[HN Gopher] New MacBook Air with M2
___________________________________________________________________
New MacBook Air with M2
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 342 points
Date : 2022-07-06 12:00 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| noja wrote:
| Anyone know anything about SSD performance on the Air?
| xbar wrote:
| No samples have made it to reviewers hands, so no. But perhaps
| it will mimic the M2 Macbook Pro 13", whose SSD performance
| scaled with size (meh at 256GB, blazing when bigger).
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Apple has discontinued the 128 GB NAND chip, so it's very
| unlikely. The first increase in storage (from 256 GB to 512
| GB) also costs twice as much as subsequent increases.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Bad if you get the 256 GB version, since it'll be a single
| chip. Otherwise it's the same chip they put on all the other
| ones.
| jeswin wrote:
| For many in the HN audience, this may not be a good buy. You'd
| need to buy the 16GB + 512GB version since the bundled 256GB SSD
| is considerably slower than the previous gen as reported by many
| people. That bumps the price to $1599, which isn't significantly
| cheaper than the 14" MacBook Pro - which sells for $1799 on Best
| Buy.
| theflyinghorse wrote:
| Thermal issues also mentioned in this thread should be factored
| in too.
|
| I personally ended up going for the pro over waiting for m2 air
| because of active cooling and multiple display support
| kbd wrote:
| I compared the 14" Pro to the M2 Air and here's how it looks to
| me: MBP 14 base M1 Pro, 32G ram, 512hd =
| $2400. MBA upgraded M2, 24G ram, 512hd = $1900.
|
| Note the Air is almost a pound lighter!
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Air also lacks far more ports, MiniLED, 120Hz, the M1 Pro's
| GPU, 8GB of ram, and cooling. I would expect the M1 Pro's Ram
| to be faster as well. Finally the M1 Pro supports dual
| display out while the M2 does not. That $500 still goes
| pretty far.
| skohan wrote:
| It depends on your priorities. Thin and light is the win
| for me.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Are there any performance comparisons between the new m2 and the
| m1 pro/max you can get in the 14" form factor (that has three tb4
| ports, hdmi, a card reader and MAGSAFE!)?
| flyt wrote:
| The M2 MBA has MagSafe too.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I wonder how many casual power users are going to get this and
| then realize they can't run their current windows VM anymore...
| wmf wrote:
| You can run a Windows VM and x86 apps work.
| simula67 wrote:
| Does anyone have reviews of any comparable ARM-based (good
| battery backup and speed) Windows laptops? Seems like there
| should be a transition of the entire laptop market to ARM, given
| that Apple has demonstrated that ARM processors are viable on the
| laptop.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| The best Windows experience is to virtualize Windows 11 on
| M1(or M2) Mac.....although you are still running Windows 11
| unfortunately. :/
|
| Still its the snappiest Windows I have used in a long time.
| Microsoft probably hasn't figured out how to use up all the
| resources of this chip (for dumb features).
| RL_Quine wrote:
| Apple proved that their ARM processors work amazingly in a
| laptop, not that the ARM processors everyone else has access to
| work well in a laptop.
| wmf wrote:
| Non-Apple ARM chips are garbage. Half the performance of M1 at
| best.
| dangus wrote:
| When it comes to Windows on ARM, so many reasons to pick a
| Windows laptop over a Mac are thrown out the door by self-
| sabotaging compatibility in that way. It's just not a good
| experience in my mind, unless you plan to use your system like
| a Chromebook and just stick to browsing the web or using other
| basic apps.
|
| I would also say that 12th generation Intel is more competitive
| with Apple's current silicon than it gets credit for. It beats
| Apple on single and multi-threaded performance. No, you won't
| get 20 hour battery life, but you can find a respectable
| balance, and to that point I don't think it's worth making the
| ARM tradeoff on the Windows side of the house.
|
| For Apple, ARM is great because they're betting the farm on it.
| For Microsoft, ARM still looks like a bit like a side project
| to me.
| seunosewa wrote:
| Apple has demonstrated that ARM processors can be viable on the
| laptop. The ARM processors on their iPhones and iPads were way
| faster than other ARM processors before they transitioned their
| macs. Furthermore, only Apple seems to have the hardware and
| software tech to allow x86 code to run nearly as fast as native
| code on an ARM CPU.
| carlycue wrote:
| This thing is going to sell like hotcakes. The combination of
| single core CPU and graphics performance, device thinness,
| battery life in this laptop is unmatched.
|
| It's funny how Apple came back from the worst the Mac has ever
| been to the best in a span of few years. Johnny I've doesn't
| dictate things around Apple anymore but the silicone chips team
| now does.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| Honestly the keyboard prevented me from purchasing a MacBook
| from 2014 until 2020. I still despise the 2020 keyboard but
| I'll reluctantly use it to type a password and then plug in a
| USB keyboard.
|
| The 2022 is a dream come true for me.
| shakezula wrote:
| And mag safe made a comeback? And an HDMI port?! The M1 pro
| was a no-brainer to me when I was in the market for a new
| laptop.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| How in the world do you invent (or at least properly
| commercialize on a mass scale) a feature like MagSafe and
| then remove it from your laptops?
|
| Jonny Ive made a lot good decisions in the days when he
| worked for Jobs, but my theory is that Jobs kept him from
| being a complete idiot. Tim Cook lost control of him and it
| went downhill massively after that.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| It was 2016 when things went wrong for the keyboards. I have
| a 2015 MacBook Pro and the keyboard is fantastic.
| nerdawson wrote:
| Apple released a 12" MacBook in early 2015 which was the
| first to have the butterfly keyboards.
|
| A guy I worked with bought one and complained about it
| relentlessly.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| True. In my case I didn't need a laptop for 2015/2016, but
| I'm typically an "every 2 years" kind of person. When 2016
| rolled out I knew I was going to be taking care of that
| 2013 laptop for a long while.
| hn_saver wrote:
| Single core, huh? It's 8 core
| peanuty1 wrote:
| I think they meant single core performance.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > This thing is going to sell like hotcakes. The combination of
| single core CPU and graphics performance, device thinness,
| battery life in this laptop is unmatched.
|
| Well, except for the small problem that the M1 air exists and
| is still on sale. Same single core CPU performance and near
| enough multicore and GPU performance. And it's cheaper by a not
| insignificant amount.
|
| Which is pretty much why Linus Tech Tips wasn't a fan. If you
| want an Air, get the M1 version and save a buck. If you want
| performance, kinda hard to argue with the huge upgrades you get
| from the not that much more expensive 14" Pro.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I think you are confusing their review of MacBook Pro M2 with
| the MacBook Air m2.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Long AAPL, you say? Or what else are you saying?
|
| I agree that Ive's influence will not be missed.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| I would be long AAPL if they didn't have the majority of
| their production in China. That now poses a significant risk
| and Apple execs must be sweating bullets right now scrambling
| to onshore.
| whiteboardr wrote:
| Let alone China invading Taiwan.
|
| What's going on in Ukraine is alteady horrible, add this
| scenario to the equation and we're looking at ultimate
| doom.
|
| There. I said it.
| [deleted]
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Aren't Macs basically a rounding error for the overall
| company?
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Around 20% of what iphone makes - not the most important
| category, but not a rounding error either.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Their Mac business is still a Fortune 500 company in terms
| of revenue by itself. Besides Halo effect, they still make
| a ton of money off Macs, and now that their chips cross
| pollinate with the iOS devices, it makes no sense to kill
| it off.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I don't disagree at all. But the context of the comment I
| was responding to was specifically about whether this
| would be enough to justify a high conviction bet on AAPL
| stock.
|
| Even if this model sells like hotcakes (which I'm sure it
| will), and even if that isn't priced in (which I'm less
| sure of), don't really see that having a large enough
| impact on overall earnings to move the needle on the
| stock. The reality is that small differences in the next
| Fed announcement probably will move AAPL to a much larger
| degree than this product.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| Yup. If for some reason Apple didn't make computers,
| don't think I'd own an iPhone -- the whole ecosystem
| fitting together is a major part of the appeal for me.
| simondotau wrote:
| Not to mention, the Mac platform is effectively the SDK
| for the iOS/iPadOS platform. And it's a thing which
| pretty much every single person who works at Apple uses
| on a daily basis. The Mac is not -- I assure you -- going
| anywhere.
| shakezula wrote:
| Especially not after they made this push into their own
| silicon where the majority of the benefits reaped so far
| have been in the Mac line.
| boringg wrote:
| And people don't need to replace iphones as much as they
| used to in the past...
|
| Still a formidable company don't get me wrong.
| andruby wrote:
| Besides what other commenters mentioned, it is also the
| longest running revenue source for Apple.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| As others have said, it's about 20% of phone revenue but
| you need a mac to build an iOS app. THey're also selling a
| whole ecosystem that needs to be cohesive and technically
| strong. For a while the mac part of the ecosystem wasn't
| living up to the quality of the phones, IMHO.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I've brought this up before, and someone responded that
| they'll move iOS app building and compilation into a web
| service, and they will no longer need to sell general-
| purpose computers, and the idea haunts me.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That feels like it cuts against the core of the f what
| Apple is, but it's possible if Cook is succeeded by
| someone with no connection to old leadership.
| hedgehog wrote:
| They've built pieces of that already:
| https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/
|
| I'm not personally very excited about living inside that
| sealed of a bubble.
| nostrademons wrote:
| It's outsourcing a key part of the Apple ecosystem to
| Google (Chrome), which is why Apple will never do it.
| Big-tech companies go to extremely great lengths to own
| every part of the pathway from consumer to developer to
| hardware. Google first developed a browser, then an OS,
| then a hardware division just so Microsoft couldn't sit
| between Search and a microchip. Similarly, Apple has
| worked extremely hard to develop an App Store, IDE
| (XCode), and developer machine (Mac) so that neither
| Google nor Microsoft can come between them and the
| developer.
|
| Facebook is currently paying the price of not owning
| their distribution infrastructure - they've been hurt
| extremely badly by recent privacy changes that Apple and
| Google have put out, while Apple and Google themselves
| have been relatively isolated from them.
| hedgehog wrote:
| I don't think Google factors into this plan anywhere. The
| endpoint is iOS devices able to build iOS apps with full
| fidelity using Xcode for iPad, not a web based IDE. Total
| control for Apple.
| b3morales wrote:
| Even if that's their plan, it will be at least another
| decade before that service is viable to be a hard
| requirement, completely replacing local builds.
| mproud wrote:
| Apple is virtually the only consumer computer company that
| has had positive YoY computer growth every year in the past
| 20 years. Apple is selling way more iPhones, but the Mac
| has been gradually and steadily gaining growth.
| caycep wrote:
| I would say, is this Ive's fault or Intel's? What the silicon
| team is doing is more or less what Ive needed to fulfill his
| visions.
|
| Honestly, there's a lot of PC nerd pushback against Ive, but I
| think the industry as a whole needs someone like his asking the
| (to the lay person) obvious questions - i.e. why can't I have
| this amount of computing power in a human-friendly form factor,
| vs. the giant, imposing, and ugly monolithic towers of yore?
| divbzero wrote:
| In addition to all of that, MagSafe is back as well.
| skohan wrote:
| Keep it. I want one port to rule them all.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Is the returned MagSafe the _only_ way to charge these new
| macs? Or can you choose to use either MagSafe _or_ usbc?
|
| Honestly curious.
| mstade wrote:
| Not sure about plugging in two chargers at once, but you
| can definitely use either MagSafe or USB-C to charge. I
| do it frequently with my MBP. The MagSafe charges faster,
| but that may be more down to the power brick than the
| interface, I don't know.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| My M1 MacBook Air is insanely fast and the battery life is
| easily the best I've ever experienced. If the M2 is anything
| like the M1 or better, I agree, these things are going to make
| Apple a nice chunk of change.
| hajile wrote:
| I suspect the best reason for upgrading is access to 24GB of
| RAM and maybe the hardware video encoders if that's your
| thing. Otherwise, M2 is a very solid iteration, but probably
| not worth dropping that much money if you already own an M1
| system.
| kingsleyopara wrote:
| For me it's hardware nested virtualization but I'll be
| waiting for the M2 Pro.
| tootie wrote:
| I wager that 90% of PC buyers don't really look at specs at all
| and just always buy the latest Mac regardless.
|
| And that 90% of that 90% won't really benefit much from the
| advanced specs. I had an 11" Chromebook with a Celeron
| processor for 6 years. Cost less than $200 and weighed almost
| nothing. If I wasn't coding or gaming, it was the best PC I
| ever owned.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > It's funny how Apple came back from the worst the Mac has
| ever been to the best in a span of few years.
|
| The terrible state of the Mac over the last nine years hardly
| compares to the dismal state that Apple was in during the 90s.
| The product line was a mess and they had multiple machines that
| had common failures (PowerBook 5300c[0] comes to mind as my
| first laptop). It was so bad that PowerComputing was making
| better Macs (clones) than Apple.
|
| They've made two incredible comebacks.
|
| [0] > Two early production PowerBook 5300s caught fire, one at
| an Apple employee's house and another at the factory; it turned
| out that the Sony-manufactured lithium ion batteries had
| overheated while recharging. Apple recalled the 5300s sold
| (around a hundred machines) and replaced the batteries on these
| and all subsequent 5300s with nickel metal hydride batteries
| that provided only about 70% the endurance. At the time, the
| media viewed the problems with the PowerBook 5300 series as yet
| another example of Apple's decline.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_5300#Batteries
| MisterTea wrote:
| > but the silicone chips team now does.
|
| Ah-ha! I knew they were implants!
| pastrami_panda wrote:
| > Johnny Ive doesn't dictate things around Apple anymore but
| the silicone chips team now does
|
| That's not how Apple works. If they still work remotely like
| they did back under Jobs the hardware teams are not the guys
| calling the shots for future product cycles.
| cwp wrote:
| > the worst the Mac has ever been
|
| No. No no no. The worst was the Amelio era.
| adolph wrote:
| Amelio did do three good things: * replaced Spindler * failed
| to buy BeOS * bought NeXT
|
| Spindler's Apple is responsible for the Performa sub-brand
| (although Amelio didn't kill it).
|
| > After releasing a total of sixty-four different models [in
| five years], Apple retired the Performa brand in early 1997,
| shortly after release of the Power Macintosh 5500, 6500, 8600
| and 9600, as well as the return of Steve Jobs to the company.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa
| cwp wrote:
| Yeah, for sure. I'm just grumbling about these kids that
| don't know how good they have it. Even with unreliable
| keyboards and Intel failing to deliver, the period leading
| up to the M1 wasn't even close to "the worst the Mac has
| ever been". I had to walk to school barefoot!
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| > Johnny Ive doesn't dictate things around Apple anymore but
| the silicone chips team now does.
|
| Then how come we never read about those hardware devs, and get
| only story after story about Ive?
|
| My guess: those hardware devs are just faceless pawns that get
| replaced as soon as they start having opinions about product
| design.
| astrange wrote:
| Ive doesn't even work at Apple anymore.
| joakleaf wrote:
| So... the last 3-4 Apple events have had minute long segments
| with Johny Srouji presenting the Apple Silicon chips. He is
| Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies.
|
| There is an interview with him in the Wall Street Journal
| here:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chips-that-rebooted-the-
| mac...
| conductr wrote:
| Wonder how long these M chips were in R&D and meanwhile they
| were just watching everyone on the internet complain how crappy
| mac laptops were but they knew this was coming
| brigade wrote:
| AMD and Intel chips take ~5 years from starting work to being
| available to buy
|
| The architecture is basically frozen 2 years before tapeout,
| which itself is a year before they go on sale.
| throw34 wrote:
| Do you have a reference for that? 5 years is a pretty long
| time but I suppose it depends a lot on how one defines the
| start of a design.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| When Linus Tech tips did a review and tear down of the last
| Intel MacBook Air the design had no heat pipe and was just
| passively cooled. The first MacBook Air with the M1 design
| was equivalent but with an updated motherboard that had an
| M1.
|
| The A12Z in the DTK is derived from the A12 which came out in
| 2018 so it probably was earlier than that.
| watersb wrote:
| ? My M1 MacBook Air is passively cooled, but has a heat
| pipe that feeds into a heat sink that's at least as large
| as the M1 system heat spreader.
|
| - Detail image: https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2020/
| 11/19115445/MBA_M...
|
| - iFixit Teardown feature article:
| https://www.ifixit.com/News/46884/m1-macbook-teardowns-
| somet...
| foldr wrote:
| None of the Intel MacBook Airs were passively cooled. They
| all had fans.
| Keyframe wrote:
| There was a Macbook however that was passively cooled.
| sneak wrote:
| I loved that computer, and I hope they make another one
| of that size.
| throw34 wrote:
| Probably somewhere around two years before the M1
| announcement is when development started.
|
| It's a lot of work to design one of these parts.
|
| https://anysilicon.com/asic-design-flow-ultimate-guide/
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2019/07/26/intel
| -...
|
| Intel - 4 years.
| hedgehog wrote:
| The M series is a continuation of the A series development
| that's been going since 2008 when they bought PA Semi, maybe
| earlier. The M1 could have been branded the A14X but for
| whatever reason they chose not to, probably to make better
| marketing buzz. I would guess they've been booting macOS on
| ARM in the lab since the A7 and after that just a long grind
| to get to a good enough user experience with sufficient app
| compatibility to switch. You can see stuff like TSO in the
| CPU showed up in earlier chips at least a couple years before
| the M1 launched.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| autocorrect spelling error : silicone -> silicon
| bluedino wrote:
| > the worst the Mac has ever been
|
| Which one was that?
| rodgerd wrote:
| Any of the 90s Performa models where processors were
| routinely crippled by having half-width memory buses on them.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| The one they launched with Touch Bar. By far the worst
| keyboard I have come across, almost useless Touch Bar, no
| ports.
| Jyaif wrote:
| For me the Touch Bar wasn't just useless, it was actively
| annoying.
| pavlov wrote:
| The 2016 MacBook Pro was a turd. The butterfly keyboard would
| inevitably break. I went through several of these laptops. To
| add insult to the injury, this model's unique innovations
| were "Touch Bar" and "no ports"...
|
| I've been buying Macs since 2000, and the 2016 MBP is
| definitely the worst Mac I ever had. It was enough to drive
| me to purchase a Surface Book as an alternative.
| butterisgood wrote:
| Hmm I did exactly the same thing. Apple refreshed my whole
| laptop after a keyboard break, and I have the Surface to my
| wife. I think we are both going to get these M2 MBAs next.
| wombat-man wrote:
| I refuse to buy a touchbar mac although some have been
| issued to me by employers. I remember when they came out
| they raised the price of the MBP for this "feature" that
| just kinda sucked.
|
| Ended up leaving my MBP closed 95% of the time and using a
| separate keyboard.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| This is why I bought a M1 Air instead of a Pro when it
| first launched. I don't know how some people can stand
| the touchbar. "But it can do so much!" Isn't the point of
| touch typing to never look at the keyboard? It never made
| sense to me.
| lloeki wrote:
| Oh my, the 2018 one I have is a terrible piece of junk,
| notably the USB subsystem (overheats on one side, prone to
| interference, regularly resets which kills and connects to
| some device, may it be mouse, keyboard, or external
| display) and although I liked the touch of the butterfly
| keyboard, the arrow keys still trip me up (and of course
| the reliability)
|
| > "Touch Bar"
|
| The default touch bar UI is terrible, except for a few
| special cases (e.g Logic Pro / GarageBand sliders/knobs). I
| did see and try some hacks to customise it but they were
| quite brittle so I dropped off that train, but it kind of
| proved to me that there was something to it that could have
| been really great were it fully programmable for real, and
| that the actual execution was extremely subpar.
|
| > "no ports"
|
| If by "no ports" you mean USB-C only, I am really enjoying
| the 4x C port machines, and would rather not go back to
| mixed ports unless forced to. USB-A/B sockets just need to
| die.
| unilynx wrote:
| > except for a few special cases (e.g Logic Pro /
| GarageBand sliders/knobs).
|
| yeah that .. I enjoy it for quickly setting/sliding
| brightness and volume. And you can add a screenshot
| button to it which does not break focus so it allows me
| to screenshot things the keyboard cmd+shift+3/4 UI can't
| (ie context menus)
| kalleboo wrote:
| In addition they made the battery smaller despite the CPU
| not really getting any more efficient so it got less
| battery life unless literally all you were doing was
| watching iTunes movies.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| The 16" Macbook pro I bought in 2019 has been a source of
| constant irritation to me - unexpected fan thrashing,
| overheating, the usual stuff - and the performance and low
| cost of the new M1-based MacBooks has done nothing to
| improve my mood.
| xbar wrote:
| I don't blame you. That "pinnacle" of hardware design is
| an Apple poop-bomb.
|
| I have one with 32GB that was provided by my employer. It
| is bad. I hate using it. The keyboard on it is bad, the
| performance is bad, and the glitchiness is deeply
| frustrating.
|
| I loved my 2015 Macbook Pro 15" that it replaced and
| wondered why I thought it would be any better.
|
| My M1 Macbook Pro 16 is a joy to me.
| jamiepenney wrote:
| I put an order in for a 14" one last night to replace my
| 2019 MBP, this makes me feel better about the price.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I have one of these for work (employer-provided) and it
| is the worst machine I have ever used. The touchbar is
| useless. It's heavy and bulky as hell. Just watching a
| Youtube video or opening a page with some gifs causes the
| fan to spin up and sound like a jet engine. The dual fan
| situation was supposed to improve cooling, but it only
| made it LOUDER.
