[HN Gopher] Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by t...
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Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip
Author : yottabyte47
Score : 303 points
Date : 2022-06-06 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| scrlk wrote:
| If Apple announced a 16" MBA, I'd buy one and ditch my ThinkPad.
| 13" is just a bit too limiting for my tastes, and I don't need
| the power or the extra expense of the 16" MBP.
| lysecret wrote:
| 100% agree, this is where LG Gram 17 can be quite interesting
| (too big for me though).
| o_____________o wrote:
| Same desire: big and light for nomadic working. Laptops in this
| price range are all powerful enough these days.
| copperx wrote:
| This one is almost 14".
| sumy23 wrote:
| Why do you want to lug around a 16 inch laptop? Just get a
| monitor when you need more screen real estate. I have to carry
| both a MBA and a 16 inch MBP and the MBP just has too big of a
| footprint. It makes almost any bag bulky.
| scrlk wrote:
| I prefer the convenience of always having a reasonably large
| screen to hand.
|
| Physical footprint doesn't matter for me; my Osprey backpack
| can easily take a 16" laptop. It's the weight that's the
| factor for me.
| krm01 wrote:
| I wish they would bring back an all white version (not aluminum).
|
| Other than that, happy to see magsafe return.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Plastic might not even be strong enough since these are so
| thin.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Painted then, or anodized white (is white anodization
| possible?).
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The plastic Macbooks had a lot of problems with cracking, wear,
| and discoloration. I'd be surprised if they ever came back.
| Dunedan wrote:
| Aside from the potential stability concerns already mentioned
| in sibling comments, the aluminum case is essential for
| dispersing heat, as the MacBook Air relies on passive cooling
| instead of using a fan.
| [deleted]
| seydor wrote:
| Their keynotes are so corny. Like repainted 80s. And what's the
| obsession with that small rather bland round building
| dylan604 wrote:
| They are a bit over produced for me. The goofy video of the kid
| floating up because "light" that was touted as showing it in
| production. The only thing being shown off in that video is
| some F/X pr0n that someone concepted, some team produced, and
| showed nothing of realworld usage. Oh well, that marketing
| clearly works on lots of people.
| seabriez wrote:
| $1,199, only $200 ... thats 20% increase. Fuck that.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I'm not too surprised to see a price increase of some sort,
| given inflation in general and increased fab costs in
| particular. Still, it's a shame they can no longer meet the $1k
| price point.
| seabriez wrote:
| It sets a new precedent. Air was supposed to be cheapest, and
| they trying to stretch people into paying more. From fab
| perspective, they used the same and it becomes CHEAPER not
| more expensive to make it. The upgrades were very incremental
| too; so this is very much a money grab.
| bradlys wrote:
| Are you advocating for a rework of our capitalistic global
| economy then? If so - just say that.
|
| A capitalistic company gonna do capitalistic things -
| shocking. Shocking!
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > From fab perspective, they used the same and it becomes
| CHEAPER not more expensive to make it.
|
| They may have used the same five nanometer process, but
| that doesn't mean Apple's own costs went down. I don't know
| what their negotiations look like, but TSMC have stated
| that they'd be raising prices on already-established chip
| technology. In general, given supply issues for many of the
| components that go into making a laptop over the past few
| years, it would be a miracle for Apple's costs _not_ to
| have risen.
|
| Combine that with general increases in the price level, and
| 20% is probably not _that_ far off.
| spfzero wrote:
| Fab process is different, just that is still 5 nm.
| ushakov wrote:
| i really wished they kept the design of the Air and brought the
| new one to the 13-inch Pro
| rbanffy wrote:
| A bit curious about the reasons behind the 24 GB limit. Also sad
| the Mini didn't get an M2 option. :-(
|
| The Mini is a true workhorse machine.
| MikusR wrote:
| It has 2 memory chips that appear smaller than the ones on m1
| pro and max.
| riffraff wrote:
| Probably because a 32gb limit would cannibalize the MacBook Pro
| with M1 pro/max.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I think it's 3 memory buses because it's rated at 50% more
| memory bandwidth than the M1.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I was waiting for today to buy a macMini for my wife whose 2012
| iMac died. So I'm unhappy as well and just bought a M1 macMini
| because I can't wait any longer.
|
| I wonder if a M2 mini would have been perceived as competition
| for the macStudio.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > I wonder if a M2 mini would have been perceived as
| competition for the macStudio.
|
| I don't think so. The smallest Studio has twice as many
| Firestorm cores and the M2 tops out at 24GB.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Looks like these will be "available next month". Usually they say
| when you can order, but I've not seen that detail. Anyone have
| more info on how to get my grubby little hands on one?
| tarentel wrote:
| They're having supply issues like everyone else. A bunch of
| their computers are on back order right now. Probably your best
| bet is to order one now and hope a ton of other people aren't
| doing the same.
| wj wrote:
| I would if I could. I can configure but cannot Add to Bag.
| freediver wrote:
| Notch is painful to see. Hope they walk back on it like for the
| mag safe.
| danieldk wrote:
| I stopped noticing the notch after using it for, what, maybe
| half an hour on my MacBook Pro? And the screen estate besides
| the notch is extra and the idea fits well with the macOS menu
| bar.
| [deleted]
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Notch is still a huge annoyance to me with a few things in my
| menubar (and that's while using Bartender).
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Would you rather have a smaller screen with no notch?
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| This argument went round and round back when Apple first
| released the notched MacBook Pro. Some people apparently
| don't care about the tradeoffs involved and would indeed
| prefer a smaller screen -- they think it would be that
| distracting to have a notch. I think they're crazy,
| personally, but maybe I'd hate the notch too if I had a
| laptop with one.
| arecurrence wrote:
| I had completely forgotten my 16" MBP has one. When I read your
| comment I had to remind myself "oh yeah, this laptop has a
| notch".
|
| I see it there looking right at it... but I'm sure in a few
| minutes it won't exist in my mind once again. It is simply that
| out of the way which seems so strange given that it is right in
| the middle... but that has always been a dead space in macOS.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Have you used one with the notch? It disappeared for me in less
| than an hour of using it. I never notice it.
| least wrote:
| The notch itself doesn't bother me but the way they deal with
| menu bar apps does. Disappearing them into the notch's void
| when you have enough to push them there is really really bad
| UX.
|
| The only app that I'm aware of that actually helps address
| this is Bartender, when they should have figured this shit
| out before they came out. It's possible that they introduced
| some fix in MacOS Ventura, but there's no indication that
| this is the case so far.
| idk1 wrote:
| I think it's ok, I never have anything in the middle of the
| menu bar anyway, might as well have a notch there.
| newfonewhodis wrote:
| 8/10 cores, 16GB, 512GB comes out to $1700. That's quite a bit
| pricey IMO compared to the base 14" MBP ($2k) which has better
| port selection, and beefier CPU/GPU.
| rnernento wrote:
| Why does my $500 Samsung Galaxy Book Flex have the webcam in a
| tiny little bezel and this thing has a giant notch?
| jpgvm wrote:
| I think the only excuse for that huge notch has to be they are
| planning to put Face ID in there at some point in the near
| future and don't want the design language to change again when
| that happens. i.e they are pre-reserving that space in the menu
| bar.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Face ID and some lidar stuff most likely, the notch being the
| same shape and size as the iPhone one is not a coincidence.
| GordonS wrote:
| Lidar... in a laptop?!
| qzw wrote:
| Right? And not in a Tesla that's supposed to drive
| itself.
|
| (They're not the same kinds of LiDAR, but still...)
| [deleted]
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Compare the webcams. 1080p resolution looks mighty different on
| some cameras than others and isn't a good descriptor by itself
| of quality.
| achow wrote:
| And that too nothing much special - 1080p resolution.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Most likely design consistency; to have the same design element
| across all devices
| jerlam wrote:
| It's going to look even more outdated when the 2022 iPhones
| remove the notch.
| andrekandre wrote:
| make every laptop look the same with a huge notch even if its
| not strictly necessary...?
| lysecret wrote:
| I am deciding on a new Laptop. I am still worried that my
| workflow (heavy on docker) will suffer under Apple Silicon. Has
| someone some (very) recent experience on Docker + M1/2?
| zamalek wrote:
| I used to use Windows+WSL+Docker for personal stuff. I now use
| Linux+Podman for personal stuff, and MacOS+Colima+Docker for
| work (not by choice).
|
| It took me 4 months to iron out everything with M1+Docker where
| I work. There's still a question weekly about some oddity in
| our Docker channel.
|
| Remember that container concepts (i.e. jails for a BSD) aren't
| natively supported by MacOS. The entire ecosystem is built on
| the backs of a very awesome community. In some cases, there are
| other things missing from MacOS that prevent them from creating
| the type of experience you get with WSL (especially
| networking).
|
| Rosetta virtualization would resolve one of the biggest
| headaches I have had: x86 container emulation speed. No idea if
| it would do anything about the second: most of the x86
| containers I have tried immediately segfault (nodejs containers
| seem to be an exception to that rule).
|
| If you're working with other people, who remain on x86, you
| will come to experience the hell that is multi-arch builds.
|
| Wait a few months and then decide based on what people are
| seeing.
| swyx wrote:
| yes - daily docker compose user. hasnt been an issue for the
| past 2 years as long as you avoid running docker desktop
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Depends - I've had a world of pain with Python because of
| incompatibilities. It's not my main language though so if
| you're as deep down the rabbit hole as I am in my main
| languages you might be able to get it working.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| It's really going to depend on how well arm64 is supported in
| your stack. If arm64 versions are just available then you
| really shouldn't see a difference.
|
| That can be a big if, though. And otherwise you are stuck
| running everything under qemu, which is going to be very slow.
|
| --- edit
|
| Apparently you'll be able to use Rosetta to execute x86 in a
| Linux VM:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Only 18% CPU performance improvement.. looks like we are finally
| getting diminishing returns.
| onetom wrote:
| I would call 1.8% a diminishing return :)
|
| 18% is pretty decent, IMHO, for their bottom-most spec,
| especially given the RAM limit is being extended to 24GB, while
| the power consumption is still brutally good (18hrs video
| playback) and the screen is also a bit more spacious at
| 13.6"...
|
| and it's not like they don't have faster CPUs. it's just the
| cheapest you can get and even that is getting faster!
|
| tbh, im using an M1 Mac Mini since last December and it's sooo
| freaking fast and smooth, that I'm not even really motivated to
| upgrade at all, if it wouldn't be for the extra memory. though
| the 16GB is surprisingly sufficient too, if i have run browser
| tab suspender extensions and close my unused electron apps
| (notion, logseq, slack), while coding (in Clojure, using
| IntelliJ and Emacs).
| onetom wrote:
| here are some real-world numbers for starting a Clojure
| process:
|
| 1. 2017 3.1GHz Quad i7 clj -M -e 1 1.73s user 0.12s system 232%
| cpu 0.795 total
|
| 2. 2020 M1 Mac Mini clj -M -e 1 0.65s user 0.05s system 157%
| cpu 0.445 total
|
| and I'm getting a very similar time-ratio, when I'm running our
| test suite for example. I find these speeds extremely
| satisfying already!
| dougmwne wrote:
| This was on the same manufacturing process as the M1. There's
| generally a bigger boost when moving to a smaller process. But
| yes, there are diminishing returns, especially when you look at
| single core performance. Power efficiency and transistor counts
| are still increasing decently.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| 18% is pretty good for the same process. So all these gains
| are from microarchitectural smarts only? Or a case of Apple
| presenting fab gains as their own?
