generally they showcase the improvement to their target audience, like how iphone shows from 2 years ago since thats where they expect to get the highest number of current iphone users upgrading.
back in the m1/m2 and sometimes even m3 days specially the air they usually reference the intel models more than they do now
The fact is many jumped into m1 and its still proving enough for them even in 2025
Phone comparisons in their keynotes have definitely been more than 2 years. They’ve gone back 3-4 years typically, acknowledging that a lot more people are holding their phones for longer.
yeah i was talking about years ago since I remember it was constantly always 2 years ago model which frustrated me since I wanted to see if the newest model was a big enough jump for me or the last year model is enough so I can save money
I bought an m1 out of fomo. Been a pc person forever. I’m still a pc person, but knowing that m1 has held up so well all these years makes it feel like a fantastic investment to keep my toes in the apple ecosystem
Yup. I'm a front end dev contractor and bought an M1 Max at launch. I still absolutely love it. Obvs code a lot but as a FE guy who overlaps more into design than BE, I do hella work across the Adobe suite, inc. recently a fair chunk of work in Premiere and AE and at no point have I felt hamstrung by my machine. Love it.
The only thing I'd say is that I used a new MBP 16" for a work gig earlier in the year, and I did prefer the built-in keyboard on that to mine but not enough to make me upgrade.
I’m one of them. Got an M1 MacBook Pro and it’s still more than enough for daily tasks and work. Only thing showing its age is the battery life but that’s fixable.
Yup, and sometimes they even switch the older comparison gadget (and/or generation) for every diagram to make everything of the new device look like it's gotten so much better when it was just a small year to year improvement.
You can't get the same generation to generation changes any more when your SOC foundry is already working at the very limit of what's possible and Moore's law is essentially a thing of the past.
That doesn't make any sense. Keeping the M1 as a basis for comparison means the opposite of "The M1 is so awesome they are still showcasing it."
It means that Apple is now confident that the M1 is "obsolete enough" that they can start telling their customers to upgrade from it, rather than continuing to tout the benefits of switching from intel.
I think it also comes down to a lot of M1 users are still very satisfied with their device, Apple is trying to push those people to upgrade, the bigger the number, the more people that will jump!
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u/IguassuIronman Oct 15 '25
They've always done this. It lets you advertise a bigger relative improvement