|
| Incredibly embarrassing to be in a quiet meeting room and
| accidentally open a slide deck with a gif for 2 minutes
| and have the machine ramp up its fans to maximum speed.
| Why?? Meanwhile on my M1 Air I can have the same content
| open + some Twitch stream + 3D map view open with no fan,
| no sound at all, and it runs great.
| Pelam wrote:
| Try customizing the fan curves to spin up at lower temps.
| Not much more noise over all if at all, but much more
| responsiveness.
| unicornporn wrote:
| > The 16" Macbook pro I bought in 2019 has been a source
| of constant irritation to me
|
| This. Worst Mac I've ever had to use.
| AOsborn wrote:
| Same situation with mine. Even had to have the battery
| replaced after showing errors, after a whole ordeal to
| have it covered under warranty. I suspect this was
| related to the constant overheating.
| SenHeng wrote:
| I'm grateful for the 'no ports' move. It really helped jump
| start moving everything on to USB-C. Yes, the
| implementation details are still being worked out.
| particularly how the mass manufacturers can cut cost while
| still the most wanted subset of supported features.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > Yes, the implementation details are still being worked
| out
|
| We're about 7 years into USB-C and I still had to do a
| ton of searching to find a dongle that does HDMI at 60
| Hz, USB-A and charging (how crazy to want all that,
| right?!). I also had to buy a shady (AFAIK it violates
| the spec) extension cable to build a dock setup ("real"
| docks are in the hundreds of Euros). It cost me about
| 40EUR to get back features I used to get for free _and_
| has reliability issues.
|
| USB-C is a blessing for charging, but I'm a bit
| disappointed by the ecosystem for the rest.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Sheesh, did you skip the MBP 2015? That's the best one they
| ever made, even to this day. I've been using MBP 2015 since
| then and just recently "upgraded" to M1. The MBP 2015 is
| still a better machine, better screen and keyboard.
|
| I can type waayy faster on the 2015 with less errors and
| the screen is better on the eye strain. The whites on the
| M1 are BRIGHT. I don't need a flash light shining at my
| face. Turning down the "brightness" doesn't address the
| problem. That just makes the whole screen darker or but the
| whites are still as bright. I'm still learning the laptop,
| maybe there is a contrast setting.
|
| Oh, and the trackpad on the 2015 doesn't feel like
| sandpaper. On the M1, the tip of my finger is numb most of
| the day.
|
| Anyway, for such a fanboi and you skipped the best MBP.
| Bummer for you. I can't imagine going from 2015 to 2016 and
| being satisfied with that. I'd have returned it the same
| day.
| whynaut wrote:
| You'll definitely want to enable warmer colors
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I use that. Been toying with night mode, color filters,
| and even flux. It's still too extreme, though it helps
| with the whites the other colors look atrocious.
|
| I have just about identical settings on both models and
| comparing the two laptops side-by-side, the 2015 looks
| much better. I still have "vivid" colors but the whites
| are more grey.
|
| Must be a screen thing, some new IPS technology. I don't
| know. It's terrible.
| appletrotter wrote:
| I feel like you might be noticing HDR. HDR supersedes
| your brightness settings.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlAsAuBtmps
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I'm not really that picky about era of MBP, honestly I'd
| be happy with any of them save for the era with the bad
| keyboards. But the 2015 vintage was certainly a good one.
|
| I have a late-2015 rMBP as my daily driver. I'm only now
| starting to run up against its limitations. USB-C, better
| 4K support, form factor, battery life, overall speed are
| things I'm looking forward to when I finally upgrade.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I was hitting memory limits and the disk was starting to
| fill up. I could have worked around the issues but the M1
| marketing got me excited and they fixed the blatant
| faults introduced in the previous generation. If I were
| to do it again, I'd hold off another two generations,
| maybe get M3 or M4. The 2015 is that good.
|
| I swapped the battery on my 2015 for like $150 at local
| computer repair shop. I was starting to hit memory limits
| but could have held off by using bare-metal dev box for
| heavy loads.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I am not generally an Apple user, but I had a 2012 MacBook
| pro for work for a few years, and it seemed pretty nice. I
| can't remember any complaints. That's while I was working
| at Google, though, so all I used it for was a web browser
| and SSH terminal.
| jclardy wrote:
| Butterfly keyboard era. I have one as a work machine that
| sits around until I need VPN access. The keyboard is
| miserable, and the fans spin up when I open Slack. In
| contrast, my 14" M1 Pro is the best laptop I've ever used.
| Fans are inaudible, incredible performance, incredible
| keyboard/trackpad, battery is not a worry.
| deepGem wrote:
| 15"/13" MBPro with the Touch Bar and that horrendous
| keyboard.
| iamben wrote:
| The last Intel Air (early 2020) is the worst Mac I've ever
| owned by an absolute mile. The fan is permanently on - it's
| like working on a hairdryer.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Honestly - Pretty much every laptop Apple released from
| 2018 to 2021 was a complete turd.
|
| I have the 16 inch 2019 model (issued by work, I don't buy
| apple products) and it's... just not a good machine.
|
| It gets amazingly hot, the fans run _ALL_ the time, the
| usb-c ports are flakey at best (frequently stop working
| after a suspend /resume cycle, or if you unplug while the
| machine is closed).
|
| It's got a shitty touch bar instead of function keys
| (although at least it reverted to a real esc-key, the
| touchbar only esc was literally a joke).
|
| It has frequent rendering glitches and artifacts.
|
| The battery life is bad (basically a given for how much
| power this thing is dumping right into my lap as heat).
|
| ----
|
| Before the M line, I was about to go have a real fight with
| our IT department to get me issued literally anything other
| than another Mac. The last couple of models they've put out
| in the intel line are just genuinely bad machines, across
| both the pro and air lines.
| iamben wrote:
| Ugh, I forgot about the battery. I'm lucky if I get a
| couple of hours out of it. Horrible thing.
| jamiepenney wrote:
| 90 minutes max for me. Awful machine.
| iamben wrote:
| I spent months complaining to them about this laptop. I
| had an Air for 5 years(!) before this and it was a
| wonderful machine. For 2k I'd expected a decent machine -
| but I hate everything about it. Obviously Apple didn't
| care in the slightest.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| M2 is not a single core CPU, albeit it does have stellar single
| threaded performance. As for having the worst Mac, it's quite
| probable they were nerfing their last x86 models on purpose to
| make the jump to Apple Silicon even more impressive. Remember
| the models that had inadequate thermals? Now magsafe is making
| a comeback?
| dean177 wrote:
| Read that sentence as "single core cpu performance and
| graphics performance" Rather than "a single core cpu. And
| graphics performance"
| stetrain wrote:
| Seems like in 2016 Apple was developing thermal designs for
| Intel's future promises which ended up being significantly
| delayed.
|
| And the Apple Silicon Macbook Air has no fan at all.
|
| This is what Apple wanted out of their laptops, and was
| clearly struggling to achieve it with Intel's offerings in
| 2015-2020.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| I find it very hard to believe that Apple deliberately
| sabotaged a multi-billion dollar product line for ~5 years in
| order to (possibly?) boost sales when their incredibly risky
| and expensive investment into their own silicon came to
| market.
|
| People have been shitting on MacBooks since they removed
| MagSafe and brought in the butterfly keyboard in 2016. The i9
| Pros with massive thermal issues came out in 2018. That's a
| lot of money to lose due to everyone and their mother
| complaining about the decline in quality and poor value for
| money of your product.
|
| I wouldn't ascribe to malice what can be more easily be
| ascribed to incompetence - Apple made questionable regarding
| the design of the MacBooks, and took the complaints to heart
| in time for release with their much improved chips.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| > I wouldn't ascribe to malice what can be more easily be
| ascribed to incompetence
|
| While I usually agree with the sentiment, it's hard to
| believe that one of the most successful companies in the
| world can be subject to such levels of incompetence on one
| of their flagship products.
| inamberclad wrote:
| I think the simpler explanation was that for that period
| of time, the mac wasn't their flagship. They were 100% on
| mobile devices.
| hajile wrote:
| Given the turnaround that happened when Ives left, I can
| definitely ascribe a lot of the problems to his push of
| form over function. Steve Jobs could set him straight in
| a way that Tim Cook apparently could not.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I take you don't know anyone working at Apple.
|
| There is plenty of good and bad, like everywhere.
|
| Apple took tons of questionable decisions and pissed off
| a lot of customers (me included) but they're redeeming
| themselves by bringing ARM to the laptop world (which was
| long overdue).
|
| Personally I'll run my current Mac to the ground and then
| I'll just have a (non Mac, hopefully ARM) desktop PC.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| The rust belt is littered with the remains of what were
| at one time or another some of the most successful
| companies in the US or the world.
|
| Corporations are ran by fallible people and are perfectly
| capable of running themselves into the ground. I'd argue
| it's nearly their natural trajectory to become bloated
| and inefficient over time. General Motors was largest and
| most successful auto manufacturer in the world right up
| until it crashed and burned in 2008 and had to be bailed
| out by the federal government.
| qzw wrote:
| I agree with your overall point, but GM was already
| widely seen as a has-been for years, maybe even decades,
| before 2008. They still had a lot of sales volume but
| apart from their trucks and a few SUVs, most of their
| products had been well behind those of their competitors
| in terms of both design and quality. So I don't think
| they were really comparable to Apple at that point.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Incompetence is the general state of affairs in the life
| of us all, unfortunately.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| The point isn't even lost revenue. That Apple can swallow.
| That's not going to sink them. But they had sufficiently
| many really _bad_ generations (like 4 or so) that people
| _had to_ start thinking about how to move out of the Mac-
| universe. And that requires significant amounts of
| investment that you cannot easily recover. And that means
| that once Apple comes up with a non-sucking Mac, it's by no
| means clear that they get _back_ that business.
|
| If they did that intentionally, then they took a very risky
| bet that paid off. But I really don't think anyone would
| make that kind of bet.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It was one generation, the 'touchbar' machines, not four.
| The third generation Macbook Pro is widely considered one
| of the best computers Apple ever built.
|
| I'm typing on one now. It's almost _ten years_ old.
| Original battery, even (though it really should have
| gotten a new battery about 2-3 years ago.)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I read GP's as "combination of (single core CPU *plus*
| graphics) performance"
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| Sure, that's why I mentioned it having stellar single
| threaded performance -- I figure out what they probably
| meant, but it's not what is written. And I've been seeing a
| lot of misinformation lately about many things (in general,
| and in tech in particular), and people buying that without
| questioning , which is why I jumped to "correct" this
| detail.
|
| The point about nerfing their last x86 models stands on its
| own though.
| sokoloff wrote:
| When you multiply that out it becomes "combination of
| (single core CPU performance) and (graphics
| performance)", which seems clear enough and aligns well
| with your point. It's _possible_ to read it as
| "combination of (single core CPU) and (graphics
| performance)", but since the first one isn't much of a
| benefit (other than possibly power), I think the other is
| the more natural reading.
| donny2018 wrote:
| My M1 Air is a nearly perfect machine, but I continuously find
| myself looking at the yellow "memory pressure" graph and swap
| disk writes.
|
| I wish Apple never offered 8gb version, as I was surprised to
| find that MacOS wants to use more RAM than a Windows machine
| with the same amount of RAM.
| joshspankit wrote:
| If they gave us a way to actually disable the macOS features,
| 8GB would be very usable. But everything from regular wifi/bt
| scanning to photo tagging to adding all interactions to a
| giant Siri database so that the OS can suggest what it thinks
| you're most likely to open at any given moment. These all
| need RAM and other resources even if you don't have any open
| applications.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| There aren't third-party ways to shut some of that stuff
| off? When I used OSX I remember a great app called OnyX [1]
| that could customize deeper, system-level stuff.
|
| [1] https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/index.html
| amelius wrote:
| > but the silicone chips team now does
|
| You mean silicon. Silicone means something else.
|
| https://www.livescience.com/37598-silicon-or-silicone-chips-...
| noarchy wrote:
| Do you think there is anyone here who didn't understand
| exactly what they meant?
| crazy_hombre wrote:
| I'm with you. HN pedants are so god damn annoying.
| kzrdude wrote:
| As one of them, I agree. It's easy to jump to the first
| thing you notice (something superficially wrong to point
| out), I often do this. And it's hard to think beyond that
| and engage with the ideas instead.
|
| But then again, that's why we try to write elegantly so
| readers don't stumble on the words and instead think
| about the meaning behind them.
| kergonath wrote:
| Well, words do matter. This _is_ HN...
| plonk wrote:
| Getting grammar and spelling right makes for text that's
| much easier to read. Helping people remember these things
| is positive.
| what_ever wrote:
| Just "silicon*" as a reply should have been enough. There
| was no need for the additional sentence and certainly no
| need for the source/link.
| azangru wrote:
| > Do you think there is anyone here who didn't understand
| exactly what they meant?
|
| "Aoccrdrinig to rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it
| deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the
| olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be
| at the rghit pclae. The rset can be ttaol mses and you can
| sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn
| mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as
| a wlohe."
| savant_penguin wrote:
| He could be talking about boobie trapped chips
| baby wrote:
| I really didn't like the Intel macbook air I had before. It was
| slow as hell. I ended up only using my macbook pro. Are the new
| macbook air with M1/M2 better?
| louloulou wrote:
| yes, much better
| burmer wrote:
| So strange there's no notch in the main picture on the
| announcement. The top bezel does not look the same as on the
| product page either, even aside from the notch, it's too thick.
|
| edit: the very last picture in the article also shows the wrong
| bezel. So strange...
| deergomoo wrote:
| If you fullscreen an app on a notched Mac it blacks out the
| area where the menubar would be, making it look like a top
| bezel the same thickness as a non-notched model. Of course,
| being an LCD, in person it will be more like a black notch and
| a very dark grey area either side of it.
| caymanjim wrote:
| There's no notch on the M1 Air. Are you expecting one? Notches
| are terrible and are enough all alone to make me change what
| I'll buy.
| eric-hu wrote:
| > Additional technical specifications and details on Apple
| accessories -- including the 30W USB-C Power Adapter for $39
| (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter for $59 (US), 35W
| Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter for $59 (US) compatible with the
| World Travel Adapter Kit for $29 (US), and the 67W USB-C Power
| Adapter for $59 (US) -- are available at apple.com/mac. The 35W
| Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter is available to customers
| in Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand,
| and the US.
|
| Anyone have any idea why one would want a dual usb C power
| adapter when MagSafe is an option?
| aobdev wrote:
| The dual power adapter is in addition to, rather than instead
| of, MagSafe. The cable has the magnetic connector on one end
| and usb-c on the other. Dual ports just lets you charge your
| iPhone/iPad etc. at the same time.
| kbd wrote:
| I can't see the value in getting the 2-port adapter over the
| 67w fast charge one. You could always charge your phone
| through your laptop if you really don't have a second power
| brick.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Size. It's not apparent in pictures but the 67w is the size
| of like a deck of playing cards. The dual port is a tiny
| Gan charger.
| krzyk wrote:
| Interoperability with every other hardware? Magsafe is only
| macbook, usb-c is non-Apple laptops, mobile phones, hearing
| aids, wireless headphones, etc.
|
| And a large, ready to orther set of adapters to other standars.
| Magsafe doesn't have that yet, and judging from Magsafe 2, it
| almost won't have any.
| distrill wrote:
| I kind of liked having everything run through usb c, including
| power. Charging from either side was nice, and being able to
| charge literally everything I own with a single charger was
| great.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Magsafe is not a 'this or that'. The other end of the magsafe
| cable is type C with a standard type C power adaptor. You can
| bring a Type C cable instead and it works just fine.
| chrisjc wrote:
| I'm sorry if this doesn't add anything to the discussion, but one
| of MKBHD's latest reviews discusses the differences between the
| MacBook Pro 13 and this new MacBook Air. The video does a great
| job of shining a light on all of the tradeoffs between the two
| devices.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSdKnNj7ozk
|
| This little device is a beast!
| retrac98 wrote:
| His videos are consistently brilliant. My go-to example for
| people who think "YouTuber" isn't a legitimate career.
| april_22 wrote:
| Exactly. I espcecially think his content is extremly well
| thought out. Like when he compared all the iPhone models from
| first to last.
| commandersaki wrote:
| What annoys me about MKBHD's video is that he complains about
| an ageing design like it's a bad thing for the general case.
|
| I laud any manufacturer that's come up with a time tested
| design that doesn't change, which is why the IBM Thinkpads of
| the day were so popular.
|
| But in this specific case, MKBHD is right, this is an Apple
| being lazy about design and probably reusing their existing
| parts and tooling just to slap on an M2 for a laptop that
| probably shouldn't exist anymore.
| ratww wrote:
| _> What annoys me about MKBHD 's video is that he complains
| about an ageing design like it's a bad thing for the general
| case._
|
| That's unfair. He does "complain" but praises Apple for
| sticking with it immediately afterwards, saying "if it ain't
| broke don't fix it". It is obvious he's playing two
| characters presenting different arguments.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The term is "brand safe" and it's how major influencers
| pander to corporations.
| hackernewds wrote:
| They likely could have released the M2 without a year stagger
| but elected to release the M1 _then_ the M2, because
| capitalism
| greggsy wrote:
| But they would have just called it the M1, and we'd be back
| in 2020, but it would be 2022.
| mc32 wrote:
| I agree with this take. Tools should rarely require style
| updates. Sometimes you see style updates in hammers for
| example, but mostly they are gimmicks. A hammer from 89 years
| ago still hammers or pulls out nails. Some forms may be
| better for certain jobs (framing hammer, pein hammer, etc),
| but overall the design does not change very much.
|
| When you introduce things like "titanium" and nail holders,
| etc., it's mostly marketing gimmick and is reminiscent of
| kids' toys. Kids need to constantly be provoked for new
| interest.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| A Macbook Air is also an accessory and a luxury item,
| though
| s0rce wrote:
| I guess to some it is, to me its just a tool. I don't
| want ti to be a hideous monstrosity but its not a luxury,
| I have a largely pointless mechanical wrist watch for
| that purpose. I used a Macbook Air from 2012-2020 and
| never really cared that it was stylish, my previous
| computer was a big black brick (aka Thinkpad).
| hajile wrote:
| Titanium hammers have half the weight and 10x less recoil
| to the user for about the same energy imparted to the
| target.
|
| This translates DIRECTLY into reducing the chances that you
| wind up with carpal tunnel or jacking up your wrist, elbow,
| and shoulder.
| adolph wrote:
| > he complains about an ageing design like it's a bad thing
| for the general case
|
| I don't think that statement is true. He speaks to the
| specific pros/cons of each. It isn't that the design is old--
| the problem is that that specific design was hobbled from the
| start, a condition that is especially apparent in comparison
| to the Air.
| commandersaki wrote:
| In the same video he compares a hypothetical with another
| laptop vendor deciding to stick to the same design (ASUS).
| That's why I said general case.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I don't think any part of the old MacBook Pro design was
| "time-tested" or "popular" though. MagSafe being removed
| wasn't popular, USB-C ports only wasn't popular, no SD card
| reader wasn't popular, Touch Bar wasn't popular and the
| keyboard... Well, the less said, the better.
|
| That's part of the reason why the new MacBook Pro was so
| liked. Apple did a complete 180deg and fixed everything that
| people hated - but they're still selling the hated one.
| chrisjc wrote:
| At the same time he did seem to suggest that it was a design
| that is aging quite well.
|
| Personally, when I look back at some of the original MacBook
| Pros with the milled chassis, I think they still look better
| than any recent Windows or Chromebook laptop. It really is
| quite a timeless design.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Timeless design and incredible engineering.
|
| I recently handled a ca. MacBook Pro from 2004, and it
| feels awful, like a collection of parts barely holding
| together. My 2008 unibody MacBook still feels nice to the
| touch and rock solid, even though it has been dead for many
| years now.
|
| Unibody was a huge investment for the company and my
| understanding is that this was in part one of Ive's highest
| career points.
|
| If I remember correctly, before unibody laptops the chassis
| was a separate component inside, with everything including
| the case attached on the outside.
| s0rce wrote:
| I agree, I just gave away my wife's 2007 macbook from
| grad school and it was a great piece of engineering. I
| also really like my 2004 T41p until the magnesium hinges
| broke in half - otherwise another great laptop. For the
| people saying these new ones are expensive, both of those
| machines 15-20 years ago were much more expensive.
| greggsy wrote:
| Yep - the case was pressed aluminium, which cant be
| returned back to it's original shape after it has been
| deformed or bent, so the fitment around thinner spots
| near the ports and cd drive would always look a bit off
| after a few years of use.
|
| Thicker aluminium on the unibody is less prone to
| bending, and much easier to assemble once you've overcome
| the challenges that come with milling, such tooling,
| optimising the materials usage and recycling the swarm
| and scrap.
| derefr wrote:
| "Being lazy about design", as if the point of this model
| refresh isn't:
|
| 1. an upgrade path for those in the Business Leasing program
| who are due a replacement for their existing MBP13-with-
| touchbar, that is careful to not break their use-cases;
|
| 2. to _use up_ an existing stock of parts. (See also: most of
| the reason the iPod Touch existed for so long.) Any touchbars
| they already cranked out ideally have to go into _something_
| , rather than just being left in a warehouse to depreciate.
|
| 3. to relieve demand pressure on their limited supply of
| newer-model parts (which could be fairly important in the
| middle of a global tech-supply-chain crunch.)
