[HN Gopher] New 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
___________________________________________________________________
New 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
Author : dm
Score : 298 points
Date : 2024-03-04 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| bearjaws wrote:
| I am most interested to see if the M4 chip will dramatically
| improve performance of local LLMs.
|
| I like M1 Pro so far with models up to 30-70b parameters, but the
| memory bandwidth is my current limit.
|
| With a large jump in unified memory and bandwidth we could see
| 120b parameter models running on a laptop.
|
| As a side note, why does Apple continue to reference the Intel
| MacBook Air... It's over 6 years old now, no shit this new CPU is
| 16x faster...
| hhh wrote:
| To influence the (probably) still large user base of Intel
| macbook owners to upgrade I would assume
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Apple could dramatically improve performance if they just
| tasked _one_ Metal engineer on llama.cpp. Like, just to finish
| up flash attention and quantum KV cache, and optimize the Metal
| kernels.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if they could double performance.
|
| I know Apple is pushing MLX, and MLC-LLM is fast too, but in
| practice most Mac users (I think) are using llama.cpp based
| stacks.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I'm a senior software dev that is still using the last of the
| intel macs (granted a maxed out 16" not an air).
|
| These kind of comparisons are still valid for me. There are
| plenty of others less technical than me that want these too.
| The youngest intel Airs only just aged out of applecare
| coverage last year, and for most casual users getting 4 years
| out of an Apple computer is totally expected.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| My personal laptop is 7 years old so these comparisons are
| relevant to me, too. I've operated on my Air a bit to reduce
| thermal throttling and I don't use it for anything crazy so
| it's still useful, but one of these days I'll upgrade. I'm
| sure there are plenty of people like us with these old
| beasts.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What is the appeal of running this sort of stuff locally
| though? Its still slower and less memory than a cluster or just
| a strong server. Just ssh into some horsepower and keep your
| lap cold.
| retskrad wrote:
| I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and
| the new M3 Max Macbook Pro. Corporations have become pros at
| exploiting our human psychology. Their ads can make you believe
| that the smallest bump in improvements will make your older
| computer appear useless in comparison. That's why it's for the
| best if you avoid ads as much as possible.
| fh9302 wrote:
| The difference is really obvious during code compilation or
| other tasks that can take advantage of all cores.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Speaking only of the Air here: The newer laptop feels
| thicker, since it doesn't have the nice tapered front. In
| general use, outside of only one external display in
| clamshell mode, the M1 feels similar. If you push things,
| like for video editing or rendering, the M2 or M3 are
| markedly better.
|
| However, you quickly hit throttling if you push for more than
| a couple minutes at a time (like when you export in
| Handbrake, it will slow down and only run marginally faster
| than the M1, in my experience).
| bombcar wrote:
| Someone should sell a little app for Mac that glows red when
| an upgrade would have been useful (e.g, when you maxed out
| your max Mac).
|
| I suspect mine would be green almost all the time, even on
| this almost three year old M1 Max.
| bigfudge wrote:
| This is a cool idea, although presumably m3 would be faster
| even for single thread apps? Also, are there cases where
| memory bandwidth could leave cpu at less than 100% on m1
| but still be faster on m3?
| pama wrote:
| An interesting difference with the new pro models, if you want
| to pay around $5k, is that you can have 128Gb unified Ram in
| them and run inference locally with exciting LLMs.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I suspect LLM performance will be a differentiator for Pro
| and newer Apple laptops in coming years.
|
| If Apple releases on-device AI, this will be an effective way
| of getting people to upgrade like they used to, but haven't
| had to recently. For example, I bought Pro-level computers in
| my younger years, but now would only consider an MBA, mini,
| or iMac. But they could get me to go for a Pro if it were the
| only way to get more RAM for better AI performance. It will
| also likely shorten upgrade cycles since newer computers
| would have the latest and greatest performance. When I bought
| my M2 MBA years ago I suspected it would last me a long time.
| Now I'm not so sure since I don't have a ton of RAM.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| 5k for a computer with 128gb doesn't seem like a great deal.
| You can get that much ddr5 today for like $400 sometimes less
| than that on sale.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| yeah but you can't get an nvidia gpu with at least 128gb
| (H200) for less than $40k
| xcv123 wrote:
| > You can get that much ddr5 today for like $400
|
| Not comparable. M2 Ultra with 128GB RAM has 800 GB/s
| bandwidth.
|
| Maximum bandwidth for a DDR5 Intel 14900K system is 89.6
| GB/s. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/
| 236773/...
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems like a pretty speculative use. That much money would
| go a long way on a $20/month subscription, and the field is
| changing rapidly. Unless you're an AI researcher, might as
| well wait a year or two and see what changes?
| addandsubtract wrote:
| The M2 and M3 are more evolutions of the M series. If you
| already have an M1 machine, there's no real need to upgrade.
| But if you don't, the M3 seems like a great device to get.
| pier25 wrote:
| Depends which chips you're comparing.
|
| Eg: The M3 Max is a substantial improvement over the M2 Max
| in both CPU and GPU. But the M3 Pro is a moderate improvement
| at best compared to the M2 Pro.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Depends on your use case. Iirc all the m3 are 30% faster
| than m2 in single core.
| pier25 wrote:
| GPU maybe but CPU it's more like 15%.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| For sure, capitalism requires a certain level of consumer savvy
| to remain sane.
|
| For most real-world users, the M3 really is about 30% faster in
| single-core and 100% faster in multicore. That _is_ really
| significant for a lot of us, especially software engineers. But
| the really big speedups mentioned in Apple 's marketing are
| more niche and it takes some savvy to recognize that.
|
| (I'm plenty content with my M1 Max for now and I expect I'll
| continue to happily use it for a few more years)
| pier25 wrote:
| Maybe you don't really need a Max chip?
| brigadier132 wrote:
| > I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro
| and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro
|
| I don't know why you bought a new one. You can have two ways to
| look at this, one way is your ultra pessimistic view, my view
| is I don't need to upgrade my laptop ever 2 years anymore.
|
| Before the M1 Max I was upgrading so often because intel
| macbooks sucked so much. Now I can comfortably say I'm keeping
| my M1 Max for a decade.
|
| As for being "exploited" by ads, just don't be, stop mindless
| consumption...
| lancesells wrote:
| I'm on my first M1 but even with intel I got 5 to 6 years out
| of the Macbook Air.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| I'm compiling a lot of code, my hands got sweaty because of
| how hot the intel macbooks got.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| External keyboard and a laptop stand would have helped.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| at that point why am i using a laptop?
| justinclift wrote:
| For portability between locations? :)
| gamepsys wrote:
| As a dev I was getting ~4 years out of Intel MBPs. The old
| ones still did the job well, but the new ones just did
| everything fast enough to justify the expense. Now I just
| realized I have over 3 years on my M1 MBP, and I realize
| I'm closer to the middle of my upgrade cycle than the end.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| I max spec a laptop and ride it as long as I can. Replaced a
| 2012 MacBook Pro just last year, and will likely be doing the
| same around 2032 ;)
|
| I'm doing most of my daily driving on whatever computer work
| gives me anyway, this is just the personal dev/audio machine.
| I do the same with a gaming computer too though, my gaming
| laptop from like 7 years ago is still going strong. I turn
| down shiny graphics settings to get good FPS anyway, I care
| way more about gameplay than visuals.
| anneessens wrote:
| 'Just don't be exploited' by people who are literally paid to
| figure out how to exploit your psychological weaknesses?
| jmull wrote:
| > That's why it's for the best if you avoid ads as much as
| possible.
|
| I wouldn't exactly just avoid them, though most are useless, so
| it's not a bad idea. You just want to understand what they
| are... even honest ones will only present information that is a
| reason to buy.
|
| E.g., when I saw the iPhone 15 ads and the best thing they
| could say about was that it had some titanium, I knew it was a
| product I could ignore. (Not that I have an iPhone 14 either,
| but I already knew that one wasn't worth an upgrade to me).
