Ask HN: Performance of Apple Sillicon vs. ThinkPads (Or Other Linux Laptops)

You can check out some benchmarks: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&#x2F;Apple-M4-SoC-analysis-AMD-Intel-and-Qualcomm-currently-don-t-stand-a-chance.839332.0.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&#x2F;Apple-M4-SoC-analysis-AMD-Inte...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cpubenchmark.net&#x2F;laptop.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cpubenchmark.net&#x2F;laptop.html</a><p>It seems like the Apple Silicon chips are generally faster single-core, but a bit slower multi-core. In real life, it will probably depend on how well optimized your compiler (or whatever software) is for Apple Silicon. And native Linux on Apple hardware isn&#x27;t mature yet, so if you need to virtualize it, it&#x27;ll be even slower.<p>The advantage of the Macs are generally efficiency (performance per watt, meaning longer battery life and less heat and noise) and build quality, and well, you get a Mac (if you like macOS). If you don&#x27;t care and just need something to crank out FLOPs, IMO I&#x27;d probably just build a desktop and run the workload there and remote into it from a cheap laptop of any sort.<p>If you do get a Thinkpad though, read up on their thermal management and try to get one that doesn&#x27;t throttle so easily. The X1s I had usually had lower voltage CPUs (less performance) and would throttle even those under load, so they weren&#x27;t good for long sustained CPU usage. Fine for business use or the occasional `npm install`, but if you&#x27;re running multi-hour workloads, it will very likely overheat and throttle down. Not sure if their workstation models (the T models and others) are better in this regard; they are generally larger and not as squished together (read: hopefully better cooling&#x2F;more fans).

It&#x27;s hard to compare. You need a clearer criterium for &quot;comparable&quot;. If they are comparable in terms of speed, so they are the same. If they are comparable in terms of price, so you need more info about what&#x27;s the price that you are considering and what are the laptops with similar prices where you live (here in Brazil, Apple products are far more expensive than the others).<p>Not to mention the architecture: Apple Silicon performs better in some tasks (e.g. running Android emulators) not because they are faster, but because they are ARM.<p>PS: I have a MacBook Air, but in terms of performance purely there are better options for the same price here.

My 11 year old ThinkPad still runs Linux fine. It is up to date and as secure as that makes it. Firefox, Thunderbird, VSCodium, Zettlr are snappy, background processes from python or postgres are stable. I have confidence a similar ThinkPad bought today will be fine in a decade.<p>An 11 year old Apple isn&#x27;t in the same state. An M* processor is a gimmick for today&#x27;s needs; it is a niche platform solution that&#x27;s reactionary to niche needs of today; that&#x27;s not a design for the future. Hence M1, M2, M2, M4, M88, etc. The Apple OS will not support decade old hardware, it&#x27;s not in the business model. You have a fine computer for today that is designed to be disposable. Like buying a plastic stool instead of a wooden one. The plastic one may be lighter, in a variety of colours, your friends might go for them, and it could lie about being privacy focused, but in the end it&#x27;s a plastic stool not a wooden one.

It doesn&#x27;t really matter. They&#x27;re both fast and you&#x27;re aren&#x27;t really going to notice or care for most workloads. I go between an M3 Max 30-core GPU system and an i5-12600K and 99% of the time I don&#x27;t really discern a notable performance difference (although some of that 1% is &quot;whoah!&quot;).<p>Apple Silicon processors are generally much faster than equivalent AMD and Intel laptop processors.<p>Which OS matters more to you? If Linux, then use Intel. If macOS, then use Apple Silicon. Linux runs well enough on M1 processors, but you should not buy an M1 for Linux alone. Linux does not yet run on the newest Apple Silicon processors.

In &gt; two decades I&#x27;ve never set eyes upon someone using Apple hardware for development unless it&#x27;s as a dumb terminal. I work in embedded, hardware and applications, not mobile, web or scientific. I am sure such users are out there.

Linux will most likely beat macOS in performance on the same hardware due to it having better drivers&#x2F;schedulers&#x2F;filesystems and lower overhead.<p>If you are using something like Docker on macOS that will also kill your performance even more.