| adrian_b wrote:
| The 18% is for multi-threaded benchmarks.
|
| They did not give any number for single-thread speed, so it
| can be expected that there the improvement is much less
| impressive.
|
| They said that the little cores have been improved
| substantially, so it is likely that a good part of the 18%
| comes from the faster little cores.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| 3nm TSMC process isn't ready yet, we have to wait more for it.
| I agree that it's not a huge upgrade like what M1 was.
| onetom wrote:
| I completely agree with "not a huge upgrade", but calling it
| "diminishing returns" is way too extreme.
| achow wrote:
| Macbook Pro 13" is smaller than Macbook Air at 13.6".
|
| What's the point of Macbook Pro 13"?
| na85 wrote:
| Why do you drop the "the"?
| bombcar wrote:
| Apple never uses it, so they're copying them.
| null_shift wrote:
| A pretentious naming convention that Apple uses to make their
| devices seem more important than they really are.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Pro is a dockable workstation with a small form factor. Pros
| have insane amount of internal bandwidth. M1 was able to edit
| 30 4K streams or 7 8K streams simultaneously IIRC.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| You are thinking of the 14 inch. The M1 Air and M1 Pro have
| only a different cooling solution and it does not really make
| a difference.
| bayindirh wrote:
| That small cooling difference affects how these CPUs are
| clocked and how they behave under sustained workloads.
|
| A long video render is easily 2-3h at 100% CPU load. A
| scientific simulation is >24h at 100% load, with
| instruction trains optimized to get every ooze of
| performance, hence hitting the TDP almost instantly.
|
| A MacBook Air M1's body is not an unlimited heatsink
| attached to M1 SoC. I've succeeded to heat my M1 air to
| unusual levels when the platform was new and some programs
| were prone to entering infinite loops.
| maigret wrote:
| Indeed they shortly hinted at this in the keynote.
| happyopossum wrote:
| The M2 air and the M2 13" Pro have the same internal
| bandwidth - it's the same chip, just one has a fan and one
| doesn't.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Inclusion of that small fan affects the frequency range and
| how they handle sustained workloads.
|
| A pro won't blink while an Air will throttle to keep itself
| from melting. For long video and photo jobs, that really
| matters (or for long (>24h) running simulation/scientific
| code or plethora of other examples).
| coder543 wrote:
| No, it absolutely doesn't matter for video or photo jobs,
| and no one is running multi-day simulations on one of
| these devices. If you're running such intense
| simulations, a theoretical 5% to 15% difference in
| performance makes no difference at all when you can pay a
| little bit more to get either a 14"/16" MBP or a Mac
| Studio and easily get a _much more substantial_ 50%+
| performance uplift.
|
| The 13" MBP is a relic that should have been
| discontinued. It makes no sense for Apple to have kept it
| around.
| happyopossum wrote:
| Unless you want a fan and a Touch Bar, there's really not a
| point...
| [deleted]
| least wrote:
| Feels like it exists for some sort of Enterprise customer that
| wants to use the old chassis for whatever reason, be it some
| sort of docking solutions, accessories, cases, whatever. It
| really doesn't make sense for almost any consumers.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| This looks like what the Macbook (2015) wanted to be. Keyboard
| and single port aside, it was a fantastic form factor, albeit
| crushingly slow. Mine no longer holds a charge, and am eagerly
| awaiting replacing it with one of these.
|
| Over time I've also noticed I no longer care about having the
| fastest possible laptop, since my job provides me with an MBP and
| that's where serious work gets done.
|
| I have a feeling this is going to be backordered for a long, long
| time though.
| zumu wrote:
| Mine (2017) is still going strong. My only complaints are the
| lack of a video-out thunderbolt port and the relatively week
| camera. I find it plenty snappy and not at all 'crushingly
| slow', but then again I'm not compiling on it--just happily
| browsing and chatting.
|
| Like you I'll probably replace it, but not for a couple years
| once the software catches up and when I can get it cheap
| refurbed.
| elxr wrote:
| I'd rather buy a similarly light laptop, that has a
| touchscreen.
|
| You can already get AMD Zen 3+ machines in this size class,
| that isn't too far behind in perf & efficiency. Doing so gives
| you much better Linux compatibility, a touchscreen, and
| (sometimes) better feeling keyboards. Battery life will always
| come up short though, x86 laptops just can't match these new
| macbooks.
| puranjay wrote:
| I'm yet to find a single non-Apple laptop that comes even
| close to Macbook's touchpad.
|
| There are better keyboards (Thinkpads are great), even
| comparable screens, fast processors, better dedicated GPUs.
| But somehow no one can get the touchpad right.
| seunosewa wrote:
| Why do you need a touchscreen? What are some of the
| applications? I feel like the screen would get dirty.
| elxr wrote:
| For casual web browsing, on some sites I find it more
| efficient to click links directly on the screen instead of
| using a cursor. A big one for me, pinch to zoom for
| images/charts/maps is a lot more natural to me on a
| touchscreen.
|
| Controlling mobile emulators when developing mobile apps
| can also benefit from a touchscreen.
|
| > I feel like the screen would get dirty.
|
| It does, but I'd just wipe it down occasionally like I do
| my phone.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I swapped out the battery on mine. It now gets a few hours of
| life per charge but it's still fairly big and the fan fires up
| when barely anything is happening. Might just have to jump on
| this MBA too.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I think we're talking about two different machines, I have a
| fanless MacBook from ~2015, with the ultra low voltage intel
| CPU that is way, way too slow these days.
|
| It has also survived multiple water spills, and the speakers
| don't work anymore. It's definitely time for an upgrade :)
| out_of_protocol wrote:
| New one is heavy, much more so than 12" one
| asdff wrote:
| It's only a half pound lighter than the macbook pro
| DominikPeters wrote:
| 12" was 0.92kg. New MBA is 1.24kg.
| coldtea wrote:
| "Heavy"
| girvo wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned, basically all of these computers
| are light compared to the multi kg 14" Toshiba I lugged
| around in the 2000s
| andrekandre wrote:
| agree, still hold out hope for a new 12 inch at some point,
| apple silicon makes me optimistic ^^
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Mine no longer holds a charge_
|
| That should be trivial to fix with a battery update. 5-6-7
| years is a good run...
| abfan1127 wrote:
| my older macbooks (air and pro) had a swollen battery which
| ruined the main boards and were no longer replaceable in
| practical terms. I'd get it replaced sooner than later if
| you're planning on doing so.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| I own a 12" Retina MacBook and I am sad that none of the new
| laptops can really replace it. They're all significantly larger
| and heavier. The new MacBook Air is a replacement for the old
| MacBook Air, not the MacBook. It's a shame Apple have given up
| on the ultra-ultra-lightweight MacBook concept, considering
| that the M1 would be perfect for it.
| nextos wrote:
| I own a MacBook Air 11'', and it's also a pretty unique
| machine in terms of small form factor and silent operation. I
| feel current MacBook Airs finally serve as a good
| replacement. However, the 11'' Late 2012 model was also quite
| unique in terms of being a perfect PC citizen. So one could
| run other OSes with zero effort. In fact, it was Linus' daily
| driver for a few years.
|
| I wish other manufacturers like Lenovo or Dell tried to
| compete in terms of fanless design so that there were more
| options. Lenovo in particular seems quite unfocused as they
| release tons of devices all the time and good ones are much
| more expensive than Apple's offerings, at least in EU.
| Method-X wrote:
| Totally agree. It's just other CPUs don't come close to the
| M1/M2. That's what really makes the new MacBooks unique.
| It's going to be like that for quite some time I think.
| Bud wrote:
| The new Air is significantly smaller in volume, though.
| wayne wrote:
| Too bad there's no 11" Apple laptop anymore.
| smlacy wrote:
| You mean like this? https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ipad/ipad-
| pro/11-inch-display...
| nicbou wrote:
| Yes but something that runs MacOS apps including docker.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| New hardware is exciting but it's also a bit scary.
|
| I've been burned by Apple hardware faults before. Dodgy keyboard,
| faulty display, bad battery. It would be cool to see the design
| velocity slow down a bit for some models so that they can iron
| out the bugs properly. I've no interest in being a Guinea pig for
| whatever A9999's problem shakes out to be.
|
| To be fair, Apple will often conclude that the faults are endemic
| and engage in a replacement program.
| dgellow wrote:
| I hoped the notch would be just an experiment and Apple would get
| rid of it the next iteration. It seems I was wrong. It looks so
| weird to have your top menu bar split in two, I really don't get
| why it is necessary.
| grishka wrote:
| The notch doesn't get in the way in daily use as much as it
| would seem. Look at it this way: without the notch, that area
| would've been useless black glass. But with the notch, the menu
| bar doesn't eat into the continuous part of the screen yet
| remains fully functional, effectively giving you more usable
| screen area.
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| Honestly haven't noticed the notch on my MacBook Pro in months
| until reading this comment. It really does disappear after a
| little while
| sgarman wrote:
| I have a launch day MBP16" and I haven't noticed the notch a
| single day so far. I just have more screen space now. Does it
| really bother you in your day to day?
| [deleted]
| dgellow wrote:
| I do not have an M1 laptop, so I cannot answer your question.
| luluthefirst wrote:
| For people undecided because of the notch, it might not look as
| clean on photographs but in practice, macOS knows that it's
| there and they did a good job in order to avoid displaying
| anything behind it.
|
| It's empty space, and the whole row goes completely black in
| most fullscreen cases too as the screen is 16:10 BELOW the menu
| bar.
|
| You forget it as easily as you forget that you have a nose
| right in the middle of your vision.
| [deleted]
| jonfw wrote:
| I'm currently sitting at my notchless-MBP noting how there is
| not a single thing in the middle of my menu bar and there never
| has been. I can't think of a single reason I wouldn't want a
| notch in exchange for smaller bezels. Especially given the
| aspect ratio of a Mac is taller such that it doesn't interrupt
| typical video or photo content
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Just spent 4k on the M1 max. These chips are coming out too fast
| sonar_un wrote:
| That's precisely why I skipped M1 altogether. The M2 gains are
| great and we will have more mature software. The second M2 Pro
| drops, it's an instant buy.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| M2 does not hold a candle to the M1 Pro or Max, don't worry.
| Every improved spec is much better in the M1 Pro/Max.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Yeah but my guess is soon the M2 Max will be revealed. Its
| probably already developed, they just need to wait six more
| months to reveal. Clearly apple is able to jump straight to
| the M2, but they are releasing M1 to maximize profit.
| spfzero wrote:
| Its not really so clear though, that the next fab rev would
| come through on time. They often don't and these product
| plans are developed years in advance.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Probably not for the Macbook Pros. The current ones are
| already backordered multiple months, not much incentive to
| release new ones this year.
| Escapado wrote:
| Didn't the M1 come out in november 2020 and the M1 Pro in
| October 2021? That would be closer to a year than 6 months.
| I actually would not be suprised if it took even a little
| longer and if they went with a more advanced node on TSMC
| to get both, architecture improvements and miniaturization
| improvements.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The M2 is 5nm, so not sure if going to something like 3nm
| is possible with the same architecture.
