
The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3 - tomerbd
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3542609/the-1799-macbook-pro-13-vs-the-650-acer-swift-3-guess-who-wins.html
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bArray
It's not just a case of dividing performance numbers by price - obviously the
Apple machine is better built. The real question is: Is it built a $1000
dollars better and built well enough to overcome the fact it's slower (in
these tests)?

There are some pretty legitimate reasons to come away from Apple products now
in my opinion, including some very competitive hardware at lower prices. I've
been quite a happy Linux user for a long time now.

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saagarjha
Not only are they better built, they also run macOS.

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tracer4201
I upgraded from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2019 16”. I heard there were tons of
keyboard issues in the years in between. Aside from that, I stick with
MacBooks because of the solid quality and macOS. I can’t work on Windows. I’ve
tried again and again. I do have a windows machine for gaming, but programming
and design work, the short cuts, fluidity, and general experience working in
iTerm2 with multiple desktops is top notch. There’s nothing really to “fix” or
make better. All my software on macOS is also top quality. I don’t know of a
replacement for Omnigraffle or Omnifocus.

I had a recent fun project where I needed to install Python and a bunch of
Python tooling and libraries (Jupyter, matplotlib, numpy, pandas, etc).
Setting PATH on Windows is one of the most bizarre things. And even then I
could not get everything to work. There were weird version conflicts, and this
was all trying to use the Linux Subsystem for Windows which was insanely slow.

Why can’t I just update one file on my file system from a text editor to
update path configuration?

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newhna
WSL2 is fast, rock-solid and outperforms a Mac with iterm2 by far. I don't
know which fluidity you mean on a multi montior setup you lack on Windows. Re
short-cuts Windows has more (just think of win+number or built in window
management) or autohotkey which owns karabiner. MacOs is good if you need
Xcode but other than that? Idk

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tracer4201
I was curious if I was using an older version that led to my problems with
WSL2, but I just did a search right now for “WSL 2 slow” on Google. I see
threads and discussions in the past couple months with people still calling
out how slow it is and other issues.

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kyriakos
Keep in mind that Wsl2 barely came out of public beta so obviously it will
have online comments about performance issues when compared with products that
don't have a public beta. And yet if you search for it you can find a lot of
hits on macos bad performance. Not saying either is better just that the
metric you set is inaccurate.

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PaulWaldman
This image on Acer's Swift product page really answered the question for me.

[https://static.acer.com/up/Resource/Acer/Laptops/Swift_7/Ove...](https://static.acer.com/up/Resource/Acer/Laptops/Swift_7/Overview/20190312/2019_Swift_7_lifestyle_1_1920.jpg)

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qzw
Those have to be (part) owners of Acer Inc.

On a separate note, the Swift 3 is $49 cheaper than the Mac Pro wheels.

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philplckthun
I think instead of drawing any unnecessary conclusions about MacBooks or this
particular Acer laptop, it simply shows just how much ground AMD has gained in
comparison to Intel. This performance is just impressive, not just at this
price point, and as far as I’m aware AMD chips are now beating Intel chips
across the entire CPU lineup

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winkeyless
I wonder how many AMD equipped Macs are there in Apple’s lab and how they
perform. I know there are hackintosh out there too but Apple please do some
validations and let there be choices.

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JoeCianflone
I love these articles because the writers are so earnest and seem to be
oblivious to the fact that buyers do not care.

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shockinglytrue
I wouldn't presume to speak for everyone, but in my case particularly e.g.
when making the leap back to PC away from macs, I poured over maybe 100 of
this kind of review before settling on a final choice

If people weren't reading those articles the writers would not be incentivized
to write them in the first place.

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thethethethe
“X laptop which is cheaper than a MacBook benches higher”

This is not news, this has always been true. People keep buying MacBooks, it’s
been one of the best selling laptops for a decade. There must be some other
reason why people like them.... Maybe benchmarks don’t matter to most people?
Really makes you think

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Delk
Or, rather, "X laptop which is cheaper than premium laptop Y benches higher".

Which also isn't news. It's trivial to find a laptop that outperforms a
premium laptop at half the price. That's equally true of any non-Apple vendor
that has premium business laptop models.

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djsumdog
The Acer Swift is limited to only 8GB of (non-upgrade) ram, which is a deal
breaker for most developers. I also wonder about that Wi-Fi 6 chip and its
Linux support. If it wasn't for those factors, I'd probably get one.

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analog31
This is totally an aside, and probably shows how out of touch I am, but there
must be developers who need 8+ GB, and others who don't. I was always under
the impression that things like editors and compilers didn't need a lot of
computing performance. So I'm curious what kinds of development demand more
performance. Is it a hard wall that you hit, or more of just a progressive
degradation of performance?