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| The worst part about M3 is that they now have an 8GB Macbook
| Pro lineup.
|
| These "pro" machines have always been known for work and
| productivity, and 8GB just sounds like a piss poor product
| decision
| skadamat wrote:
| The WORST part is the 8GB Macbook Pro (base M3) doesn't
| support 2 external displays but this new Macbook Air (base
| M3) DOES. This is so confusing
| jhickok wrote:
| 8gb in a pro machine honestly wild. I guess it makes some
| sense if you consume content and you want a better screen and
| audio, but it still offends.
| caycep wrote:
| I feel like sometimes the bean counters win out too strongly
| at Apple...
| coolspot wrote:
| M2 also has 8GB model, e.g. MNEH3LL
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The "pro" isn't for work or productivity, its for the
| appearance of work and productivity. Most people who buy Macs
| don't really understand what they are getting, developers
| included.
| whynotminot wrote:
| > I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro
| and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro. Corporations have become pros
| at exploiting our human psychology. Their ads can make you
| believe that the smallest bump in improvements will make your
| older computer appear useless in comparison. That's why it's
| for the best if you avoid ads as much as possible.
|
| It's also why you should understand your personal use case and
| do research. I think this is on you, not Apple. Corpos gonna
| corpo -- you have to do the research to figure out whether the
| gains from new chips will actually impact your workflow.
| leo150 wrote:
| Let's put it this way. M1 Max can build some amount of code in
| 134 seconds. M3 Max can do it in 70 seconds. Does this sound
| like a small bump? Source: XcodeBenchmark
| xcv123 wrote:
| > I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro
| and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro
|
| If you bought a M3 Max just to fuck around on Facebook and
| Hacker News then of course you won't notice a difference. If
| you are running workloads that actually require that level of
| performance then you will notice a significant difference. M3
| Max is twice as fast at rendering 3D scenes in Cinebench.
| brewmarche wrote:
| > Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3
| now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is
| closed
| RamRodification wrote:
| The future is here!
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| Most interesting change:
|
| > Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3
| now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is
| closed ...
| input_sh wrote:
| So it's still limited to two monitors, but now one of them
| doesn't necessarily need to be the internal one?
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| Seems like it. Which is a huge win in my opinion. To bad the
| base MacBook Pro M3 14" doesn't have that feature
| benfa94 wrote:
| which version of the MacBook Pro 14" do i need to buy to
| have this feature?
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| With an M3 Pro or Max chip
| bombcar wrote:
| The M1 Max MacBook Pro can drive four monitors + the
| screen, at least.
| dataworm wrote:
| The base M3, it will gain this feature in a software
| update.
| dataworm wrote:
| It doesn't because the M3 has two dedicated DP outputs. One
| can be routed to the Thunderbolt and the other can't. On
| the M3 MBP, the DP to HDMI converter is connected to the
| former output, the display to the latter. On the MBA, the
| display is connected to the routable output. The M2 also
| has a routable output, you can connect two USB-C displays
| to an M2 Mac mini if you don't use the HDMI port. It's
| unclear why Apple didn't enable that feature on the M2 MBA.
|
| Edit: I had a brainfart and forgot that both ports are
| routable. It's market segmentation or stupidity like with
| the M2 MBA.
| dataworm wrote:
| Can't edit anymore: this also applies to the M2 MBP, and
| both of them could get this feature in a software update
| like the M3 MBP. But it's unlikely, because of greed.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| So I still need to use Instant View with my docking station,
| got it. Been using that on my M1 air to drive 2x4K displays
| (the 30Hz display isn't that useful if I'm mousing around,
| though)
| 93po wrote:
| if that only mirrors, can you set the built in display on
| the laptop to 4k so the external mirror is the full 4k too?
| elthran wrote:
| Apple Cynic/Windows user here with a genuine question - why is
| this interesting? I'm currently looking at my wife's old
| corporate-issued windows laptop, which is running 2 external
| monitors as well as it's own display - am I missing something
| here, or is this just a case of Apple being held to different
| standards to other manufacturers in terms of feature parity?
| scrlk wrote:
| M1/M2 MBAs are limited to one external display.
|
| The M3 MacBook Air relaxes this restriction by allowing two
| external displays.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| ... When the clamshell is closed. With an open one it is
| still just one external display.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which basically means the others could do it (all M1
| processors can handle two displays, which is either two
| for the Mac mini or internal + external for the laptops).
|
| The addition is the ability to have two external when
| closed; likely this could have mainly been done in
| software if they cared.
|
| (You can get more than one external on a laptop _with_
| the screen open if you go up to the Max or Pro or
| whatever.)
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Well, it's definitely "interesting" because it was a weird
| and user-unfriendly restriction on previous M1/M2 Airs and
| now it's gone. So that is interesting for sure.
|
| Perhaps more to the point, you're right -- Apple doesn't
| deserve to be lauded for removing something that was a dumb
| restriction in the first place. But it is interesting
| considering this is the most popular laptop in the world.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I don't think there is anything interesting. Someone on the
| hardware side thought it would be great to hardwire one of
| two the display controllers to the internal display. That
| would explain why M1 and M2 can't be fixed in a software
| update and why the Mac Mini supports two external displays.
|
| Restriction implies they made the deliberate decision to
| withhold or break functionally. Limitation is probably more
| accurate, because they didn't put the extra work to make it
| work properly.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Limitation is probably more accurate
|
| Yeah. I don't think there is anything
| interesting
|
| From an engineering standpoint? Heck no.
|
| From a consumer standpoint? Apple sells about six million
| Macs per year and the Air is their best-selling computer
| and anecdotally it is popular with the HN crowd. So it is
| objectively impactful. I would call that therefore
| "interesting" but at that point we're splitting semantic
| hairs so whatever.
| gxs wrote:
| This is far from a "genuine" question.
|
| It's easy to deduce that it's a big deal for macbook air
| users because it wasn't possible before.
|
| It's easy to deduce both from the article and from other
| comments here, which presumably you read if you're going
| through the trouble of responding to someone else's comment.
|
| I typically despise this type of question, where you're
| obviously trying to make a point but playing dumb and playing
| it off as if you have no clue what you're talking about.
|
| This type of question is used all over the place and super
| obnoxious.
|
| I'm not American, genuine question, why is it a big deal that
| you're getting free healthcare? I've had free healthcare my
| whole life, shrug.
|
| As a European, genuine question. Why is it a big deal that
| Biden wants to forgive student loan? I've gotten free
| education my whole life, shrug.
|
| As an apple user, why is it a big deal that Dell is extending
| it's warranty to 2 years? My apple device gets updates 4
| years later, shrug.