| hatware wrote:
| They know how to capture their market. These things will sell
| like hotcakes.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Incremental release of breakthrough products. M1 and M2 were
| both probably ready at the same time. Release M1, then M2 to
| try and get the upgrade sells. Its tough to beat, but atleast
| the products are amazing
| kanwisher wrote:
| M2 is nearly 2 years after m1. On iPhone apple was updating
| the cpu every year
| mullingitover wrote:
| If your purpose in buying a computer is to have the latest
| thing, and not because it does what you need it to do, you're
| gonna have a bad time.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
|
| But it was obsolete before I opened the box
|
| You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
|
| Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique
|
| Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great
|
| If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The biggest question I have is whether it has WiFi 6E or just
| WiFi 6 (2x2 80 MHz like the original M1 MacBook Air).
|
| That's the one thing that's kind of gimped it for me--if I could
| get more WiFi bandwidth, especially with the ProRes decoding
| built into the M2, I might be able to edit 4K video over my
| network wirelessly for the first time. Would be amazing.
|
| To be clear, I still think the M1 Air was the best portable
| laptop Apple made since the 11" Air before it was discontinued. I
| just think it being so 'wireless-first', it should have the best
| wireless speed possible.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >edit 4K video over my network wirelessly for the first time.
|
| Good lord, to think of not that many years ago still needing to
| be firmly attached to an array of spinning rust to get
| performance for that. Now, we want to (nearly can) do it
| wirelessly. Just another set of gear adding to the pile of boat
| anchors I've been collecting
| bayindirh wrote:
| From the specs: -802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless
| networking -IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac compatible
|
| Both same on the Pro and Air M2.
| vetinari wrote:
| For a bit more detailed wifi specs:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/macbook-pro-wi-
| fi...
|
| (It is not updated for the new models yet).
|
| However, for 2020 & 2021 models is nothing out of ordinary:
| 2x2 ax, max 80 MHz wide channels. Basically what every other
| vendor at the market offers.
|
| During 2019, they went a step backwards: from 3x3 MIMO to 2x2
| MIMO. Granted, many APs do not support more than 2x2, but
| there are models on the market that do, and those who care
| about these things had a choice. Now, it is join the
| averages.
| monocasa wrote:
| > Appple always leads the way with wireless chips for the
| last 15 years, and they don't disappoint again.
|
| I mean, those specs seem to say that it doesn't support Wi-Fi
| 6E.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I edited the comment after noticing my error, no?
| olliej wrote:
| I've been looking for replacement home networking gear the last
| few days - I still don't understand Wifi 6 vs 6E, but mostly
| what I wanted to say was when the Wifi4,5,.. naming came out a
| few years back my response was "ugh, stupid marketing" and now
| that I was actually having to look for hardware the difference
| in actually comparing functionality with linearly increasing
| numbers is so wonderful :D
|
| That said, what exactly does E imply? I was really trying to
| distinguish devices using separate 6ghz backplane, and that was
| annoyingly opaque to me as a person who writes does code but
| aggressively avoids anything networking :D
| vetinari wrote:
| E implies the ability to use additional channels at the 6 GHz
| frequencies. With 5 GHz there are some problems, almost
| everyone uses the lower ones, leading to congestion and
| ignoring the upper ones due to DFS (radar detection; people
| are not fond of their wifi randomly not working).
|
| And contrary to yours opinion, I consider that both 4 (-n)
| and 5 (-ac) brought very nice things (like support for new
| frequencies, wider channels or multiple streams). I happened
| to own 3x3 MIMO ac router at the time and together with 2015
| MBP, I saw what it was not necessary to provide ethernet port
| anymore.
| bredren wrote:
| They could add it after the fact. The Mac Mini M1 launched with
| only a regular Ethernet port. They added 10GB as an option ~5
| months later.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-get-a-10gbps-ethernet-port-o...
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > the best portable laptop Apple made since the 11" Air before
| it was discontinued
|
| I used to have an 11" Air as a daily driver. The portability
| was nice but I'd never go back to a computer that small. Too
| cramped, too little screen real estate, too small a battery. It
| doesn't surprise me that 11" laptops are rare these days.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've gone back and forth over the years. Part of me would
| like a smaller system for travel but 1.) I always end up
| wondering if the tradeoff is worth it given how relatively
| small and light 13" laptops can be and 2.) I probably will
| never again travel to the degree I was doing it at peak. So I
| probably wouldn't actually buy an 11" MacBook Air even if I
| could.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| A modern 13" laptop with narrow bezels is pretty much the
| same size as the old 11" laptops with huge bezels. I have a
| Dell XPS 13 9310 (2021 model), and I absolutely love how
| small it is.
| bredren wrote:
| I used four generations of the MBA, including the 11" 2015.
| That was definitely the pinnacle of value / performance in
| Apple's laptop line until the M1.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Pricing looks excellent ($1200 to start); I was expecting a
| bigger bump. We'll see about the 16G price and availability.
| yojo wrote:
| The $999 M1 air was such a bargain, I was hoping they'd keep
| the price that low with the upgrade.
|
| Possibly they're moving to the iPhone model of keeping the last
| gen around as a lower price entry level device.
| seabriez wrote:
| No it doesn't. It's essentially Air with just a few incremental
| upgrades, the same chip just with a few updates. It's a money
| grab. They will keep selling Air for $999 and pressure
| consumers into a higher price, as they typically do/and is
| their business mantra.
| onphonenow wrote:
| How is $1,200 for this a money grab? Lenovo X1 starts at
| $1,500 or so and really you can't get it going for < 1,800.
|
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t.
| ..
| seabriez wrote:
| X1 is a Pro level device more comparable to MBP. Air is
| like a browsing the web laptop. It's in the class of
| laptops that should be $500. You are all so bedazzled by
| the hype machine that you don't even perceive how you are
| being fooled to pay a massive fee for EXTREMELY limited
| feature set of a laptop that's a class below. And Apple
| isn't even lying about that, Air is a hobby/not a pro level
| hardware. It's clear Air had more sales funnel than MBP and
| they wanted to tap into that money making funnel. Have fun
| with your 2 ports and single screen, and a phone like bezel
| with no FaceID LMAO. This is such a massive rip off lol,
| sorry to pour cold water on the hype, but that's just what
| it is.
|
| Hell, they rewrote Google Work, hey, I'm Apple pay me $200
| for rewriting software that has existed for 12 years
| already.
| onphonenow wrote:
| > "Air is like a browsing the web laptop. It's in the
| class of laptops that should be $500."
|
| I do some volume purchasing of tech product (Lenovo /
| Dell Laptops and desktops + poweredge on server side +
| some networking on other gear). I like those products,
| they are fine.
|
| That said, my wife has an air. I think folks are
| seriously underestimating the air if they are thinking it
| just something to browse the web.
|
| The "pro class" X1 screen resolution is 1920 x 1200 / the
| "web laptop" Air is 2,560 x 1,600.
| seabriez wrote:
| I mean, you just said it, your wife. X1 maybe went with
| this screen for whatever reason but there are other
| laptop options (XPS 13, Surface Laptop). XPS is even
| better than Air 3.5K 3456x2160. I think for newer
| consumers, they can more "easily" navigate through all
| these options to decide, well, I'm not a Pro (or not
| using it for Pro) and I will get Air. But in the end it's
| not a PRO level device and it's really sad that these
| GREAT devices are being overlooked due to this. As far as
| Air most PRO people wouldn't do with only one screen, or
| they want to us VM, or if they truly edit video Air won't
| have the AV1 and H264 extensions making it dog slow for
| that. In the end Air is REALLY marketed and sold to the
| web browser crowd, which is a laptop you can find easily
| for $500 and really great one around $700-$900 range,
| with the only thing you are losing is maybe that extra
| couple hours on battery life.
| thebean11 wrote:
| 16GB is $200 more, 24GB is $400 more. Not horrible but can't
| help feeling it should start at 16GB at this point.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Urk: nothing above 8G memory listed on the apple store.
| yojo wrote:
| Once you select the model you can customize the memory on the
| next page. As others have mentioned, +$200 for 16GB, +$400
| for 24GB
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Unfortunate that the wedge design is gone.
|
| The previous one was really comfortable to type on since you
| didn't feel the 90 degree metal edge digging into your wrist like
| on the pro models.
|
| Was one of the main reasons I got it.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| After I taught myself to keep my wrists unbent/horizontal with
| the ground while I typed, this sort of thing doesn't bother me
| at all. Without evidence I attribute to this my lack of RSI or
| carpal tunnel despite being a heavy emacs user over the
| decades.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| How many external screens?
| terramex wrote:
| > Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-
| in display at 1 billion colors and:
|
| > One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Thanks for that link.
|
| For my next work laptop, I've been waiting to see if
| (sometime soon) there would be a MBP that supported external
| refresh rates > 60 Hz.
|
| Given that the M2 MBA still has that limitation, I suspect
| not.
| cloudengineer94 wrote:
| Main reason I went from the 16" Intel to the M1 Pro, dual
| displays is a must for me when I'm docked at home.
| synaesthesisx wrote:
| I can run my Samsung CRG9 (a 49" UW monitor) with one of my
| M1 machines (an original 13" Pro w/ M1) at 120hz with no
| issues, FWIW.
|
| I suspect it would probably have issues running 4K @120hz
| however.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Thanks, that's an interesting data point.
|
| Back when I had my M1 MBP, I never managed to get above
| 60Hz, and I found some articles suggesting that _nobody_
| could. I 'm curious why you had more success.
| synaesthesisx wrote:
| In my case, I had to get a new DisplayPort cable (not all
| cables will support 120hz). Things were rocky at the
| start but I believe Apple also released an update to
| improve compatibility.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Literally my only question. If they don't understand that then
| this is a massive market-research fail. I went Windows before
| the M1 Pro Macs just because I could not run two displays well
| on the Air (Displaylink sucks so so much).
