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Comment by nzjrs | Hacker News Reader

I really wish people would more clearly disclose when they have been provided a product to review by the manufacturer.

Can it really be more clear than this:

Apple lent me a high-end configuration for review — 6-core i7, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD — which would cost $2499 (much of which is the SSD)

That should really be the very first line of the review instead of being buried at the 10th paragraph...

Yeah, how about putting that disclaimer first paragraph, first sentence.

I think (and I have no relation to this person) http://lon.tv is an example of an exemplary and ethical reviewer in this regard.

He puts it at the very first mention of the hardware he's reviewing. I think it's about as clear as you could ask for.

How about blazing red letters at the top of the page?

How about putting "paid review" in the title of the HN submit?

Is it "paid" if you have to return it after? Presuming "lent" is being used in it's ordinary meaning...

But is this a paid review? He was lent the hardware, which means he had to return it after he had made his review. While there’s certainly some conflict of interest there, I don’t know anyone that would consider that a payment.

it's common practice for journalists to get review unit, which they later return. Not just apple, everybody does it.

Also, in case you're not familiar with Marco, he was a co-founder of Tumblr, created Instapaper, and is the developer of Overcast (podcast app for iOS). Not sure he needs the money

I don't think it's fair to suspect Marco being paid by Apple, he's far from a shill. See for example [1][2].

[1] https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever

[2] https://marco.org/2017/11/24/fixing-the-macbook-pro

Most reviews are done on devices _loaned_ by the vendor; Consumer Reports and a couple of others buy their own stuff but they're very much the exception. A paid review is where the vendor pays for the review; that's very different. Basically any professional review of a computer you see will be on a review unit loaned by the vendor.

> much of which is the SSD

A 1 TB SSD is on the order of $150.

Not saying the price is not outrageous but I found it ironic that you spec maniacs can’t tell the difference between a sata ssd vs pcie ssd. You will be hard pressed to find retail ssd that’s remotely close to the performance in these new macs.

For users that care, a 1TB PCIe SSD currently costs a mere $230 (for the Samsung 970 EVO on Newegg, which has pretty impressive performance). Sure, that's slightly more expensive, but it's nowhere near the premium Apple are charging. On the other hand, users who don't need the extra performance still have to pay through the nose for it - and arguably the difference between SSD and HDD is more important from a user experience perspective than the difference between SATA and PCIe.

You can find PCIe SSDs for about $150. Like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-860-SATA-Internal-MZ-N6E1T0BW...

That isn't a performance monster. But you could get something really top-of-the-line for, say, $400.

I clicked on your link and it says "SATA 6 Gb/s Interface". is the Amazon description incorrect or did you paste the wrong link?

so your last sentence contradicts your first. Why would you want the slow PCIe SSD, you would want a better performing one for the technology being offered.

That said, Apple should not be sodering these SSDs to the motherboard.

How is this statement accurate?

> which would cost $2499 (much of which is the SSD)

A 1TB SSD is maybe $200 retail?

It's accurate maybe not according to the market in general, but it's how the pricing on the BTO works. I tried building a similarly specced Mac Mini just now and upgrading to the 1TB SSD is +$600, whereas 2TB would be +$1,400.

If this was a PC then a 1TB SSD would be about $200, but the 2018 Mac Mini has a non-upgradable soldered-on SSD on the motherboard so you have to pay Apple's build-to-order prices if you want one. (The RAM is technically upgradable but requires a security Torx bit to access just to be annoying.)

A 1TB SSD is maybe $200 retail?

For the cheap ones. The faster/better quality ones from Samsung and Intel, which are more comparable to what Apple is using, are $400-500

970 Evo 1TB (3500MB/sec): $228

970 Pro (effectively same speed, but 3bit MLC versus 2bit): $380

The 970 EVO performs noticeably better in almost all benchmark categories (latency, sequential read/write, 4K read/write) than Apple SSDs. The 970 EVO uses MLC.

The 970 EVO is $230.

Come again?

> Apple lent me a high-end configuration for review — 6-core i7, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD

The problem is that the i7 has hyper-threading, which creates a giant security hole in your system. I'd be much more interested in the i5 benchmarks, since the i5 (supposedly) does not have hyper-threading.

The "giant security hole" I assume you're referring to isn't particularly worrisome for your own hardware running trusted software. It's more of a problem in a shared environment where you don't know who else is running code.

> The "giant security hole" I assume you're referring to isn't particularly worrisome for your own hardware running trusted software.

My concern is mainly javascript or webasm running in the browser. Even if there aren't currently any unpatched exploits of this nature, that's no guarantee that there won't be in the future.

First, that means it isn't a "giant security hole"; it's a potential security hole.

Second, if an exploit is discovered just disable the extra hardware threads until it gets patched.

As an aside, I don't know what your "supposedly" about the i5 is supposed to mean. The i5 has only one hardware thread per core.

> As an aside, I don't know what your "supposedly" about the i5 is supposed to mean.

The tech specs page on the Apple site doesn't give the exact part number, so there's always the chance it could be some previously unreleased chip.

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