M4 Mac Announcements

New cpu capabilities found in macOS 15.4. Could it indicate a new M5 or just exposing existing M4 features.
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Edit. Maybe not so new it seems. Disregard.
 
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One rumor is the M3 will be dropped and the M2 will stay. Frankly, I’d rather they just drop M4 down to $999 again, with a binned 3+6 or whatever. Keeping the M2 till 2026 seems a bit much. Not that it’s bad but still.

That said what it will confirm if they drop M3, not M2, is that the M3 lineup is costly and they really did want it out ASAP, N3E even with a 10-15% larger die probably costs less.

I believe this to be true, but also found it interesting they’re still producing A17 Pros for the iPad Mini, which is conflicting.
 
Artemis said:
One rumor is the M3 will be dropped and the M2 will stay. Frankly, I’d rather they just drop M4 down to $999 again, with a binned 3+6 or whatever. Keeping the M2 till 2026 seems a bit much. Not that it’s bad but still.

That said what it will confirm if they drop M3, not M2, is that the M3 lineup is costly and they really did want it out ASAP, N3E even with a 10-15% larger die probably costs less.

I believe this to be true, but also found it interesting they’re still producing A17 Pros for the iPad Mini, which is conflicting.
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Yeah I’m also not a fan of the rumor if true because it’ll keep the non dynamic cache/ray tracing/mesh shading GPUs around as the base configuration for longer. Especially since for dynamic cache one of the benefits is that, when it becomes the minimum target, programming for Apple GPUs becomes much simpler/less costly in compilation time.
 
dada_dave said:
Yeah I’m also not a fan of the rumor if true because it’ll keep the non dynamic cache/ray tracing/mesh shading GPUs around as the base configuration for longer. Especially since for dynamic cache one of the benefits is that, when it becomes the minimum target, programming for Apple GPUs becomes much simpler/less costly in compilation time.
Click to expand...
Yes great point. GPU + AV1 and all is what I have in mind too
 
They should just do 1K for 16/256 and take the L, it’s still an LED display anyway and relatively standard RAM just on-package like with phones. The SSD is also mid. The 16GB + price before that was a good step but I’d say one more wouldn’t be ridiculous. At least with the MBP there’s a more compelling argument for the $1599 starting price what with the SSD, display, fans, ports, better keyboard etc at that price. A 16/512 M4 Air at $1299 these days feels a bit silly given the kind of stuff going similar and that will continue to go for similar (and/or with deeper markdowns), especially this Q4/next Q1.

Granted Apple has never fought full price wars but we’re lying to ourselves to say they don’t at least give it some effort to stay competitive on value. Macs don’t sell the same way that iPhones and iPads do in part because of RAM/SSD margins, but also that Windows is either tolerable or has things you genuinely can’t do with a Mac (though less than ever in 2025, yet pending Nvidia’s SoC entry)
 
Artemis said:
They should just do 1K for 16/256 and take the L, it’s still an LED display anyway and relatively standard RAM just on-package like with phones. The SSD is also mid. The 16GB + price before that was a good step but I’d say one more wouldn’t be ridiculous. At least with the MBP there’s a more compelling argument for the $1599 starting price what with the SSD, display, fans, ports, better keyboard etc at that price. A 16/512 M4 Air at $1299 these days feels a bit silly given the kind of stuff going similar and that will continue to go for similar (and/or with deeper markdowns), especially this Q4/next Q1.

Granted Apple has never fought full price wars but we’re lying to ourselves to say they don’t at least give it some effort to stay competitive on value. Macs don’t sell the same way that iPhones and iPads do in part because of RAM/SSD margins, but also that Windows is either tolerable or has things you genuinely can’t do with a Mac (though less than ever in 2025, yet pending Nvidia’s SoC entry)
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16GB minimum of RAM is a nice update - overdue perhaps but also higher than I thought they would do (I thought 12GB). But I also thought they might bump minimum base storage to 512GB and they didn’t. Agreed that while I don’t think Apple needs to get into price wars, upgrade pricing is getting ridiculous - especially for storage. Now that 8GB of RAM is no longer a tier, the most egregiously priced RAM upgrades from 8 to 16GB have been eliminated. And I’d even say that 16/24/36GB as base RAM for base/Pro/Max should eliminate upgrade prices for most customers of those tiers. But … storage is not great.
 
Apple doesn’t have direct ecosystem vendor competition, and in the past has had much more hardware value adds like with display resolutions and power management, keyboards, trackpads, and preference for MacOS, so it reduces the pressure. But at a certain point of good enough hardware on the chip and vastly more competitive RAM/SSD & Display pricing Apple will take a professional hit simply because computers are not primarily for iMessage et. Al, and It’s not the early 10’s on keyboards/trackpads/displays either.


