Are they throttling with the fan off? Because I don't recall ever hearing the fan on my M3 Max 14" (granted no heavy deliberate computational beyond regular dev work).

No this shows up when you really fully load them and the fans can't keep up. Most people never do, but then why buy the Max?

AFAIK it’s only something that happens under sustained heavy load. The 14” Max should still outperform the Pro for shorter tasks but I’d reckon few people buy the most expensive machine for such use cases.

Personally I think that Apple should not even be selling the 14” Max when it has this defect.

I can’t comment on that.

But at least you always know an A7 is better than an A6 or an A4. The M4 is better than the M3 and M1.

The suffixes make it more complicated, but at least within a suffix group the rule still holds.

But if you buy a Mac Studio today, you have to choose a M4 Max or a much faster M3 Ultra.

The Ultra isn’t always faster.

Apple’s spotty record on the Ultras (they haven’t released one every generation) makes things harder for comparisons without looking at benchmarks.

First time I’m hearing this. Do you have any sources on this?