|
| Points 2+3 could _theoretically_ be called "lazy" (or
| perhaps "selfish") on Apple's part -- but there's little real
| downside for anyone here, since, per point 1, most of the
| expected consumers of this hardware are business customers
| doing bulk buys/leases, who don't care about having the
| "newest and sexiest" designs anyway; and releasing a
| "retread" model for those customers "frees up" the logistical
| resources to get new laptops to the customers that _do_ care
| about those things.
|
| Home users are expected to just get an Air; "individual
| professionals" are expected to get the MBP14/16. It's only
| corporate buyers that requirements-checkbox themselves into
| buying MBPs rather than Airs, but then also economize
| themselves into the cheapest possible MBPs.
| adolph wrote:
| Title "M2 MacBook Pro: Why Does This Exist?" is perfect. This
| is Apple back in Centra/Performa territory [0]. See also
| iFixit's "We're Pretty Sure We Just Tore Down the New M2
| MacBook Pro!?" [1]
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJEaAINoQPo&t=223s
| pininja wrote:
| iFixIt nearly upgraded their M1 Pro to an M2 Pro by replacing
| its logic board?! The peripherals didn't work, but I like
| this direction and hope Apple embraces the concept so people
| in their self repair program can give old chassis a new life.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| However the cat (inflation) got the laptop, in Europe it's now
| 1500EUR instead of the 1050EUR previous gen with same specs. I
| think it's unjustifiable for a normal consumer.
| pcarolan wrote:
| I disagree. The colorful consumer oriented mac ibook clamshell
| g3 was USD $1,599 when it came out in 1999. That's $2,800 in
| today's dollars and it was orders of magnitude less powerful
| than this Macbook Air. The value per dollar you are getting is
| simply staggering.
| adrianN wrote:
| Go back twenty more years are computers were even more
| expensive. I don't think it makes sense to compare to prices
| that long ago.
| pcarolan wrote:
| The base model Macbook Air in 2010 was $1299 which means
| that you get compute and product improvements following
| Moore's law at deflationary prices. Humans have a hard time
| understanding the value of power laws. What Apple has done
| has given us something nothing short of superpowers and
| we've gotten complacent and feeling entitled to these
| continuous improvements despite the unbelievable amount of
| human ingenuity required to make it all work out.
| theriddlr wrote:
| The base MacBook Air had its price dropped to $999 in
| 2013 and battery life improved to 12 hours. That's what
| got me onto the Apple bandwagon.
| jerich wrote:
| After growing up on a Mac SE and going off to college
| with a Centris 650, I went through a string of windows
| PCs until the 2013 MacBook Air brought me back into the
| fold.
|
| I still use the 2013 MBA almost daily--mostly as an
| external keyboard and screen for my iPhone notes, but it
| really slowed down with Mojave, so I'm trying to decide
| whether to pick up a cheap replacement M1 model now, or
| wait for sales on the M2. I think I can hold out a
| little, but won't quite make the 10 year mark.
|
| BTW, the c. 1993 Mac Centris was able to boot up last
| year (at 28 years old!), and thanks to an Ethernet
| adapter I dumpster-dived from work in the early 2000s, I
| was even able to get online with it without any extra
| configuration. Netscape Navigator doesn't do too well
| with modern websites (and probably made for a baffling
| entry in some server logs), but I could at least load the
| Dole/Kemp '96 site.
| radiKal07 wrote:
| I hope this is supposed to be some kind of joke
| jdlyga wrote:
| It's the exchange rate I'd bet. $1 is around 0.98EUR right now
| silverlake wrote:
| $1200 * 0.98 EUR/USD * 20% VAT ~= 1411EUR. M1 Air was $1000 *
| ~0.85 EUR/USD * 20% VAT ~= 1020EUR.
| tenpies wrote:
| It's not just inflation, the Euro has been getting crushed as
| decades of negligence by the ECB show up. That's not stopping
| any time soon and the ECB looks like it will be in the position
| to either destroy the Euro or destroy the bond market.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > It's not just inflation, the Euro has been getting crushed
| as decades of negligence by the ECB show up.
|
| the stream of anti ECB drones is frankly ridiculous
|
| the price has gone up in pounds as well.
|
| Does the ECB controls them too?
|
| Prices in Europe are taxes included, in US are before taxes.
|
| In Europe you have to add VAT, not only sales taxes, which
| are much lower in US anyway.
|
| Last but not least, custom duties are a thing.
| xbar wrote:
| Compared to the M1 Macbook Air, the M2 Macbook Air has: a
| PS50 premium in the UK vs US. A EUR200 Euro premium in
| Ireland (for example) vs US.
|
| So, you are right. Apple raised prices. I suspect exchange
| rates. It is easier to account for unfavorable exchange
| rates in new products than in raising prices of existing
| products.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| On Apple.co.uk M1 is listed at PS999.00 and M2 at
| PS1,249.00 (respectively EUR 1,168 and EUR 1,460, not far
| from the actual prices in Europe)
|
| The same difference exists in European Apple stores
| (~+25%).
|
| They simply kept lower prices in US in my opinion, but
| obviously comparing US prices with non-US prices for a US
| manufacturer it's not going to work in favor of the non-
| US market.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Look at the EUR-USD chart ser
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| also look at the export charts from Europe to USA
|
| a strong Euro doesn't automatically makes for a stronger
| EU economy.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| He might be being hyperbolic, but the euro is definitely
| not doing too hot right now - it's gone from $1.18 to the
| euro a year ago to $1.02.
|
| The Air in the UK is PS1,249, up from PS999 - a 25%
| increase.
|
| The EU price is EUR1,500, up from EUR1,050 - a 43%
| increase.
|
| At least some of that has to be explained by the euro
| dropping ~14% against the dollar. Take away 14% from the EU
| price and you get EUR1,290 - pretty close to the UK price.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > The Air in the UK is PS1,249, up from PS999 - a 25%
| increase.
|
| > The EU price is EUR1,500, up from EUR1,050 - a 43%
| increase.
|
| where did you get these prices?
|
| From Apple store Italy M1 8 core
| CPU 7 Core GPU 8GB RAM EUR 1.229,00
| --- M2 8 core CPU 8 Core GPU
| 8GB RAM EUR 1.529,00
|
| EUR 1.529 from EUR 1.229 it's a ~25% increase
| xbar wrote:
| Here is an example of data abuse.
|
| You are comparing 2 different products' prices.
|
| The M2 Air is up PS49 compared to its US counterpart. A
| ~5% increase. And its up EUR200 compared to its US
| counterpart. An ~18% increase.
|
| Exchange rates explain this easily.
| [deleted]
| samatman wrote:
| You just listed a bunch of things which have not changed
| between the last model and this one, to brush off the new
| model being much more expensive.
|
| The parsimonious explanation is that the Euro went from
| 120C/ to 98C/ in the intervening time. I have no opinion on
| why that happened, I will pretend I don't even know what
| the ECB is.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > to brush off the new model being much more expensive
|
| I'm never going to buy an Apple M* at actual price
| points.
|
| I was merely pointing out that ECB has nothing to do with
| the prices of Apple products, compared to equivalent in
| the US.
|
| Apple raised the prices outside the USA and kept the same
| prices in the US.
|
| That's all.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Europe bad. Euro is getting crushed. Europe destroying
| itself. ECB is enemy of the people. Europe will destroy
| civilization.
|
| We must destroy Europe before it's too late!
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's EUR/USD exchange rate, not inflation. I
| bought the first gen when it came out, base model, for $1199.
| The price today, for 2nd gen base model, is $1199.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Tim Apple isn't going to take a haircut on a weak Euro
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Had to check, but one of the top questions on a google
| search:
|
| "Is Tim Apple a billionaire?"
| dan1234 wrote:
| The UK pricing is PS1,249, up from PS999, so 24% extra for the
| better CPU, webcam & display[0].
|
| A bit disappointed to see them sticking with 256GB SSD as the
| base, feel like 512GB should really be the standard nowadays.
|
| [0]https://www.apple.com/uk/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-
| Air-...
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Better webcam? With every model they claim the webcam is
| better, but once I start Photo Booth I am thoroughly
| disappointed. In recent years webcam quality has even gone
| down -- the webcam in the M1 Macbook Air and the M1 Max
| Macbook Pro from 2020 and 2021 is worse than the webcam from
| the 2015 Macbook Pro!
| mproud wrote:
| You're taking about the entry-level consumer notebook model.
|
| For entry-level consumers, they don't need extra storage. So
| many kids are online-based nowadays. Younger people are
| routinely using iCloud/One Drive/Google Drive/Box/Dropbox and
| other services.
|
| But sure, if you're working with more and larger files, then
| you aren't the target for the entry-level model with 256, and
| spend extra for more storage.
| botdan wrote:
| Beyond just the storage constraints, there are performance
| concerns with the 256GB model [1]. At least with the 13" M2
| MBP Apple has switched to using 256GB SSD NAND chips which
| means that anything less than 512GB has only a single channel
| of flash to read and write from. It's unclear if the new Air
| will have this same constraint but it's something to
| consider.
|
| [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/07/01/m2-macbook-pro-
| slower-t...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| It's almost half the speed of the old base model. I think
| most consumers don't understand how much drive speed
| effects performance. The cpu is waiting around for the
| drive most of the time. So this feels like a major
| downgrade for the base model.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| And you get half the IOPS, because in the base model they ship
| it with only one NAND chip. (Apple has stopped making the 128
| GB chip)
| greedo wrote:
| Pretty sure that Apple isn't manufacturing NAND chips. Now it
| might be hard to procure the 128GB chips, so Apple may be at
| the mercy of suppliers, or it might just be cheaper to buy a
| 256GB chip (and suffer slower perf).
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Apple may not manufacture them, but they don't look to be
| off the shelf components either. So maybe I should be
| writing "Apple has stopped ordering the 128 GB chips and
| removed them from all current designs".
|
| This has been coming for some time, the refreshed 14" and
| 16" Pro models already had their base capacity bumped to
| 512.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > So maybe I should be writing "Apple has stopped
| ordering the 128 GB chips and removed them from all
| current designs".
|
| Is there some reason to assume that Apple isn't just
| facing the supply chain issues that have been plaguing
| the other laptop makers?
| sylens wrote:
| Would be the perfect laptop if it could hook up to 2 external
| monitors instead of just one. For that reason, I have to go for
| the M2 Pro.
| deergomoo wrote:
| It's such an odd thing to not address. Even the old Intel
| MacBook Air could drive two.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Not meant as a sarcastic question but why not get a mac
| mini/studio instead?
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| Not OP, but I work from home and the office, and also take my
| machine into meetings occasionally. The portability is nice.
|
| I assume the same for just about anyone in my position.
|
| (I'd have two Studios and an Air if it were a utopia
| scenario, but... that's expensive!)
| noelsusman wrote:
| Presumably because that's not a laptop.
| spideymans wrote:
| If the M2 Air supported two displays, I'd have no reason
| whatsoever to buy the expensive MacBook Pro. The M1/M2 Air is
| already so ridiculously overpowered for my needs. Which is
| probably why the Air doesn't support two displays. Sigh.
| hbn wrote:
| > Which is probably why the Air doesn't support two displays
|
| I recall reading at least with the M1 that it's actually a
| physical hardware limitation with the architecture inherited
| from the fact that the base M1 is pretty close to the A15
| which never needed to pump out to more displays.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| The irony being that they then made the M1 Pro and M1
| Max/Ultra that support more displays. In fact, I would be
| okay with it running dual displays like the mac mini where
| the internal display is disabled when two externals are
| connected. The M2, made after the M1 Pro still does not
| support multiple displays. It's an odd omission.
| kijin wrote:
| Genuinely curious: can I hook up the Air with a single ultra-
| wide monitor that's exactly as large as two regular monitors
| side by side, or is the screen resolution limited, too? I'm
| thinking of something like [1], though it will probably make
| more sense to get a MacBook Pro instead at that kind of
| price.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/LG-49WL95C-W-49-Inch-Curved-
| Ultrawide...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It should be fine. I'm typing this on an M1 MBP hooked to a
| Samsung CRG9.
| kalleboo wrote:
| The MacBook Air supports up to 6K resolution displays, your
| linked display has 60% fewer pixels than that, it will work
| fine
| Aperocky wrote:
| You just convinced me not to buy it (M1 user that are annoyed
| by the same issue).
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I have a hub that lets me use two external monitors. The big
| downside is that one of them is limited to 30Hz and moving my
| mouse around it feels wrong compared to the 60Hz main display.
| [deleted]
| InTheArena wrote:
| I'd be wary of this, until we get to the bottom of the reported
| thermal throttling issues with the Macbook Pro M2. That at least
| is actively cooled. This isn't.
| thunfischbrot wrote:
| Wasn't that about an extreme benchmarking test which is
| continuously fully utilising CPU and GPU for an extended
| period, like 30min?
|
| If I recall correctly, that would not influence my decision at
| all. I also do not select which car to get based on how far it
| gets with one charge if I load it with one ton of luggage, even
| if it were theoretically possible. I get the one which suits my
| needs best most of the time for a good price.
| turdit wrote:
| thanks for sharing
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Something about that test rubbed me the wrong way. Like that
| the Package was pulling more watts than stated or some sort
| of bad firmware allowing for extreme temps. It's so odd to
| come from the M1 with nearly unused fans to being able to
| downright overheat the CPU so aggressively. Even the hottest
| tests on the M1 13inch MBP never ran the fans that high at
| all.
| zekrioca wrote:
| * One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz [1]
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
| dekhn wrote:
| Although I'm not a Macintosh fan, I got the original macbook m1
| air for everybody in my family and it's been an absolute dream
| for all of them. They definitely engineered the whole device to
| make a superior product.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| I'm sure it's fast coming from previous intel Macs but really the
| main thing holding me back is seeing how many hurdles my fellow
| devs run into. There's always talk about something not running or
| being M1 incompatible.
|
| Well, that and I'd be forced to use OSX.
|
| So far the only real benefit I've seen seems to be for those who
| code on insanely long train commutes.
| dep_b wrote:
| Haven't ran into any problems really. Anticipated a ton. I had
| more trouble with the latest OS version changes.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I solved it by renting x86 VPS and using docker remotely. It's
| not ideal, but it worked for me.
|
| There's hope that docker virtualization for x86 images will be
| faster with new virtualization framework features. It probably
| will take some time to implement, but in a year or two I expect
| most issues with docker to be resolved.
| senttoschool wrote:
| Haven't ran into a dev issue since the start of 2021.
|
| macOS is much better to write code on due to its native *nix
| style terminal and it's far more usable for everything else
| than Linux.
|
| To me, macOS is the best platform for writing code in 2022.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Linux/WSL is superior to the Mac terminal. Closer to the
| servers that code tends to run on
|
| Being close but slightly off is a negative for MacOS imo.
|
| The hardware is for sure the best though. I'd run windows/WSL
| on one of these if I could
| tekkk wrote:
| Well I know this more related to MacBook Pro M2 but it's not
| necessarily as amazing compared to M1 as it appears
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZjELZBq7WU
| greggsy wrote:
| It looks better.
| april_22 wrote:
| The question is whether you'll want to pay 500EUR just for
| better looks..
| t3rabytes wrote:
| I'm quite in love with this machine. If my corporate IT group
| offered them over our top spec MacBook Pro options, I would take
| it in a heartbeat -- I don't care about the loss of compute
| power.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Is there any loss anyway? I don't see any difference between
| Macbook Pro M2 and Macbook Air M2.
| gfiorav wrote:
| It's only noticeable when there's a sustained workload. The
| Pro model can use active cooling (fans) while the air can't.
| Tostino wrote:
| Sustained performance due to better heat management
| mrtesthah wrote:
| The Pro M2 has excessive thermal throttling and significantly
| lower flash storage throughput.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| This Air has the exact same chip as that MBP.. If the M2 in
| the 13" MBP (not the M2 Pro, which is currently unreleased)
| gets thermally throttled, we'll have to see how it performs
| in a device without a fan.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Isn't the SSD only slower on the 256GB models, due to fewer
| flash chips?
| [deleted]
| chongli wrote:
| I think the main difference (besides storage and peripherals)
| is active cooling. MBA's are passive cooled now (since the
| original M1) whereas MBP's have always had fans. The M1 & M2
| chips are so cool that they generally don't need any active
| cooling most of the time. Where it does make a difference is
| under heavy sustained compute workloads. The passively-cooled
| MBA's will start to throttle under these workloads whereas
| the MBP's will maintain full speed indefinitely by spinning
| up the fans.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > difference is under heavy sustained compute workloads
|
| How long can my compile be, before throttling begins? Say
| using 4 cores? 2 minutes? 5 minutes?
| spideymans wrote:
| > I think the main difference (besides storage and
| peripherals) is active cooling
|
| Haha, I read your comment, and my first thought was a
| dismissive, "who cares about active cooling". Which really
| says something about how insanely power efficient these
| chips are. I've had the M1 Air since launch and I've yet to
| observe any thermal throttling under my workloads (I've yet
| to feel the machine even get hot)
| chongli wrote:
| Same here. I have never seen any throttling on mine, even
| when playing games (although admittedly I don't play
| demanding games). I think the target market for the Pro's
| active cooling is rendering (3D and video). For
| programmers I see little reason to get a Pro, unless
| you're running large C++ or Rust builds.
| rob_c wrote:
| other than promoting the laptop, is there a point to the
| announcement?
| rchrch wrote:
| Just putting this out there for all the "one external display"
| concerns. I run two 34-inch ultrawides from my M1 Air via a
| DisplayLink dock. Sure you can't run Crysis 3 on ultra, but it
| certainly does the job for browser, terminal, and editor windows
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I'm hoping to order a higher-specced version soon. I hope the
| wait time isn't too bad!
| Havoc wrote:
| Surprised people are optimistic about this given recent reports
| of M2 throttling with active cooling
| nojito wrote:
| This is quite possibly the absolute most perfect portable laptop
| ever released. Thin, light, no fan, and looks great with great
| performance and battery life.
| flatiron wrote:
| If it only ran Linux...
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Echoing janandoly's comment, the main force behind Asahi
| mentioned being close to a release that will support M2
| machines:
| https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1543568303725375488
| [deleted]
| janandonly wrote:
| Check: https://asahilinux.org/about/
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Agreed. They're never going to be able to meet demand.
| postalrat wrote:
| Looks nice but gets expensive adding ram that I'd need to have.
| bluedino wrote:
| $200 to go from 8GB to 16GB is an atrocity.
| nojito wrote:
| Assuming you use the laptop for 5 years that's $40 a year.
| wombat-man wrote:
| The overall price isn't bad still imo. Apple has always
| had goofy component upgrade pricing.
| z9znz wrote:
| These are not ram sticks, these are difference in the M2
| chip itself. I'm not a chip designer, but I imagine there
| are more manufacturing quality challenges with the ones
| that have more RAM.
| bentcorner wrote:
| Don't they bin the chips? The lower spec chips have the
| same layout as higher spec ones but they have defects.
| z9znz wrote:
| I would imagine so, and I would think that out of 100% of
| their chips, they would have more which passed the lower
| RAM standards than the higher ones. So the higher RAM
| chips (which passed) would be more rare, so to speak.
| wtallis wrote:
| > These are not ram sticks, these are difference in the
| M2 chip itself.
|
| TSMC fabs don't make DRAM. Apple buys DRAM chips from the
| same handful of manufacturers that everyone else sources
| DRAM from.
| z9znz wrote:
| I don't know much about this topic, but I have read that
| the RAM in M1/M2 machines is part of the Mx chip itself.
| Unless I misunderstand, I don't believe it's any kind of
| separate component - stick or otherwise.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| This is incorrect, just looking at the M2 promotional
| materials the DRAM is quite clearly a separate
| component[1]. The DRAM modules are combined with the M2
| in a single package though, maybe that's what you're
| thinking of?
