That being said, They are still comparing against the M1 chips here. They aren't only comparing against Intel.
Both Intel and AMD has done great job with their processors recently.
“With M2 Pro on MacBook Pro: Rendering titles and animations in Motion is up to 80 percent faster1 than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 20 percent faster5 than the previous generation.
Compiling in Xcode is up to 2.5x faster1 than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and nearly 25 percent faster5 than the previous generation.
Image processing in Adobe Photoshop is up to 80 percent faster1 than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 40 percent faster5 than the previous generation.”
Apple has literally never posted “here’s a ream of benchmarks vs the Dell XPS XYZ and HP modelnumbersneeze738462” — pretending this is indicative of some grand conspiracy to hide performance deficiencies of these new M2 models the way GP is, is silly.
More realistically, this is one of the more drab ways apple announces products. They didn’t even have a presentation or anything. So they’re clearly not marketing with the same goals in mind as a presentation. I’d say the intended audience here are people already going to buy the latest model because they’re in the apple ecosystem.
Not that I’m inclined to defend a multi trillion dollar company, of course. It’s just pithy to hop into this sort of thread and grind the old axe against apple.
https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2020/11/introducing-the-ne...
They talk all about how it's faster than 98% of PC laptops sold. When they are in the lead or feel they are then they do.
Apple is now facing the same struggle as AMD and Intel. They have a generational processor product that relies on new silicon to get faster, and they can't get new silicon fast enough. The M2 was basically just a wattage-bump of the M1, and looking at the performance increase/processor count, I'm inclined to call the Pro/Max the same thing. You're telling me you added 2 cores to a 10 core system for a 20% performance increase? Wow, color me surprised.
The whole thing feels like Apple's lack of humility here is biting them in the ass. There's nothing wrong with paving your own path in the tech industry, but mocking your competitors is not what a reasonably-educated analyst does. It's what someone in marketing does.
The linked website for this discussion is marketing.
Mostly, it's ironic that Apple is comparing themselves to a company that they want so desperately to escape. And, once you do run the math on their actual year-over-year improvements, it's not that different from AMD or Intel. And Apple is increasing their power consumption to hit those numbers. It's quite literally square one in a sense, just with a different CPU architecture and a different manufacturer.
They are selling to professionals, but probably not ones that speak your exact language. Having a solid understanding of hardware puts you into a small small minority of professionals that this was meant to be for. This is the same for Intel and AMD marketing: hardcore tech people are not the target audience for this material.
Professional:
1. relating to or belonging to a profession.
2. engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
Professional writers using a word processor might not understand what "hardware-accelerated H.264" means, yet there it is on their website under Air! Are those for "hardcore tech" people?
You're referencing marketing material. All marketing material is to sell the product, usually to a somewhat targeted subset of the buyers. Looking at their sales, and around any office, their marketing, and "Pro" products, appear to be extremely appealing to a large range of professional users. I think this shows that their "Pro" label is appropriate. I'm having trouble understanding why you think it isn't appropriate.
Do you have a notebook in mind that is worthy of a "Pro" label, so I can see what you're baseline is?
Should they buy the Air, or pay the premium for the Pro? After all, they're "hardcore tech" people.
Do you have an example of a notebook where a "Pro" label would be appropriate, as an example, so I can understand where you're coming from?
I do all compiling and heavy testing on servers, so the laptop is just for SSH, analysis software, and regular desktop stuff, for which it is fast enough.
Frankly this speaks volumes about what a sea change the M1 was if people are hoping for a 50% performance increase between CPU generations.
If they convince you to trade in the old one, they take that off the market and make cash.