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Comment by mahboi | Hacker News Reader

The Intel period of MacBooks allowed a more direct comparison. Don't think macOS itself is the differentiator vs Windows.

But vs Linux, well even Linux on a non-Apple laptop tends to mean screwed up power management. The display system might be less efficient too, depending whether it's X11 or Wayland, and idk which one is the good one.

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A significant portion of the Apple Silicon efficiency gains would have come from shifting away from discrete GPUs. At that time it was very normal for the integrated GPU to be minimal (slow) because people who need it get a discrete GPU. Things are very different now because we push far more onto the GPU now vs. back then, which made Intel and AMD scale them up out of uselessness. Now most people don't really need a discrete GPU because the integrated ones are fast enough to even handle some gaming.

The majority(?) of Intel MacBooks didn't have dGPUs though. That was a higher-end option on the larger models. I also vaguely remember there being a big leap in iGPU performance with Intel Iris around 2013. I had a high-end MBP from work and wished I could perma disable the dGPU, cause I didn't need it and it just made the thing get hot.

But yeah, the remaining people who needed dGPUs can now just use the integrated AS graphics, so they'll notice an even bigger difference.

Skimming Wikipedia it looked like you get discrete graphics unless you have a MacBook Air or 13-inch MacBook Pro. A higher-end option, yes, but probably the more likely one that people actually had here.

And yes, Intel Iris was a good leap forward for their iGPUs at the time! But I don't see any models with Iris and a dGPU, so if you got a model with the dGPU then you would be switching between a potato iGPU and the dGPU.

Oh yeah, I was thinking of 2015 and earlier. They used to have "IG" and "DG" models. https://everymac.com/systems/by_year/macs-released-in-2015.h... And I never wanted the 2016-2020 ones because of all the issues, so my personal MBP was a 2015 model until like 2024.

> But I don't see any models with Iris and a dGPU, so if you got a model with the dGPU then you would be switching between a potato iGPU and the dGPU.

Dang, didn't notice until you pointed it out. So it's a really good thing I got the 13".

> But I don't see any models with Iris and a dGPU

I don't remember exactly what the chip options were back then, but currently Intel enforces that by ensuring that the laptop chip with the larger iGPU doesn't actually have enough PCIe lanes to connect a dGPU.

But you could use an external GPU on any of the up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports. Intel is stingy with PCIe lanes but there's definitely enough. A dGPU doesn't need the full 16 and will do just fine with 8, maybe even 4. Especially the low power ones found in laptops.

Intel Macbooks were really really terrible. Slow OS, noisy fan, bad battery life, awful keyboard, little connectivity.

The current ones are really good, but honestly I'm kind of afraid Apple would build crap like that again, because it's not like you can "just" switch to a competitor.

Touch bar, all ports replaced with USB-C with no transition period, no HDMI or SD, fruitfly keyboard, charge on left bug. I held onto my 2015 MBP.

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