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/06/apple-
| unveils-m2-with...
| z9znz wrote:
| Ahh ok, so it's not on the same die, but it's on the same
| package. Thus, it's not exactly something you can
| configure after the fact. In advance of configuration and
| sale, Apple has to decide to commit to some assortment of
| M2+RAM configurations.
| tedd4u wrote:
| Let's say you're going to use this for 3 years and it becomes
| worthless after that.
|
| $1,800 / (3 * 365) = $1.64 a day
|
| In reality you could still probably sell it for at least $500
| at the end of the term bringing the cost down to $1.19 a day.
|
| And with inflation where it is, you're locking in the current
| price with today's dollars.
|
| If it's something you'll use every day adding the RAM you
| need I think is an easy decision.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Having a smaller volume and more power consuming chip than M1[0],
| I wonder if it will match M1 air performance and battery life on
| heavy tasks. The media engine will definitely provide smoother
| experience when working with sound and videos but I kind of
| suspect that on other tasks it will be about the same as M1, thus
| prolonging the Apple's software support for the original one.
|
| [0] Early reviews of M2 Macbook Pro indicate that the M2 chip
| heats up more than the M1 and consumes a more power. An example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVIknUcCjiQ
| senttoschool wrote:
| M2 Air has a bigger battery pack than M1 Air.
|
| M2 is also just more efficient than M1 because the A15 is much
| more efficient than the A14.
|
| Anandtech showed this in their A15 review:
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo...
|
| So even if the chip heats up more, it's still going to be more
| efficient.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sure but the thinner design might have reduced the thermal
| envelope, thus increasing the possibility of throttling
| earlier than the M1 version. For context, my M1 throttles
| down about %15 at room temperature after about 10 minutes on
| very heavy load.
|
| I'm curious about the benchmarks and stress tests. Would be
| very cool if it is actually significantly better than the M1
| on everything.
| duxup wrote:
| I gave the iPhone a try after a long time on Android (since the
| nexus) and I've been very happy.
|
| I'm going to give the Air M2 a spin for a work/ personal device
| too.
|
| Im excited.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Oh, man, you're in for a treat.
|
| Make sure to enable Handoff - copy on your phone (Google
| Authenticator, for example), CMD+V on your laptop. CMD+Tab to
| something on your phone (a Safari tab, for instance) from your
| laptop, and vice versa. A lot of other neat stuff awaits you!
| oynqr wrote:
| It's not like you can't do that with Android, though.
| privacyking wrote:
| Don't be silly. Everyone knows apple invented that /s
| duxup wrote:
| Will do.
|
| I'm really excited for all the differences.
|
| Who knows long term (I expect ups and downs) but I plan on
| geeking out over all the little differences.
| epolanski wrote:
| I was interested to pick when I saw the price in USD..
|
| Then I realized the starting price in Italy for the 8GB version
| is 1829 euros, and more than 2100 to get 8 GBs of memory more.
| mft_ wrote:
| Totally agree. The new Air to my mind is decent value at $1199.
|
| But that then becomes 1499 EUR in Germany, for... some reason.
| And then you see that the entry level model is specced low, and
| to get a reasonable 16GB memory and 512GB SSD bumps it up to
| 1959 EUR, which is a very different level of purchase, and also
| most of the way to the cost of a comparable 14" M1 MacBook Pro.
| dudul wrote:
| "Some reason"? Isn't it pretty obviously taxes?
| kristianp wrote:
| Wow, the euro is just about at parity with the dollar recently.
| That's a big markup.
| heystefan wrote:
| Import taxes/customs.
| kitten_mittens_ wrote:
| The VAT too (at least in Germany).
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > A three-mic array captures clean audio using advanced
| beamforming algorithms
|
| Oddly, out of the entire press release, this is the part I have
| trouble believing. Every MBP launch announces the best
| microphones ever. When the first MPB 16" came out, it's
| gazillion-mic array was supposed to be amazing, some reviewers
| asking "can it replace a professional condenser microphone", yet
| in reality it's made completely useless by the fan noise and
| people can barely hear you in a call.
| smcleod wrote:
| The three-mic array on the 2021 M1 Pro is really very good,
| people have told me it sounds better than my Yeti Blue even
| with background noise.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I haven't experienced the microphones on the ARM MBP 16", but
| with its Intel predecessor. And there the microphones are
| excellent and not drowned by fan noise (assuming of course, you
| don't run huge compute tasks in the background during the
| calls, never encountered anyone doing so). I can't imagine the
| ARM MBP to be more noisy than the Intel one.
|
| But specifically: the MB Air doesn't have a fan, so you won't
| hear fan noise while using it.
| sdf4j wrote:
| Even on the Intel i9 MBP 16" having a call is a huge compute
| task that will unleash the fans. Regardless of Zoom, Meet or
| whatever videoconferencing I use.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The >2018 Intel MBPs have the fans permanently on when
| connected to an external monitor. You could fry an egg on it,
| it's a known design defect. A simple combo of slack + ios
| simulator + VS Code + a web server will also do the trick.
|
| Source: worked with one for the last 2 years
| barelysapient wrote:
| Pass for me.
|
| I want either a 15" MacBook Air or a 12".
| jupp0r wrote:
| The best feature in my opinion: no fans!
|
| With my other MacBooks that do have fans, I regularly have to
| clean them, which is increasingly hard with thinner, more
| integrated designs. I also have to pay attention where to place
| the laptop in order to not obstruct air flow.
|
| My M1 MacBook Air not having any fans while still being
| reasonably powerful is my favorite feature.
| latchkey wrote:
| The fans of my m1 16" max turn on so rarely that I doubt they
| will get as dirty as previous Macs. If you're working in an
| area that is so dirty that you have to clean your fans often,
| imagine what you're breathing. I'd suggest getting an air
| filter.
| yosito wrote:
| I'm excited to get my hands on one of these. I'm a US citizen
| living in Hungary, and hoping to get my hands on a US version
| ASAP. I'm debating if it will be easier to order from Apple in
| the US and ship it via a third party to the EU, or order in the
| EU and have the keyboard swapped out after I get it. I'm mostly
| nervous that if I don't order right away, it will be sold out and
| hard to get my hands on for a few more months. Hungary doesn't
| have any physical Apple stores and last time I checked, ordering
| directly from Apple to Hungary wasn't really possible without
| going through a partner.
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| ISO layout completely sucks, why would you want it?
| prawel wrote:
| I always order Macbooks with US keyboards, as default European
| version with double-row Enter and ~ in the wrong place is
| unacceptable for me.
| balfirevic wrote:
| What's the difference in keyboards?
| z9znz wrote:
| This image illustrates the differences:
| https://appuals.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/1-11.jpg
|
| The difference is that one keyboard is made for humans who
| touch type, and the other keyboard is made for people who
| like to lift up their hand and move it every time they want
| to hit return... or left shift.
|
| The ones with the shorter left shift and narrower/taller
| return key are just bad designs. They make keys you use
| frequently less accessible, and the tradeoff is that keys you
| rarely use are now in reach.
| balfirevic wrote:
| That's interesting, the one I'm typing on right now seems
| to be a hybrid, longer left shift (which is indeed better)
| but tall enter (which I like because I like to just smack
| it from time to time).
| jeffhuys wrote:
| I'm not in the US, so I'm kinda alone in this, and forgot
| to tell my work I wanted an international one, so I got an
| M1 pro from work with the international lay-out.
|
| I've been using US layout since I was ~8. And all my other
| systems have the US layout. I am having such a hard time to
| get used to it.
|
| I keep hitting +- when I mean ~ (why would I even need a
| +-/SS key on my keyboard?). I keep hitting \ when I want to
| hit Return. I keep hitting ~ when I want to hit shift.
|
| Frustrating. Agreed with the "bad design" point.
| z9znz wrote:
| I had this as well with a previous company work laptop,
| so I had to use a wireless external keyboard always.
| Using the built-in keyboard was so frustrating that it
| made me angry enough to almost destroy the laptop a few
| times.
|
| It should be noted that on older Macbooks, the aluminum
| case has actual cutouts for keys. So it's not possible to
| change the layout of keyboard without also changing the
| case. I discovered this when I had my personal laptop
| repaired, and it came back with the wrong keyboard! The
| shop just instinctively ordered keyboard+case of their
| usual layout, so I had to have the whole thing redone
| again (at no extra charge, just a loss of time).
| tom_ wrote:
| Well there must be at least 3 of us, because I'm another
| one. I've used the US layout ever since you could save
| something like 28 KBytes from not loading the UK layout,
| and I used this with UK keyboards for years. (Very useful
| having a backslash key for every hand.) Then at some
| point I acquired an actual US keyboard, and I was an
| immediate convert. I just really liked the fat Return
| key.
|
| When I bought my first MBP, I wasn't completely wedded to
| the idea of getting a Mac necessarily - but when I
| noticed you could order one with a US keyboard, it tipped
| the balance in favour.
|
| (For any serious work, I use a USB keyboard and mouse, so
| in a sense it doesn't really matter. But I use the built-
| in keyboard often enough that I'd be annoyed being stuck
| with that tiny Return key...)
|
| (This reminded me: if you go to get a battery
| replacement, make sure the staff member notes that it's
| got a US keyboard. I took mine to a UK Apple store for a
| battery replacement a couple of years ago, and when I
| went to pick it up a few days later, it had had its
| keyboard replaced with a UK one! The staff member was
| very apologetic - perhaps they correctly read my
| expression of speechless shock after opening it - and it
| got fixed, but it took a couple more days. So in the end
| I was without my laptop for over a week.)
| schroeding wrote:
| European keyboards are often in the ISO layout, think large
| enter key and additional keys left of it
|
| US keyboards have the narrow enter key and different
| placements for many symbols
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Some European countries (eg. Poland) typically use US
| layout.
| roywashere wrote:
| Also in France and Germany you have funny stuff such as
| azerty and QWERTZ. And have you seen Spanish layout?
| Horrible for software development
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| ';' is moved, to add the 'N' key:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Spanish.svg
| hans1729 wrote:
| can't speak for op because I don't know what layout his
| country has. For Germany, vim is not usable beyond basic
| movements, because for example [ and ] have no dedicated
| keys. Typing { } on the default german layout is an insult to
| the typer. I remember a vim-shortcut that would have required
| to press five keys at the same time.
| balfirevic wrote:
| But that's just about software keyboard layout, isn't it?
| I've been using US layout since forever (configured in OS),
| even though my keyboards have Croatian scribbles on some
| keys.
|
| I do see now that the actual physical layout might be
| different, having large vs. small enter key and possibly
| additional key next to the left shift.
| gfiorav wrote:
| You can order Macs with US keyboard layouts from the country's
| Apple Store page. It'll take longer to ship is all.
| ysleepy wrote:
| Could get expensive. Past Macbooks hat a top chassis combo of
| keyboard, chassis and battery. At least the MacBook air battery
| replacement was only like 150EUR, including a new keyboard/top
| plate. Not sure it will be the same with the new design.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| Just order it with US keyboard (that's what I've done -- CEE
| citizen living in CEE).
| hans1729 wrote:
| My m1 air with us layout was shipped to Germany from Poland
| within one month, right after M1s were released. The US-layout
| is faily common in the EU among programmers etc.
| roywashere wrote:
| In The Netherlands you typically will get US keyboards in your
| MacBooks. I think keyboards are not easily swappable but I
| might be mistaken? AFAIK in most European countries (at least
| in Germany) you can also order macs with US layout.
|
| Ordering in EU is easier especially related to warranty. But
| the price is steep: it is 1199 USD in the US versus 1519EUR in
| The Netherlands, including sales tax
| em500 wrote:
| No, it's not typical to get US keyboard Macs in NL. All
| physical stores (and most online stores) including Media
| Markt and the official Apple store only stock ISO layout.
|
| Fortunately it's simple to order the ANSI (US) layout in the
| online Apple store these days. (US English, not International
| English!). Up to maybe 10 years ago or so it was pretty hard
| to get it with US keyboards in Europe. (I usually imported
| them from the US via eBay.)
| [deleted]
| cutler wrote:
| Same old Apple rip-off. Base model with ridiculously low RAM and
| disk with increments offered at PS200 a pop.
| H12 wrote:
| I want a 15" version of this hardware so badly. It would be my
| perfect personal webdev machine, assuming no significant M2
| thermal issues.
|
| My workflows are all lightly threaded and CPU bound, so I don't
| benefit much from the Pro/Max/Ultra SKUs. So considering the base
| M1/M2 meets my performance needs, nothing else really comes close
| when it comes to portability/battery life.
|
| All I really crave is a bit more screen real estate.
|
| I do really hope the competition catches up and we start to see
| more open alternatives that approach the same perf-per-watt. As
| it stands, there just isn't anything else I've seen that offers a
| comparable experience to one of these Apple Silicon machines.
|
| My personal endgame would be an ARM/RISC-V Linux machine from a
| company like Framework, but I feel like that's a ways off.
| deergomoo wrote:
| There's been rumours for a while now of a 15" Air in the next
| few years. It would make a lot of sense--not many people
| looking at the MacBook Air would be willing to pay double the
| price to jump to a 16" MBP just for a bigger screen.
| skohan wrote:
| Also there are probably a lot of people who want a bigger
| screen but not a thick and heavy laptop
| petercooper wrote:
| If you want one and if it's anything like the M1 devices right
| now, expect to wait till mid August or later if you want anything
| beyond the basic specs. Even now, M1 MBPs with 32 or 64GB RAM are
| a good 5-6 weeks out.
| april_22 wrote:
| same for Apple Stores?
| iamyatin wrote:
| And now the old ones will start getting slower with new Mac
| updates coming in. This somehow happens. Strange.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| I am not denying the existence of planned obsolescence but My
| 2013 Macbook Air lasted almost until now, better durability
| than any other machine I have ever owned.
| flatiron wrote:
| I'm still using that! 4 gigs is pretty weak but it runs Linux
| and is still smooth if there is no ram pressure.
| xbar wrote:
| I had exactly the same experience with my 2013 Macbook Air.
| It is still perfectly fine, but I wanted something that was
| actually faster for couch surfing. Which took until now.
| Humdeee wrote:
| Same situation here. My 2015 is still going, and I've put
| that little guy through the ringer. Awesome laptop. I caved
| and bought an M1 Air last year and it's just amazing. I seem
| to have luckily missed the problem years of the Macs in
| between.
| kbd wrote:
| I bought a Mac Mini in 2018 to replace my 2010 Macbook Pro.
| So that laptop lasted 8 years. The only reason I didn't buy
| a laptop instead of the Mini is I refused to buy anything
| with a touch bar. This is my first new personal laptop in
| 12 years and I'm so excited.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Comments like this are so reliable around Apple product
| releases that we could use them to replace NTP. Over time,
| machines get slower. New code favors new instructions. But it's
| not like the machine gets 10% slower the day the new ones start
| shipping.
| [deleted]
| whalesalad wrote:
| I've owned a lot of computers and my pre-retina MacBook Air was
| one of my faves. So much seat time, so many LoC written. I loved
| the wedge shape of the chassis for actual _lap_ work.
| Disappointed they moved to the square chassis like other models
| but it's so thin it might not be a dealbreaker.
| dangus wrote:
| I thought it'd be an issue when my work shipped me the new 14"
| MacBook Pro, but I found it pretty easy to pick up the laptop
| thanks to the bigger feet, and the bottom edges of the case
| that have a rounded shape.
|
| I think with the Air's weight being slightly less than the
| outgoing model, the shape isn't going to be so much of a
| concern.
|
| I don't need more than two Thunderbolt ports, but I would have
| liked to see one of them on the right side of the case.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Yeah, I had a 2012 era MBA, and it was basically the ideal
| laptop, until it didn't have the power to run XCode (so I
| bought a 2015 15"). The M1 Air is there again, fast enough,
| light enough, good enough keyboard, and incredible battery
| life.
|
| I'm due for a work laptop upgrade soon, and I'm on the fence
| between a maxed MBA m2 and a 14" M1 Pro with 32G ram. It'll be
| mainly tethered to one big monitor, but light weight would be
| nice when commuting, as often as I do that.
| ushakov wrote:
| people getting the new MBA, how much RAM would you be getting?
| nojito wrote:
| I'm definitely going to be an outlier but 8 for me.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Never get less than 16, since you cannot upgrade it later. Yes,
| it's obviously a sales technique to get you to pay a lot more
| than the main price they like to put in ads.
| javagram wrote:
| I have 8GB on my M1 air and will definitely be paying extra for
| 16 or 24 GB next time. Memory pressure is real especially
| because I have a second user on the laptop for my spouse - if
| both our accounts are logged in with apps open it can slow down
| and freeze for 30 seconds or more.
| cute_boi wrote:
| more than 16 gigs is my recommendation. As the electron apps
| are proliferating RAM will always be bottleneck.
| michaelje wrote:
| Please don't get less than 16.
|
| I have now had two (work and personal) - my work m1 air was
| specced with 8GB, and had major memory pressure and issues with
| an external monitor. My personal 14" MBP has 16GB - same
| workload, same monitor, never skipped a beat.
|
| Ended up sending the air back and swapping for one of the old
| dev ex MBP (intel based).
| ysleepy wrote:
| At least 16G, them having a 8G offering is customer hostile.
|
| They pay like $40 for the difference, while making it a $200
| upgrade, same with the SSD. - Especially since the SSD is
| apparently really slow with the 256G model.
| sgarland wrote:
| Eh. I bought a base model M1 Air on a whim because they were
| in stock, and I can count on one hand the times I wished for
| more RAM. I have a Kubernetes cluster at home I can run
| things in, which also hosts a Jupyter instance.
|
| My next one I'll get 16G simply because those few times
| (namely, creating Kubernetes labs intended to be ran on Apple
| Silicon) were annoying to deal with. But for I would wager
| 90+% of their customer base, 8G is absolutely fine. I've
| never once had it stutter with heavy Chrome usage, video
| streaming, or even gaming (not AAA titles, granted) out to an
| external monitor.
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| I have the 8GB M1 mini, which I bought as soon as it went
| on sale, so it's a year and a half old. In general the 8GB
| thing has been fine, and the notion that it can swap pretty
| quickly has been fine, but it's definitely noticeable now
| that the swapping is no longer fine, whether because the
| flash is wearing out or because there was a software
| update. These days I regularly reboot the thing just to
| clear the decks after the machine comes to a crawl. And I
| don't do anything stressful with it. VS Code, Chrome, and
| Terminal at the same time is about as extreme as it gets.
| All the real work is happening on adjacent Linux box.
| sgarland wrote:
| I can't imagine the SSD having worn out yet; that's very
| odd. Mine hasn't quite hit a year yet, so I'll definitely
| keep an eye on it, but I haven't noticed any slowdowns.
| sentrms wrote:
| Excessive swapping due to ram pressure can wear out an
| SSD pretty fast.
| jeffbee wrote:
| A change in the software is more likely, but Apple
| doesn't ship the tools to read out SSD health indicators
| so I can't rule that out.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Absolutely skip the 8 GB. I tried my luck with M1 Air, but
| returned it after two days for 16 GB version. Some Xcode,
| Sketch and web development.
|
| Once you start swapping, you easily get multi-second delays
| where a system is totally unresponsive.
|
| A 24 GB M2 Air would be great, but I expect my current M1 to
| last gracefully for years.
| Darmody wrote:
| Am I the only one around here that doesn't like MacBooks? The
| hardware is fine, yes, except the glossy screen but the software
| is horrible. Everything is a pain in the a*.
| [deleted]
| klodolph wrote:
| Pick an operating system--you can be confident that plenty of
| people on HN hate it. It's true now, it was true on Slashdot
| twenty years ago, it was true on Usenet thirty years ago.
| xbar wrote:
| The difference: everyone on Usenet was right.
| swozey wrote:
| If you're coming from Windows or another OS it definitely takes
| time to get used to the "Apple way" of doing things. Also you
| need to expect that a lot of the applications you're used to
| being free in other OS cost $10-35+ each on Apple. Apps like
| SetApp are great for this and trying new applications out but
| that's a $10 monthly fee. It'd still take me awhile (a year+)
| to buy the apps I use at $10/mo so I just pay the monthly.
|
| I still have to look at my (unlabeled) keyboard to figure out
| what the Apple Cmd Shift Up etc heiroglyphs are and it'll
| always be weird closing windows on the left instead of right
| side but beyond that after about 3 months of forcing myself to
| use OSX 5 years ago OSX is now by far my favorite OS. The
| continuity and interoperability between my other Apple devices
| is amazing. Yesterday I was working on my jeep and I just
| dragged a PDF of instructions over to my Ipad from my Macbook
| and immediately had it to look at downstairs. You can do that
| in other systems with pushbullet, dropbox, etc but it's just
| fluid and built in here.
|
| I've always only owned a MBP through work, the M1 max w/64gb
| 14" is the first MBP I've ever bought for myself and it just
| hums. I hope it'll be "fast" for 5+ years for the price I paid.
| Darmody wrote:
| I come from linux and I feel like I've been given a machine
| for computer illiterate people who are going to do some
| office work at Starbucks. Stereotypical, yes, but that's how
| I feel.
|
| I need this basic software feature. Yeah? Too bad, the OS
| won't allow you to do that. Maybe you'll find a paid app that
| does it. I do pay for software but when you have to pay for
| basic stuff that should come out of the box, it's a no for
| me. To cover the basics you need to pay a lot of money.
|
| Then there's the weird behaviour. Example. You have 2 Chrome
| windows on two different monitors. You're focusing one of
| them and on that same monitor witch to a fullscreen app and
| then go back. Now it'll raise and focus the Chrome window on
| the other monitor. In the worst case I just have to manually
| change the window, on the worst case, I'll use some shortcut
| on a windows that I'm not supposed to and break something. I
| wouldn't be the only one breaking/changing something in Jira
| because of this.
|
| The file manager is a joke. Again, something fancy but
| useless if you need a bit of functionality. At least the OS
| has a good shell that you can use instead.
|
| When I'm told to learn to use it "the Apple way" what I
| understand is, "shut up and get used to it, you have no
| saying in how your machine or you should work".
|
| If I leave my current job it'll be because of the Macbook.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > When I'm told to learn to use it "the Apple way" what I
| understand is, "shut up and get used to it, you have no
| saying in how your machine or you should work".
|
| Well yeah that is kind of the philosophy - a single simple
| way to do things. Cutting down on customisation makes the
| system more stable and I think allows them to innovate more
| quickly. Don't confuse it with lack of power - it's a fully
| certified UNIX unlike most Linux distributions.
|
| They do have incredible support for accessibility, so they
| do accommodate people who genuinely need things to work
| differently, not just a preference.
|
| What they're not keen on is adding knobs and bells and
| whistles for the sake of it, as it's clutter.
| Darmody wrote:
| > Well yeah that is kind of the philosophy - a single
| simple way to do things.
|
| Not being able to do something is very different from
| what you're saying. Not being able to do something, in
| fact, makes it more complicated because you need
| workarounds. > Cutting down on
| customisation makes the system more stable and I think
| allows them to innovate more quickly
|
| Nobody is talking about customization. Missing features
| does not equal a simple way to do things.
