Laws aren't the problem here. If the data exists it will be abused, if not by the government then by corrupt insiders.

Reminds me of a farmer who found a snake one winter.

There's just no demand for high speed ECC aside from a few people making their own dimms.

Very few applications scale with cores. For the vast majority of people single core performance is all they care about, it's also cheaper. They don't need or want workstation gear.

I have come to doubt that single core or CPU performance in general, other than maybe specialty applications like CAD and some games, is all that noticeable for most computer users in the last decade. I can take relatively pedestrian users like my parents or my wife and put them in front of a decade old high end Haswell system or a brand new mega-$$$ threadripper/epyc and for almost all intents and purposes they don't notice a different. What they do notice is when things die. I'm sure consumer hardware might be OK for 2-3 years (maybe), but like for my parents, they're happier to keep using the same computer, and honestly the same Dell Precision system I gave them almost 10 years ago works great today, and I have a suspicion that the hardware, outside of maybe the SSD finally wearing out, will probably work right a decade from now too.

> Very few applications scale with cores

You mean like compilers and test suites ? Very few professional workloads don't parallelize well these days.

Compilers and test suits do scale (at least for C/C++ and Rust, which is what I work with). But I think the parent comment referred to consumer applications: games, word processing, light browsing, ...

(Though games these days scale better than they used to, but only up to a to a point.)

I find that most tools I write for my own use can be made to scale with cores, or run so fast that the overhead of starting threads is longer than the program runtime. But I write that in Rust which makes parallelism easy. If I wrote that code in C++ I would probably not bother with trying to parallelize.

But those tools aren't really compute bound anyway - you're not buying a workstation to do them, you're getting a consumer laptop or a tablet.

And that consumer device should have ECC! That's the whole discussion here.

It's confusing because a few comments up is "for the vast majority of people single core performance is all they care about, it's also cheaper" which is unrelated to ECC.

I think it's coherent -- it's an argument for why most people don't want to buy Workstation class products just to get ECC. (Prices scale with core count. Not linearly, but still.)

Test suites often don't scale, actually. Unit tests usually run single-threaded by default, and also relatively often have side effects on the system that mean they're unsafe to run in parallel. (Sure, sure, you could definitely argue the latter thing is a skill issue.)

In theory, do you need a single machine for any of that, or would it be cheaper to use a low-availability cloud cluster? Tests are totally independent, and builds probably parallel enough.

Only a small percentage of computer users are programmers.

No magsafe seems like a bad idea given the target demographic.

Not if their goal is to make money on repairs/upgrades!

Kidding aside, I think this is one of their key differentiators from the MBA line. It's partly the MagSafe itself, and partly that you have an extra USB port open even when charging.

Two advantages for me: It's nice that you don't break the connector if you trip over the cable or put the laptop down on a soft surface, and it's nice being able to charge while still using both USB-C ports (although I guess 3x USB-C would also solve that).

I don't really see any downside to a proprietary connector if you also have the option to charge over USB-C as well.

I wonder how people would feel about:

MagSafe + 2 USB C, all on the left

vs

3 USB C, 2 on one side and 1 on the other

I don't care much about MagSafe, but it is sometimes annoying to have to plug everything on the left. If given the option, I might pick the extra USB (which could also be used for data/monitor/etc. when not being used for charging, of course.

MagSafe’s great because nobody in your house will run off with your cable to charge their phone or tablet or Switch controller or whatever.

Every time that happens buy two more cables. It will stop happening.

It's less stress on a frequently used port. I've got an early M1 MacBook Air where the USB-C port I always used for charging is starting to get flaky, presumably because it's been used so much and because of the weight of the cord + dongle hanging off the side of the machine.

Replacement port for M1 Air can be bought for around $10 off Amazon and installation take like 10 minutes for total newbie like me. All you need is right screwdriver.

Just look for a2337 usb-c port replacement.

Says the person who has apparently never had a dog or a kid get tangled in the power cable and destroyed the port, or pulled the laptop off the table.

I charge my M2 air with a usb-c cable.

Soooo, continue to charge the M5 Air with a USB-C cable? What's your objection here?

The day I tripped over the cord and smashed my netbook I suddenly appreciated MagSafe a lot more.

I can't understand why they ever moved away from it.

Magsafe on laptops is so much better than any other option: zero force "insertion", convenient breakaway if tripped over causing no damage to either side. Magsafe is fantastic.

If only we could get a MagSafe data cable! I'd kill for a MagSafe equivalent of a thunderbolt dock

It's a big selling point for the slice of laptop buyers that are replacing a machine they just broke by tripping over the power cord.

I just never run a power cord where it can be tripped over.

They brought it back because it's a fantastic feature for clumsy people like me.

My wife does, too, but only because the dog ate the magsafe.

Right? also, where's the thunderbolt ports? and it needs about another inch? maybe half inch on the screen. And really, 16gb is the new minimum. There's a whole bunch of acceleration and co processing features in the m series missing from the a series, so they really should put an m5 in there instead...

Seriously though. Every feature someone says is missing and should have been added would be another $100 on the cost. This is already likely a low margin product meant of someone who's only using a browser and maybe a few apps.

There is no modular PSU cable standard. Mixing cables between PSUs can destroy your hardware. Even among the same brand there is no standard.

Why would I care about desktop performance without the PC desktop ecosystem where everything 'just works'? Universal ARM linux distros aren't supported by anything.

Why would you not be able to build a PC around it? That's what you do with PowerPC.

Can you use "I believed this was AI generated" as a copyright defense now?

No? Just as you've never been able to use your ignorance as a defense?

People forget that Google is a malware services company. A significant part of their revenue is fake OBS malware and the like.

Apple is likely a large enough consumer to fully utilize a fab.

AI valuation is based on vibes not fundamentals. If the vibes are bad it could tank valuations. That's why theyre so sensitive.

but they make the vibes much worse by doing stuff like this

Apparently the number of people familiar with the Streisand Effect is vanishingly small.

You only hear about the times when suppression doesnt work.