than Intel and AMD CPUs and the columnist was trying to hide it with these bad comparisons. Instead, the M1 Max is actually BETTER than anything you can find in a non-server from factor except a Xeon or Threadripper. That is what makes these bad comparisons with machines not even designed to do typical MacBook workloads are so frustrating. The guy is making a big deal about the 1080p screens and low nits when the screens are designed for gaming content at the highest possible FPS, not maximum resolution and brightness. If you want maximum resolution and brightness get a device designed for photo and video editing like the MSI Creator or the Acer Concept 7D instead of MSI gaming or Acer Predator. And compare it with the latest Intel Core i9, not 10th gen Core i7. The M1 Max and Pro are going to win anyway, so why not? 

Also, the Surface Studio is designed for aesthetics and workflow, not performance. As for the Dell XPS, it is the opinion of Apple users that the XPS is the MacBook counterpart. You will never hear that from Dell, or from actual Windows users generally.

Mike Wuerthele said:

KITA said:

GeorgeBMac said:

That's not to fault this review, which is, as always, a good one. 

Agree to disagree I suppose... The article does essentially nothing to "review" either device beyond a light spec sheet comparison.

This is just a straight specs compare, which we get a large volume of requests for. Reviews will follow.

But it isn't a legitimate "straight specs compare." You chose a lesser last gen CPU/GPU combo - Intel Core i7-10875H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 - over the current gen and superior Intel Core i9-11900H and Nvidia RTX 3060. I guess you can say that it is because the 16' Intel MBP started out with the Core i7. But the 11900H/RTX 3060 and the entry level MBP 16' both still cost $2500!

Look, I have read that no x86 "PC" processor - which in my book precludes the Intel Xeon and AMD Threadripper - on the market has CPU benchmarks that can compete with the M1 Max. So why even do this?

entropys said:

Tbh I think the comparable machine would be a legion 5 pro with a Ryzen chip and the QHD 500 nit screen.
closer price range too.it even has “pro” in the name!

None of these laptops are serious comparisons. First off, they are capping their GPU comparisons to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 or lower. Second, they aren't considering Intel Core i9 devices at all. 

Yes, you can get a 2021 Dell XPS 17 with a 10th gen Intel Core i7 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 for $2150. But why when you can get a 2021 Dell XPS 17 with an 11th gen Core i9 with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 for the same amount of money? Or with the RTX 3060 for $2450, which is still $50 less than the MacBook? It is like they chose the worst possible comparison on purpose! Why do you suppose that was?