| > Cutting down on customisation makes the system more
| stable and I think allows them to innovate more quickly.
|
| How? How does that allow them to innovate more quickly?
| There has been no innovation in their UI for ages.
| > Don't confuse it with lack of power - it's a fully
| certified UNIX unlike most Linux distributions.
|
| Don't confuse lacking a POSIX certification with the lack
| of power. The certification is just a badge you pay money
| for. Nothing else. It can't even run Docker properly.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I've not really encountered not being able to do
| something I needed to do with my Mac before that I can
| recall.
|
| You don't give many concrete examples of things you're
| unable to do, so I can't help you figure them out. The
| file manager is a joke? Well it lets you manage files not
| sure what else you need.
|
| I'd done my whole career doing PhD-level systems research
| on my Macs - hasn't held me back from doing anything.
|
| > Don't confuse lacking a POSIX certification with the
| lack of power.
|
| Don't confuse POSIX for UNIX!
|
| > It can't even run Docker properly.
|
| What are you missing with Docker? I use Docker all the
| time. It's fine what's wrong?
| howinteresting wrote:
| What does being a "certified UNIX" have to do with power?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| People talk about macOS as being a toy and say it's not a
| real UNIX like Linux - but it's actually one of very few
| real UNIX implementations, which only includes a couple
| of Linux distributions.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Who says it's not a "real UNIX"? More importantly, who
| cares about that? Something being a "real UNIX" or not
| matters very little.
|
| I certainly think it is a "real UNIX", but I also think
| it's very much a toy. It doesn't even have a good tiling
| wm (yabai is janky af).
| wombat-man wrote:
| yeah finder is pretty annoying. I don't know how to just
| get the path of where I'm at a lot of the time.
| swozey wrote:
| I hate Finder and use Forklift, but if you alt-click (or
| command/ctrl, I can't tell on my keyboard) the top where
| it says the file name you'll be shown a tree of the path
| you're in. It's not the full file path in a text window
| unfortunately.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| There's a toggle to enable a path bar in the View menu,
| along with an option to enable a status bar and a bunch
| of other things.
|
| It pays to explore the menus of apps under macOS -- it's
| not like under GNOME or Windows where menubars are
| vestigial and paltry if they exist at all, Mac apps
| actually put a lot of useful things in them.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| What are your issues with Finder specifically? I use
| Windows and Linux on a regular basis in addition to macOS
| and after a few basics (like enabling the path bar and
| setting the search field to search the current directory),
| I don't find it any worse than Windows Explorer, and in
| fact preferable to something like Nautilus.
| senttoschool wrote:
| Yes, you're the only one.
| CHY872 wrote:
| As a software engineer, the software is pleasant. I have a Unix
| OS for development tooling and the standard set of applications
| (browser, preview, file management, IDE tooling) just work. It
| seems far more likely that something works first time than my
| desktop that runs either Windows or Linux (Windows example:
| clock somehow ends up 1 hour out of sync every week or two,
| computer sometimes locks up leaving me no control over mouse,
| screen flickers whenever my VR headset comes out of sleep
| moode. Linux example: I now have to enter my password 3 times
| in order to fully get into the operating system). Mostly I'm
| disappointed with the hardware - my late-2018 model is
| extremely slow for what it is.
| cehrlich wrote:
| The base model seems fine, but I'm amazed by how expensive the
| higher spec models are.
|
| MacBook Air M2, 8/8 cores, 16GB, 1TB: 2189 Euro
|
| MacBook Pro 14, 8/14 cores, 16GB, 1TB: 2479 Euro
|
| That's too small of a difference for how much nicer the Pro is.
| apexalpha wrote:
| EUR1520 in Europe for 256gb ssd and 8gb ram... The 512/16 version
| is almost EUR2000.
|
| Man this is just insane pricing. It sucks because besides ssd/ram
| everything is fantastic for a laptop. I would buy it almost
| instantly for $1000
| weberer wrote:
| Inflation is crazy right now, so expect it to only go up.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Not sure what you mean as RAM and SSD prices have been
| steadily dropping.
|
| Comparable pc laptops have not increased in price nearly as
| much. Ryzen 6000 laptops, while scare, do not appear more
| expensive than last gen.
| weberer wrote:
| I mean the CPI in some countries is increasing by double
| digit percentage points. And the value of the euro has
| fallen so its now close to 1:1 with the USD.
| april_22 wrote:
| the M1 Air is also still a great option though, the M1 is still
| really fast.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| As another kick in the nuts, the 256GB SSD is dog-slow as well,
| and that's before you'll inevitably hit the swap in multi
| tasking thanks to the 8GB RAM.
|
| That entry level model is just there to advertise a starting
| price but should be avoided.
| JonathanBeuys wrote:
| At 500 nits of brightness, it is also 25 percent brighter
| than before
|
| Still not enought for a reflective screen.
|
| If the screen has no anti-glare coating, it needs to be crazy
| bright to be usable outside.
|
| My favorite for a new laptop would be the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. It
| is lighter, has a matte screen and can run Linux.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| The X1's matte display is a tradeoff however in it's own way.
| You introduce grain and lose vibrance making it a worse display
| in any other use case. I would note that the 14 inch pro has
| some antiglare coating going on that actually works pretty
| well.
| capableweb wrote:
| Probably too early to tell, but anyone know how running Asahi
| Linux on this would be? Is M1 similar to M2 enough that stuff
| would just work?
|
| I'd love to use Apple hardware again, but I cannot stand the
| Apple software and UX, so need my laptops and desktops to run
| Linux.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| Follow @AsahiLinux and @marcan42 on Twitter for updates. Looks
| like it's in progress.
|
| https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1544408695295328256
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Is M1 similar to M2 enough that stuff would just work?
|
| Apparently so.
|
| > At this point, it's pretty likely that M2 will be at feature
| parity with M1 with <24h of actual work.
|
| https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542957901651685376
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Such a tough choice, do I spend the extra 300 on a bigger SSD?
|
| I definitely intend to buy one by years end.
| mproud wrote:
| This is THE MACHINE to buy.
| lycos wrote:
| It's very tempting, but my MacBook Air M1 has been great and
| performance wise any improvement is probably barely noticeable in
| the day to day that I'd end up feeling like I just bought a new
| chassis. Which could still be nice.. although most of the time
| it's in clamshell attached to my monitor. I'll have to sleep on
| this!
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| That's a good thing! The fact that the original version is
| still going strong is a (huge) selling point for Apple.
|
| I am glad to see a class of device meant to last upwards of 5
| years.
| azemetre wrote:
| I've been using my 2013 MBP for nearly a decade. Finally
| replaced it with a M1 MBP a few months ago.
|
| Honestly the 2013 still works great for what I do (web,
| videos, and dev work that doesn't involve spinning up
| multiple VMs ;) ), I figured it was time to upgrade and the
| supply chain issues don't seem to be letting up anytime soon.
| I might replace the battery in the old one. I'm hoping to get
| at least another decade out of the M1 machine, hopefully
| more.
| herpderperator wrote:
| Are you _sure_ that you can watch today 's VP9/AV1 YouTube
| videos which would be software-decoded on a 2013 MBP
| without spinning fans incessantly?
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| One thing that bothers me about my M1 Air is that they still
| haven't fixed the "stuttering cursor" bug...
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Just recently bought a 2020 Intel air. It's very powerful and
| responsive. Would I notice a difference with an M1 or M2?
| Maybe, but I doubt it would be enough to justify the
| investment.
| Silica6149 wrote:
| I'm in the same position with an M1 Pro. Although the new
| screens do look nice for dark mode...
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| maybe I will convince my boss to get me the new one, and I
| will give the m1 pro to my teammates :)
|
| Other than that I agree (though, as I have stated elsewhere,
| this is good. less landfill). The m1 pro is just insane - I
| sold all of my other machines.
| nop_slide wrote:
| As an M1 pro owner, the big non starter for the M2 air is the
| lack of the high refresh rate screen (pro motion or w/e),
| I've really gotten spoiled by it.
| senttoschool wrote:
| For M1 owners, just wait for M3. It should be on TSMC 3nm which
| will be the next true node shrinkage.
| Aperocky wrote:
| M1 owner but since 2020, so probably the among the longest
| users.
|
| I'm tempted.
|
| I also think 3nm is going to beset with production problems,
| I don't think it's coming around anytime near.
| april_22 wrote:
| I am reading that alot of users had issues with the 8gig
| model. If you have 8gigs, did you experience any perfomance
| issues?
| mediaman wrote:
| I did - I believed all the '8 gig is fine' stuff at the
| beginning, and didn't like how much Apple charged for
| RAM. But for my work anyway it often starts having
| stuttering and slowness issues if I have too many things
| open. Otherwise it's quite fast.
| april_22 wrote:
| hm okay so i will maybe get the 16 gig version better
| jcmontx wrote:
| Yeah, I have the M1 2020 with 8gigs and 512ssd. I
| encounter some issues when I use it for development.
| Aperocky wrote:
| I had 16g though. 8g would be horrible.
| thathndude wrote:
| Please post more of this. I need an angel on my shoulder
| whispering.
|
| I have a 16" with the Max chip, and yet . . .
| Tagbert wrote:
| Don't worry there will be daily rumor stories posted here
| about the subject along with daily stories about how great
| recently announced X is. Your challenge is to sail between
| Scylla and Charybdis.
| swat535 wrote:
| I mean to be honest if you have a 16' M1 Max, there is no
| reason to upgrade for the next 2-3 years..
|
| The performance improvements will be marginal at best and
| in any case, what good is a machine if you can't keep it
| more than a year?
|
| I just ordered my 16' Max and am not willing to upgrade for
| a while.. it's not even worth the wait for the M2 Max pros,
| since it will be basically the same specs and you'll have
| to wait more than a moth to get it anyway so why delay
| further?
|
| If you have cash to burn however, then I guess it doesn't
| matter..
| kojeovo wrote:
| I'm in the same boat and opting to wait. Sure it'll be a nicer
| machine, but I don't think we'll really feel the upgrade.
| tedd4u wrote:
| Also on the fence. For me the reason to upgrade would be the
| 24GB RAM option: more tabs. I'll wait and see what the hands-on
| reviews say. Not sold on flat slab either, the wedge is very
| practical. The M1 MBA is going to be hard to beat.
| wslh wrote:
| Agree. Apple haven't added support for a second external
| monitor so the extra features are more performance and more
| battery. The performance of the M1 is incredible so it is not
| clear why to update.
| piyh wrote:
| I bought an M1 Air the day of the M2 announcement. $780 shipped
| on ebay for a mint laptop with 3 battery cycles. Battery life
| will be about the same, screen is good enough, 20% multicore
| boost is not worth an extra $450. M2 does look great though.
|
| Looks like M1 prices have dropped even more since I bought.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Are you using the Air for development? How does it hold up?
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| I want it, but I'm not getting it until all the hardware works
| under Linux.
|
| MacOS is great, but someday they will stop updating MacOS for
| this. I see it as a device with incredible longevity because of
| the fanless thermals and how it sips energy. I could see myself
| using it 10 years later. I want to run MacOS or Fedora
| Silverblue, with Silverblue being my true love. Immutable OS
| images <3
|
| HAH, downvoted in seconds. Would not be surprised if there are
| Apple employees brigading this.
| senttoschool wrote:
| I don't think you're downvoted because of fanboys.
|
| I think you're downvoted because:
|
| 1. Linux is coming to Apple Silicon sooner or later. You can
| buy now, enjoy macOS, and then install Linux later.
|
| 2. It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years. Even
| if Apple stops supporting it, you can still use it. In
| addition, Macs have insane resale value. So you can sell it in
| 5 years, and then buy a new one. This is a more reasonable
| approach than yours.
|
| 3. Apple tends to support their laptops for a long time.
| Usually 7-8 years. And given that this is their own chip and
| it's extremely powerful, I can see it being supported for 8
| years at least.
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| 1) We are now 2 generations in without full Linux support for
| the hardware.
|
| 2) I used my Powerbook G4 for 12 years; this is mostly
| because I was a kid with no money. When I got something else,
| my sister used it for another 3 years. With thermals as they
| are in this device, instead of selling it after 4-5 years I'd
| rather keep it for one-off projects as a server like a Mac
| Mini. I know laptops aren't designed for server work, but I
| love that it's a server with a builtin terminal. Also a
| device I'd use for hiking, because I could charge it from
| backpack solar.
|
| 3) The worst experience I've had was telling my dad MacOS
| Catalina couldn't be installed on his $3.5k iMac.
|
| As you said in your other comment, M3 will be 3nm TSMC? Maybe
| Linux will look good on Apple Silicon then.
| kalleboo wrote:
| "2 generations" sounds a lot more dramatic than "2 years"
| (and it's not even 2 years yet, the first M1 Macs were
| released in November)
| amelius wrote:
| 2 years is a big chunk of a lifetime in tech.
|
| Plus there is no guarantee that Apple will ever allow
| Linux again.
| nicoburns wrote:
| You have pretty good support except for the GPU at this
| point (admittedly I'm waiting for this until I install it
| on my machine). They've had to write all the drivers from
| scratch, so it was bound to take a while. But on the plus
| side the hardware interfaces seem to be stable across
| generations. M2 parity with M1 was implemented in 48 hours!
| So I'm pretty confident it will mostly be case of linux
| support continuously improving rather than resetting with
| each new generation.
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| The GPU is important.. afaik the keyboard and trackpad
| aren't working yet in Asahi Linux.
|
| I don't expect Apple to support the Linux community. It
| feels like this is trending in one direction. It felt
| like things stopped being "favorable" to us when they
| stopped supporting OpenGL and made no effort with Vulkan.
| The touchbar and some wifi chipsets were poorly supported
| for years before M1 debuted.
|
| What has been implemented in Asahi is impressive, but
| it's not ready to be a daily driver. I hope this becomes
| my mobile device of choice _someday_. I 'd use MacOS for
| work-work, and I would choose Linux every time for fun-
| work. So tired of everything having telemetry and vendor
| lock-in and basic pieces of software moving to
| subscription models.
|
| Apple laptops became the dev machines of choice because
| they embraced the OSS community in pretty big ways. Right
| now the water feels tepid.
| dagmx wrote:
| Hector has the keyboard working now https://twitter.com/m
| arcan42/status/1544408695295328256?s=21...
|
| I might have missed a trackpad update but I don't think
| it will take them long.
| johnfernow wrote:
| > Apple laptops became the dev machines of choice because
| they embraced the OSS community in pretty big ways. Right
| now the water feels tepid.
|
| You could triple boot Windows, MacOS and Linux with Intel
| Macs. A Mac was a great choice because you could develop
| for and support all 3 of those platforms (plus Android
| and iOS). Aside from having bad GPUs, expensive storage,
| and little modularity, they were great machines for
| development.
|
| Now, with no Linux or Windows support, not so much
| (unless you don't need to use anything but MacOS.)
| Unfortunately, if you need to support MacOS or iOS, you
| don't have much of a choice. Just really unfortunate that
| what used to be possible with one machine may soon
| require two. So long as Apple supports _any_ Intel Mac,
| many Macs will be able to get OS updates thanks to the
| OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. I 'm not sure when Apple
| will drop Intel Macs though. The last Mac to use an Intel
| processor released in 2020, so there will hopefully still
| be quite a few years left of support for Intel Macs for
| the time being.
|
| 1. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-
| Patcher/START.htm...
| tomaskafka wrote:
| > The worst experience I've had was telling my dad MacOS
| Catalina couldn't be installed on his $3.5k iMac.
|
| Just in case you'd be ok with unofficial way - there are
| patchers to enable macOS install on older machines:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/install-macos-catalina-
| unsu...
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| This is something I'd be comfortable with maintaining,
| but I couldn't leave with my dad. (I work on the road for
| months, and it's unpredictable when I come back. Longest
| I was out was 2 years..)
| SenHeng wrote:
| I just checked several online auction sites and my 10 year
| old 2012 quad core Mac Mini can be sold for about $300 while
| my 5 year old 2017 retina MacBook can be sold for around
| $500.
|
| That is insane.
|
| * values converted to USD. Prices may differ in countries
| actually using USD.
| krzyk wrote:
| > enjoy macOS
|
| This is not something, a person that wants Linux, will enjoy.
|
| > It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years. Even
| if Apple stops supporting it, you can still use it
|
| I'm not sure, my friend has M1 Macbook Air and he complains
| that it looses performance after a year.
| kzrdude wrote:
| What does that mean, that it loses performance?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years.
|
| Why ever not? I have 14 year old laptops that run fully up to
| date Linux just fine. Why can unpaid volunteers do better
| than one of the most profitable companies on earth?
|
| > So you can sell it in 5 years
|
| That just makes the looming end of support someone else's
| problem, it doesn't actually solve anything.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Why are 10 years not reasonable? Like ebay is full of 2013
| laptops and people buy these.
|
| If it is not reasonable why can you resell it for a large
| amount after 5 years?
| eertami wrote:
| >enjoy macOS
|
| If you're wanting to use your laptop for development work,
| you're going to pick the best job for the task. Moving to OSX
| would not only slow things down due to how slow non-native
| Docker is (no it is not negligible, yes I have an M1 Mac and
| I have tested it in a side-by-side comparison), but you have
| much less control over your environment compared to Linux.
|
| The vast majority of the people I've worked with choose to
| use Linux laptops over Macs, and I don't think CPU efficiency
| is something that's going to get them to change. While
| working from home, I can think of zero scenarios where I need
| more than 8 hours of battery life, which my x86 Intel laptop
| already exceeds.
| Aperocky wrote:
| I don't enjoy macOS but I enjoy the hardware.
|
| All of my work goes into (local/alpha/beta) production
| linux box that's why the mac is technically just a display.
|
| And when I say local, I refer to a linux server, the mac
| connects to it. the macOS terminal does a nice work doing
| that, don't think there would be any difference in that
| regard if the laptop was running linux.
|
| The new mac checks all of the hardware boxes that I wanted.
| Even occasional gaming if I felt like it.
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| I think we're getting faster at iterating on bringing up
| dev environments.
|
| Silverblue is my favorite, but it's becoming common for me
| to develop everything within a docker image. As quickly as
| we're committing to a project, we're updating the env and
| rebuilding that image at the same time? I'm new to this.
|
| I have a friend who's really big into k8s and ansible.
| Right now it feels like I'm toying around in 1 pod. He can
| bring up a set of services around the thing he's developing
| in a few minutes. I want his power. :x
| leadingthenet wrote:
| It's called docker-compose, and it's really simple
| compared to even a 1 pod k8s. Or maybe I'm
| misunderstanding what you mean by bringing up a set of
| services.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Yeah seconding the recommendation for docker-compose,
| it's a great way to start up multiple services and once
| you know the syntax, pretty straightforward to use in my
| limited experience. You can essentially declaratively
| define which other Docker containers you want to start up
| (in which order), which volumes they can use, and which
| ports should be exposed.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > due to how slow non-native Docker is
|
| Are you running arm64 containers? Is x86 a requirement for
| you?
| johnfernow wrote:
| > 2. It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years.
| Even if Apple stops supporting it, you can still use it. In
| addition, Macs have insane resale value. So you can sell it
| in 5 years, and then buy a new one. This is a more reasonable
| approach than yours.
|
| Why is that? I still use my 2015 15" MacBook Pro which
| released 7 years ago, and I have no intention of replacing it
| anytime soon. This isn't the 70s, 80s, 90s or early 2000s:
| the improvements in performance from one year to the next are
| far more modest and the utility of further improvements are
| far less impactful than they once were. My 2015 MBP is still
| as capable of browsing the web, writing code, and video
| editing as it was back in 2016 when I got it. It's not in any
| way slow doing any of those tasks.
|
| The performance of an M2 MacBook would undoubtedly be much
| better, but am I actually going to be able to browse the web
| faster or write code any faster? Probably not.
|
| A new 16-inch MacBook Pro with 1TB storage emits
| approximately 620kg of CO2e in its manufacturing process (The
| Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee, 2020
| second edition, page 140). Why should someone emit more than
| half a ton of CO2e for a new laptop unless they really need
| it?
|
| If you have a Mac that no longer gets OS updates by Apple, as
| long as it was released within the past decade you should be
| able to use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to update it to macOS
| Monterey (and later Ventura when it releases) without much
| issue. If it's older than that, you might run into some
| issues, but generally speaking everything from late 2008 and
| beyond is supported, with everything from late 2012 and
| beyond being fully supported.
|
| https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-
| Patcher/START.htm...
| mwint wrote:
| > Why should someone emit more than half a ton of CO2e for
| a new laptop unless they really need it?
|
| If this is a serious concern for anyone, it looks like
| carbon capture runs around $22/ton. So this is an $11
| problem.
| buzzy_hacker wrote:
| Do you mean offsets (which don't really do anything)?
| Because carbon capture is more expensive than that.
| nrp wrote:
| For reference, carbon capture and sequestration goes for
| >$250/ton at the moment from reputable suppliers.
| SenHeng wrote:
| > The performance of an M2 MacBook would undoubtedly be
| much better, but am I actually going to be able to browse
| the web faster or write code any faster?
|
| I split my coding time between a 2017 retina MacBook and a
| 2018 Mac Mini. Code compiles very much faster on the Mini
| -> faster iterations. So yes, you may literally code faster
| on a faster computer.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I switched to surface book when mac jumped the shark in
| '16.
|
| Went through a few generations of that, it was "ok".
|
| Bought the cheapest 13" M1 I could because I had to debug
| some stuff on the iPhone, I was pretty angry about it.
|
| That day I switched over to it as my daily driver.
|
| The performance absolutely blew my mind.
|
| Stuff I'd wait for one to two minutes to build on the SB
| would build in a few seconds on the M1.
|
| Debugging + video call + building went from crushing my
| laptop to being not really noticable.
|
| I was using it heavily for two days and realized I forgot
| to plug it in. Was only down to 50% battery.
|
| I'm very far from being an apple fan boy, but this little
| laptop has completely blown my mind. Simply the best
| hardware I've ever owned, and makes me easily 2x as
| productive.
|
| And that's all with the cheapest 8 gig of memory model.
| hericium wrote:
| > I still use my 2015 15" MacBook Pro which released 7
| years ago, and I have no intention of replacing it anytime
| soon.
|
| Understandable. Great vintage year!