| skyyler wrote:
| It seems like their question struck a nerve. Did you really
| feel it necessary to bring up hot political issues to
| explain why it's interesting that the new apple laptops can
| drive two external displays?
|
| Just for clarity, it's so far from novel in the world of
| windows laptops that it's genuinely confusing why that
| would be an advertised feature.
| pquki4 wrote:
| How is Dell warranty comparable to iOS/MacOS updates? Maybe
| at least compare that to something related to operating
| system, like Windows 10/Ubuntu LTS support lifecycle, or
| Android major version updates, which are usually much
| longer than the 1 or 2 year warranty that comes with the
| device? That's too much a rant that is completely
| meaningless and way too cynical.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| It's interesting because the whole M# line started with a
| smart phone and built a pc out of that. As a result it has
| some unfortunate restrictions that aren't there when you
| build a machine out of capable yet pretty clunky intel
| hardware. I don't doubt there are similar tradeoffs in the
| WoS world but I'm not aware of what they are specifically.
|
| The restriction I am most annoyed with these days is the lack
| of external GPU passthrough. I'm not even sure the asahi
| Linux folks have gotten that working yet.
|
| So folks are probably just happy they're not having to deal
| with as many compromises and tradeoffs (they get to have
| their PC that works almost just like a smartphone but does
| more things their intel machine could now). That's totally
| understandable.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > As a result it has some unfortunate restrictions
|
| Ah, yes, "poor Apple couldn't find a way".
|
| Except it did for the more pricey models.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Well, yes. By using the bigger CPUs, which have more
| cores, more gpus and more IO hardware on chip.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| No ones saying "poor apple." The pricier models don't run
| the same soc. With the air you're getting the same
| constraints as an iPad. They made tradeoffs.
| pixelbath wrote:
| It's not interesting in a "wow, Macbooks can finally support
| two external displays" as much as "this does make this
| intentionally-small form factor slightly more tolerable."
|
| Comparing the port count/capabilities of the two isn't a
| fully fair comparison though. The Apple Silicon Macbook Air
| models are likely 1) much faster than that corporate-issued
| laptop (even if it's workstation class), and 2) much smaller
| and quieter (no fan noise even under load).
|
| Though I'm not sure why all the griping about how many
| monitors an Air can support; users can buy a Macbook Pro if
| they want more monitors? I don't understand the logic behind
| buying a tiny, thin laptop only to dock it as a workstation.
| pquki4 wrote:
| "Users can buy a MacBook Pro"
|
| as if $500 isn't money to you. Maybe it indeed isn't, but
| that is a lot of money to many people.
|
| FYI Intel Macbook Air has supported dual external monitors
| 2018-2020, and same for base Macbook Pro 2012 (Retina) -
| 2020.
| lozenge wrote:
| The limitation started because the M chip combined the CPU
| and GPU and combined the RAM with the VRAM. That's why its
| battery life and power efficiency blows Windows laptops out
| of the water. So they didn't just limit it for no reason.
| rvz wrote:
| Great news and another reason to upgrade to the M3 series if
| you're using an M1 and like to use local LLMs or anything AI.
|
| This time, it supports for up to two external displays with the
| lid closed.
|
| The Macbook Air with M1 is already discontinued. [0].
|
| Can't wait for the Mac mini with M3 Max or Mac Studio with M3
| Ultra.
|
| [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/04/apple-
| discontinues-m1-m...
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| it's so clear that they limit it to 24GB to prevent
| cannibalization of the macbook pro. I personally could go for a
| M3 base chip with 64GB or 128GB of memory.
| the-grump wrote:
| And, of course, it starts at 8GB of RAM to nudge you up from
| $1100 to $1300/$1500.
|
| At which point you might as well spring for the Pro.
|
| I can't fault the business logic but as someone who'd only use
| a Mac for occasional iOS development, this nudging upward
| dissuades me from pursuing that idea altogether.
| bombcar wrote:
| One you get to "reasonable specs" you're into the Pro, and
| they know it.
|
| The Air with 16GB is not too bad, especially if you get the
| discounts that are everywhere.
| danieldk wrote:
| I still want a MacBook Air with 32GB RAM or more. The Air is
| lighter and more compact than the Pro. (I currently use a
| MacBook Pro because of the memory limit on the Air.)
| ephemeral-life wrote:
| If you only use it for occasional ios dev, rather get a mac
| mini. As a bonus, when your done with it, put asahi linux on
| it and itd be a great home server.
| the-grump wrote:
| I've considered that and might end up taking that route but
| the nice thing about a MacBook is I can take it with me on
| trips and learn iOS when I get bored.
|
| There's a big server rack at home with multiple servers, so
| the Linux server part isn't a draw in my case.
| dbbk wrote:
| I mean, yeah, that's market segmentation. If you need more than
| 24GB you are certainly a Pro, not an Air customer.
| marban wrote:
| "MacBook Air can also run optimized AI models, including large
| language models (LLMs) and diffusion models for image generation
| locally with great performance."
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Worthless PR. Further down, another selling point is "MacBook
| Air supports cloud-based solutions, enabling users to run
| powerful productivity and creative apps that tap into the power
| of AI, such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Canva, and
| Adobe Firefly."
|
| Wow. Until they support CUDA or more ML/AI implementations on
| their chips, this is just marketing speak.
| eutropia wrote:
| I run Mixtral 8x-7B on my M1 max mpb with llamafile, and
| Stable Diffusion - the backend for both is running via Metal
| implementations for Pytorch et al...
|
| But "supports cloud-based solutions" is a pretty lame way to
| sell it.
| yoavm wrote:
| That's actually funny. My ThinkPad with Arch Linux also
| supports Microsoft 365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly! Since when
| are we advertising a list of "supported websites"?
| karmakaze wrote:
| Looking at this list comparing the M3 with M1 doesn't motivate me
| to want the M3. It seems most gains are GPU related. The M2 was
| underwhelming, and it seems the M3 isn't much better than the M2
| so comparing against M1.
|
| > _M3 takes MacBook Air performance even further:_
|
| > _Game titles like No Man's Sky run up to 60 percent faster than
| the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip._
|
| > _Enhancing an image with AI using Photomator's Super Resolution
| feature is up to 40 percent faster than the 13-inch model with
| the M1 chip, and up to 15x faster for customers who haven't
| upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon._
|
| > _Working in Excel spreadsheets is up to 35 percent faster than
| the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 3x faster for
| customers who haven't upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon._
|
| > _Video editing in Final Cut Pro is up to 60 percent faster than
| the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 13x faster for
| customers who haven't upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon._
|
| > _Compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor,
| MacBook Air delivers up to 2x faster performance, up to 50
| percent faster web browsing, and up to 40 percent longer battery
| life._
|
| Combining the two datapoints 15x faster than Mac with non-Apple-
| silicon and 2x faster than PC with i7 makes it seem like Intel
| parts have improved a lot since Apple stopped using them.
| asplake wrote:
| Speaking of video, I'm on my second MacBook Air and have been
| very happy with them both except for one consistent concern,
| their unreliability with regard to external displays. It
| bothers me sufficiently for me to bring my Apple TV with me
| when delivering training, which is kinda ridiculous. I think my
| next one will be a Pro. That's a pity really - I like the Air
| form factor and I don't really need the extra power. I do think
| I need a real HDMI port though.
| bstchn wrote:
| What exaclty are these unreliabilities?