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| On the contrary, I suspect they have market research to the
| effect that only a small proportion of users have or want
| multiple screens, and of those who do, they're likely to buy
| a more expensive model in the first place. Basically everyone
| I know has gone the route of a single large display, Mac user
| or not.
| bradstewart wrote:
| My anecdata seems to confirm this as well. We ordered ~30
| Macbook Airs at work over the last 18 months or so
| (startup, so no actual IT department), and I didn't even
| know they only supported one monitor until a month ago when
| a new employee asked why their second screen didn't work.
|
| This was the 27th MBA we deployed, so 26 people only used
| one external monitor (and I went back and asked if anyone
| needed an upgrade for dual-monitor use in case they just
| ignored it). All non engineering roles though.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I'd buy an MBP if it didn't have fans, and if it weren't
| such a 2013-style lunchbox.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I genuinely don't know what "2013-style lunchbox" means
| here. Lunchbox to me means a small metal box with a
| handle that has a picture of an 80s cartoon on it.
| copperx wrote:
| > Basically everyone I know has gone the route of a single
| large display, Mac user or not.
|
| I've noticed that, too, which I don't quite understand.
| Dual displays were touted as a productivity multiplier back
| in the day. Is that not the case anymore?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Seeing as there are single large monitors with more
| pixels than those multiple back in the day monitors, it
| makes sense. People ran multiple screens to get the real
| estate. There was always a fight on how to arrange them
| to minimize the gaps from the bezels. Now, it's one
| screen, no interrupting bezels and more pixels.
| ghaff wrote:
| I prefer my dual displays--I think. But there are
| definitely a ton of "power users" of various kinds these
| days who prefer a single large (often curved) display. I
| really thought about it a bit back and decided to stick
| with dual displays but I see the arguments for not having
| to deal with moving windows between monitors, etc.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Still the case..
|
| People aren't productive.. haven't you noticed?
|
| It's not just notifications of the phone. Having to
| switch between the huge amount of apps and windows is bad
| even on more screens, let alone on a single screen.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Meh. I'm more productive when one thing has focus, so I
| prefer not having multiple applications open at once
| vying for my attention. One display works great for me
| ... I'd even shut my laptop screen if I could, but I use
| touch ID for authentication.
|
| Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I've
| never been in a position where I thought that having more
| screen real estate than a large 4k display would be
| helpful. When I need to have more than one application
| visible I can do that; when I want to focus on one thing
| at a time I can do that too.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Looks like just one. This is the wording on the marketing page:
|
| > "You can also connect up to a 6K display."
| gnicholas wrote:
| Cannot believe the updated base MBP has the old Touch Bar. Why
| can't they give us back our function keys?
|
| EDIT: and is now the only laptop without MagSafe? There are more
| ports on the new MBA!
| prvc wrote:
| They probably sell well.
| tra3 wrote:
| Is there no config available with no Touch Bar for the 13" pro?
| I would prefer the Air M2, honestly, but still only 1 external
| monitor support.
|
| Mind blown.
| interestica wrote:
| And still just the two USBC ports. I would have jumped to this
| if it just had better onboard connectivity like it's 14/16
| versions.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Oh man I didn't even realize that. So if you want HDMI or SD
| slots you have to shell out $2k for the high-end MBPs?
| coder543 wrote:
| Yes. There is literally no point to the 13" MBP. _No one_
| should buy it.
|
| The M2 Air looks great, and the 14" and 16" MBP continue to
| be great as well (but pricey).
|
| The 13" MBP offers you nothing but an outdated chassis,
| screen, and keyboard.
|
| Ignore the word "Pro". There was nothing more Pro about the
| 13" MBP when M1 came out... and it's even _less_ Pro than
| the M2 MBA this time around.
| KVFinn wrote:
| >Cannot believe the updated base MBP has the old Touch Bar. Why
| can't they give us back our function keys?
|
| It's truly bizarre. They must have 10 million of the old laptop
| bodies in a warehouse or something?
| andrekandre wrote:
| > They must have 10 million of the old laptop bodies in a
| warehouse or something?
|
| the supply-chain is a leaky abstraction...
| nickpp wrote:
| The whole existence of the 13" MBP is kinda pointless and
| anachronistic?! It sticks out like a sore thumb with the old-
| school display and touch bar next to the 14" MBP.
| quacker wrote:
| The 13" MacBook Pro is so strange.
|
| It is identical to the M2 MacBook Air, except:
|
| - Worse camera: 720p camera where the Air has a 1080p camera
|
| - Worse speakers: stereo speakers where the Air has four-
| speakers (I'm assuming stereo is 2-speakers?)
|
| - Bigger battery: 58.2 WHr vs 52.6 WHr (about a 2hr battery
| life difference)
|
| - Slightly heavier: +0.3 lbs over the Air
|
| - Slightly smaller screen: 13.3" vs the Air's 13.6", although
| this is probably due to the notch
|
| - Has the touchbar
|
| They are priced the same from what I can tell.
| StreamBright wrote:
| In Europe we are waiting for the M1 chip enabled Apple computers
| to arrive (as of the delivery). I ordered mine in January, still
| has not arrived.
| exhilaration wrote:
| _And for the first time, MacBook Air supports fast charge for
| charging up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes with an optional 67W
| USB-C power adapter._
|
| Anybody know if the 67W USB-C power adapter is finally stock?
| Edit: Nope, still gotta wait a month:
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MKU63AM/A/67w-usb-c-power...
| Other (bigger) chargers are a 2 month wait. Looks like Apple is
| still suffering from supply chain issues.
| copperx wrote:
| Is there a third-party charger that can deliver that wattage?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I have a GaN charger from Anchor that delivers 62W and was
| under $50
| gumby wrote:
| Sure, Anker sells some
| willcipriano wrote:
| Never measured it but this can charge my Razor Blade at what
| appears to be 100w.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08YY5XG4N?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_.
| ..
| colechristensen wrote:
| Pretty sure my Dell charger puts out nearly 100W, not sure
| how compatible it is actually though
|
| Edit:
|
| It is a power supply that came with an XPS 15
|
| The text on the brick claims 5V 1A and 20 V 6.5 A, missing 9V
| and 15V levels and the current on 20V seems not to be
| standard. It _does_ charge everything I have plugged it into,
| but they might all be falling back to 5V1A. The back text
| could also just not be telling the truth.
| booi wrote:
| I've used them to good success. USB-PD is well defined I
| think and I've not run into issues if it's supported.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I strongly suspect it isn't standards conforming USB-PD
| asdff wrote:
| If that means they ship with something like a 45W that's just
| cruel. I bet the charge merely maintains when the computer is
| under load.
| frutiger wrote:
| You can choose from either at no additional charge.
| littleweep wrote:
| This is surprising! Thought they would have found a way to
| extract more money from people.
| rektide wrote:
| Is this about the new MacBook Air? I'm in favor of them
| bringing magsafe back, but if and only if it also charges via
| USB-C cables as well. If this is true, and it charges 60W+,
| that'd be great.
| cehrlich wrote:
| The MacBook Pro 14"/16" can charge via USB-C, so almost
| certainly.
| coder543 wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
|
| > MagSafe 3 charging port
|
| > ...
|
| > Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:
|
| > Charging
|
| > ...
|
| There is absolutely zero doubt, and as others mentioned, it
| is the same on the 14" and 16".
| nicoburns wrote:
| This is true of the latest MacBook Pro's (you can use either
| MagSafe or usb-c), so it's likely true here.
| Kognito wrote:
| Shanghai lockdowns are easing now so we should see supply come
| back online soon.
| mslate wrote:
| "Supercharged" does not mean anything.
| hanniabu wrote:
| It means more money
| coldtea wrote:
| It's actually the same, and in some cases like educational,
| less money than before.
| coldtea wrote:
| Really? Did you bother checking the dictionary?
|
| supercharged /'su:p@tSa:dZd/ Learn to pronounce adjective 1.
| (of an internal combustion engine) fitted with a supercharger.
| "a supercharged 3.8-litre V6"
|
| 2. extremely powerful or fast. "it's essentially a cutting-edge
| smartphone with a supercharged camera"
| jmyeet wrote:
| The 24GB unified memory is a really nice upgrade (the M1 MBA has
| 8GB upgradeable to 16GB). The CPU/GPU upgrades are predictable
| and wlecome but the memory is huge.
|
| A lot of development isn't CPU bound but is memory bound or at
| least can really benefit from more memory. This upgrade makes the
| MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads.
|
| I have a MBP (Intel) but it's expensive. Getting a viable machine
| for $1200 would be great. You feel less bad about losing it or
| breaking it or upgrading it more often.
|
| Really happy to see this.
|
| As an aside, having 8GB of _unified_ memory even as an option in
| 2022 is a joke. It should just be 16Gb minimum.
| rozenmd wrote:
| For web dev the base model (8GB RAM) MacBook Air M1 _is_ a
| viable dev machine - makes the maxed out i7 MacBook Pro I had
| from work feel sluggish in comparison.
| omegabravo wrote:
| I needed more RAM to run SQL in a VM that I didn't expect I
| would need.
|
| If you can guarantee you won't need more, sure it's plenty
| viable. If you can't make that guarantee, you need to
| remember there is no upgrade path. You will be selling the
| machine and buying a new one.
| Kognito wrote:
| It's viable but you'll spend a lot of time with memory
| compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO.
|
| Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air
| now.
| omnimus wrote:
| In my experience this is just not true. Unless you are
| doing multiple vms and some wierd stuff. Base Macbook Air
| is wonderful. It is faster than my 32gig desktop xeon
| workstation desktop from 5 years ago.
|
| I also think there is big argument for devs to be
| developing webaps on consumer gear. How else you can spot
| the issues with your apps. And tbh if your macbook air has
| problems running your webapp... well. Good luck.
| cowtools wrote:
| why does web development require so much memory and
| computing power?
| onetom wrote:
| Because ppl use Docker, even when it's not really that
| necessary... I'm using Nix for the past few years and it
| has obviated the need for Docker. I have simple shell.nix
| files, which are activated via direnv and that's it; 0
| runtime overhead, no need to install various
| java/node/python/ruby version managers.
|
| What actually feasts on memory is the various chat apps
| and project management and knowledge-base management
| software, in-browser email clients, github pages,
| JetBrains IDEs.
|
| You should keep these closed, whenever u can and then 8GB
| is enough comfortably. You will still receive Slack
| notifications on your phone, then u can fire up Slack to
| reply or have a discussion. Same with Notion or Logseq.
| You don't need to have a gmail tab open all the time
| either. The built-in Mail.app might just be enough for
| you too, which might eat slightly less memory. You can
| use Sublime Text or Emacs for editing, instead of VS Code
| or WebStorm. Install a browser-tab suspender extension.
| Download technical docs and read them via Dash (or
| whatever open-source equivalent it has). Have you looked
| into how much memory does a github.com page eats?
| trenchgun wrote:
| How is nix with M1 mac?
| monocasa wrote:
| Running a more or less complete stack of the backend can
| be a lot of containers.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I want to make fun of javascript here
| BoumTAC wrote:
| Docker
| axlee wrote:
| Not Docker, webpack. Your run-of-the-mill webpack dev
| server will happily gulp gigabytes of RAM, and pray that
| your frontend dev stack only runs one of them. Your IDE
| will probably use a few more gigabytes on top of that for
| static analysis and autocompletion, and that's how you
| need at least 8-10GB to run develop your average mid-size
| web app without swapping.
| postalrat wrote:
| How about the rest of the app? Database servers, other
| servers, more servers, other services, etc all running in
| docker.
| axlee wrote:
| Whether they run in docker or not has very little impact
| on the memory usage, especially on Linux where the
| overhead is tiny. In VMs, YMMV.
| nicoburns wrote:
| My webpack config for a fairly large app run under a
| single GB, and performance on my m1 pro machine is so
| good that I have it permanently running the background.
| Maybe you need to optimise your config?
| znpy wrote:
| not docker, but the linux virtual machine that docker on
| mac has to use because mac os has no other way to run
| containers (which would mean running linux binaries
| anyway).
|
| on linux you would have pretty much no overhead from
| running software in containers.
| [deleted]
| nabaraz wrote:
| I have M1 with 8GB, it can't handle basic node.js/react
| app. I have to force kill node and start again every few
| hours. This with just browsers and apple music playing.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| You must have some kind of memory leak in that app. Node
| uses ~200MB at startup, and is limited to 4GB unless you
| explicitly increase it with a flag.
| hugi wrote:
| You need 8GB just to run "modern" web applications, let
| alone develop them.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Tell me you haven't used an M1 device without telling me.
|
| People getting their hands on 8GB M1 MacBook Airs in the
| early days were saying the memory management and
| performance were making it snappier than the 16GB Intel
| MacBooks.
