AI PCs Aren't Good at AI: The CPU Beats the NPU

Microsoft needs to throw something in the gap to slow down MacBook attrition.

The M processors changed the game. My teams support 250k users. I went from 50 MacBooks in 2020 to over 10,000 today. I added zero staff - we manage them like iPhones.

Rightly so.

The M processor really did completely eliminate all sense of “lag” for basic computing (web browsing, restarting your computer, etc). Everything happens nearly instantly, even on the first generation M1 processor. The experience of “waiting for something to load” went away.

Not to mention these machines easily last 5-10 years.

As a very happy M1 Max user (should've shelled out for 64GB of RAM, though, for local LLMs!), I don't look forward to seeing how the Google Workspace/Notions/etc. of the world somehow reintroduce lag back in.

The problem for Intel and AMD is they are stuck with an OS that ships with a lag-inducing Anti-malware suite. I just did a simple git log and it took 2000% longer than usual because the Antivirus was triggered to scan and run a simulation on each machine instruction and byte of data accessed. The commit log window stayed blank waiting to load long enough for me to complete another tiny project. It always ruin my day.

I have a first gen M1 and it holds up very nicely even today. I/O is crazy fast and high compute loads get done efficiently.

One can bury the machine and lose very little basic interactivity. That part users really like.

Frankly the only downside of the MacBook Air is the tiny storage. The 8GB RAM is actually enough most of the time. But general system storage with only 1/4 TB is cramped consistently.

Been thinking about sending the machine out to one of those upgrade shops...

This is most likely due to corporate malware.

Even modern macs can be brought to their knees by something that rhymes with FrowdStrike Calcon and interrupts all IO.

Why did you buy a 256GB device for personal use in the first place? Too good of a deal? Or saving these $400 for upgrades for something else?

Pro tip: turn off malware scanning in your git repos[0]. There is also the new Dev Drive feature in Windows 11 that makes it even easier for developers (and IT admins) to set this kind of thing up via policies[1].

In companies where I worked where the IT team rolled out "security" software to the Mac-based developers, their computers were not noticeably faster than Windows PCs at all, especially given the majority of containers are still linux/amd64, reflecting the actual deployment environment. Meanwhile Windows also runs on ARM anyway, so it's not really something useful to generalize about.

[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-add-a-file-...

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-drive/

Microsoft has indeed a problem, however only in countries whose people can afford Apple level prices, and not everyone is a G7 citizen.

Oh, just work for a company that uses Crowdstrike or similar. You'll get back all the lag you want.

Depends on the application as well. Just try to start up Microsoft Teams.

Unfortunately, the IT department people think they are literal GODs for knowing how to configure Domain Policies and lock down everything. They even refuse to help or even answer requests for help when there are false positives on our own software builds that we cannot unmark as false positives. These people are proactively antagonistic to productivity. Management could not careless…

Chrome managed it. Not sure how since Edge still works reasonably well and Safari is instant to start (even faster than system settings, which is really an indictment of SwiftUI).

the short answer is that you can't without the necessary permissions, and even if you do - the next roll out will wipe out your changes.

So the pro-part of the tip does not apply.

On my own machines anti-virus is one the very first things to be removed. Most of the time I'd turn off all the swap file, yet Windows doesn't overcommit and certain applications are notorious for allocating memory w/o even using it.

Microsoft is slowly being squeezed from both sides of the market. Chromebooks have silently become wildly popular on the low end. The only advantage I see windows have is corporate and gaming. But valve is slowly chopping away at the gaming advantage as well.

Chromebooks are no where to be seen outside US school market.

Coffe shops, trains and airports in Europe? Nope, rare animal on tables.

European schools? Most countries parents buy their kids a computer, and most often it is a desktop used by the whole family, or a laptop of some kind running Windows, unless we are talking about the countries where buying Apple isn't an issue on the monthly expenses.

Popular? In Germany, the few times they get displayed on shopping mall stores, they get rountinely discounted, or bundled with something else, until finally they get rid of them.

Valve is heavily dependent on game studios producing Windows games.

It's fine. For basic computing, my M3 doesn't feel much faster than my Linux desktop that's like 8 years old. I think the standard for laptops was just really, really low.

Nobody wants to be resonsible for giving allowing exceptions in security-matters. Its far easier to ignore the problems at hand, then to risk being wrong just once.

Not OP, but by booting M1 from external thunderbolt nvme you lose less than 50% of benchmark disk throughput (3GB/s is still ridiculously fast), can buy 8TB drive for less than 1k, plus can boot it on another M1 mac if something happens. If there was "max mem, min disk" model, would def get that.

> I think the standard for laptops was just really, really low.

As someone who used windows laptops, I was amazed when I saw someone sitting next to me on a public transit subway on her MacBook Pro editing images on photoshop with just her trackpad. The standard for windows laptops used to be that low (about ten or twelve years ago?) that seeing a MacBook trackpad just woke someone is a part of my permanent memory.

I don't understand the hype around Apple trackpads. 15 years ago, sure, there was a huge gulf of difference, but today? The only difference that I can see or fee, at least between lenovo or dell and apple, is that the mac trackpad is physically larger.

They don't think they're gods, they just think you're an idiot. This is not to say that you are, or even that they believe YOU individually are an idiot, it's just that users are idiots.

There are also insurance, compliance, and other constraints that IT folks have that make them unwilling to turn off scanning for you.

they are allowed to do that for the folks that produce the goods of course, it just makes a lot harder to retain the said idiots.

I got it for a song. Literally a coupla hundred bucks a few months after release.

So yeah, great deal. And I really wanted to run the new CPU.

Frankly, I can do more and generally faster than I would expect running on those limited resources. It has been a quite nice surprise.

For a lot of what I do, the RAM and storage are enough.

Interesting. You know I bought one of those USB 3 port expanders from TEMU and it is excellent! (I know, TEMU right? But it was so cheap!)

I could 3d print a couple of brackets and probably lodge a bigger SSD or the smaller form factor eMMC I think and pack it all into a little package one just plugs in. The port extender is currently shaped such that it fits right under the Air tilting it nicely for general use.

The Air only has external USB... still, I don't need to boot from it. The internal one can continue to do that. Storage is storage for most tasks.

In our company we see the opposite. 5 years ago all the devs wanted Mac instead of Linux. Now they want to go back.

I think part of the reason is that we manage Mac pretty strictly now but we're getting there with Linux too.

We also tried to get them to use WSL 1 and 2 but they just laugh at it :) And point at its terrible disk performance and other dealbreakers. Can't blame them.

> they just think you're an idiot.

To be fair, the average employee doesn’t have much more than idiot-level knowledge when it comes to security.

The majority of employees would rather turn off automatic OS updates simply because it’s a hassle to restart your computer because god forbid they you loose those 250 chrome tabs waiting for you to never get around to revisiting!

I have never seen, much less interacted with, a chromebook. I don't think they're as popular as you think, in a lot of not-usa