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling,
| bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades
| discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about
| abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| spallas wrote:
| https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t...
| abrouwers wrote:
| I'm a current Linux Desktop (plasma) user, who is really
| tempted by this machine, given my 6 year old thinkpad is
| showing it's age. I'm not sure I can get used to MacOS's window
| management, even though the rest of the OS looks great. I'm
| definitely not a power user on linux (mostly sticking to
| defaults), but things like not being able to adjust the green
| button to maximize a window? Ugh.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| I use rectangle (app) for snapping windows around. I think
| CMD F will full screen just about every app, if not it's
| another keyboard shortcut. You can also assign your own
| shortcuts in the keyboard preferences.
| timdev2 wrote:
| There are a number of utilities to improve window management
| on MacOS. I find rectangle[0] works reliably, without trying
| to do too much. Easy keyboard shortcuts to maximize, snap to
| 50% left/right, or quadrants.
|
| [0]: https://rectangleapp.com/
| dang wrote:
| > _HAH, downvoted in seconds. Would not be surprised if there
| are Apple employees brigading this._
|
| You broke more than one site guideline with this. Would you
| please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| and stick to the rules when posting here? We'd appreciate it.
| franze wrote:
| Anybody got their head around why the new 13 Mac Book Pro M2 is
| more expensive than the Mac Air M2?
|
| Is it the (in my opinion negative UX) touchbar?
| peer2pay wrote:
| The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that the M2 MBP
| only exists to make the increased price on the Mac Book Air
| look more competitive.
|
| It's an old sales trick. Show the customer three products in
| different price ranges to get them to buy the middle one.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Slightly higher capacity battery is the only strictly better
| feature I can see in the MBP 13". Usually the MBP is a poor buy
| anyway. Better the 13" MBA or on the other side the 14" MBP.
| fossuser wrote:
| That machine shouldn't exist - I don't know why they kept it
| around. Maybe they just had lots of old hardware they wanted to
| try to unload.
| senttoschool wrote:
| They kept it around because:
|
| 1. They don't have something to slot between the Air and the
| 14" Pro. The much rumored 15" Macbook Air isn't ready yet.
|
| 2. With how wacky supply chains are, it makes sense to rely
| on a supply chain that has been working since 2016, the year
| the 13" MBP came out.
|
| 3. Apple needed a device with active cooling to show off the
| power of the M2.
| [deleted]
| kossTKR wrote:
| Thanks for giving a heads up on the 15" Air on the horizon.
|
| This would be the perfect computer for me, and probably
| most other pros in the current landscape - 13,4 is just too
| small for a lot of work, but few people need more power
| than an M1/M2.
|
| I can see it's rumoured for spring next year, so a year is
| probably realistic.
| pdpi wrote:
| Especially with the Mac, Apple has this odd tendency to keep
| moribund parts of their lineup around while simultaneously
| going for a take-no-prisoners approach to rebuilding other
| lines. The bottom of their laptop offering seems to be the part
| that suffers the most from this -- the Air has always sort of
| see-sawed between being the premium thin-and-light offering or
| the entry-level offering (with the 12" MacBook carrying the
| thin-and-light torch for a while).
|
| Looks like right now the Air and the "proper" (14"/16") MBPs
| are the ones being propelled forward, while the 13" MBP is the
| moribund one.
| dijit wrote:
| Larger battery, active cooling, afaik the storage options go
| higher.
| larrywright wrote:
| If you're doing anything heavy that will put sustained stress
| on the machine, active cooling is the important difference.
| While the laptops may have identical CPUs, with only passive
| cooling the Air is going to get throttled down after a bit
| whereas the Pro won't have to. If you're going to do
| something like video rendering you'd notice the difference.
| jmull wrote:
| You mean the lowest-specced M2 model for each? The ones that
| are $1199 for Air and $1299 for 13" MBP?
|
| I noticed the tech specs for the lower-end air have a slightly
| lower M2 -- 8 GPU cores vs 10... and in the Air price tool,
| it's a $100 upgrade to go from 8-core GPU to 10-core.
|
| So I guess that's it -- the low-end Air is a little lower-end
| and a little cheaper.
| andriesm wrote:
| In promotional materials they often show pictures of the laptops
| without the notch.
|
| If the notch is such an obvious eye-sore, why aren't they
| abondoning it?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The notched area of the screen isn't used in full screen mode.
| The remaining non-notched area of the screen is a standard size
| and ratio.
|
| The notch is a total non-issue during normal use because it
| only exists in the menu bar area. It basically looks like
| another item occupying your menu bar. If you go full screen you
| still have a notch-free experience.
|
| They probably show it that way in promotional materials because
| people wrongly assume that it's a bigger deal than it actually
| is. Virtually nobody actually cares about it when they start
| using the laptop.
| tm-guimaraes wrote:
| > The notched area of the screen isn't used in full screen
| mode.
|
| That's the default setting. You can choose to have the menu
| bar there as well in full screen.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| ...but you can't choose to use it for full-screen
| _content_. The distinction the comment was drawing was
| about the notch interfering in that manner.
| egypturnash wrote:
| How does the notch deal with programs with enough menus to
| hit that midpoint? Which includes the one I do pretty much
| all my paying work in. Or people who have enough stuff
| squatting in the right side of the menu bar to cross the
| midpoint from the other direction. Which is also me when I'm
| not hiding most of them with Bartender. So many things just
| want to plop an icon up there.
|
| I guess I'll find out soon, because one of these M2 Airs will
| be replacing the 2016 Pro I've been using as soon as I scrape
| the funds together.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| I'm guessing, since the OS handles those menu items and the
| OS knows about the notch, it'll just skip the notch and
| continue the menu items to the right.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Apps that have been updated to work with the notch will
| flow around it.
|
| If you have an old app that hasn't been updated, you can
| enable the "Scale to fit below built-in camera" option on
| the executable and it will show the full menu bar under the
| notch, exactly like it worked before the notch existed.
|
| Best way to think about the notch is that it's not
| subtracting from your 16:10 screen, it's just pushing the
| menu bar up into the area on either side of the camera.
| It's previously wasted space that now takes your menu bar
| so you get the full 16:10 screen for content.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I'm gonna bet that Illustrator is gonna need that switch
| flipped. Thanks!
| buu700 wrote:
| Does anyone know how well this works with the M2 Air
| specifically? My understanding with the M1 Pros was that the
| notch working seamlessly was dependent on Mini-LED.
|
| Without the ability to produce perfect black around the
| notch, is the notch not going to be an eyesore even in
| fullscreen mode? Or is the "Liquid Retina" display close
| enough that it's basically a non-issue?
| em500 wrote:
| Even weirder is that according to the rumor mill the notch is
| already on it's way out in the iPhone, to be replaced with a
| pill shaped cutout this year, and under-screen cameras in a few
| years.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Which promotional material are you referring to?
| caymanjim wrote:
| Of course this comes out just four months after I buy an M1 Air.
| senttoschool wrote:
| Do we still need Mighty App?
|
| M2 is significantly faster than Xeon and Epyc in single core
| speeds which is what matters the most in web browsing speed.
| There's also no latency that Mighty has.
|
| Just get yourself a 24GB M2 Macbook.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Depends, is Mighty App cheaper than $2099+existing laptop
| disposal cost per user?
| senttoschool wrote:
| FYI, an M1 will also be significantly faster than Mighty for
| most web browsing.
|
| If you're willing to pay for Mighty, I presume that you're
| willing to upgrade your laptop as well.
| janandonly wrote:
| I'd never heard of this browser before, but, really, for most
| usages Safari is out-of-the-box good enough isn't it?
| asadlionpk wrote:
| I feel Mighty will have to quickly pivot to more value-added
| features than just streaming browser. I love the founder and I
| know PG loves them too but I have doubts about their future...
| I strongly wish I am proved wrong.
| mpeg wrote:
| Did we ever need Mighty?
| NoraCodes wrote:
| Looks like a neat laptop.
|
| I don't really understand why apple feels the need to forgoe
| articles for their devices, however. For instance, they write
| "MacBook Air features..." rather than "The MacBook Air
| features..." as would be grammatically correct in English.
| FredPret wrote:
| Just wait until the devices wake up, then it'll be correct
| grumple wrote:
| "MacBook Air" is an idea. A concept.
|
| "The MacBook Air" is a thing. How mundane.
|
| Or something like that.
| Silica6149 wrote:
| Exactly, it's just Apple's style of copywriting.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| That sounds almost verbatim from one of the Jony Ive design
| marketing videos around ~2011 or so.
| napkin wrote:
| Heh, my mother was recently alarmed by the following iOS
| notification:
|
| (password-at-risk-blah-blah)... 'iPad can help you re-secure
| your account.'
|
| She associates poor grammar with phishing attempts, so assumed
| this could not have been a genuine notification from Apple.
| When I checked my own devices, it seems clear that their
| approach is at least consistent.
| nojito wrote:
| It's to prevent people from pluralizing the product name.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Just like LEGO, which demands that you always capitalize the
| brand name and never pluralise it, likely so that their
| trademark doesn't become generic. "I have lots of LEGO
| bricks", not " I have lots of Legos".
|
| Of course, that's corporate BS and everyone can feel free to
| use it however they want.
| paulcole wrote:
| John Gruber in shambles. Driving through Cupertino begging
| (thru iMessage) for Tim Cook's home address.
| gumby wrote:
| Good point, should it be "iPhones" and "MacBook airs" or "is
| phone" and "macbooks air"?
|
| Apple needs to speak out on this issue. Why the coverup?
| nojito wrote:
| Phil Schiller actually answered this a few years ago
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/30/11541268/apple-grammar-
| is...
|
| https://twitter.com/pschiller/status/725791354769399808
|
| https://twitter.com/pschiller/status/725937759022514176
|
| https://twitter.com/pschiller/status/725938369826414592
| macintux wrote:
| I still get occasionally likes for my tweet in that
| thread, 6 years later.
| mcphage wrote:
| Definitely "MacBooks Air".
| mproud wrote:
| I believe it's also a branding and copyright protection tactic
| to prevent diluting the name.
| martin_a wrote:
| Maybe they want to think about their products more like a
| platform than an actual product? Would that explain that
| difference in language?
|
| edit: What @grumple said further below.
| layer8 wrote:
| Steve Jobs wanted to anthropomorphize the devices. It's already
| in the Lisa manual:
| https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1413/712113879_a7079d8cc8.jp...
|
| Or here for the original Macintosh:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterme/1253692391/
| hyperdimension wrote:
| That has always bothered me, and I swear no one ever seems to
| notice. I see it everywhere, and it clearly must work, since
| you can even see it being said by owner of devices.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Ooo yes, it's so stilted and unnatural and transparently done
| on purpose.
|
| It's nearly as bad as people referring to a baby as just "baby"
| rather than "the baby" or "your baby".
| hbn wrote:
| Referring to their products as a proper noun is an old Jobs-
| ism that he intentionally did. I'm pretty sure it goes all
| the way back to the original Macintosh, that he wanted to be
| referred to as just "Macintosh" in all the marketing
| material, and his on-stage announcement.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It also predates Apple by a long time. Steve Jobs didn't
| invent this, though he did use it.
| schroeding wrote:
| They just took a page from the Columbo[1] playbook. Why use
| names when you just can call it "baby". :D
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/pZ0PzRuAv0Y?t=108
| adolph wrote:
| "Think Different"
|
| Missing "ly" transforms two words from humdrum imperative
| verb/adjective pairing to action whose object is enigmatic,
| provocative and whose verb stands strong, without
| qualification.
|
| (I attempted to write this without articles. I don't really
| agree with using "whose" but needed a replacement to "for
| which the")
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's interesting where our language goes.
|
| I do not say "The Windows" etc. when talking about software,
| but I definitely say "The iPad" etc. when talking about
| hardware.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| I agree, that's very interesting! I also omit articles when
| talking about software, except when talking about a
| particular instantiation of the software; for example
| "Windows supports Nvidia hardware", but "the Windows
| installation on this device is broken". (And, indeed,
| "Windows installation is broken in the presence of NVMe
| drives" would mean, to me, that _all_ new Windows installers
| are broken for NVMe drives.)
| maurits wrote:
| Because Steve Jobs used to do this, e.g. introduction of
| Macintosh.[1]
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=23
| paulcole wrote:
| Think Differently would also be grammatically correct in
| English. But Think Different was what Apple went with. When you
| write, you make the decisions.
|
| Another way to think about this is that when introducing a
| friend you wouldn't say, "Hi, this is the Kelly." You'd say,
| "Hi, this is Kelly."
| jsight wrote:
| I remember thinking that about the way Jobs introduced the ipad
| 2:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=ipad+2+jobs+speech&oq=ipad+2...
| timmattison wrote:
| They've been doing this with a lot of products for a long time.
| "Today we announce iPhone ... with iPhone you can do anything!"
|
| I think it is very strange.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| One of the first ways a cult gets everyone on the same page
| is altered language and speech patterns.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| This comment makes me sigh. I know you will defend yourself
| with "what? I'm just stating a fact!" but saying stuff like
| this makes me really dislike you. I really like Apple
| products, does that make me a part of a cult? If yes, why?
| I wouldn't die for them, I wouldn't go through pain for
| them.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| The fact that my comment on the internet makes you
| "really dislike me" is probably all the confirmation you
| need.
|
| _This comment sent from my iPhone SE 2016._
| Silica6149 wrote:
| I mean, apple knows their customer base. It wouldn't be
| unlikely that their writing is somehow catered to who they
| know would buy their devices.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Fortunately I have free-thinking windows installed on my
| desktop to counteract my Apple cultist indoctrination.
| millzlane wrote:
| For me it's android. As long as I can replace the default
| apps like the sms app and the launcher. I will continue
| to use android.
| Karsteski wrote:
| It really does seem very cult-like with the way Apple wants
| everyone to change up English for their product
| specifically...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If you think this is changing up English, you may not be
| speaking English as a first language? Referring to
| products as a proper noun is very common. E.g. Ford will
| tell you "Mustang offers a powerful engine... blah blah
| blah" not "The Mustang offers..."
| Karsteski wrote:
| English is my first language, and yes to me that sentence
| would sound odd. Perhaps that's something common in
| American advertisement and not elsewhere
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Maybe it's just that I'm a car guy, and I watch a lot of
| presentations about cars. They constantly refer to their
| models like this. Like it's a person, not an object.
| mastax wrote:
| https://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/
|
| > Hear the roar of a Mustang as the ground starts to
| tremble and your legs start to shake. As always, Mustang
| draws upon its performance roots with features for
| enhanced handling, high-powered engine options and a
| classic Mustang design. For 2022, the soul-stirring
| Mustang Mach 1 and Mach 1 Premium stand at the pinnacle
| of 5.0L performance. The personally customizable Mach 1
| continues its legacy, engineered specifically for quick
| turns and spirited drives.
|
| Confusingly, they use Mustang both with an article and
| without.
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- doesn't the imply there are others of similar? maybe what
| apple is saying is that there is no other iPhone except the
| iPhone so the is redundant? - just a guess - i agree it's odd
| --
| Silica6149 wrote:
| It certainly sounds weird to english speakers. I imagine they
| shorten sentences to not lose people's attention.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Only if you don't pay much attention to PR. Lots of
| manufacturers talk this way when referring to their own
| products. Apple isn't blazing a new trail here.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's deliberate. I guarantee that it's about building a
| "brand mindset." They've been playing with text copy for
| decades.
|
| If you say "iPhone," instead of " _The_ iPhone, " you've
| turned "iPhone" into a pronoun. That has a different
| "connection" to people that hear it.
|
| Branding seems to be something that a lot of tecchies
| (including Yours Truly) have difficulty with. There's a lot
| of subtle psychological games that aren't easy to quantify.
| Adraghast wrote:
| Do you mean common noun instead of pronoun?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I think of it as a "pronoun." It makes it into a
| "person," or some kind of major deal, like we call
| localities (usually) by their single pronouns. Sometimes,
| "The" becomes part of the pronoun, like " _The_
| Netherlands," or " _The_ Bronx."
|
| Usually, though, we assign pronouns (I'm not an English
| major, though, so the proper term may be different).
|
| Like, you can't have "a brooklyn," or "an amsterdam."
|
| They want to make it so we can't have "an iPhone."
|
| Good luck with that...
| skyyler wrote:
| >Like, you can't have "a brooklyn"
|
| Every Brooklyn outside of the one in NYC is just "a
| Brooklyn" and not "THE Brookyln"
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Fair point.
|
| Then you also have Brook _line_ , in Bastin.
| whynaut wrote:
| The term you want is Proper Noun.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That makes sense.
|
| Thanks!
| wizofaus wrote:
| It's already a proper noun (not a pronoun!), but it's
| being treated almost as though the name of every
| individual Apple device is the product brand name, which
| is weird. Using a product brand name without an article
| is normally only done for uncountable/mass noun things
| like "gorilla glue" or many food/drink products.
| eproxus wrote:
| Would it be equally weird or correct to write _the macOS_?
| After all, it's short for "Mac Operating System".
|
| I'm not a native speaker so I'm genuinely curious.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| They're treating "MacBook Air" as a proper noun. It's to
| personify their products, presumably with the idea that
| people will "connect" to them, for some hollow, tech-oriented
| definition of "connect".
| gumby wrote:
| Even they find it hard to keep up this stupid convention. Ppl
| who work there of course say "the iPhone" but you even see it
| slip out frequently on stage at the big events. Even Steve
| Jobs, the originator of this convention and supposed stickler
| for detail used to say "the iphone" quite a bit.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| Air M2 and Pro M2, one of them should just crash and burn, and
| you know which.
| drunner wrote:
| Is there anything out there that can run linux that has battery
| life like this?
|
| I'm debating just getting one and running a linux VM full time in
| it.
| wmf wrote:
| AMD 6xxxU has really good battery life.
| rewgs wrote:
| That's what I'm doing -- I use Canonical's Multipass and it's
| flawless.
| pc86 wrote:
| I spent an embarrassing amount on a lackluster early 2019 MBP.
| It's fine as a general purpose laptop but is just a _little_ too
| slow for serious dev work, a _little_ too heavy as the main
| travel laptop, battery life a _little_ too short for my liking.
|
| I got an M1 for my work laptop maybe 4 months ago and it might
| honestly be the best laptop I've ever used.
| loeg wrote:
| I'm still stuck on a 2019 MBP from work. What garbage hardware.
| Up for a refresh in December.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Just to put things into perspective, the 2019 MBP might be
| worse than M1 Macs, but it's still _way_ better than anything
| I 've seen in the PC world (which is why Macs have been able
| to coast through bad decisions regarding keyboard, ports, and
| touchbar for so many years). That said, I'm _very_ excited
| for these new ARM devices.
| depereo wrote:
| The XPS9575 was great (with linux). I still use it for
| laptop tasks despite having a 16 inch m1 mbp and a 13 inch
| m1 mba.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > it's still way better than anything I've seen in the PC
| world
|
| Man, if the 2019 16" Macbook is better than anything in the
| PC world, I feel like you don't try many laptops. That 16"
| laptop is one of the most comically terrible laptops I've
| ever seen. Nevermind the Touch Bar, the performance
| envelope on these devices is way off (and probably boils
| down to the terrible chassis design and logic board
| layout). I have a friend with the i7 model, and it would
| regularly hit 90c on completely benign workloads like
| watching YouTube or browsing through her calendar. The
| battery life is distinctly worse than most laptops I've
| seen at that size too, which really left me scratching my
| head over these machines. Even the 2019 13" model wasn't
| _that_ bad.
|
| With all fairness though, I've never owned one or driven it
| full-time. I just remember balking at how poorly thought-
| out the hardware was at the time, and feeling pretty good
| about my choice to abandon Macbooks altogether.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I have the 13" model at home and the 16" at work. My work
| computer runs hot and slow, but that seems to be
| attributable largely to (or at least confounded by)
| corporate malware (falcond in particular IIRC).