| M4v3R wrote:
| I made a mistake of purchasing a 8GB M1 MacBook Pro. It
| was painful to work with. For casual stuff it worked just
| fine, but as soon as I ran a Docker image (with 2GB
| memory limit), had Slack and few other light apps open,
| some tabs in Safari it started to become slow. Painfully
| slow. The spinning beach ball was a very frequent sight
| to me. My RAM usage was often in the red zone and I had
| to kill applications constantly. When I finally bit the
| bullet and upgraded to a M1 Pro with 32 GB of RAM all of
| these issues went away.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Docker on Mac is a pretty terrible experience in general
| in my experience. Better to run things natively if you
| can.
| vetinari wrote:
| Docker on Mac (and Windows) is a full-blown VM. The
| containers assume Linux, so they are getting it -- inside
| that VM.
|
| That also brings issue with networking. Sure, if you are
| using the bridged (in Docker's parlance) networks, you
| won't notice. If you need to use host/ipvlan/macvlan, you
| will.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And then shortly thereafter they were saying that their
| SSDs were getting _hammered_ with swap. Very fast swap,
| but constant R/W on those devices.
| jcytong wrote:
| I have a MBA 16GB and everything is fine until I use
| Docker. It's under constant memory pressure and I was
| looking into getting a 32/64GB Macbook Pro 14 M1 Pro max.
| But really dreaded the additional weight/size of the laptop
| + 96W power brick which is an additional of ~2 lb
| alwillis wrote:
| _It's viable but you'll spend a lot of time with memory
| compression /swap working hard. Not a great experience
| IMO._
|
| It's more complicated than that; if you look at the reviews
| and tests 8GB M1 machines, you'll see there were no issues
| like the ones you're mentioning.
|
| The pipeline between the unified RAM and the SSD is so
| fast, it's essentially a L3 cache as apposed to swap as in
| the way we traditionally think about it.
| jcranberry wrote:
| That certainly hasn't been my experience on my M1 Max
| MBP. When it swaps, I can immediately tell.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| > makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many
| workloads.
|
| So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so as
| long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.
| parkingrift wrote:
| This is true, but that one display can be a 49" 5120x1440
| ultra wide and it will drive that with no problems.
| zekrioca wrote:
| I really do not understand this. The 14" Macbook Pro (M1 Max)
| does support up to three external displays. What was the
| problem with these new Macbooks to not support at least two
| displays..
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe multi-monitor is considered a pro feature?
| zekrioca wrote:
| M1 Mac Mini does natively support up to two external
| monitors - one via the HDMI port and a second via USB-C.
| criddell wrote:
| Yeah, they seem to treat their desktop machine
| differently.
| vetinari wrote:
| Nope, just as the sibling wrote: with that chip, they
| have two outputs total to play with, and on laptops one
| of them is wired to the internal display.
| [deleted]
| nicoburns wrote:
| That because it doesn't have an internal display... this
| has to displays in total as well.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| The M1 Pro/Max have multiple GPUs, one in each CPU cluster.
| zekrioca wrote:
| M1 Mac Mini does natively support up to two external
| monitors - one via the HDMI port and a second via USB-C.
| bombcar wrote:
| Whatever wizard at Apple came up with "the number of
| monitors" as a distinguishing difference between price
| levels should get a pretty big raise.
|
| It's perfect segmentation, most people don't care, and
| those that do will pay.
| yardie wrote:
| The Touchbar in the 13" MBP counts as a display. So the
| Pro already runs 2 displays and can add a third. The same
| GPU+CPU is in the MBA which only runs 1 + 1 external
| display. It't not a limitation of GPU or whatever they
| want you to believe. This is pure market segmentation.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Does it? The touch bar is something like 2170x60px.
| That's a tiny fraction of the processing power and data
| bandwidth compared to an _actual_ screen. In terms of raw
| pixel count, it 's only about 2x as many pixels as my old
| Commodore 64 would push every frame. Each of those pixels
| is a lot deeper but it's still probably pretty much a
| rounding error compared to how much is being dealt with
| for the internal screen, never mind an external one.
|
| (Hell, is the central GPU even running the touchbar, or
| is there a specialized display circuit just for it?)
|
| That said, my reaction to this whole thread is pretty
| much "I guess multiple external monitors is a reason to
| upsell you to a Pro machine" so we agree on that point :)
| bombcar wrote:
| If the Touch Bar could refresh at 60 hz or something,
| maybe it's a display.
|
| But if it (as it actually is I suspect) a USB connected
| thing that refreshes very slowly, it's not a display at
| all.
|
| And the MacBook Air can take a USB "monitor" for whatever
| that's worth.
| egypturnash wrote:
| It seems to refresh fast enough to run Doom on it. https:
| //www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/21/13697058/...
|
| Framerate's hard to determine from a youtube video of
| someone pointing a camera at it, single-stepping has some
| things seeming to move at the same framerate as the
| camera but redrawing the whole screen as the player moves
| around looks more like 1/3 of the camera's framerate to
| me.
| bombcar wrote:
| True, but the "can run Doom" framerate could be 1 per
| minute. It obviously can update decently fast, but
| whether it's a "display" is arguable.
| 0xcoffee wrote:
| Isn't it just based on amount of pixels needing to be
| pushed through? So if it can support a 6K external, it
| should be able to support multiple monitors as long as
| combined resolution doesn't exceed 6k?
| KVFinn wrote:
| >So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so
| as long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.
|
| Oh no, you're breaking my heart. Is there no adapter you can
| buy that splits that 6k thunderbolt bandwidth into two
| smaller external displays? Okay I just googled, and it looks
| like there are third party DisplayLink which sort of maybe
| work, but are not officially supported? But people SEEM to
| have dual 4k monitors working?
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| Running Macbook Air M1 with 16 GB of RAM and never had
| performance issues running multiple Electron instances,
| simulators, compilers, browsers and what not. Changed to
| Macbook Air after my 3 times as expensive Macbook Pro 16" (8
| core Intel) was stolen and never missed it for a second.
| Doesn't seem like there is a compelling reason to upgrade to
| Macbook Air M2.
| bayindirh wrote:
| On the contrary, I was planning to get an almost maxed out M1
| Pro, and now I'll buy an almost maxed out M2 Pro (when 16"
| comes out), because the things I do need extensive processing
| power and every bit of performance counts.
|
| If I can not have a big desktop system and just use my daily
| laptop for developing these hard, CPU bound simulation tasks;
| I'll be a happy camper.
|
| So, horses for courses.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The macbook air with 24gb memory and 512gb ssd is $1800, not
| $1200. Another $100 if you want the extra GPU cores.
| onetom wrote:
| I'm using 256GB machines for Clojure development in IntelliJ
| since 2017 and I never run out of disk space. I have 36GB of
| photos and 10GB of iPhone backups on iCloud Drive though.
|
| The trick is not to mix your personal stuff, like movies,
| photos and music with your work stuff. Also make sure you
| regularly clean up the older versions of the software you
| use, including Docker layer caches, brew / nix packages,
| JetBrains IDEs, browser caches, etc. If you are not doing
| audio/video work, then removing iMovie and GarageBand frees
| up 4.5GB. Similarly Keynote/Numbers/Pages 2GB.
| [deleted]
| notatoad wrote:
| for the person who's looking for a machine to handle emails,
| facebook, netflix, and maybe a bit of document editing, 8GB is
| totally fine. and even if that extra ram was free, it still has
| a cost in battery life. 8GB of ram is the right choice for a
| lot of people buying a macbook air.
| znpy wrote:
| > a machine to handle emails, facebook, netflix, and maybe a
| bit of document editing, 8GB is totally fine
|
| for that kind of usage a $750 acer/asus laptop would probably
| be good too, however.
| ianai wrote:
| The RAM being on-die, the 8 gig option is probably a result of
| binning and marketing what makes sense with yield rates.
| stetrain wrote:
| It's on-package not on-die. The RAM capacity isn't related to
| the binning of the M2 die.
| m_ke wrote:
| I have the M1 air with 8GB and it's unusable with pycharm on an
| external 4K display.
| alibert wrote:
| Should be better when this land (next version)
| https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-745
|
| (switch rendering API in JRE used by Intellj/Pycharm to Metal
| for rendering)
| PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote:
| I've been following that ticket for yeeears. Is it actually
| shipping in the next release?
| onetom wrote:
| Because you are most likely running the Intel version, not
| the Apple Silicon one! Check it in the Activity Monitor.
| There should be a "Kind" column on the CPU or Memory tabs. If
| not, you can turn on that column via a right click on the
| headers.
| onetom wrote:
| I'm using IntelliJ IDEA 2022.2 EAP (Ultimate Edition) Build
| #IU-222.2680.4, built on May 25, 2022 Runtime version:
| 17.0.3+7-b463.3 aarch64 VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by
| JetBrains s.r.o.
|
| and it's freaking buttery smooth. notice the "aarch64"
| part!
| UmbertoNoEco wrote:
| the 24GB are for the MBP
| terramex wrote:
| For Air too: https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
|
| > Configurable to: 16GB or 24GB
|
| Store is updated too, 16GB upgrade is 200$ and 24GB is 400$.
| UmbertoNoEco wrote:
| 400 USD for a 16GB upgrade is daylight street robbery. The
| power of brands.
| bitwize wrote:
| For slow-ass DIMM memory, sure. But we're talking on-die
| integrated memory that's leagues ahead of any PC memory
| in performance.
| MikusR wrote:
| Its on package not die
| gorbypark wrote:
| It's actually in-package, not on-die. It's still insanely
| fast, though.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Actually, when you consider how many banks of memory it
| would take to obtain 100GB/s, it's a bargain. _Desktop_
| DDR5-4800 tops out at 38.4 GB /s, so you would need
| _three_ , _desktop_ DDR5 memory sticks to get that - but
| it would not even matter because a 12th Gen _desktop_
| Intel Core i9 can 't handle more than 75GB/s at once.
| Now, DDR5 is falling in price, but low-power laptop grade
| DDR5 is still quite a specialized part, let alone with
| such bandwidth potential.
|
| In a nutshell, not all RAM is created equal.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Apple charges $400 for 32 GB when you upgrade the memory
| in computers with M1 Max. That used to be a decent price,
| at least before DDR5 prices started falling. The M2
| memory upgrade is twice as expensive.
|
| Edit: 16 -> 32 GB with M1 Pro is $400. 32 -> 64 GB with
| M1 Max is also $400. 64 -> 128 GB with M1 Ultra is $800.
| Memory upgrades for the high-end Macs are surprisingly
| cost-effective.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is not true. The M1 Max machines start with 16GB of
| RAM, upgradable to 32GB, so you are adding 16GB more for
| $400. The new M2 machine starts with 8GB of RAM,
| upgradable to 24GB for $400. They are both adding 16GB
| for $400 or 8GB for $200 if you check, so the cost of
| upgrades is exactly the same.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Kind of ridiculous when you can get 64GB of laptop RAM for
| less than $400 easily. I still don't get why the M-series
| chips have such ridiculously low memory ceilings.
| ianai wrote:
| It's DDR5 on-die ram. The M1 ultra is essentially 4 M1s
| with an on-die messaging fabric and separate ram for each
| compute "node", iirc.
| skrause wrote:
| Which is the same per GB price that I paid 10 years ago to
| upgrade my 2012 MacBook Air from 4 to 8 GB, which cost
| $100.
| [deleted]
| leohonexus wrote:
| I doubt Apple will allow you to configure up to 24GB on a MBA
| though - they'd likely want to reserve that to the MBP which
| has active cooling and can sustain peak performance.
