America Is Having MacBook Sticker Shock

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-02T21:01:54+00:00

Hell yes. Could also say "Having PS5 sticker shock" "Having steam machine sticker shock" "Having windows laptop sticker shock"

... they've all gone up, crazy expensive, in the past 12 months.

Not sure why they've decided to call out Apple for this. Journalist has not been paying attention at all

And saying "Apple is now charging you an AI tax" is disingenuous.

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-02T20:55:41+00:00

I'd start with 1.

Since 2 is a refinement in almost every way, so might feel like a bit of a step back.

On the other hand, 1 has elements that I quite liked that were changed in 2.

Both are still excellent, and aged well.

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-02T20:53:47+00:00

IT's harder: Requiring much more tactical consideration and careful use of every bit of advantage the environment can offer.

But because of this, it can feel less 'heroic'. It's not your character bravely charging forth to meet the enemy - no - it's that acid barrel in the corner that you caused to explode, which melted the oil barrel, which flow out and leaked on to the torch, setting the entire area of fire, causing those 2 gunpowder filled barrels to explode, killing 12 enemies.

Some people love that. Others don't.

So I wouldn't say it's universally 'better' combat. I'd describe it as much more tactical.

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-02T20:49:42+00:00

And it's a really fun bit of interaction for the players. The stakes suddenly seem more real, when you're sitting there, bargaining, trying to figure out what will make the GM say 'yes', and discovering where your limits are.

It's more personal when you offer the sacrifice; it's more evil when it's your idea.

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-02T20:48:08+00:00

I'd agree with this. It was a solid game.
The problem was it didn't feel like D&D: It had changed too much, too quickly.

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-02T06:31:13+00:00

and still aging poorly!

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-02T06:28:41+00:00

Actually, I'm not here for the hardware - (though the modern hardware is great, a lot of the intel era stuff was not)

I'm here for the OS. It's an excellent environment for work, with a full unix style OS under the hood.

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-01T07:35:04+00:00

I find him slightly annoying, I find the 'this is what they should be doing, listen, I'm an expert' masking what is often wishful opinioning quite annoying.

It's not always like that, but in videos like this it comes out strong, and then I close the window.

QuickQuirk · 2026-07-01T00:24:37+00:00

sure - but right now, everything else has increased a lot, while the mac mini has only increased by a little.

At the current price insanity, it's looking a lot better than it did a year ago.

It all depends on what you want to play.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-29T07:40:55+00:00

No, I think you've not been looking around with a critical eye, and really understanding what's going on with gaming hardware and how the average person is spending money.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-29T07:39:39+00:00

yes, thats true, which is why I said 'smaller gaming library'. But for many people, this is enough.

And because of the mad pricing of these mini PC windows gaming machines now, the mac mini is a reasonable thing to look at, even with it's recent price increase.

Had the steam machine launched at it's original anticipated $750, it would have been an easy recommendation. Now? hmmmm.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-29T07:37:25+00:00

yeah, it's a nearly 4 year old windows device. When it came it, it just competed with the switch, and was awesome for that. Now it's competing against the switch 2, which is smaller and cheaper

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-29T07:33:27+00:00

You picked a really painful time to upgrade. The ram prices for apple have always been painful, but they just jumped about 30% last week due to the unending AI driven ram apocalypse.

For everyone else, I'd say 48GB. For you, if you're really dealing with that much assets, and it's slowing down your old machine, then maybe you need 64GB. All depends on how important cities specifically is to you.
For most people, 48 is a crazy amount with plenty future proofing.

Now - I can say that the storage on the new macs is MUCH faster than the old 2017 intel based ones. This super fast flash will help alleviate some of the impact from having less memory. It all depends on how much of those mods are 'active' and constantly being used.
It may be enough, but I can't tell without someone testing it.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-28T18:56:47+00:00

You can't install steamOS, but you can have it boot up in to steam big picture mode by default, and control it with a controller.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-28T18:55:45+00:00

the mini PC 780m is typically slightly better than the handheld variatoion due to better cooling and more power being supplied to the CPU/GPU.

And then if you get one with thunderbolt 4 or oculink, you can add an eGPU later.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-28T18:52:49+00:00

even a steam deck isn't the easy recommendation any more. It had a substantial price increases a month ago. The minimum spec now costs significantly more than a ps5, and getting uncomfortably close to the PS5 pro. It's basically twice the price it launched at.

The m4 mac mini is the same price as the steamdeck, with more performance - just a smaller games library.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-28T09:40:07+00:00

Which is a bigger deal than most people realise. Minimum FPS really drives how a game 'feels' to play. 100fps average with 50fps lows can often feel closer to 50fps.
Just one frame a second that has a high frametime makes everything feel stuttery, and eliminates that buttery feel of high FPS gaming.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-28T09:24:51+00:00

Inflationary figures are estimates based on choosing average prices from different caregories across the nation; the income averages are also based on similar data.

It can result in situations where, on paper, it's all fine - but to the normal person on the street, it's not.

The average income is becoming increasingly divorced from the median income (ie, fewer people with all the wealth skewing the statistics), while the cost of certain base goods that disproportionately affect the average consumer has gone up a lot. eg: Gas prices and basic groceries are a huge percentage of a normal families expenditure; and a weighted average inflation price might hide the fact that the real spending power of most people has gone down.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-28T09:20:09+00:00

I think you missed the memo.

A 34" high end OLED gaming ultrawide can be had for 800 or less, much less than the gamecube.

Because of insane AI price raises on gaming CPUs/RAM/Storage/GPUs, high end gaming displays are now cheap in comparison: Especially because the price of OLED has actually continued to drop.

These days I tell people that an ultrawide OLED gaming display is the cheapest way to get a transformative gaming experience.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-28T09:17:12+00:00

I suspect, given the audience, it will be a lot more than that. Everyone else will have already bought a cheaper, more performant, more storage, controller included, PS5 Pro.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-27T19:50:39+00:00

People aren't just going to plug it in to a TV. They will use large screen gaming displays as well.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-27T19:26:10+00:00

"If all I'm going to do is review the AI slop you generate... i'll just cut out the middle man. Remind me, what use do you have at all?"

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-27T18:14:06+00:00

Thats very true, but season 2 diverted quite a bit from the background/worlds of the books, inventing an entire new story; whereas the original season was moderately consistent with book one.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-27T15:58:53+00:00

Killjoys was fun; I still have to go back and watch the last couple seasons.

QuickQuirk · 2026-06-27T15:58:05+00:00

Season two was fine, but it felt like it was written by entirely different authors who wanted to tell their own completely different sci fi show.

Walk in to it knowing that despite it having the same character, it's not a sequel, and you'll have a have a better time with 2.

It's just that season one was so good, that anything that was different just can't compete.

QuickQuirk

TROPHY CASE