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Last I heard a Mac is a PC. Hey even phones are PCs.
| They're all personal computers. In fact I would say mac's
| are more often PC then windows machines. Windows machines
| are often not personal and are used my many people in big
| orgs in a shared corporate fashion.
| pc86 wrote:
| Oh man it's been a while since I've seen this particular
| flavor of needless pedantry. What a blast from the past!
| loeg wrote:
| I don't believe it's better than non-mac products.
| maccard wrote:
| Curious what you'd buy instead?
| pleb_nz wrote:
| I had a Lenovo P15 before my current M1Pro. That thing
| was a machine. I got roughly the same battery life
| through day of dev work, got to choose my OS, it did
| everything perfectly. Only thing it lacked on imo was
| looks.
|
| So yeah, in my experience, there are other laptops out
| there that are as good.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I used to work on the similar P51, definitely a nice
| device for Unix work. I also keep a maxed-out T460s
| around as a handy little notebook for programming and
| photo editing. Not as powerful as the P51, but the design
| feels like a refinement of the "manila envelope" Macbook
| Airs. Lenovo hardware is starting to find it's footing
| again, though there's still a number of really
| Lovecraftian devices they made in the early 2010s (T440p,
| anyone? How about an X240?).
| [deleted]
| Pulcinella wrote:
| In a somewhat similar situation with the 2019 16 inch Intel
| MBP. I wouldn't say it's too slow, but it does get
| embarrassingly hot during regular use. Enabling low power mode
| disables turbo boost and keeps it much, much cooler, but
| plugging into an external monitor enables the discrete graphics
| card and the laptop gets hot again.
|
| Going to try to get a few more years out of it hopefully until
| Imagination Tech's hardware accelerated ray tracing solutions
| can make it to Apple's GPUs.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Yeah I ditched my 2019 16" for an M1 Max. Was an expensive
| move but honestly, I couldn't bear to use that thing as a
| laptop, especially once I knew there was an alternative which
| doesn't get hot enough to fry eggs on.
|
| For me it was worth it, because I now enjoy using my laptop
| as a laptop on the sofa or whatever, and do a lot more
| creative stuff on it than I did with the old one. But
| definitely not a cheap move!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The 16 inch Intel MBP was a machine I wanted to love. Big
| lovely screen, should be fast and capable, I was stoked to
| get it. But on the occasion where I have to take it off the
| charger and attend a zoom call, it gives me maybe 90 minutes
| of battery life, fan going full speed the whole time, trying
| to melt the desktop.
|
| Fortunately I also have a 13 inch M1 MBP that has no such
| problem, and is easily my favorite MBP in many years.
| nerdawson wrote:
| I remember having to close down every app before starting a
| video call in an attempt to keep the fans under control.
|
| The new 16" just does not care! I've owned it since March
| and haven't heard the fans once. Runs smoothly whatever I
| try and throw at it.
| drcongo wrote:
| Mine's gone in the cupboard and never been used since the M1
| Pro arrived.
| tails4e wrote:
| I switched from windows/dell to a 2019 16inch MBP Intel for
| work as I wanted everything MBPs promised, especially battery
| life. I was very dissapointed that I get about 2 hours on
| battery, but I suspect its mostly due to the MS office apps.
| Is this improved on the M1 versions? Surely high cpu usage
| there will still waste battery pretty quickly?
| deergomoo wrote:
| The 16" MBP would have been a much better machine for most
| people if it didn't have a dedicated GPU. The CPU got pretty
| toasty as-is, but adding a dGPU into the mix just turned it
| into a furnace.
|
| The way the thing was wired up also meant that connecting to
| an external display engaged the GPU, and some unacknowledged
| hardware or software flaw set the power/heat floor to about
| 20W (it's not just the minimum draw of the chip--you can have
| the GPU active without an external display and it uses a
| fraction of that). The end result: if you have it plugged
| into a monitor, you're almost constantly hearing a fan, even
| when idle.
|
| Mine replaced a 2015 entry-level MacBook Pro which, while it
| served me well, had long since fallen behind what I needed. I
| was so excited to have the 16" for about a week, until I
| realised that I was never going to not be hearing fans
| screaming. I know laptops (especially big laptops) aren't
| _actually_ meant to be used on laps for extended periods, but
| I genuinely couldn 't with that thing. Even mild load would
| make it uncomfortable to be in physical contact with. I don't
| understand how none of the reviews seemed to pick up on it--
| perhaps everyone was too distracted by finally having a
| functional keyboard again to notice.
|
| The sad irony of it all is that I bet the vast majority of
| purchasers were developers like myself, who have absolutely
| no need for a dedicated GPU.
|
| In any case I sold mine and bought an M1 Air, which I've been
| very happy with ever since. As nice as these new ones look
| (and as great as the new 14" and 16" M1 Pros are), I don't
| think I could justify it. This thing handles everything I
| throw at it (though my wife has the 8GB model and it really
| doesn't seem to be enough with how much RAM stuff guzzles
| these days).
| mehrdada wrote:
| > The sad irony of it all is that I bet the vast majority
| of purchasers were developers like myself, who have
| absolutely no need for a dedicated GPU.
|
| I would seriously doubt that. Mac sales are huge and
| developers must be a relatively small segment of computer
| users.
| robbintt wrote:
| I use these with few or no problems. The heat dissipation is
| pretty much solved by charging on the right side. My life is
| full of usability hacks, I don't mind one more.
|
| The biggest frustration for me with a mac now is that it's
| becoming a toy OS like windows. It becomes more and more
| cumbersome to run programs that aren't in the app store. As a
| result I've been cultivating an ubuntu/plasma(kde) practice
| on a gaming desktop outside of working hours.
| kayoone wrote:
| I had the same issues with a 2019 16" MBP. Annoying fans as
| soon as I connected an external display, getting very hot,
| okay performance. Switched to a M1 Pro 14" and couldn't be
| happier, as far as work laptops go it's the best I ever used
| since switching to macs in 2009.
| dubeye wrote:
| you just gave me flashbacks :( worst purchase ever!
| mbesto wrote:
| 2016 MBP gang rise up! I switched over to the Air M1 a year ago
| (I think?) and it's faster, lighter and smaller. Best laptop
| ever.
| importantbrian wrote:
| I have a 2019 pro and my wife got an M1 air and every time I
| use her computer for anything I kick myself for not waiting a
| year and getting an M1 for myself.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| The resale value of that 2019 will be high. I don't know the
| safest place to sell them though. Recommendations welcome!
| EBay just fills me with dread.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| I got the M1 iMac with only 16gb RAM when it came out and it's
| incredible how fast it is. My previous machines were top-of-
| the-line intel Macs and the M1 blows them out of the water,
| performance-wise.
|
| I can buy the lowest-end M-series models from now on and feel
| confident I'll have more than enough power. Gonna save a lot of
| money going forward.
| pc86 wrote:
| Yeah, basically same here. My work M1 is 16GB and the '19
| Intel is basically maxed out, and I'd take the M1 any day.
| Thaxll wrote:
| The pricing outside the US is outrageous though. Those are very
| expensive laptops.
|
| EUR1520 for the base version with only 8GB lol
| waynesonfire wrote:
| are you a new mac user or something?
| qwertyuiop12 wrote:
| 2-3 years ago the price was less than 1000EUR. 1500 for the
| base model is ridiculous
| xienze wrote:
| Inflation, and also the dollar is basically at par with the
| Euro now. Throw in VAT and there you have it.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Maybe you can snatch up some on sale. I picked up my dad a
| base model M1 Air for 880EUR last autumn. Should be good
| value, since he got 10 years out of the last one.
| MilaM wrote:
| Considering the shared GPU memory, 8 GB is going to be very
| limiting going forward. Also, this Mac is very likely going to
| have the same slower SSD like the recently released 13 inch M2
| MBP. This means you have to upgrade the SSD as well, if you
| care about performance. I would not recommend buying an MBA
| with base specs.
| mstipetic wrote:
| I have a base M1 MBA, I've been running k8s clusters,
| building stuff with elixir, python and go, doing web dev, all
| without any issues at all
| rollcat wrote:
| > Considering the shared GPU memory
|
| Shared memory and unified memory are very, veeery different
| things.
| Joeri wrote:
| And once you spec it up to the 16 / 512 that it minimally
| needs to be for any serious work, you are close to the (now
| discounted) price for the base 14 inch macbook pro at third
| party resellers. This air is currently way overpriced. At the
| price it was released it should have had 512 gb storage,
| which also would have avoided the performance issues. It is
| still going to sell really well though, so maybe the previous
| model was just underpriced.
| alxlu wrote:
| the air is thinner and lighter though. i think a lot of
| people (including myself) would consider that tradeoff
| worth it.
| MilaM wrote:
| I agree. I'm torn between the already discounted 14" Pro
| model and the new MBA. The weight difference is quite
| considerable, so it's a tough choice if you value
| portability. I'll have to compare them in the store before
| I decide.
| tfehring wrote:
| For reference, the slower speed seems to be around 1500
| MB/s read and write, compared to 3000 MB/s read speeds for
| the M1 MBP [0]. While there are definitely applications
| that would benefit from the extra speed, I wouldn't call
| 1500 MB/s - ~2.5x the speed of the fastest SATA SSDs - a
| "performance issue."
|
| [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/26/base-m2-13-inch-
| macbook...
| vardump wrote:
| Why on earth would you compare it to SATA SSDs?
|
| Common ~$100-150 1 TB M.2 SSDs read 7000 MB/s and write
| 5000 MB/s.
| uneventual wrote:
| It's basically the exact same pricing as the US. $1 [?] EUR1
| today and $1200 * 1.25 for VAT equals $1500.
| rayiner wrote:
| And the US price is also only $100 more than the nominal
| price of the base model of the original MacBook in early
| 2008, and $300 less adjusted for inflation.
| jsight wrote:
| I think those had 4GB and complaints about not enough
| memory. 14 years later, we have 8 GB and complaints about
| not enough memory.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| The previous M1 base model was (still is) 899EUR I believe?
| april_22 wrote:
| I think you can get it a lot cheaper at a lot of retailers
| now
| marricks wrote:
| Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student
| with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background?
|
| People complaining about low ram sound like the bros asking how
| many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people.
|
| Just complain about price, yeah, it is expensive!
|
| ---
|
| This is coming from someone who does light gaming on an 8gb m1
| MacBook Air and has plenty of tabs open. I don't see lag.
|
| Then again, I use safari, maybe Chrome it'd be different.
| hajile wrote:
| 8GB results in lots of swapping with the SSD which greatly
| shortens SSD lifespan. That alone was reason enough to have
| 16GB.
|
| I have an air for work with 16GB and frequently bump up
| against the amount of memory. I'm currently just waiting on
| reviews to decide between a 24GB Air and a 32GB Pro.
| pen2l wrote:
| My super light and thin [1] Carbon X1 Thinkpad from about 5
| years ago has 16gb ram, half TB SSD and still runs like a
| champ with 200 tabs open.
|
| It's just strange to see a premium brand product not being
| able to compete with same-category class products from a
| half-decade ago.
|
| [1]: Lighter, in fact, than this MB Air M2
| boardwaalk wrote:
| You can spec it with or 16 or 24 GB and the CPU is going to
| be miles faster than your Thinkpad.
|
| Sometimes I think people just want to feel good about their
| purchases... It's 5 years old, it's okay if it's not top of
| the line anymore.
| 2143 wrote:
| > Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student
| with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background?
|
| How about a college student who contributes to large open
| source projects? (eg. Chromium or Firefox -- I don't know if
| their memory footprint situation improved so these examples
| might not be valid today, but they definitely were back in
| the day). Don't underestimate college students ;)
|
| People who complain about 8 GB being too low probably have a
| good reason.
|
| I know I needed more than 8 GB because my 8 GB memory laptop
| always had it full (and was using swap) whenever I was using
| it for software development (and this laptop was already an
| upgrade from 4 GB).
|
| However, I also know that I don't need more than 24 GB,
| because my utilization never reach anywhere close to that in
| practice.
|
| The problem is more pronounced on computers with memory that
| cannot be upgraded.
|
| > asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for
| most people.
|
| Where I'm at, the F10 BMW 525d used to come with a creamy
| smooth 6 cylinder straight six motor. Made a little over 200
| hp and 460 Nm of torque.
|
| Later, they changed the engine to a highly tuned 4 cylinder
| with nearly identical power and torque (still called "525d").
| Infact, the 4 cyl motor has a little over 10 horses more than
| the 6 cyl, but it came at a higher rpm.
|
| The driving experience was noticeably different. The 6
| cylinder engine just felt effortless; in-gear acceleration
| (which matters during overtakes) was simply better. The 4 cyl
| motor felt strained.
|
| Also, there's the other point that you'd know if you're into
| engines -- straight 6 engines are inherently balanced and
| yadda yadda (=> no engine vibrations => very smooth), while
| other configurations need balancer shafts (which can't really
| be perfected), so the straight 6 engines are slightly more
| "clean" from an engineering perspective.
|
| Sure, 120 km/h is 120 km/h regardless of cylinder count, but
| that's not the point. Environmental considerations are also a
| different matter.
| nightski wrote:
| Sounds like Apple. For a premium price they give you only
| bare minimum and if you want anything more you can pay
| thousands of dollars in pure premium and profit for Apple.
|
| Of course sheep will keep buying these things.
| thrill wrote:
| There's no reason to insult people.
| [deleted]
| nightski wrote:
| There is when they are paying $200 for 8GB of ram.
| ajuc wrote:
| > Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram
|
| Typical Air user would be fine performance-wise with any
| laptop made in last 10 years TBH.
|
| It's a premium product that is priced accordingly, so it's
| fine to complain about substandard specs.
| pivo wrote:
| We had to replace my wife's intel MBP with 8G of memory
| because it was just not sufficient. She just does simple
| stuff with her laptop, web browsing, occasional videos,
| google spreadsheets and email. The thing would just grind to
| a halt. We bought a 16G MBP and she's been fine.
|
| I'm sure the ARM laptops are better with only 8G but I'm not
| going to test that idea. 16G is the bottom line for us from
| now on.
| pletnes wrote:
| I disagree, RAM is super important. But I went from win10
| with 32 GB + dedicated nvidia with 4 GB to M1 on a mbp with
| just 16 GB. The M1 is still so much faster it's like swapping
| a forklift with a fighter jet. I don't think the numbers are
| comparable without more analysis of the workload and OS. FWIW
| I'm doing coding and data analysis with python and 99 tabs in
| 3 different browsers on both machines.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Yes. In college I had many tabs and many word documents open,
| a few IDEs, horribly inefficient LMS or video sharing sites,
| and massive lecture videos. Maybe a few chat apps to keep in
| touch with classmates.
|
| If you've used google chrome with messenger dot com, that's
| already eating into the ram budget a good amount.
| eropple wrote:
| Having had an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM--under _very_ light use
| it was great, but under anything a little more taxing (a good
| number of tabs, having Discord open, a relatively "light"
| creative app like Logic or Fusion 360) it would very rapidly
| not just get bad, but get stop-the-world awful. (edit: and as
| a sibling poster notes, plugging it into an external monitor
| made things a lot worse!)
|
| I don't know if MacOS's low-RAM behavior has anything
| particular to it that makes it act so erratically, but it's
| the only time using a Mac in the last ten years where I've
| gone "oh, this _sucks_. " Going to 16GB of RAM is a way
| better spot, I think, for folks who want more than _strictly_
| web-browser-and-keyboard. (And those folks are probably
| better off with an iPad in 2022 I think? The current iPads
| are great.)
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| Fusion is anything but light, and still not optimized for
| M1 (still a Rosetta app). Even on a beefy Workstation, it's
| no fun. Logic is better but not exactly light if you have
| multiple track, AU plug-in...
|
| So that's not surprising - heck, with 16gb or ram it's not
| a walk in the park. I've discussed with owner a Mac studio,
| and they were not happy for Fusion either, that's with 64gb
| of ram so...
| eropple wrote:
| In my experience, Fusion and Logic both quite well on M1s
| with 16GB of RAM, no other changes. One variable makes a
| ton of difference.
| Aperocky wrote:
| I have a M1 with 16G ram. I don't think 8GB ram is even
| feasible - and that's coming from a user whose primary
| interface is terminal.
|
| 16GB is great though, never had a problem with RAM issue.
| throw34 wrote:
| Usually it's what's being run inside the terminal that
| matters. ssh? no big deal. ffmpeg? can slow a machine
| down and can have a significant memory footprint.
|
| YMMV
| april_22 wrote:
| Why is that though? I have a ten year old machine at home
| with 8gigs of ram and it smoothly runs with alot of
| chrome tabs open?
| jandrese wrote:
| My feeling is that 8GB is barely adequate in 2020 for light
| or medium-light usage, a couple of MacOS updates and a few
| more apps switching to Electron and you're going to be
| chugging hard. This wouldn't be a problem except that the RAM
| can't be upgraded so you have a laptop that would probably
| last 6-8 years easy likely being kneecapped in 2-4 years
| instead.
| donny2018 wrote:
| As an owner of an 8gb M1 Air, I now think that a machine
| for "light usage" that can barely handle a half dozen of
| open tabs and 1 Docker container shouldn't cost even half
| as much. I bought it for about $1700 with 512Gb SSD.
|
| In fact, Apple should stop offering 8GB versions at this
| point as MacOS is very memory hungry compared to Windows.
| That yellow "memory pressure" graph is irritating.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college
| student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background?_
|
| If we're going to play that game, which college student
| requires a new MacBook Air at all?
|
| I'm an industry professional and do my development on used
| ThinkPads. Sure there are are some people out there who need
| more processing power than I do, but not many, and certainly
| not in college.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Remember it's not 8gb of _dedicated_ RAM. It 's 8gb shared
| with the video subsystem. Let's see how far that goes when
| you plug it into a 4K monitor and/or do anything that
| requires GPU acceleration (which can include simply decoding
| video).
|
| I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the
| circumstances. At least this thing has the option for 24gb
| though. I just wish that was a stocked model so you could
| just walk into a store and buy one without having to order
| it.
| lalaithion wrote:
| I have an 8gb M1 Air, and use it plugged into a 1440p
| monitor while watching video or in video calls. _Maybe_ 4k
| would make a difference, I don 't know--but most people
| don't have 4k monitors. 8gb is perfectly fine for me, and
| I'm probably in the top 10% of users as far as being a
| power user goes.
| bdhess wrote:
| I use my 8 GB M1 Air with a 5K display regularly and the
| only situation where it struggles is gaming. Browsing with
| zillions of tabs, video, etc is beautiful and lag free.
| eropple wrote:
| For what it's worth--when I had an 8GB Air, decoding video
| in a browser didn't seem to really impact performance.
| Plugging in an external monitor, though, was not a fun
| time.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| I have a 32Gb M1 Pro as a work laptop and connecting a
| retina 4K external display is not a fun experience for me
| either. It was very surprising to see it fail to maintain
| 60fps in the OS' own animations.
| whynaut wrote:
| Are you using the built-in HDMI port, or a dongle? I had
| the same issue before switching off the dongle.
| phren0logy wrote:
| That seems like something is wrong - if this is a known
| issue with such capable hardware I'd find that shocking
| 1123581321 wrote:
| The SoC contains hardware decoders and external monitors
| don't require a lot of video memory per se.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > and external monitors don't require a lot of video
| memory per se.
|
| That depends. Your average 1080p display doesn't really
| use a ton of video memory, but a 5k display connected to
| an internal 1440p display? That's a pretty huge
| framebuffer. AFAIK, Quartz also has a separate video
| buffer for each individual window, ranging from 50-150mb
| for the average application. Add it all up, and I agree
| that 8gb is pretty low, even with swap. Macs are memory-
| hungry devices, limiting your physical memory to 8gb is
| going to be really difficult to work with on anything
| that isn't text editing or light web browsing.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I agree you hit memory limits per application if you run
| a lot at once, but WindowServer roughly uses about 10-20%
| more memory on 4-5k vs. 2k, running the same
| applications. The 1080 plus the external, perhaps 15-25%.
| I'm not saying this means 8GB is the right amount of RAM
| for you.
| adrr wrote:
| How many people are using external display on an entry
| level laptop? Think of all you family members and friends
| who aren't in the software field. I don't even use an
| external monitor on my personal laptop and its MBP 16"
| Pro with 32GB of ram. At most I side car an Ipad but that
| is more power user stuff.
|
| Air with 8 GM of ram is perfect for a personal laptop
| where your primary focus is web browsing, watching media
| and occasional video/photo editing.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Air with 8 GM of ram is perfect for a personal laptop
| where your primary focus is web browsing, watching media
| and occasional video/photo editing.
|
| I hear people say that today, but how is it going to feel
| in 2025, when you try loading up MacOS 16 on it? Given
| the trend of Apple's development, I don't think 8 gigs is
| going to be sufficient for most people going forward.
| That's basically iPad-tier memory constraints on a
| desktop-class operating system.
| adrr wrote:
| Do people upgrade? I still see a bunch of old safari
| versions in our web traffic. It's the biggest thorn in my
| side supporting them.
|
| One thing that is a problem is that web pages get bigger
| and bigger and more resource intense. I doubt my 2011 air
| could handle a modern day web page with videos and a
| bunch of css transforms like on the apple site.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Do people upgrade? I still see a bunch of old safari
| versions in our web traffic. It's the biggest thorn in my
| side supporting them.
|
| I believe Apple is pretty good about keeping people on
| the latest versions of their software, but it wouldn't
| surprise me if there were a few stragglers or people
| using EOL devices that are stranded on an older build. I
| can definitely believe that it's a PITA supporting them,
| though. Working around MacOS shenanigans is the most
| frustrating part of my job too.
|
| > One thing that is a problem is that web pages get
| bigger and bigger and more resource intense.
|
| Eh... I'm not sure if I agree with that sentiment. In the
| early 2000s there were also people saying "desktop apps
| are going to get bigger and more resource-intensive", but
| that never really happened. In fact, the Java runtimes
| people used in that era were usually heavier than modern
| applications today, or evestn Electron-bundled programs.
| IMO, the web has been resource-intensive ever since
| Javascript became the lingua franca. Nowadays, I think
| we're making progress to _reduce_ the resources used on
| websites. Things like WASM and lighter JS frameworks are
| going to make all the difference here. In fact, I can
| even see ourselves in another Web2 golden age in a few
| years. I personally don 't think the SAAS landscape is
| long for this earth, and once it fades away, there will
| be less incentive to make bloated, broken applications
| and more of a focus on refining user experience and
| performance.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Do normal people _not_ use their laptops like an iPad
| with a slightly less painful word processor experience?
| morganw wrote:
| I have a Pro Display XDR for working at home w/ a 16"
| MacBook Pro M1 Max. I use it with my personal MacBook Air
| M1, too. I like my spreadsheets for personal finance BIG.
|
| It's not just the GPU that shares memory with the CPU.
| The "media engine" buffers are in there, too at 18
| megabytes per frame for 4k reference pictures in the
| decoded picture buffer. The decoder, scaler, GPU, and
| DRAM are fast enough to have several tracks of 4k (which
| even the iPhone 11 & SE can shoot), so don't let RAM size
| be your limit. I'm happy to see a max of 24GB vs. the
| M1's 16GB.
| bluedino wrote:
| > How many people are using external display on an entry
| level laptop?
|
| Everyone from the sounds of it. Half the threads on
| /r/mac are from people that want to connect 2/3 monitors
| to their M1 MacBooks
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| >I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the
| circumstances.
|
| I think Apple has a far better understanding, backed by
| actual data, of the circumstances than you, or indeed
| anyone here. My wife is still using her 2015 Air and has
| yet to plug it into anything, let alone 4k or 5k monitors
| that appears to be the "end game scenario" for posters
| here.
|
| If you are posting on HN, then 8GB is not enough for you. I
| bought a 16GB M1 Air and it was great, and the day it came
| out I bought a 64GB M1 Max. But 8GB is more than enough for
| most of Apple's customers, and I'm sure they have the data
| to back that up.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I think you're overstating the technical weight going
| into this decision. I think it's almost all marketing.
|
| Remember the 16gb iPhone? It really just existed to make
| the 32/64gb models look more reasonable and so Apple
| could say "From $lower_price_point".