|
| Edit: as comments pointed out, I'm wrong - thanks for the
| corrections.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| You can but it costs +$400 to go from 8gb to 24gb.
| [deleted]
| ianbutler wrote:
| That is one of the current options for the new MBA announced
| today.
| armadsen wrote:
| You can indeed configure the MBA with 24 GB. It's a $400
| upgrade.
| SenHeng wrote:
| Disappointed that it still only supports 1 external display,
| albeit up to 6K.
|
| Otherwise still looks like an amazing machine so I'm probably
| still getting one anyway.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| It's unfortunate that the base price is $1200. I don't see myself
| recommending this to friends when the M1 Air starts at $1000 and
| is so similarly spec'd.
| cft wrote:
| 20% inflation-adjusted. What i don't like is its 224ppi
| resolution, instead of pro's 254ppi
| copperx wrote:
| Finally, Apple has seen the light! This is going to be an
| instabuy for many, including me. This feels like 2012 when Apple
| introduced Retina displays: Everything that's good about Apple in
| a single package, and unavailable at any price anywhere else. The
| nitpicky in me will complain about the lack of a glass touchpad,
| but I feel Apple is justified in leaving it as a Pro feature.
| nickpp wrote:
| Displays are significantly better on the MBPs though: PPI,
| refresh rate.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Greater contrast ratio as well
| fumar wrote:
| Where did you catch that the trackpad was different than the
| Pros? My M1 Air has a glass trackpad.
| copperx wrote:
| I just checked and you are right, my M1 Air has a glass
| trackpad too. However, the trackpad on the 14" MBP is much
| smoother and more responsive; I thought it the difference was
| glass vs non-glass. It must be something else.
| duxup wrote:
| Anyone do full time web dev work on an Air?
|
| I'm thinking of switching from PC land but not sure.
| larrykubin wrote:
| I was a full time web dev on a 2011 Air with 4 GB, so this one
| should be good :).
| duxup wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback.
|
| I am working on a beat up old Inspiron... I gotta think an
| Air can handle the work.
| dschuessler wrote:
| Until February I used a 2013 Air with 8 GB. It was perfectly
| fine for web dev, even with Docker.
|
| The current model will probably not even notice what you throw
| at it.
| duxup wrote:
| TY
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Almost 10 years ago we purchased a MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and
| 512GB SSD for approx 2K UK pounds. It's really surprising and
| disappointing that a decade later these same specs essentially
| cost the same!
| quacker wrote:
| _Almost 10 years ago we purchased a MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM
| and 512GB SSD for approx 2K UK pounds._
|
| With inflation, PS2000 in 2012 is equal to about PS2516 today.
| I configured an M2 MacBook Air with these specs for PS1750
| today, so it actually costs less in real terms.
|
| Edit: A 13" MacBook _Pro_ with the same specs is also PS1750
| [deleted]
| apozem wrote:
| Not to be rude but this is an inaccurate and poor understanding
| of computers. The entire chip architecture of the Mac changed
| since 2010. 16 gigs of RAM on an M1-based chip gets you much,
| _much_ better performance than 16 gigs on an Intel chip from 10
| years ago.
|
| Even the RAM and SSD stats you cite are apples and oranges -
| both have gotten dramatically faster in the last decade.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Ya but neither have really mattered in terms of speed for
| years for most people. I'm still stick at 256gb over here and
| I have to be pretty picky about what stays on.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _16 gigs of RAM on an M1-based chip gets you much, much
| better performance than 16 gigs on an Intel chip from 10
| years ago._
|
| Unless you want to run VMs. Then more RAM is generally more
| better.
| troupe wrote:
| While your second statement is probably true, do you
| actually disagree that 16 gigs of RAM on an M1 gets you
| much better performance than 16 gigs on an Intel Mac?
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Isn't it the same DDR4x in either?
| grumpyprole wrote:
| > Not to be rude but this is an inaccurate and poor
| understanding of computers
|
| Not to be rude, but a poor understanding of computers would
| be to think that speed is all that matters. Software has only
| been getting more and more complex and bloated over the last
| 10 years. What good is 16GB of super fast RAM if the machine
| is swapping out to disk regularly?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I have an M1 macbook air and it's flipping fast with insane
| battery life. It's giving my employers 6K US Dollars Intel
| Macbook Pro a run for its money at a fraction of the cost.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Software has only been getting more and more complex and
| bloated over the last 10 years_
|
| That's just some handwaving complain that doesn't mean
| much.
|
| > _What good is 16GB of super fast RAM if the machine is
| swapping out to disk regularly?_
|
| Try
|
| - opening 2 Linux/Windows VMs on that 2012 laptop
|
| - or opening a big Logic project with 100 tracks,
| convolution reverbs, high end AU/VSTs, and so on
|
| - or opening and editing several 8K, ney, 4K video streams,
| and slap some VFX nodes on them...
|
| - or running a programming IDE like Idea
|
| - or compiling a large C++ codebase
|
| ... and several other tasks, and compare running the same
| on the 2022 machine.
|
| Since "software has only been getting more and more complex
| and bloated over the last 10 years" it should be
| comparable, right?
| grumpyprole wrote:
| I don't understand the point you are trying to make here.
| I wish you luck getting a 2022 Apple machine with 8GB of
| RAM to handle 2 VMs, IntelliJ, a logic project with 100
| tracks or 4K video editing. These tasks are all limited
| by available RAM and the available RAM has not
| significantly increased since 2012 (my point).
| [deleted]
| standyro wrote:
| I definitely have used multiple VMs in VirtualBox and
| Docker on a daily basis on my Macbook Air M1. It's a
| phenomenal machine.
| dijit wrote:
| With 8gb?
|
| I am aware that macOS is better than Linux with low
| memory conditions but I can't imagine this, granted I
| have an older (2020) MacBook Pro, but I have ran out of
| ram and I specifically opted for the 32G one.
|
| As in: I got the infamous "your system is low on memory"
| dialog.
|
| All it took was teams, slack, chrome, MS word, docker (vm
| with default config) and 2 1G VMs invirtualbox
| hxegon wrote:
| Generally won't be swapping that often I would think, but
| besides the point because swap with SSDs (that are as good
| as the ones in MBs) isn't a big performance hit like it
| used to be. Swap also doesn't degrade SSD lifetimes like it
| used to.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > a poor understanding of computers would be to think that
| speed is all that matters.
|
| > What good is 16GB of super fast RAM if the machine is
| swapping out to disk regularly?
|
| If the swapping is fast enough not to be noticeable, then
| speed is all that matters. In fact, if SSDs were about as
| fast as RAM, we wouldn't need RAM at all!
|
| The whole reason why we have all these layers of memory
| (disk, RAM, L3, L2 and L1 cache, etc) is exactly speed,
| nothing else. The closer to the CPU, the faster, but also
| more expensive.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| You're describing your results on an Intel Mac. They
| aren't relevant to this particular bit of the discussion.
| And, owning two different M1 laptops, I concur that the
| relationship between the RAM and SSD and M1 SoC yields
| fundamentally different results from prior hardware. The
| result is stunning.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I assume you are responding to pxmpxm's comment. :)
| pxmpxm wrote:
| What relationship would that be? The DDR4x ram in the M1
| can hit 70gb/sec, compared to 7gb/sec and ~3.5gb/sec
| average for the NVME. There's no amount of magic to get
| around those facts.
| petercooper wrote:
| _In fact, if SSDs were about as fast as RAM, we wouldn 't
| need RAM at all!_
|
| Just in case anyone was curious, I looked into this
| recently, assuming 7-8GB/s was pretty darn fast, but dual
| channel DDR2 RAM was doing such speeds in 2002. So a high
| end SSD is about as fast as 20 year old memory, if you
| ignore latency.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Ah beat me to it!
|
| The idea that Mx swapping to NVME is essentially no-op
| from performance perspective is patently wrong.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I don't know what people are reading into my comment. I
| said _if_ SSD speeds were comparable to RAM, RAM wouldn't
| be needed. The reason we need it is precisely because
| disk is slower and cheaper.
| girvo wrote:
| I think people just want to argue, so they half read your
| comment.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Apple must've spent a fortune on marketing bamboozlement
| ("you don't need as much RAM with apple silicone") that
| even people on HN now seem to parrot it.
|
| NVME is around _two orders of magnitude slower_ than DDR3
| RAM, so as soon as your heap is tapped out you 'll hit a
| performance wall.
|
| As I sit here and type this, my 10.15.7 Catalina desktop
| is sitting at 12.25Gb of used memory with 2 Edge tabs and
| an open Citrix session. Any actual, professional use will
| put you way north of even 16gb.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > even people on HN now seem to parrot it.
|
| There's no need for personal attacks.
|
| > as soon as your heap is tapped out you'll hit a
| performance wall.
|
| Yes, probably. Two points though:
|
| 1. My comment was that _if_ SSD performance was
| comparable to RAM, there would be no need for the latter.
|
| 2. I have very rarely swapped on my 16Gb M1 Air, and when
| I did I only noticed later when looking back at graphs.
| I'm sure there was a performance hit but I never felt it.
|
| > Any actual, professional use will put you way north of
| even 16gb.
|
| I do plenty of actual, professional use on my 16Gb M1
| Air. Right now I have 3 VS Code windows open compiling Go
| code, running acceptance tests and whatnot. I also have
| Mail, Safari (with tens of tabs) and Firefox (with >100
| tabs) open. A few minutes ago I also had Slack open on
| it. I regularly start iTerm to do terminal tasks.
|
| You must have an Intel machine. I had a powerful fully
| specced 32Gb i9 16" MBP. This cheap and humble 16Gb
| passively cooled M1 blows it right out of the water in
| every single aspect. It's even better at running Intel
| Docker images!
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Any actual, professional use will put you way north of
| even 16gb._
|
| Well, I use my M1 (16 GB) for heavy video editing and
| music sessions, plus professional programming, with IDEA,
| VMs, and so on. And I don't seem to ever need even close
| to 16GB, much less "way north", or even saw it be slow.
|
| > _As I sit here and type this, my 10.15.7 Catalina
| desktop is sitting at 12.25Gb of used memory with 2 Edge
| tabs and an open Citrix session. Any actual, professional
| use will put you way north of even 16gb._
|
| Maybe it's time to come over to M1 and 12.4?
| pxmpxm wrote:
| _> Maybe it 's time to come over to M1 and 12.4?_
|
| This is the very type of bamboozlement I was alluding to
| - instruction set and/or silicon architecture doesn't
| actually change the _amount_ of data you use.
|
| Citrix will still need to buffer the same (compressed?)
| 4K worth of pixels and Edge will still to load up the
| full DOM, cache all the sources, stand up a sandbox with
| javascript virtual machine etc.
|
| There's nothing magical there... a single frame of 16 bit
| 8K RAW will allocate the exactly same amount of heap on
| M1, M2, Intel or anything else for that matter.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| You're at least somewhat correct.
|
| I'm now playing a 4K movie on Plex. It's using a little
| over 1Gb RAM for that. After I started it, my computer
| swapped ~250Mb to the SSD. Firefox is still snappy.
| Safari is still running normally. VS Code is still doing
| its thing. I even started a `brew update` on iTerm, and I
| have the App Store installing a couple apps. Mail still
| runs fine, sends and receives, and I can switch between
| mail accounts and messages.
|
| So, you may be technically right about the memory usage
| and the need for swapping. What you're missing is the
| fact that it doesn't hurt the user experience.
|
| This is not marketing or bamboozlement. This is me on the
| same laptop I'm typing this answer.
|
| You should probably do a deep inspection of your beliefs
| and stop denying the actual, practical experience of many
| people who are responding to you with real world
| experience.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| > Any actual, professional use will put you way north of
| even 16gb.
|
| Plenty of people will be more than happy with 8GB of RAM
| on an M1. I had a base model M1 Mac Mini and it worked
| great even for gaming.
|
| Obviously if you're running VMs or editing video or doing
| any other memory intense workload you're going to need
| more memory. But for anyone who doesn't need an absurd
| (>16gb) amount of memory (college students, many
| programmers, those who use computers just for web
| browsing and Netflix), 8GB or 16GB will feel snappy.
| phonon wrote:
| > NVME is around two orders of magnitude slower than DDR3
| RAM,
|
| No. Dual channel DDR3 went up to about 18 GB/s read and
| 14 GB/s write. [1]
|
| The latest NVMe PCIe 5.0 SSD are about 13 GB/s read and
| 12 GB/s write. [2]
|
| Apple SSD are about half that now, but most DDR3 users
| didn't have highest clocked dual channel RAM either. So
| roughly a factor of 2 or so at best, about a 50x
| difference compared to two orders of magnitude :-)
|
| [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/2792/5
|
| [2] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/86395/apacer-is-first-
| with-pc...