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mh-
The kind that requires you to collaborate on Slack.

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saagarjha
Slack works fairly well in the browser, if you have one that’s not a resource
hog.

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Wowfunhappy
It does until you need to do video calls. Then it tells you to either download
Chrome or download the Slack app aka Chrome. :(

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saagarjha
People actually use Slack for calling? Color me surprised…

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vikramkr
The macbook pro is not competing with the Acer swift. A lot fo people buy for
the OS, which Acer doesn't have, and the brand/build quality, which acer
doesnt have. For a lot of people, the benchmarks might be among the last thing
they care about. The laptops the acer swift 3 should terrify are other 700
dollar windows laptops without the ryzen and as well as any highly premium
windows laptops with customers that pay for benchmarks, where eyes might start
to wander if, say, the next XPS can't beat a 650 buck acer on benchmarks.

~~~
tornato7
Not only that, but not as many Mac users are gaming on their laptop, which is
a strong reason to need good benchmarks. If I'm buying a laptop it's really
the user experience and battery life that I care about. Any CPU heavy tasks I
can do on my desktop computer or an EC2 instance.

By the way, I assume this article is partly about gaming because of the
preview image, but I was unable to read it on mobile thanks to all the popups.

~~~
mping
I agree that what matters most is UX and battery life, but these are not fixed
and are actually pretty malleable, otherwise the only thing that would beat a
mbp could only be next year's mbp.

I had a laptop with terrible battery (desktop replacement) and it was great
for my use. I also have a xps13 and it's great. I also had a mbp15 and it was
great too. As you guessed, I had a different use case for each.

If I had to spend my money, would probably be the Acer as long as battery was
ok.

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Sangeppato
Two things:

First, this is not about Apple, but rather about Intel. The 10th gen chips are
very expensive, but they can't compete with AMD offer and this should be
pretty clear to everyone right now. Anyway, this isn't just true for the MBP:
we could make the same article for pretty much every premium laptop that uses
Intel instead of AMD such as the Dell XPS, the X1 Carbon, the MS Surface
Laptop/Book.

Secondly, what really matters in a laptop is the cooling system. Geekbench is
nice to get a general idea of what a chip is capable of, but to understand how
much the laptop can take advantage of it, you should run some stress tests. In
this scenario, the base MBP can sustain ~25W while the higher end model goes
up to ~30W. Most laptops in this category limit the chip to ~15W and sometimes
they have to go even lower than that. I'm not saying that the Swift will be
bad, but Geekbench doesn't really say much about that.

So sure, every occasion is good to scream "Apple bad", but this really isn't
surprising

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mdgrech23
These posts are obnoxious. People don't buy Macs b/c of their impressive tech
specs - they buy them b/c of macOS.

~~~
mlacks
I don't know why you're being downvoted; this is true for a number of reasons.

1\. Used to mac only software or workflow 2\. ercieved supramacy in security
3\. Ios compatibility 4\. etc

The price/ hardware spec ratio by and large always goes to Windows boxes, but
for many people the change in OS disrupts too many other areas in life to
justify the discount

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jiripospisil
I don't know either. macOS is pretty much the single reason why our team and I
are staying on the Apple ship while crying over other laptops that cost half
as much and yet provide superior performance.

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candiodari
One look at the pictures and I immediately question the difference in comfort
between these 2 machines. Big difference and nice benchmarks, but ... it's
just not the whole story.

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Ididntdothis
How do the displays compare? Or the trackpad? How will the Acer hold up after
two years of use? Raw speed is only one factor.

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toast0
If the Acer needs replacing after two years, and the Mac after five, you're
still ahead, asuming a similar speced Acer is available for a similar price in
the future.

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kyriakos
Not only that, you'll probably get even better performance after two years by
replacing the cheaper acer.

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crystaln
Guess which computer will still be running strong in 5 years?

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somerandomanon
Show me Motion 5 and FCPX for Windows and I'll gladly switch.

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mlacks
So we all know that can't happen; whats keeping you away from the adobe suite?
From my research as a begining youtuber, the biggest hurdle seems to be price

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somerandomanon
\- paying the extortion every month, \- speed (no real time in AE/Premiere)

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roydivision
Because performance specs are the only factor in buying a laptop.

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godzillabrennus
This kind of bad PR will push Apple to using their own chips in future laptop
form factor models.

Sadly because unless there is a miracle to secure licensing IP from Intel in
the process this will remove virtualization options for Windows from the
platform.