| asplake wrote:
| Failure to drive those displays, big TVs or projectors for
| the most part
| seuraughty wrote:
| I thought they could drive up to 6k or something crazy -
| surprised to hear it struggles with TVs and projectors
| that I imagine are 4k.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| They don't have HDMI port, so you're limited to your
| adapter or the TV's display port capabilities.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you're dependent on the adapter, you _need_ to use the
| Apple ones, or you need to have multiple. Sometimes HDMI
| works, sometimes it doesn 't, changing the adapter
| usually fixes it.
| danieldk wrote:
| Sure, but there are plenty of adapters that drive 4k@60Hz
| without an issue, such as the latest revision Apple's
| adapter (old revisions would only do 4k@30).
| mcphage wrote:
| What do you use to connect the screen to your Air? I've
| got an M2 air, and recently purchased a 5120x1440 screen
| with HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. I first connected it
| through HDMI to one of the USB/HDMI/USB-C Apple adapters,
| and the result was terrible. But I ordered a
| DisplayPort->USB-C cable, and it worked perfectly.
| dagmx wrote:
| I'm sure they know most people aren't upgrading yearly so it
| makes more sense to target people two gens or more behind.
|
| Regarding your last point, it's because of the video
| accelerators on the M series chips which is why they mention
| Final Cut. The latter comparison to Intel laptops also has to
| take into account that it's been ~4 years since Apple shipped
| that.
| danieldk wrote:
| After the big bump with the M1, we are back to the 10-20%
| generational improvements of old days. The deltas between
| generations are not impressive, but they do add up after a few
| years.
|
| I am kind of interested in the M3 Air. I generally prefer
| MacBook Air over MacBook Pro, since it's lighter and more
| compact than the Pro, but I am currently still using a MacBook
| Pro with M1 Pro due to the limitations of the earlier Airs. It
| seems that these limitations are getting lifted slowly, with
| the M2 supporting up to 24GB RAM and the M3 supporting two
| external displays in clamshell. If the MacBook Air M3 supported
| 32GB RAM, it would pretty much be a no-brainer to go from the
| M1 Pro to Air M3.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Depends on your use case. What little heavy software I run is
| all terribly optimized single core stuff, so even going m2 to
| m3 the single core gains are appreciable to me. Iirc its about
| a 30% bump worth it for a little bit more in price for me. Then
| of course much better battery life from more and faster e cores
| too.
| glial wrote:
| If you're running LLMs locally using something like LM Studio
| or Jan.ai, a GPU bump will speed up text production.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| For anyone having issues with only one external display at once,
| DisplayLink adapters work very well, allowing you to connect much
| more displays if you need them.
| danieldk wrote:
| It comes with a bunch of downsides though. It is lossy,
| requires a third-party driver (and you become dependent on them
| to provide timely updates for new macOS releases), protected
| content from iTunes and other players is not visible on the
| laptop display when DisplayLink adapters are connected, a bunch
| of HiDPI resolutions are missing on Apple Silicon Macs, etc.
|
| USB-C Alt-Mode and Thunderbolt always trump DisplayLink. So
| it's best to figure out first what displays you want to connect
| and then buy the Mac that supports that configuration. But if
| you already have a Mac that doesn't support the number of
| displays that you want to hook up, DisplayLink is a solution.
|
| Luckily, these new MacBook Air models support two external
| 5K@60Hz displays with the lid closed.
| reactordev wrote:
| Mine requires no driver, it's plug and play. I just get the
| Apple Security nag when I plug (anything) in.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| DisplayLink can get an LCD to re-engage from sleep which
| Apple's built in ports often can't. Try switching off your
| Dell LCD attached directly to an M2 Mini.
| danieldk wrote:
| Works fine for me across a bunch of LG and Dell displays
| hooked up with DisplayPort (DP-Alt over Type-C). I only had
| this issue with a StarTech Thunderbolt hub (used to work
| fine until it didn't).
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > It is lossy,
|
| I was cautious about this issue before buying the device, but
| the fears turned out to be unfounded. Sure it won't be good
| enough for competitive gaming or something like that, but
| watching youtube is pretty good, and text rendering is
| indistinguishable from regular display. The only issue is
| that refresh rate seems to be about 30fps but for many tasks
| it is acceptable.
|
| > USB-C Alt-Mode and Thunderbolt always trump DisplayLink.
|
| Yes, but does it allow you to connect 3 displays to your
| notebook? I actually wanted just 2 external displays, but the
| DisplayLink device had 2 ports, and I have many HDMI displays
| laying around, so I connected 3 _because I can_.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Not to mention, you need to give the DisplayLink driver
| permission to record your screen. Which is _probably_ fine
| from a security standpoint, but doesn 't feel great.
|
| I've used both and while Displaylink works, native support is
| definitely snappier. Not by much, but just enough to be able
| to notice.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Maybe things are better in the Apple Silicon days, but I tried
| using an external "carry it with you" monitor that used
| DisplayLink on an old Intel MacBook and it was an endless
| stream of headaches. Frequently the computer just wouldn't see
| the monitor at all until I restarted both of them, custom
| settings like color and rotation would often reset, etc. The
| DisplayLink drivers seemed like total shit.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| For me it works like a charm. I had to change the USB hub
| though, first one was buggy and would randomly stop working.
| But on a second one everything is fine.
| flippy_flops wrote:
| Depends very much on what you're doing. DisplayLink adds
| noticeable lag, compression artifacts, and will prevent HDCP
| video from playing on all monitors including ones not using
| DisplayLink.
| switch007 wrote:
| PS1,699 for 13" Air with M3 (8/10/16), 24GB RAM, 512GB
|
| vs PS2,299 (from Costco) for 14" MBP M3 Pro (11/14/16), 36GB RAM,
| 512GB
|
| I'm unsure if PS600 extra is worth it for average dev use? The
| main points I know are: better screen, speakers, fans, 12GB extra
| ram. But not sure about valuing those at PS600. Hm
|
| (I'm making this specific comparison because I've just ordered
| the MBP, but could return it, and get the MBA :D)
| switch007 wrote:
| (replying to myself)
|
| Half the reason I'm getting is a Mac is because they're so nice
| to look at, so I think I really want the better screen. And the
| extra RAM is always nice. And I know I'll appreciate the decent
| speakers.
|
| Plus it'll arrive way quicker. I think I'm happy with the
| MBP...
| theGnuMe wrote:
| You will never regret more memory but if you want value, put
| that 600 into nvidia or apple stock.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Yeah by the time you realize you are ram bound that nvda
| stock might be worth a new computer outright.
| vundercind wrote:
| Define "average dev use".
|
| My personal machine is a 16GB M1 Air. I never wish I had more
| horsepower. It's simply never an issue.
|
| My work machine is a 16GB M1 Pro. Ditto. Really, I'd probably
| be fine on an M1 Air for that, too.
|
| [EDIT] Yes I run local docker containers, though not with huge
| production datasets or for load testing or whatever--all that
| works fine. And, hell, they run faster than the shitty
| oversubscribed VMs our K8S cluster hands out anyway--I see _way
| worse_ performance in prod.
|
| [EDIT EDIT] Oh and I used to compile a fairly big C++ program
| on my Air pretty regularly, and use it to test/develop a big 3D
| application. Worked fine. Took a damn beefy server to compile
| that project much faster than my Air did.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Dev use is a huge spectrum. You know your use cases better than
| us. For example dev use in my line of work just means you can
| run ssh and an editor.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| MBA needs to go back to previous design with keyboard from MBP.