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Ooooh good point - haven't actually heard of newest NVME
| stuff before.
|
| The M1/M2 apple hardware specifically seems to be around
| an order of magnitude from what I've seen (ddr4x
| 60-70gb/sec vs 7gb/sec for the NVME or thereabouts).
|
| The obvious observation here is that the fab yields for
| high memory apple silicone must not be all that great,
| which is why they're mostly shipping 8 and 16gb versions.
| phonon wrote:
| You just switched from DDR3, to the latest (few laptops
| offering that) DDR4x. And even then it's barely one order
| of magnitude.
|
| You were wrong, it's ok...welcome to the SSD future :-)
| postalrat wrote:
| Disk can have high transfer speeds but access time isn't
| at all comparable to ram.
|
| I was interested until I saw it tops out at 8gb. My
| environment typically needs just over 16gb.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| What tops out at 8gb by the way? The previous gen Air gos
| up to 16Gb, and this gen's goes up to 24Gb.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > Disk can have high transfer speeds but access time
| isn't at all comparable to ram.
|
| I never said it was. I said _if_ it was, we wouldn't need
| RAM.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| Speed _is_ all that matters. Who cares what the hardware is
| as long as it responds quickly to my commands?
| grumpyprole wrote:
| The killer feature of the M1 chip is actually
| performance-per-watt, not outright performance/speed. It
| does not help to oversimplify things.
| [deleted]
| bitwize wrote:
| An MBP that's faster than _any_ PC laptop of equivalent form
| factor, with a longer battery life, should be well worth the
| scratch.
|
| Historically, if you compare pre-M1 Macs to _equivalent_ PCs,
| they were very price competitive. There are no equivalents to
| Apple Silicon Macs.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| Those two numbers are the same
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| It's a lot faster and of higher quality now. Those numbers do
| not reflect the speed of the ram, the speed of the memory, the
| quality of the screen, or the performance of the CPU
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Yes it's made with iPhone/iPad parts instead of PC parts :)
| bitwize wrote:
| In other words, they're made with parts from best-of-breed
| computing devices, superior to janky-ass PC parts :)
| smoldesu wrote:
| ...just don't compare GPU benchmarks. Or any SIMD
| operations, for that matter.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Ya but it's the same amount. Wew my files load marginally
| faster, but I can only have 5 of them for the same money that
| I used to be able to have 10. That's like telling someone who
| can't get a new van with similar features for the same price
| to instead get a one wheel
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| It really doesn't matter what the underlying hardware is.
| If it responds to your input quicker, then it's a better
| product (remember how slow it was to fill that memory in
| the first place and then save your changes to disk?).
|
| That's not to forget the improvements in network speeds,
| the screen, the speakers, the battery life, the webcam,
| etc.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I actually disagree, but I take your point. A better
| product needs to make a real difference for the price.
| Right now, 16gb of ram costs $250 (cad) more than base
| model. 512gb ssd costs $250 more than base model. The
| likelihood I'd ever see those gains, compared to the
| likelihood I'd be able to use more storage, is wildly
| different. The product as a whole is better, but the
| individual upgrades you'd be absolutely limited by cost
| much more than they should. For example, a 1TB ~5GB/s
| read/write capable NVMe SSD off-the-shelf can be had for
| under $200. That's just a bit ridiculous. I'm not going
| to get the same utility between those two examples for
| the ~$4-500 price difference.
|
| If I did have endless money, or my regular work was
| heavily IO bound, then it wouldn't change anything,
| except I'd be much more willing to ignore how much it
| costs.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| In addition to that, today's 2000 GBP are more comparable to
| 1600 GBP in 2012 due to inflation.
| trenchgun wrote:
| Also, software bloat means that the old macbook can't do
| shit with today's software.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Sure it can
| asdff wrote:
| Currently using a 2012 macbook pro, with a 512gb ssd, and
| 16gb sticks. It's more than enough power for I'd say 99%
| of what people use computers for (ms office, adobe suite,
| some cad, light dev work, etc.) These days its not hard
| to call upon compute from the heavens priced by the
| second should you need more horsepower.
| girvo wrote:
| My spinning-rust 24" iMac from 2011 _mostly_ manages to
| trundle along with Linux Mint on it for my partner to
| use. LibreOffice and Firefox for web browsing, mostly.
|
| Anything more than that and it chokes. Too many tabs, it
| chokes. Too many software updates, woo boy does she
| choke. That poor machine!
| geodel wrote:
| Which other has gotten dramatically cheaper in that time. I see
| lenovo T-, P- series, dell precision, HP elitebook essentially
| same price.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yeah, only
|
| - the processor has several times more transistors and cores,
|
| - plus several special purposes devices for encoding video, AI
| tasks, and so on
|
| - the video performance is several times faster
|
| - the battery lasts 4 times as much,
|
| - the RAM is several times faster,
|
| - the SSD is 4-5x faster,
|
| - the display has twice the resolution and extremelly improved
| brightness and color rendition...
|
| and so on
|
| So dissapointing /s
| [deleted]
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| One paragraph on that page bothers me:
|
| "Better for the Environment"
|
| No, it is not better for the environment, it is not as bad for
| the environment.
| haswell wrote:
| Given two options, both of which are bad for the environment,
| but one is less bad, is one not better than the other?
|
| Can you point to a product that highlights its strengths by
| framing them in a negative light instead of painting them
| positively?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just to show our commitment to our users, we're only
| responsible for 25% of future cancer where our competitors
| are responsible for 29%.
|
| I just don't see that line being effective.
| haswell wrote:
| What do you propose, then? Should they just not say
| anything at all? Or is your contention that the product
| should not even exist?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Chaning one's perspective on PR vomit would be my
| suggestion. If it comes from a PR team, then of course it
| is all shiny, smells great, long lasting, making the
| world a better place. The true information will never
| come from those PR departments. Maybe, it'll come from an
| interested 3rd party, but then you have to know if they
| are just being informative or if they have an agenda and
| distorting info as well.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Yes, they should say nothing at all. Instead of saying
| things like "This means that every Mac Apple creates,
| from design to manufacturing, will be 100 percent carbon
| neutral."
|
| Carbon Neutrality is branding and does nothing to reverse
| CO2 or climate change. It is all green washing.
|
| https://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article256-the-
| carbon-ne...
|
| Better for the environment is never buying another
| computer.
|
| Yes, I am saying that the MacBook Air M1 I am writing on
| right now should not exist. That what short term gains I
| am getting from it now will end up causing all your kids
| to suffer. I am saying you are all sacrificing your
| children future for novelty and convince. I ams also
| saying there is no way out of this because we have built
| this Tower of Babel and what will happen now is out of
| our hands.
| haswell wrote:
| While I appreciate where you're coming from, your
| conclusion seems to imply there is no world in which
| technology and a sustainable future can coexist. I
| realize we are closer to the end now than ever before,
| but what you are suggesting is that the ending is
| inevitable. If this is true - we've triggered our
| downfall and nothing can stop it - then should we not be
| praising companies that make efforts towards
| sustainability?
|
| Since we can't just put things back into a box, isn't
| complaining about marketing like this just barking up
| entirely the wrong tree? If the premise is that
| technology ideally shouldn't exist in its current form,
| then that requires an entirely different discussion built
| on an entirely different foundation, and Apple's
| marketing claims are just a small distraction at best.
| seabriez wrote:
| Creating products that you can't easily repair or upgrade?
| Creating a vicious upgrade cycle? Hmmm...
| onetom wrote:
| I'm still using a 2017 MacBook Pro, though I have an M1 Mac
| Mini. I had 2 second-hand 27" iMacs too, from 2011 and
| 2013.
|
| I gave the 2011 one away, because I couldn't upgrade it
| anymore, but it is still used for audio/video editing.
|
| The 2013 one has some issues with its hard-drive and I'm
| planning to upgrade it to an SSD. It's still a pretty
| capable machine, though I would probably put Linux on it,
| since the macOS upgrades for that are discontinued too.
|
| The display panels are "just" 2K in them, but still super
| sharp, though a bit dusty inside... They are better than
| most cheaper external monitors I saw ppl using for everyday
| work...
|
| I think a decade of runtime for Macs is not that uncommon.
| 2 decades would be even better, but I wouldn't call it a
| "vicious upgrade cycle"...
|
| I mean, I'm still on an iPhone Xs Max and before that I had
| an iPhone 7 Pro and I have no intention of upgrading,
| despite the back-glass being cracked on it. and not because
| I can't afford it, but because I won't really utilize the
| extra power of the latest versions.
| haswell wrote:
| Upgrade-ability and repair-ability are important topics,
| and do impact how environmentally friendly a device can be
| considered to be, but this is unrelated to the core of the
| topic at hand.
|
| The contention was that "They should have said it's less
| bad instead of saying it's better". That is what I was
| responding to.
|
| You've introduced a different topic, that is tangentially
| related, but not directly relevant to a discussion about
| framing things. It'd be relevant in a discussion about the
| absolute environmental friendliness of the device, but
| that's another discussion entirely.
| onetom wrote:
| No matter how I squint, those 2 statements are logically
| equivalent, while "both harm the environment" is also true, but
| you "harm" the environment too, in that sense, no?
| hit8run wrote:
| I don't buy 60hz displays in 2022. No way this comes without
| 120hz ,,Pro Motion". Disgusting.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Pro motion displays have only ever been available on devices
| with the "pro" moniker, there was never a chance of the MacBook
| Air getting it.
| copperx wrote:
| Are 120 Hz 4k or 5k external displays common?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| This was a sticking point for me as well.
|
| Honestly I don't get the limitation. I'm assuming there were
| trade-offs involved, but it seems like an odd feature to
| sacrifice.
| Escapado wrote:
| I am torn... One one hand I think I want this as an upgrade to my
| 2016 MBP, on the other hand the 14" Pro has a 120hz display. And
| although I mostly code on it on the go I got so used to 144hz on
| my desktop monitor that I kinda feel like an upgrade should
| include that too. I get that this would totally canibalize their
| more expensive models but one can dream.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Is it only me who'd like a 15 inch air?