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Confused by your reply. It is absolutely all marketing.
| Driven by data. They know their market, and the market
| for an 8GB M2 Air is not the HN crowd. Further, they know
| that the HN market exists, and _will pay more_ for 16GB.
| jmull wrote:
| For a frame of reference, one full frame buffer for a 4K
| monitor is around 32MB. Put another way, you can have about
| 32 of them per GB of RAM.
|
| Not that you can't use plenty of GPU RAM, but 8GB gives you
| a lot of room to work with. (Video decoding need all that
| much -- probably three buffers worth per stream, and at the
| size of the video, not the screen.)
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| If you think a compositor only holds a single frame
| buffer (or even up to three), boy do I have some news for
| you about the last 30 years.
| jmull wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding my comment.
| numpad0 wrote:
| This just occurred to me: They should add DRAM interface to
| M chips. Or maybe a RAM over PCIe device. Those RAM chips
| are gigantic off-die cache, can't replace RAM.
| bluedino wrote:
| > Remember it's not 8gb of dedicated RAM. It's 8gb shared
| with the video subsystem.
|
| Just as it was before, with the Intel chips. Sure you had
| 64MB of eDRAM or whatever they called it as a cache but you
| were still using system memory for video.
| Nursie wrote:
| > Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram
|
| The developer for whom a macbook air brings a huge amount of
| power?
|
| I mean, they aren't low-end when compared to the general
| laptop market, they're awesome!
| dewey wrote:
| You responded to a comment about the "typical Air buyer". A
| developer is really not the typical Air buyer and more the
| target audience for a Pro line product even if that
| specific model is plenty fast.
| adwww wrote:
| I think the high price actually means that is a typical
| user. The original casual user type this has been
| designed for likely use iPads or Chromebooks at this
| point.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| For what it's worth, I bought my partner an 8gb Air a
| couple months ago. I had reservations about that amount
| of memory but she insisted on not spending more money. As
| far as she's told me she's experienced no performance
| issues whatsoever as a non-developer (she uses her laptop
| for video conferencing, email, and web browsing).
| ratww wrote:
| I use my 8GB one for development (mostly web and Cocoa,
| but also some 3d stuff w/Metal) and the only issues are
| with things like Microsoft Teams or some other memory
| hog, but even my co-workers with 32GB machines suffer
| with those, so I guess it's alright.
| CamelRocketFish wrote:
| I switched to running MS teams in safari as the app was
| terribly resource intensive. Unfortunately it's only
| safari that works with voice/video calls.
| PKop wrote:
| Because the $ is currently so strong against Euro, and others.
| girishso wrote:
| Is that going to change anytime soon? Genuinely interested
| because all currencies, other than USD are depreciating.
| PKop wrote:
| Unless Western leaders or US particularly, want a severe
| global recession to persist, I think they will eventually
| pursue whatever means necessary to weaken $ and help
| Europe, rest of world, perhaps with a new "Plaza Accord"
| type arrangement[0].
|
| This is _if_ one believes they actually care about
| stabilizing European industry and economy and not rather
| that they are keen on seeing global chaos for a period of
| time and a weaker Europe dependent on US instead of having
| close trade relations with Russia and a thriving domestic
| industrial sector (which they have with cheap Russian
| energy, which they don 't with sanction and less supplied
| more expensive substitutes), in service to US's own
| relative position becoming stronger and maintenance of
| global hegemony.
|
| Many analysts, particularly leaders form China, have opined
| on the nature of US periodic "harvesting" through dollar
| strengthening policy which crushes developing (and now even
| developed) countries so as to maintain their reserve
| currency status and relative global strength (even
| conceding that in short term everyone experiences pain as
| result). Great speech from Qiao Liang, a Chinese PLA Major-
| General articulating the nature of the reserve $ and the
| way US uses it as financial weapon particularly when they
| strengthen it to temporarily crush world economy [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord
|
| [1] http://chinascope.org/archives/6458
|
| ^From link General Qio Lian quote: "Not many people had a
| clear understanding of this at the time. People, including
| economists and financial experts, didn't realize that the
| most important thing in the 20th century was not World War
| I, World War II, or the disintegration of the USSR, but
| rather the August 15, 1971, disconnection between the U.S.
| dollar and gold."
|
| Precient insight into developing Ukraine crises, (speech
| made in 2015):
|
| "Where else did [US] target? Ukraine, the connection
| between the EU and Russia. Of course there were some
| problems under Ukraine President Yanukovych's
| administration, but the reason that the Americans picked it
| was not simply because of his problem. They had three
| goals: teach a lesson to Yanukovych who didn't listen to
| the U.S., _prevent the EU from getting too close to Russia,
| and create a bad investment environment in Europe._ "
|
| ^In the context of recent financial sanctions against
| Russian trade and currency, this is exactly what is
| happening across Europe right now.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| How is that last part prescient? That's a year after
| Euromaidan. Ever since then, 2014, critics have always
| lambasted any US/EU in support of the Ukrainian people.
| Why? Because geopolitically Ukraine was meant to be
| another Belarus, a patsy state, for Russia and its
| allies. That statement is the opposite of prescient, in
| that we now see the mask off and the devil that patsy
| Ukrainian governments were actually making a deal with.
| PKop wrote:
| Ukraine is a patsy regardless of who dominates that
| region, as allying with US has led to the complete
| destruction of their country. They picked the wrong horse
| to follow. If they stuck with Russia, they wouldn't be in
| this situation (would US have invaded?).
|
| It's prescient because it hints as US long term interest
| in keeping Europe and Russia apart (in recent times seen
| most clearly with meddling with Nord Stream 2 pipeline
| agreement, and encouraging sanctions that are on their
| way to destroying European industrial power and
| impoverishing their citizens on account of lack of cheap
| energy).
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > allying with US
|
| and Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, France,
| UK, Spain, Slovakia, Georgia, and everyone else who
| understands what a bloody nightmare Russia has been the
| last 100 years. Ask any closest neighbor: Pole, Slovak,
| or Georgian 10 years ago how much they trust anything
| Russia says.
|
| > They picked the wrong horse to follow. If they stuck
| with Russia, they wouldn't be in this situation (would US
| have invaded?).
|
| Seriously? They picked the wrong ally because the other
| would invade and murder them? Should France have allied
| with Germany against UK in WW2 instead too? We already
| know US won't invade with the script flipped; Belarus
| exists.
|
| > seen most clearly with meddling with Nord Stream 2
| pipeline agreement
|
| Are you living under a rock? Every civilized country now
| unanimously realizes how stupid trying to Nord Stream 2
| with Russia was, including Germany.
|
| I am so sick and tired of the goalposts being moved for
| Russian apologetics. Invasion of Georgia, Donbas, and now
| full scale invasion of Ukraine. I thought, surely, surely
| if Russia invades all of Ukraine, there's no possible way
| some fool can try to make these arguments anymore.
| PKop wrote:
| >how stupid trying to Nord Stream 2
|
| No. In fact, soon they will see how stupid cancelling it
| was and reopen it willingly.
|
| Look around at all the industrial heads telling you their
| production will collapse soon without oil and gas
| imports. This was self inflicted from sanctions and
| confiscating Russian reserves.
|
| >because the other would invade and murder them
|
| Russia is incapable of invading the rest of Europe. They
| don't have enough troops or power to do this. And they
| don't have any national interest in pursuing this.
| Invading half of Ukraine is difficult enough.
| Encroachment of NATO forces and weapons along a strategic
| position on Russia's border (they said for years Ukraine
| was existential and could never align with NATO) was a
| terrible decision that Europe went along with while it
| was only in US's interest to cause chaos and threaten
| Russia's security interest that way.
|
| Now all of Europe pays the price.
|
| This is real politik. No I do not think it was in
| Germany's interest to destroy their own domestic economy
| by backing US's NATO schemes.
|
| It is in Germany and rest of Europe's interest to have
| good relations with Russia and stop NATO expansion on
| their border. To have a cheap plentiful energy supply
| right nearby not import expensive gas from far away.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Lavrov? Is that you?
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| > whatever means necessary to weaken $ and help Europe,
| rest of world
|
| I might be misunderstanding something here, but wouldn't
| a weak dollar strengthen the US economy (in terms of
| exports) relative to other peer economies (e.g. Euro
| area, the UK, Japan)?
| PKop wrote:
| Yes and I think there are often conflicting interests
| around who gains and who loses even within the US from a
| strong or weak dollar.
|
| But this is why I noted that, every so often US for
| geopolitical reason seems willing to except even domestic
| pain for _some_ period of time if the relative position
| of US increases due to the rest of world suffering more
| during strong-dollar periods.
|
| Give that article a read to understand what I'm saying
| regarding periodic "harvesting" of rest of world economy
| (for one, via financial flows into $ and assets as safe
| haven). Arguably Volcker's extreme tightening in 1970's,
| with his willingness to crush even the domestic economy
| for a time, was due to geopolitical interests to maintain
| trust in the $ as reserve currency and to crush USSR
| economy by destroying commodity prices and bankrupting
| their economy partially due to their inability to print
| the currency of which they had some external debts in.
|
| But I think this is a complex topic you can find many
| arguments both ways. And US policy has gone back at forth
| at times pursing both strong and weak for their own
| interest.
|
| Though I didn't mean to imply weak dollar wouldn't also
| boost US domestic economy. But to the thrust of my post
| which way US regime wants to go depends on current
| geopolitical context.
| fulafel wrote:
| Currency depreciation forecast from oecd:
| https://data.oecd.org/price/inflation-
| forecast.htm#indicator...
| noir_lord wrote:
| USD is _the_ global reserve currency - when shit goes
| sideways everyone jumps on the dollar and that pushes it 's
| value up and the value of the other currencies down.
|
| In the case of the EU/Euro you've also got an active
| shooting war, massive inflation and the economic damage
| that the UK did both to itself and the EU and a bunch of
| other stuff.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| MacBook Air M2 will most probably replace my current 2018 MacBook
| Pro. My only gripe with MacBook Air M1 was crappy RAM which they
| addressed (24GB). It's still less than what I have (32GB) I
| expect M2 will make up for that.
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| My dealbreaker for the MBA is single external monitor support
| duxup wrote:
| There are some work arounds for that limit on the M1.
| Depending on your situation that might be an acceptable
| solution.
| bank_daddy wrote:
| I'm having no issues running two displays with my MBA M1. The
| second display does require a DisplayLink adapter though.
| boringg wrote:
| Single monitor support that's it? Why is that? Seems like an
| odd limitation.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Have to justify the Pro. Same in regard to the ram
| eptcyka wrote:
| The regular 13" is also limited to a single external
| output. I feel burned, because I got one before the 14
| and 16 inch models were announced.
| highwaylights wrote:
| This is the real problem right here and why I was ready to
| upgrade day one. Not interested in the M2 Air now. I'm sure
| it's all very nice but the only thing missing from my Air
| that I really wanted was multiple display output.
| tra3 wrote:
| You can have multiple display support with Display Link.
| It's not ideal because it consumes CPU, but it's working
| fine with my M1 MBA. If I had to do it again, I'd likely
| just purchase a real nice single monitor.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Looked into it but the need to grant screen recording
| permission really made me uncomfortable.
|
| EDIT: not sure why this was downvoted. All DisplayLink
| devices need to be granted screen recording permission to
| work on macOS.
| aemadrid wrote:
| with DisplayLink I'm running two external monitors just fine.
| woodylondon wrote:
| I maybe being dumb here - but why can you not plugin a USB-C
| dock that has dual HDMI output ? I get you cannot dual
| monitor direct from laptop > screens. I would always use a
| dock with single cable. e.g https://www.belkin.com/uk/docks-
| hubs/connect-pro-thunderbolt...
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Because that requires DisplayPort MultiStream Transport,
| which Apple's chipsets for unknown reasons do not support.
| nico_h wrote:
| MY only gripe with the M1 and M2 Air the lack of support for
| more than a single external screen. I feel like it's just a
| pure marketing play to only support more than one external
| screen on the 14" pro. They have Magsafe and two thunderbolt 3
| / USB 4 ports, they could totally support 2 Apple studio
| displays, at least on the 24GB model.
| evo_9 wrote:
| I switched to a single ultra wide 38 from LG and it was a
| huge improvement over my dual monitor setup. I'm on M1 Air,
| and switched my work pc to the same.
| pc86 wrote:
| I've been really considering an ultra-wide and have heard
| extremely polarized opinions on it. Is there anything
| specific that you prefer over two widescreen monitors?
| evo_9 wrote:
| The lack of a center bar was a bigger deal than I
| expected. Being able to extend my SQL window to the full
| screen seeing all columns for example, beyond 'just
| nice'.
|
| Same with code, not always but sometimes I need a wider
| view.
|
| There are a lot of subtle gains that I'm probably
| forgetting about and really only one negative that I've
| run into - games don't play super nice on the ultra-wide,
| but that's not really what I use this machine for.
|
| Oh another bonus I forgot - watching shows / movies on it
| is really nice. I have very rarely considered this but
| with an 18 month old, you find you have to squeeze in
| time here/there, we had to stop the new batman movie on
| HBO with 20 minutes left... I probably would not have
| ever watched the ending (it was pretty good!) if I didn't
| have that display, it was a nice way to spend 20 minutes
| during lunch and I've been watching movies/shows on it
| randomly during lunch since. It's pretty great for this
| use too.
| joshspankit wrote:
| If you had 3 wide monitors instead, would that make the
| ultrawide less appealing?
|
| It would solve the "center bar" issue, for example
| evo_9 wrote:
| For me that's just too much screen, but I have guys
| (DevOps in particular) that do exactly that.
| april_22 wrote:
| I find it too distracting. When I have multiple screens I
| spend way too much time thinking about what I should put
| on which screen.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| The other reason I enjoy my ultrawide is that there are
| fewer cables to deal with and less hardware needed to mount
| the monitors. I bought a 34" UW a couple of years back. But
| I reckon my next upgrade I'm going to the superwides.
| dijit wrote:
| > They could totally support 2 Apple studio displays, at
| least on the 24GB model.
|
| What are you basing this assumption on?
| ST2084 wrote:
| Complete hot air. It's about PCIE lanes
| mciancia wrote:
| How so?
| dijit wrote:
| There's a lot that goes into this and it's not Apples
| (heh) to Oranges.
|
| a normal Intel machine has some kind of southbridge, this
| means a traditional CPU that has 16 PCIe lanes total
| (this is actually the standard for intel) can have more
| than just 16x lanes, usually a PCH can add another 20
| with an internal PCI switch.
|
| Great in theory, but it does mean you can be constrained
| in bandwidth since that switch is limited to 16x on the
| upstream, in fact usually there's only 4! upstream PCIe
| connections to the CPU and there's some natively attached
| items (like the USB controller and some lanes of a GPU).
|
| Apple's M-series CPUs _do not have_ any southbridge or
| PCI switch, you get the full bandwidth of the lanes; this
| is why Apple M1 can run all of its ports at native speed
| at the same time, (where most laptops can 't).
|
| It also means that when you dedicate PCIe lanes for
| graphics, they can't just take away bandwidth from
| inactive ports.
|
| It's only when they increase the die area and add more
| lanes that they dedicate more lanes to attachable
| graphics.
|
| It's not a soft limitation, it's a trade-off.
|
| They're banking on the fact that casual consumers won't
| use more than 2 displays (1 internal, 1 external); and
| that casual consumers would prefer more ports.
| wtallis wrote:
| Displays do not connect over PCIe; GPUs do.
| eins1234 wrote:
| > I feel like it's just a pure marketing play to only support
| more than one external screen on the 14" pro.
|
| I'm convinced it's exactly this. I gave them the benefit of
| the doubt with the M1 that it's just a first-gen quirk,
| something that they managed to address with the Pro and Max
| and would become a non-issue going forward.
|
| But now that M2 has been introduced with the same limitation,
| it's become crystal clear that this is yet another classic
| Apple anti-consumer profit-seeking tactic.
|
| Hoping the rest of the industry can eventually catch up to
| and hopefully overtake Apple silicon in performance/watt and
| discourage this kind of behavior, but given the sheer amount
| of resources they have available compared to every other
| player, I'm not holding my breath.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Might you or someone else be able to say why the state of the
| art Macbook is not capable of driving two monitors? Does this
| apply to all model or is this only an issue on the 14" MBPs
| and Airs?
| wmf wrote:
| The M1 and M2 have the hardware to drive two displays (the
| internal counts as one). The M1 Pro and M1 Max support four
| displays and the M1 Ultra probably supports eight.
| louissm_it wrote:
| As someone who upgraded from an Intel Mac to an M1 mac, the
| memory is a non-issue. Three years ago I would have laughed
| if you said I would be happy with "only" 8GB, but now I am.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I thought I'd be happy with 8GB based on benchmarks and
| sensationalistic videos (thanks, Max Tech), but I
| absolutely wasn't. Apple silicon Macs or maybe Macs in
| general handle high memory pressure (graph in the red)
| terribly. The system will get extremely slow and laggy,
| develop audio issues and eventually lock up.
|
| I ran into that all the time on the 8GB model (admittedly
| with multiple RAM-intensive apps and lots of tabs open),
| while it now happens very rarely on my 16GB model.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Is that high memory pressure slowness issue the same when
| there is lots of HD space left? Apple devices have had
| issues with "low" amounts of HD space for a long time,
| and I'm curious if the M* continue the trend.
|
| Also: this makes a red flag of the recent shift to half-
| speed drive performance
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _MY only gripe with the M1 and M2 Air the lack of support
| for more than a single external screen._
|
| Officially Apple specs out a single external screen, but
| using DisplayPort you can do more. The video below shows how
| to connect an unreasonable number of external monitors to an
| Apple Silicon laptop, but a two-external-monitor
| configuration doesn't seem too crazy.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jLAwSvs7vE
| ksala_ wrote:
| DisplayLink*
|
| I don't have any personal preference (I'm fine with a big
| single monitor/ultrawide) but from reading around and
| listening to other experience you're likely to hit
| performance/compatibility issues with that since it's a
| software solution.
| mciancia wrote:
| Displaylink doesn't support hidpi monitors on macOS with
| fractional scaling (unless they fixed it in last month or
| so). For me this is a deal breaker since I have 27" 4k
| monitors which IMO work best at 125%-150% scaling
| staticfloat wrote:
| Small correction; it's DisplayLink, not DisplayPort. You
| have to use DisplayLink because they do some part in
| software as a part of their driver (which you must download
| and install) whereas the native Apple stuff has some
| internal hardware limitation.
|
| I run three 1080p monitors off of my M1Pro, and I don't
| notice any heavy CPU load from whatever software load the
| driver may be adding.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Small correction; it's DisplayLink, not DisplayPort._
|
| Thanks, _staticfloat_ and _ksala__!
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Displaylink is lossy software compression of your video
| stream, and when I last explored using it with Macs in a
| professional setting ~3 years ago the software was
| borderline unsupported by the vendor on the Mac platform
| and absolutely unreliable.
| db39 wrote:
| Very excited about the new Air. The size (& weight!) to
| performance and battery life is unmatched as far as I can tell.
| It's literally the laptop I dreamed they would make after I
| stopped daily-driving my 2012 retina pro in favour of a desktop a
| few years ago. It's going to be great for traveling.
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