| ketzo wrote:
| The degree to which Apple has kinda just "won" laptops is nuts to
| me.
|
| $999 for an 13-inch M2 Air is just bonkers. You can easily pay
| $1500, even $2000 for Windows laptops that are hotter, heavier,
| AND slower.
| snizovtsev wrote:
| $999 is for soldered 8GB/256GB crap. Add $400 for 16GB/512GB
| models.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| It's not crap, though. I am using the exact config with an M1
| and it's really quite usable, even for development. Also I
| have hundreds of tabs open. You can even watch movies because
| the speakers are so good - opposed to any PC laptop I ever
| owned.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| It might be usable but the cost difference of 8/256 and
| 16/512 is negligible. But Apple wants to price gouge you if
| you want the latter. Computing hardware was always about
| providing the maximum upfront to give headroom in the
| future.
| dbbk wrote:
| I can guarantee you that most people buying the $999 laptop
| have 5 Chrome tabs open and don't store files on their
| computer. 8GB/256GB is fine.
| NBJack wrote:
| That's a bold statement.
|
| Videos, music, photos, all of these add up fast. I have
| encountered plenty of family and friends needing help when
| their storage is exhausted.
|
| Then there is the ever increasong bloat of software, web
| apps, etc. that chew through RAM.
|
| If this isn't a daily driver, sure. It is fine. But for
| those where this is their only computer, this is a lot of
| money for an 'entry level' model that can't do as much.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am still using a 2015 MacBook Air with 8GB / 256GB, and
| I use Excel/Safari/Chrome Remote
| Desktop/VLC/Photos/Handbrake/etc just fine.
|
| And I bet I use my computer more strenuously than 90% of
| the population.
| szundi wrote:
| What are you talking about? Apple Music streaming,
| Netflix, Youtube. Nothing on the machine.
|
| Those times are over when you swim in the mainstream.
| w0m wrote:
| You're making the argument to get them to buy iPads, not
| entry level laptops for roughly the same price (+-100usd)
| dboreham wrote:
| Then they could use a $200 Chromebook.
| vundercind wrote:
| Worse battery life, such weak hardware (you're bringing
| up $200 models) that they're laggy and shitty even with a
| few Chrome tabs, bad trackpads, terrible accessibility
| options compared to Macs (I was very surprised to
| discover this latter issue when configuring my elderly
| father's Chromebook, given the market for Chromebooks is
| basically kids and old people)
|
| $200 Chromebooks are the kind my various teacher friends
| complain about because they're so shit that they even
| drive elementary school kids crazy.
| leetharris wrote:
| But they don't want to. This is what people who are spec
| chasers miss. They want to use a MacBook because it's a
| joy to use compared to a shitty $200 Chromebook
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| 256gb is 3 AAA games. luckily Apple solves this problem by
| not being able to run any games.
| gs17 wrote:
| At least on my MBA, 50-60 GB is taken up by the system
| itself, so 2 games really.
| huuhee3 wrote:
| Most of those people could save 600 dollars and buy an used
| Thinkpad that works just as well for their uses
| jsz0 wrote:
| I dunno about Chrome but a _single_ YouTube tab in Safari
| can use over 1GB of RAM these days. It 's absolutely insane
| to sell a computer in 2024 that's gonna struggle to open
| 10+ browser tabs.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/VzCQ4zF
| r00fus wrote:
| I found it's completely acceptable for hobby usages that
| don't involve running offline LLMs. If you're doing work, get
| a Pro.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I run an offline LLM on my M2 MBA with 16 GB RAM. It's fine
| (but I will buy more RAM on my next machine, in large part
| due to LLM developments).
| rkangel wrote:
| I have found 8GB RAM to be completely unusable on Windows
| and Linux these days. Once you've got Chrome open with half
| a dozen tabs and any even slightly memory hungry program
| (VS Code or Android Studio etc.) you're out of luck.
| Actually I had to have my last work laptop replaced because
| 8GB wasn't enough for Chrome and a Teams video call! If I
| tried to screen share a browser tab of Jira everything
| would start paging.
|
| I have zero recent experience with MacOS or the M1,2,3 ARM
| hardware but I doubt even the very fast RAM is going to
| make that much difference to the above.
| acdha wrote:
| 8GB of RAM is extremely usable on macOS - until last year
| I was using that for VSC, Podman, etc. and the only time
| I noticed it was running x86 Java containers in
| emulation. Beyond the much leaner base OS, they have
| hardware memory page compression which seems to make a
| huge difference. My corporate Dell with 16GB feels slower
| in every way even running the same apps (Teams, Edge,
| etc.).
| macNchz wrote:
| I have been a minimum-16GB-of-RAM guy since 2012 or so,
| but I got a great deal last year on a base model M1 Air
| that I mostly just use for web/email while traveling, and
| as a thin client back to my Linux desktop with 64GB of
| RAM. I've found it surprisingly adequate, even as someone
| who is not so good about closing browser tabs.
|
| I can certainly get it to start swapping easily enough,
| so I don't necessarily agree with all of the people I've
| seen claiming that these machines are revolutionary and
| 8GB is the new 16GB, but it does seem to manage better
| than I would have expected.
|
| Apple's pricing on memory and disk upgrades really
| aggravates me, though, and was a significant factor in
| deciding to switch to Linux for my primary computer.
| r00fus wrote:
| RAM usage even vs Intel Mac was completely different - I
| did push my M1 Air a while back and it complained about
| running out of memory but that was once in the past 1.5
| years after I'd skipped rebooting for 4/5 weeks. On my
| Intel with 16GB this happened more often.
|
| For my kids and parents, the M1 Air has been flawless
| (even for me - it's my travel Mac). But if you know
| you're a heavy user definitely get more RAM.
| dgellow wrote:
| I'm writing this from an x230 with Windows and 8GB of
| RAM. It's a pretty old machine I'm using for FreeCAD, 3D
| printer slicers, and simple admin stuff, and it's pretty
| usable?
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I have found 8GB RAM to be completely unusable on
| Windows and Linux these days. Once you've got Chrome open
| with half a dozen tabs and any even slightly memory
| hungry program (VS Code or Android Studio etc.) you're
| out of luck.
|
| Honestly, even 16GB isn't enough if you keep a modest
| (say, O(100)) number of tabs open. I regularly find my
| MBP slowed down due to "memory pressure" (swapping) at
| that point, with closing/restarting the browser to be an
| instantaneous fix.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Which browser is that with? I wouldn't try that with
| Chrome, but I'd be kinda surprised if Safari wouldn't
| handle it.
| Thrymr wrote:
| 8 GB is barely enough for web browsing these days. What
| will it be like in a couple years? A MacBook will generally
| run fine for years, it is well worth future-proofing a bit
| with more memory, since it is not upgradable.
| giantrobot wrote:
| That's a Chrome problem more than a web browsing problem.
| Chrome is ridiculously heavy on RAM versus Safari on the
| same machine with the same tabs.
| sempron64 wrote:
| But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable
| alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete
| GPU. It is probably the best laptop in the $1K price range for
| laptops that don't have a GPU, but that's basically it.
|
| The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that there
| is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs,
| processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical
| quality control that confuse consumers and leave them unhappy.
