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My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

(michael.stapelberg.ch)
240 points secure | 8 comments | 31 Oct 25 10:13 UTC | HN request time: 1.577s | source | bottom
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lisbbb ◴[31 Oct 25 20:22 UTC] No.45776292[source]▶
I couldn't really trust the author of the review after he established his preference for "quiet computers" having no cooling slots or whatever he called them. Okay, fine, you're placing aesthetics above actual performance, then. The Pro laptops are the only ones viable for any really hardcore work because if you push the Air too hard it is going to just slow down in order to stay cool and that's not what you want if you are doing graphics work or in my case, I was running a bunch of containers in K8s. I never bought an Air because it was too similar to an iPad.

The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is soldered in RAM and non-upgradeable storage. Apple is still the best thing going for doing most pro development work, but it's just so irritating that they shit on us like this. I did buy an M4 Mini and expanded it some. My 2019 MB Pro is siting here on the desk, mostly unused these days. The Intel Macs are basically dead now--still great computers, but no longer desirable. My daughter is doing Graphic Arts in college and is using another 2019 Pro for that. I've used Macs continuously since at least 2014.

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1. PlunderBunny ◴[31 Oct 25 21:11 UTC] No.45776743[source]▶
>The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is soldered in RAM and non-upgradeable storage.

Isn't the 'soldered-in' RAM and storage fundamental to the M-series architecture? It's not like there's a board with individual chips sitting in it for the RAM and storage, that could potentially have been 'popped out' if they weren't soldered in. It's all one giant 'chip' now.

replies(1): >>45777390 #
2. dontlaugh ◴[31 Oct 25 22:28 UTC] No.45777390[source]▶
There are separate chips.

But just like Strix Halo, they have to be soldered. There’s no way to reach the signal integrity required with connectors.

replies(2): >>45778173 #>>45779675 #
3. benoau ◴[01 Nov 25 00:24 UTC] No.45778173[source]▶
I've heard many people saying CAMM2 solves this.
replies(1): >>45779083 #
4. wtallis ◴[01 Nov 25 03:41 UTC] No.45779083{3}[source]▶
We're still waiting to see any CAMM-style memory module show up in a mass market product at any speed, instead of merely getting press coverage where the number of articles written seems to outnumber the number of laptops actually built and shipped. But even if you are willing to take the examples thus far seriously as real products, they haven't come close to matching the speed of soldered LPDDR.
replies(1): >>45780425 #
5. zero_bias ◴[01 Nov 25 06:37 UTC] No.45779675[source]▶
No, M series is a system on chip (SoC), that’s why it’s able to run local LLM models in a range impossible for other laptop brands: VRAM == RAM, unified shared memory at max speed for both CPU and GPU
replies(1): >>45780258 #
6. dontlaugh ◴[01 Nov 25 09:07 UTC] No.45780258{3}[source]▶
Strix Halo has the same unified RAM with no separation.

Sadly it’s not in many laptops, probably the easiest way to obtain it is in the Framework Desktop or a mini pc.

7. WesolyKubeczek ◴[01 Nov 25 09:45 UTC] No.45780425{4}[source]▶
I was considering an LPCAMM2-fitted Thinkpad. I was eyeing to buy one with less memory and then buy a 96GB module to upgrade it. However, the module was nowhere to be found in stock, and where it was found, it was priced almost like the whole laptop.
replies(1): >>45780706 #
8. zozbot234 ◴[01 Nov 25 10:54 UTC] No.45780706{5}[source]▶
CAMM is still less effective than in-package RAM bundled with your CPU. The Framework folks looked into using CAMM for their recent AMD APU-based desktop and it was a no go.