Again I realize Apple won’t do full-blown price wars, but they are semi-responsive,

IOW I think an M4 price at the same target is still too high for the MBA given the SSD and LED display especially in a year. The sales that go on for Zen 5 and Lunar Lake/X Elite laptops with 16/512 or 32/1TB and quality OLED, 90-120Hz VRR displays are pretty ridiculous, even if you took them at MSRP and added $100 for next year with newer more expensive but comparable base level QC/Nvidia chips then on paper it just won’t be close, and sales happen more often for PCs. Now wether Build 2025 rounds out some other stuff remains to be seen, along with that synergy to new Nvidia SoCs.
 
Apple may not care but in principle they probably should, MacOS has grown a lot in higher income segments since 2008, and even more now with Apple Silicon IME, and after correcting the butterfly mistake. There’s a tradeoff that’s worth making for developer TAM and scale that carries the ecosystem. Worth doing $600 MacBooks? No lol. But keeping professional machines short of robbery is imo wise
 
Artemis said:
Apple may not care but in principle they probably should, MacOS has grown a lot in higher income segments since 2008, and even more now with Apple Silicon IME, and after correcting the butterfly mistake. There’s a tradeoff that’s worth making for developer TAM and scale that carries the ecosystem. Worth doing $600 MacBooks? No lol. But keeping professional machines short of robbery is imo wise
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Aye although they are doing minis for $600, which is a fantastic price except for the 256GB storage.
 
Artemis said:
if they drop M3, not M2, is that the M3 lineup is costly and they really did want it out ASAP
Click to expand...

More'n likely, I think, is that M3 was seen as a leap, so it sold well, vs M2, which was seen as kind of a placeholder, so they have stale stock.
 
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Yoused said:
If you need more, you are expected to rent space on iCloud. I mean, get with the program, man.
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I tried iCloud and was surprised by how limited it is as a backup. It won't include any of the folders I've created directly under my home directory.
 
I bought a 256GB USB-C flash drive for, what, $30. But, damn, that thing gets really, really hot when I use it. A simple card+reader setup would be fine, and more affordable.
 
Using an SSD for backups is often the wrong choice.

SSD data retention is typically worse than an HDD. So if you want to go back and get your data at some point (which is, after all, the whole point of this exercise), the older the backup, the more likely it is that the SSD will have bad data and the HDD won't. Of course that's not the only consideration. If the backup unit is susceptible to being jostled, especially while in use, the SSD may still be a better bet. Other environmental factor may be relevant too (extremely loud noises, for example, can mess with HDDs).

Personally, I back up onto two rotating SSDs and two HDDs. Plus cloud sync.
 
exoticspice1 said:

a simple TLC 512GB SSD is enough for quick backups used with an SSD USB-C enclosure better than USB-C flash drives.
Don't know why Apple charges so much for storage, they don't even use the fastest drives or the latest PCIe technologies. Be like Sony PS5 here, let users install off the shelf SSDs, if a console has that a Mac should too.
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This won't buy you better performance than a decent 10gbps-type drive, though it will be much better than most thumb drives. (Price may or may not be better.) But performance is rarely a major factor for backups like these, so, while thumb drives may still be too slow, you don't really need NVMe.

If you're in a known no- or low-static environment, and you're reasonably careful, you can buy a dock for SATA disks, which will work with both SSDs and HDDs. Or, if you must, though I wouldn't, something like this.
 
NotEntirelyConfused said:
Using an SSD for backups is often the wrong choice.

SSD data retention is typically worse than an HDD. So if you want to go back and get your data at some point (which is, after all, the whole point of this exercise), the older the backup, the more likely it is that the SSD will have bad data and the HDD won't. Of course that's not the only consideration. If the backup unit is susceptible to being jostled, especially while in use, the SSD may still be a better bet. Other environmental factor may be relevant too (extremely loud noises, for example, can mess with HDDs).

Personally, I back up onto two rotating SSDs and two HDDs. Plus cloud sync.
Click to expand...
That makes sense for archival backups. But for continuously-attached drives that are backed up nightly, SSD's offer a key advantage over HD's: They're silent. So my continously-attached drives are SSD's.

I also have a pair of portable HDD's I use for remote backups. One is kept in my safety deposit box, and these are swapped when I need to update. Though note that safety deposit boxes are not foolproof remote backups. Some of the banks in Pacific Palisades were burned to the ground in the recent fire, and while the safety deposit boxes are fire-resistant, they aren't fireproof. [I've not yet read reports on what happened to their contents.] So I also have an iCloud backup.
 
NotEntirelyConfused said:
SSD data retention is typically worse than an HDD. So if you want to go back and get your data at some point (which is, after all, the whole point of this exercise), the older the backup, the more likely it is that the SSD will have bad data and the HDD won't. Of course that's not the only consideration. If the backup unit is susceptible to being jostled, especially while in use, the SSD may still be a better bet. Other environmental factor may be relevant too (extremely loud noises, for example, can mess with HDDs).
Click to expand...

Or, if you have your data on an old Quantum drive, your data is likely in a super position of both accessible and not until you go to read it again.

Sorry, couldn’t resist the joke after trying to recover data off an old PowerMac 7300 for my father. These old Quantum drives are known for dying faster than other brands of the era.
 

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