| This is the flip side of choice in prioritizing, say, gaming
| performance over battery life while optimizing price or vice-
| versa.
|
| Also my personal opinion is that 90% of consumer frustration
| comes from the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep
| between Windows, Intel/AMD, and OEMs. Consumers expect to be
| able to close their laptop and for it to preserve battery
| instead of becoming hot or dying the bag. That really needs a
| solution.
| samatman wrote:
| > _But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable
| alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a
| discrete GPU._
|
| People love to say this without linking to a model. That's
| because the models in this price range are obviously not in
| the same weight class as a MacBook.
|
| Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same
| thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class"
| so that the more... literal-minded Hacker News commenters
| will understand what I mean, but let's start there.
| justinclift wrote:
| Personally, I'm ok with getting 2nd hand business grade
| models off Ebay. They're _generally_ pretty good (and
| cheap).
|
| But a lot of people (especially the less technically
| inclined) will only buy brand new, which I think is for
| safety.
|
| Anyway, 2nd hand laptops on Ebay can be both really good
| and in that price range. :)
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm not sure it makes sense to compare new laptops with
| used laptops, especially since the latter generally don't
| come with any sort of warranty. And when you're buying
| off ebay (and can't inspect beforehand, like with
| craigslist/nextdoor), you don't even know for sure if it
| will work on day 1.
| justinclift wrote:
| Yeah, I'm kind of 50/50 about comparing them for the
| purposes of this conversation too.
|
| In practical terms though, when I'm looking for a new
| laptop I do check both pricing of new and what's on Ebay.
| Sometimes I'll go with the new thing, and other times
| I'll get the Ebay thing, depending on the situation.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I think for the general public this is a reasonable
| comparison, since the performance is good enough for most
| things on a 2 year old eng pc for less than half the
| msrp. I would expect most corporate refurbs on eBay to be
| moderately reputable, and eBay is know to be consumer
| friendly.
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| Shouldn't you then compare it to a 2 year old Air? They
| seem to be in the $600-$700 range on eBay.
| justinclift wrote:
| Probably a good comparison point as well. :)
| gnicholas wrote:
| I would consider buying a used computer from a person, if
| I could test it in advance. I don't think I'd ever buy a
| computer sight-unseen off ebay. They may be customer
| friendly on balance, but they're unpredictable enough
| that I wouldn't want to spend that kind of cash and risk
| being completely screwed.
| samatman wrote:
| > _not sure it makes sense to compare new laptops with
| used laptops_
|
| It of course makes no sense at all. For any given laptop,
| you can also buy it used. Including MacBooks, believe it
| or not. It's a way of puffing up a comparison when the
| person making it knows the comparison doesn't stand on
| its own.
| rfoo wrote:
| > same weight class as a MacBook
|
| Except that there are plenty? As long as you avoid Dell
| it's easy to find a good deal.
|
| Oh, and I prefer plastic. Aluminum adds weight for nothing.
| jiqiren wrote:
| lol reply guy didn't leave a model name either...
| konart wrote:
| Why not just name a few with links to benchmarks,
| temperature and battery profile etc?
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > not in the same weight class as a MacBook
|
| Which might not be a consideration whatsoever. It isn't for
| me; I bring my laptop to the office, or from the office,
| and am never using it where weight makes one bit of
| difference.
| theultdev wrote:
| Speaking for myself, weight and battery life are the two
| most important factors for a portable.
|
| I mainly use a desktop if I'm at home or the office.
|
| I only use a laptop occasionally in bed or heavily when
| traveling.
| n42 wrote:
| "Weight class" as in "League", not weight
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Commuting to/from an office is usually a prime example of
| when a laptop's weight would matter.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Commutes can be very different, too. Someone who walks
| and uses public transport will feel differently about the
| weight of their laptop than someone who just has to lug
| theirs to their car and across the parking lot. Same with
| travel: Flying with just a carry-on bag and crossing big
| airports on foot makes lightweight laptops a lot more
| attractive.
| silisili wrote:
| Are we talking weight class as in weight or performance?
|
| I find the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 'in the weight class'
| with about the same weight, but with a less performant CPU
| and not as high res screen. It's also 8/256, has good
| battery life, and is fine for a lot of workloads. It can be
| had for $400ish factory recertified, or 100-200 more new
| brand new depending on sales.
|
| Keep in mind I'm not saying that the two go toe to toe
| here, I'm just listing a lightweight alternative.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| This is an excellent laptop, I've found it to be great.
| Plenty of people can't stand chromeos, but you can run
| linux in vm mode, I find the ability to have a safe env
| but run any x / linux apps natively makes for a very
| compelling combo. You can run emacs, any x-windows
| software like dev tools natively. I also like the ability
| to run android apps - with the limitation that some app
| disallow running them unless they are on a 'native'
| phone; over time it seems more and more mainstream apps
| allow this.
| silisili wrote:
| Yep same. I wanted a cheap decent laptop for when I'm
| traveling, which isn't often, so didn't want or need best
| of the best. It dawned on me I spend about all my time on
| the web, in vs code, or on the command line. With their
| Linux VM setup I can install about anything, and it both
| installs and runs as if it were a native app. Perfect for
| my use case, at least.
|
| I'm not a huge fan of the ChromeOS UI and whatnot, but
| spend very little time interacting with it or Gnome on my
| main machine, so it's fine enough.
| wfhBrian wrote:
| The other issue with linking is that the "best" in the
| windows market is that it's heavily dependent on current
| promotions. It's easy to find windows laptops discounted
| >20% which really throws off the direct comparisons at
| retail prices.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14" 14ACN6. Got one at Costco over a
| year ago for around $700US. Runs Pop_OS! really well.
|
| Weight is very much light enough for me.
|
| Edit: There is one downside I found. I replaced the 512GB
| SSD with 1TB and nearly needed stitches because the bottom
| plate was so sharp. Oh and I just looked it up, it's listed
| at 3.04lbs
| moolcool wrote:
| A big factor is how these machines age too, though. 4
| years ago the 2020 M1 Macbook Air dropped, and it's still
| a fantastic computer today. On the other hand, I don't
| think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo Ideapad
| today
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Why not? It benchmarks really good:
|
| https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5600
| U&i...
|
| Here's the M1:
|
| https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+
| 320...
| moolcool wrote:
| I'm just thinking more in terms of hardware. Trackpad,
| keyboard, display, hinges, ports, support, battery life--
| all of those (in my experience) tend to either be poor
| out of the box or decay rapidly for many machines. I've
| used an "enterprise" HP laptop that's just a couple years
| old recently-- the battery is totally cooked and it feels
| like it's made out of takeout containers.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I'm a year and a half in and everything is running
| smooth. I still get a full workday out of the battery -
| and that's using Linux. That's plenty for me. It opens
| smooth. The keyboard is good - no deck flex. The screen
| is fine - even at only 300nits I don't need it brighter
| as I don't work in bright areas.
|
| I really really don't see how this won't last another 2
| and half years or even more.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| A 4 year old Lenovo is an eight core Ryzen with 32gb
| memory. Battery still lasts a day. I'm not sure there's
| anything significantly better available yet.
| ftrobro wrote:
| I'm still using this beautiful 12 year old Samsung series
| 9 laptop. Unlike my 9 year old Macbook it still receives
| official security updates (Win 10) and can run any new
| application (Xcode refuses to install on the Macbook, too
| old).