|
| I've got a 16 MacBook Pro and it's great and all - but soooo
| thick. Like as thick as my old, old, MacBook Pro from 2012. I was
| expecting it to be more like a 2015 MacBook Pro when I bought it.
|
| I'd much prefer some of that sweet apple silicon power, in a nice
| thin 15 inch size please.
| deergomoo wrote:
| It's an odd one: Apple Silicon would allow for a significantly
| more portable laptop with far fewer compromises than something
| like the 2015 MacBook. Not only that, it's been a number of
| years since the MacBook Air could be considered remarkably thin
| or light. These days it's just "pretty thin" and "pretty
| light".
|
| Logically, I would like to see the Air be renamed to just
| "MacBook", with a 15" variant for those that want a larger
| screen but don't need the extra horsepower. The Air name would
| better fit a spiritual successor to the 2015 MacBook IMO
| (though with a usable keyboard and a non-gimped CPU).
| onurcel wrote:
| > Is it only me who'd like a 15 inch air?
|
| yes
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The new MacBook Air features MagSafe for dedicated charging and
| peace of mind when users are plugged in.
|
| MagSafe was one of Apple's best hardware ideas, and I'm really
| surprised they dropped it for a few generations. I'm glad they
| realized their mistake and brought it back, though.
| npongratz wrote:
| For every new device Apple markets, I'm curious if they still
| have that famed "#courage" they so loudly advertised a while
| back. Let's take a look at the tech specs:
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
|
| > 3.5 mm headphone jack
|
| Nice.
|
| I am unhappy it's on the righthand side, but I won't let the
| perfect be the enemy of the good.
| gman83 wrote:
| I'm using a Lenovo Thinkpad and thinking of upgrading soon. How's
| Linux on these new chips?
| f311a wrote:
| There is asahi linux, but it's definitely not ready for general
| use
| abbyck wrote:
| Asahi is promising. Some folks can daily drive it, while some
| can't. Checkout what all things work now
| least wrote:
| Asahi doesn't have native sound support so you'd need an
| external DAC or audio interface to get audio from it... as
| well as no GPU acceleration. I'd say that the only people
| that could daily drive it are using it from a desk right now
| for programming. Very promising indeed, but I don't think
| anyone would be wise to run it on their primary device.
| zekrioca wrote:
| "One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz." [1]
|
| Same for the new M2 Macbook Pro.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
| trenchgun wrote:
| What's the rationale behind it?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Not to kill the MBP sales probably. Apple doing apple things.
| petercooper wrote:
| Here in the UK, you're waiting about 2 months right now for
| an M1 MBP, even a base spec one. I can't imagine Apple
| wanted to kill off all the backorders for machines built
| from existing components, so they need to stretch out the
| launch.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I wish there was a MacBook variant that had a 15" screen but cost
| under $1500. I feel like this is probably the only missing gap in
| the laptop line up. Its hard for me to understand the limitation
| considering the iMac is at 24".
|
| As a parent with 2 kids - giving each a Mac laptop that won't
| cause eyestrain/reduced productivity is a non starter at $1999
| each.
| suyash wrote:
| Wonder how good it is compared to the latest NVIDIA GPUs in
| laptops for gaming and ML Tasks
| lysecret wrote:
| Ml (Using Pytorch or Tensorflow) still much much better on cuda
| from what I have heard.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Oh it's no contest. You may as well be comparing chihuahua to
| a mastiff. Still, it's better than nothing and useful to have
| around for development and small-scale experimentation.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| True... unless you factor in all those blackscreens nvidia
| has given you on linux(well me at least). Ive wasted days
| and weeks on stupid nvidia drivers.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Probably still way slower than advertised. The M1's were
| otherwise awesome but the GPU performance was much over-stated
| (claims like faster than 3090 when barely on-par with 3050
| which is 1/4th as fast).
|
| You have to remember that these are just scaled mobile GPUs.
| They can't hold a candle to proper dedicated GPU hardware and
| never will until Apple gets around to designing desktop
| specific GPU SoCs.
| wmf wrote:
| Laptops this size cannot fit NVIDIA GPUs.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| They can totally fit Nvidia GPUs, just not particularly high
| performance ones. It's not that hard to find a thin-and-light
| laptop with a low powered discrete Nvidia GPU.
|
| Heck, even the Switch technically has an Nvidia GPU.
| neogodless wrote:
| Largely true, though...
|
| https://www.asus.com/us/site/gaming/rog/gaming-
| laptops/flow-...
|
| It's a very small laptop with the option to utilize a current
| generation Nvidia GPU.
| f311a wrote:
| Mobile GPUs are much slower, they only share the same name
| spfzero wrote:
| Well, even if they could, battery life...
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I don't understand why the new M2 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
| exists.
|
| Looks like it adds active cooling but keeps an old design? Is it
| for generalists who don't want the 14"? Who is it for?
| cloverich wrote:
| Is this the 13" model? Might just be they still have a bunch of
| manufacturing capacity or something comparable left. But my
| wife owns the 2-core version (w/o touchbar) and so far its my
| favorite sized macbook -- had me regularly wondering why the
| air existed. If it weren't for the touchbar on the current
| model, I would have strongly considered it but couldn't resist
| a better keyboard + no touchbar on the 14" model. Still, side
| by side I just love the size and feel of the 13". Curious to
| checkout the air now at some point.
| nocturnes wrote:
| It's for Apple to offload old parts.
| grishka wrote:
| For those 3 people who genuinely think that the touch bar is
| useful. And isn't it cheaper and lower-end than the M1 Pro/Max
| 14"? (gosh is their naming confusing)
| dmix wrote:
| > And for the first time, MacBook Air supports fast charge for
| charging up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes with an optional 67W
| USB-C power adapter.7
|
| Woah. Speaking of batteries I've been impressed with the battery
| life in the new MBPs. They last forever with these new M chips.
| One of the best features.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I used my M1 MBA for six and a half hours on a ten-hour flight
| from London to Austin (coding), and the battery went down from
| 100% to 60%. It's nuts.
| ssalka wrote:
| And just like that, M1 is version last
| jiripospisil wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the Air would be enough for me performance-wise
| but the number of ports is a problem - I have 3 USB-C ports
| occupied right now. Any tips for a docking station?
| knownastron wrote:
| This docking station is highly recommended on HN:
| https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-station-4/
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Love it, but the lack of ports still seems like a bit of an
| issue. It looks like the MBA and 13in MBP only have 2 USBC ports,
| with one used for charging (they don't have magsafe from what i
| can see). The 14/16in MBPs have 3 USBC, HDMI, SD card + a
| separate magsafe charging port.
| MivLives wrote:
| There is magsafe now, so you don't have to loose one for
| charging. Honestly it's easiest to just dump it into a USB C
| dock because they don't support more then one external monitor
| anyway.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| From what i see on the store pages, only the 14in+ MBPs have
| the magsafe ports. The MBA and 13in MBP don't. Point taken
| about the dock though, thanks.
| et-al wrote:
| The M2 MBA has magsafe, but the M2 13" MBP does not. Sure
| it's cheaper and quicker not to redesign a new chassis, but
| it puts the 13" MBP in an odd spot.
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
| reducesuffering wrote:
| You can combine charging with external display on 1 port.
| That's my "desktop" setup with no other ports used. Mouse and
| keyboard work connected to monitor.
| lh7777 wrote:
| One of my favorite things about my 2020 13" MBP (Intel) is that
| it has USB-C ports on both sides, so it's a bit disappointing
| that Apple decided not to carry that feature on to the smaller
| M1 Macbooks. The 14" M1 seems like a big hit to portability
| just to get a few extra ports.
| [deleted]
| simonmales wrote:
| Bringing all the good things back.
| brailsafe wrote:
| No new colours for the MBP? Lame.. I'm holding out for some
| greens, reds, blues even. Midnight is cool, but it's basically
| just darker grey and not on the MBP. Pretty sick of silver and
| grey tbh
| needcleartype64 wrote:
| It's still only 224 pixels per inch (ppi), not the 254 ppi of the
| MBP 16". Back when Apple had subpixel RGB font antialiasing like
| Cleartype the 224ppi was fine but 224ppi text doesn't look sharp
| with grayscale antialiasing. It's not without good reason that an
| iPad Retina display is 264ppi. I switched from Mac after Apple
| removed Cleartype-like font rendering because my external 4K
| display no longer had as sharp of text as Windows+Linux.
| nickpp wrote:
| Excellent observation. But I will add that it seems to me that
| Microsoft also removed ClearType in Windows 11 as well... at
| least partially.
| needcleartype64 wrote:
| It's not enabled by default, but can be enabled in 30 seconds
| by (1.) pressing the Win key, (2.) starting to type "adjust
| cleartype...", (3.) clicking "Adjust Cleartype Text", (4.)
| clicking "Turn on Cleartype". One can then fine tune it but
| the defaults work great.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I'm confused about the display size. It's smaller than the 14".
|
| Also, the small print is outdated:
|
| > The displays on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro have
| rounded corners at the top. When measured as a standard
| rectangular shape, the screens are 14.2 inches and 16.2 inches
| diagonally (actual viewable area is less).
|
| Oh that's for the pro
| stetrain wrote:
| It's most likely the same size as the previous display, but
| taller by the height of the webcam notch.
|
| The horizontal display resolution is the same, the vertical
| resolution has increased by 64px.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I drooled over the black Macbook waaay back in 2006, so happy
| it's back.
| binarynate wrote:
| The new midnight color is a dark blue rather than black. It's
| still cool, though.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Close enough. I love sleek, dark, brushed-metal computers.
| Looks very cool.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I called it "NeXTBook".
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I presumably still have mine, though it's probably hidden away
| in storage somewhere. Why I as a poor grad student in 2007
| thought it was worth it to pay extra just for the black finish,
| I'm not sure. I was new to the Mac back then ... funny to think
| that I went from anti-Apple as a college student to a dedicated
| Mac user for fifteen years.
| TillE wrote:
| I'm a little sad they didn't have an actual dark color
| available for the M1 MBP (just light silver and medium silver),
| I assume it'll be offered on the next MBP.
| minimaxir wrote:
| So a notable difference between the $1199 and $1499 SKUs is the
| 35W dual-USB-C-port charger.
|
| Apparently, it retails for _$60_ alone!
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNWM3AM/A/35w-dual-usb-c-...
|
| Retailers like Anker sell a similar charger with double the power
| at that price range.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| It appears to be a super compact Gan charger FWIIW
| wollsmoth wrote:
| you can add the charger to the cheaper MBA as a $20 option
| minimaxir wrote:
| Interesting. I wouldn't consider the base 30W adapter as a
| de-facto $40 either.
| hank_z wrote:
| The base M2 macbook air is $1499 in the US. Whereas it is PS1549
| in the UK. Previousely Apple just replaces the currency but uses
| the same figure. Now Apple has increased the uk price. Thank you
| Apple.
| technotony wrote:
| One difference is taxes, the UK price includes VAT whereas the
| USA price adds tax at checkout so they aren't really comparable
| numbers. Further, the pound has fallen so you'd expect they
| have to increase the GBP price to maintain margin.
| city17 wrote:
| Dollar has been appreciating rather fast the last few months
| compared to the pound and euro.
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