this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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This isn't about laptop/desktop but about modular vs. Integrated processors.
Integrated processors let laptops be faster without also using power. Strictly speaking it'd be cheaper to just use a faster CPU but battery life is more important than cost so lots of money is spent on integrating processors.
Desktops are still around because they're upgradable and faster than their laptop brothers.
...once again, not talking about laptops.
An AIO is effectively a laptop without a keyboard. They're functionally very similar (appealing to less power-hungry users). They're just less mobile.
Presumably it's cheaper for apple to just put the integrated CPUs in everything because it'd be expensive to make another model.
I garuntee you this trade off only makes sense for Apple. Other AIOs don't always have the new laptop chips from Intel because it makes more sense to use the desktop one with all the space they have.
They put them in everything because they're smaller and more efficient (and thus quieter) and because they're competitive with PC desktops in performance. And economies of scale doesn't hurt either.
I get what you mean. What I'm trying to say is that desktop/non integrated CPUs are cheaper and this cost savings continues into a large form factor. Apple doesn't put a desktop chip in their iMacs because they don't make one. That's not what their customer base needs. If they did it'd be 4x faster for the same price.
And these arm chips are slower than x86. X86 is so much faster at least for single core performance which matters a LOT more for desktop use cases
Again, it depends on the workload. There are endless comparisons between high end desktops and comparably-priced Mac desktops, and while the PC is often more powerful, that's not always the case , and the Mac does it while being much quieter, and not turning the room it's in into a sauna.
Yes as it turns out when your workload is 99999 idle applications, a larger number cores helps more than single core performance. SOCs don't change that. They just reduce power and space usage at the expense of cost. It makes no sense to point at the special-case computing company and say that their special case will suddenly override a 50 year pattern.
It's nothing to do with idle applications, you should really look more into this because what you're saying is simply misinformed.
Can you give me an example? The video you linked has a timestamp to something about video encoding.
The Mac is comparable in photo and video editing a dominates in LLM generation.
Which again would be cheaper if they put the chips in separate enclosures. Just way bigger and more power usage.
Macs are good at video editing because Apple actually givesa shit about hardware encoding. NVENC is the only competitor. Everything else is shit.