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/16/3160289/samsung-
| series-9-...
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I don 't think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo
| Ideapad today_
|
| Why not? I have a M1 Max supplied by my employer, and
| it's awesome. But guess what I use as my daily driver? An
| old t450s, running Ubuntu. Does everything I need, I can
| fix and replace anything in it (including the battery),
| and the keyboard is awesome. I think it's 10 years old.
|
| I mean, for most of the work I do my computer is just a
| client anyway.
| miggol wrote:
| Hello, laptop buddy!! Paid more than $700 in euros for it
| two years ago though. Can totally relate to the
| sharpness, but otherwise still very happy with it. Had to
| patch my ACPI to nuke S0 and get decent S3 suspend
| though. Did they ever patch that with firmware?
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I recall doing this:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zq3tc5/how_to_di
| sab...
|
| And it worked for me.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >That's because the models in this price range are
| obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook.
|
| Hard to be when other oems need to profit from hardware and
| pay windows/Intel/Nvidia/etc. For using their parts. But
| the upside is that those companies want to make
| repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes
| them easy for the saavy consumer to do.
|
| Apple just metaphorically throws out a MacBook at the
| slightest inconvenience, they don't even bother trying to
| fix their own devices.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > But the upside is that those companies want to make
| repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes
| them easy for the saavy consumer to do.
|
| Do they? At least for the slimmer models, I was under the
| impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to
| soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable
| mess.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I was under the impression most have copied Apple and
| transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an
| unserviceable mess
|
| ultrabooks, yes. everything is so crammed and specs are
| relatively low, so you're mostly stuck with what comes in
| the machine.
|
| Most other laptops (the "pro" competitors) tend to not do
| that. There's no good reason for an OEM to do that if
| they aren't optimizing for some sub 4lb laptop.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's part of the reason Apple has so few SKUs compared to
| others, because everything is conjoined; Dell will have
| five SKUs that are identical except two removable pieces
| (RAM and SSD) are varying sizes.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class"
|
| I think "class" is the term you're looking for. Or
| ballpark.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| The term you're looking for is "caliber", since many will
| interpret "weight class" to mean the actual weight of the
| laptop.
| ecopoesis wrote:
| > "caliber"
|
| What are you talking about? Laptops aren't even
| round.</literal>
| bowsamic wrote:
| > Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same
| thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class"
| so that the more... literal-minded Hacker News commenters
| will understand what I mean, but let's start there.
|
| Just don't ever use a metaphor on Hacker News. People will
| _always_ misinterpret it
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > Just don't ever use a metaphor on Hacker News. People
| will always misinterpret it
|
| I've always wondered why that is. No other community I'm
| active in insists so much on explicitly spelling out
| everything and very literal language - most will actually
| reward playing with language, if done well. Writing as if
| targeting Commander Data seems to work quite well though.
| bowsamic wrote:
| This might come off as projection, but in my experience,
| HN has a lot of people who pride themselves on their
| rationality, and part of this is giving off the image of
| never joking and always being serious. You can see this
| when people get mass downvoted for making jokes, which is
| also uncommon in other programming communities. Somehow
| this often spills over into metaphors as well as jokes. I
| think that jokes and metaphors are quite similar in that
| regard, both not to be taken totally seriously and/or
| literally. The HN insistence of being above jokes
| inevitably leads to being above metaphors.
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| Tech is known for being international, and even in the US
| is staffed with a lot of foreign-born labour. I don't
| find it surprising that a community with a high amount of
| non-native speakers sometimes misinterprets metaphors.
| silisili wrote:
| It's just not a good metaphor in this case, where weight
| is an actual determining factor. In boxing, weight class
| is literally your weight, saying nothing of your power.
|
| League or class would have probably been better here.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable
| alternatives
|
| Can you show me just one of those, please?
|
| I would buy it today.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I bought a laptop for about $600 with a GPU (RTX 3050).
|
| The display... is not comparable. Sure, it's 144hz compared
| to the Mac's 60hz... but it's only 74% NTSC at 250 nits with
| 1080p, so the color accuracy and dim picture is distractingly
| bad.
|
| And as for sleep, it's just useless. You close it with 70% at
| night and it's dead by morning. Supposedly the battery is the
| same size, but even when it's awake, the battery never makes
| it last more than ~2 hours. Also, that's two hours... _when I
| 'm not gaming_, as I painfully learned when trying to
| download a Windows ISO. When I'm gaming, well, then it's
| shorter.
|
| I might as well mention the thick, heavy, completely plastic
| construction. Feels like it will shatter from one drop. On
| the upside I managed to upgrade it from 8GB to 16GB... but
| then I'm wondering why this laptop even shipped with 8GB in
| the first place.
|
| Ultimately though, it runs Windows with a basic GPU. Desktop
| Parametric CAD isn't coming to Mac anytime soon.
| smoldesu wrote:
| As a dissenting example, I got a 14" Lenovo Ideapad with a
| Ryzen 7 for $250 on Ebay. It's got a nice 1440p HDR
| display, a great iGPU for gaming at low-power, and an
| 8-core CPU.
|
| If you want an ultrabook experience, get ultrabook
| hardware.
| Teever wrote:
| > Desktop Parametric CAD isn't coming to Mac anytime soon.
|
| I had no problems with Fusion360 running under Rosetta 2
| and Autodesk recently released an Apple Silicon version of
| Fusion360.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Sorry, I was thinking more along the lines of SolidWorks
| and Alibre which aren't so web-based.
| Solvency wrote:
| Switch to Fusion or Rhino/Grasshopper.
| vundercind wrote:
| I was initially issued a Lenovo Thinkpad running Windows at
| my new job last year. I really liked my bottom-tier IBM
| Thinkpad back in the mid '00s (running a heavily-tuned
| Gentoo) and WSL exists so it's possible to do real work on
| a Windows machine without just using it to run a fullscreen
| Linux VM (... though WSL2 kinda _is_ that) so I decided to
| give it a real chance.
|
| I was working on getting issued a MacBook within a week.
| Right back to battery/outlet anxiety that I had escaped
| years and years ago by switching to Mac. Goddamn thing was
| losing over half its power over night. Six hours of useful
| time before you'll be hunting for an outlet _at best_ from
| a full battery. WTF.
|
| My MacBook that I've been using on battery almost three
| hours this morning and that hasn't been plugged in since
| about 5PM Friday is still over 70% charge. I didn't even
| think about or check the battery level when I opened it
| this morning, because there's no way it'd be a problem.
| Ahhh. Relaxing.
| int_19h wrote:
| Which ThinkPad model was it?
| justin66 wrote:
| > But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable
| alternatives
|
| I would pay _more_ for an acceptable alternative - no fan,
| Windows 11, good battery life, top quality screen, no gimmick
| features (touchscreen! detachable screen! whatever).
|
| No such thing exists, as far as I can tell.
| theultdev wrote:
| Don't forget the touch pad / gesture recognition.
|
| You can tell Windows laptops are general computers, the
| hardware fires off the gesture recognition and gives the
| command to the OS, so you swipe, it's recognized, then you
| get the action.
|
| On Mac, the gesture is registered as it's happening, you
| can pull the screen, cancel, flick it, etc.
|
| Not to mention the convenience of taking it to any Apple
| store and the battery life.
|
| I game on Windows, host on Linux, and travel with Apple.
| Solvency wrote:
| Can you explain technically the hardware difference here?
| Or is there none and Apple's track firmware/software is
| just better.
| tnmom wrote:
| Probably some vendor provides the trackpad, and provides
| a driver for that trackpad, and it recognizes the gesture
| and then sends Windows a `GestureHappened()` event.
|
| Versus macOS being fully integrated and effectively
| generating `GestureProgress(0.31)` events.
| vient wrote:
| I don't notice anything unusual in that sense on MSI
| laptop with Linux. I start pinching, browser immediately
| performs gradual zoom. Swiping with 3 fingers immediately
| starts a "desktop switch" which is controlled by my
| movement - so I can pause, revert the gesture, and you
| will see on the screen exactly what you expect, second
| desktop partially showing, pausing, and then going back.
|
| Can't test on Windows right now but I would expect it to
| have even less problems than Linux.
| theultdev wrote:
| It's possible things have improved, I haven't used a non
| Apple laptop in some time.
|
| Last time I checked on Windows, swiping will result in
| basically an alt-tab after the swipe.
|
| It was not a fluid motion that could be cancelled.
| szundi wrote:
| Sorry but 400 is peanuts to beat Apple's simplest in build
| quality, touchpad and performance
| DataDive wrote:
| Oh yeah?
|
| Please link to a model, just one in the 500-600 range that is
| comparable to a 1K Apple model.
|
| I have owned half a dozen Windows laptops in the past, in all
| kinds of price ranges, cheaper and far more expensive than a
| Macbook Air.
|
| None were even remotely comparable to the build quality and
| practicality of a Macbook Air. This was true even in the
| Intel CPU era. In the M processor era, the gap only
| increased.
|
| You cannot even do research on a good Windows laptop because
| the makers constantly change the model numbers to confuse the
| customer and hide the flaws of these systems.
|
| You buy a Windows laptop then either the screen, the battery
| life, the touchpad or the keyboard will suck ... maybe all
| four.
|
| The sole reason to buy a Windows laptop and put up with all
| these flaws is playing games. If you need that you will put
| up with all that crap.
| rkangel wrote:
| The parent isn't saying that there are $500 laptops that
| are as good as $1k Air. They're saying that there are $500
| laptops that are "good enough" for most people's use.
|
| Personally for home use I buy pre-owned Thinkpads and then
| put Linux on them. They're fine for normal use - Internet,
| Email and light to moderate SW Development. The screens are
| mediocre, but I pay PS300-PS400 (UK). Oh and I don't care
| about battery age because replacements are inexpensive and
| require sliding one catch to make the replacement.
|
| Yes, for work I want something more performant and I'm
| considering pushing work to get me a Macbook (instead of
| the high-spec Thinkpad I currently have), but that's a
| different use case.
| havaloc wrote:
| $500 laptops are good enough until they have to call over
| a tech consultant (me) to work through some issues once
| every 3 months. At trip charge of $65 each, they aren't
| saving money with a $500 laptop - and then the battery
| gives out 2.5 years later.
|
| This isn't theoretical, it happens all the time. I worked
| with a person who had a 10 year old MacBook Air - it
| still worked and held a charge! They got their money's
| worth.
| xutopia wrote:
| I disagree with your assessment.
|
| Things that matter to me and that all Windows laptops in the
| same price range or lower as the MBA have shittier speakers,
| camera, monitor (both brightness and color accuracy). The
| trackpad feels entirely wrong on those plastic devices and
| often you have loud fans turning on at random times.
| Furthermore they're usually heavier despite being made out of
| plastic rather than metal.
| Solvency wrote:
| Why has it been so utterly impossible for a single Windows
| laptop manufacturer to match the build quality? Just
| matching the body itself would at last be SOMETHING.
| xutopia wrote:
| I suspect it has to do with the effect of scale. Apple
| operates with limited number of models and that means
| they get volume for each mould and assembly lines. If you
| did 20000 laptops of one model versus 2 million you can
| definitely can put way more thought into every detail and
| that translates into higher quality.
| izacus wrote:
| Because you're not looking hard enough.
| MBCook wrote:
| So post some links.
| saurik wrote:
| I solve these problems by: 1) only ever buying machines
| without fans; 2) barely ever touching a mouse; and 3) using
| my phone for speakers and camera... all three of which I
| was doing even when I used to use a Mac as fans have always
| sucked, I am a software developer and don't need or want a
| mouse, and Apple's laptop cameras have always been much
| worse than the phones in their phones AND meeting software
| tends to do dumb things if you screen share and try to just
| be in the meeting at the same time (and do it is often
| better to have an external camera device off to the side).
|
| I then just have to buy any laptop that: 1) doesn't weigh
| much; 2) doesn't have a fan (this is so much more difficult
| than it should be it is insane); and 3) has a good enough
| monitor... I care a lot about resolution and brightness but
| it might be I don't care enough about color accuracy as I
| am a software developer and so honestly barely have much
| use for more than 16 colors and mostly look at photos,
| again, on my phone (which is also my camera and my media
| device in general as it is simply better at that so this
| makes sense). If you are a graphics designer, though, I get
| it... but weren't they always Apple's core market?
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable
| alternatives,
|
| I don't think this true, unless you have extremely low
| standards for "acceptable". I've tried a number of $400
| laptops and in every single case got fed up with the
| shittiness within minutes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Also my personal opinion is that 90% of consumer
| frustration comes from the extremely subpar implementation of
| Hybrid Sleep between Windows, Intel/AMD, and OEMs. Consumers
| expect to be able to close their laptop and for it to
| preserve battery instead of becoming hot or dying the bag.
| That really needs a solution.
|
| Mind boggling that so many smart people at
| Microsoft/AMD/Intel/HP/Dell have not been able to figure this
| out yet.
| acdha wrote:
| Here's a better way to think about it: whose boss thinks
| that _they_ need to fix something as opposed to all of
| those other people? If your MacBook had a problem everyone
| involved knows that Tim Cook is going to pull their bosses
| into his office and ask why he's reading a news story about
| unhappy users. In the PC or Android world you have
| coordinate different parties who each have a financial
| stake in saying that their part is working but the other
| guys screwed up.
|
| This is an area where I think part of the solution should
| be regulatory: require manufacturers to take back defective
| devices within a much longer period of time after the
| initial sale, for example, or requiring them to cash out
| advertised features which don't work reliably.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| It's the heterogenous combination of multiple and
| constantly changing hardware requiring tweaks or
| adjustments to the sleep modes. It's not satisfactory to
| write that down but I think that's what's happening.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Mind boggling that so many smart people at
| Microsoft/AMD/Intel/HP/Dell have not been able to figure
| this out yet.
|
| Follow the money. How much demand is there for it, Who's
| incentivized to fix it, how much does it cost to R&D, and
| will that feature increase profit margins?
|
| The sad workaround is simply SSD's having faster boot times
| and setting a computer to hibernate instead of sleep when
| closed (and not on battery). It gets "close enough" for
| many.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >The sad workaround is simply SSD's having faster boot
| times and setting a computer to hibernate instead of
| sleep when closed (and not on battery). It gets "close
| enough" for many.
|
| That is not a workaround since, as far as I know, only
| MacBooks have a sufficiently good reputation that when
| you close the lid, it won't still be on in your bag.
|
| I assume if this hibernate option was viable, then people
| would be slamming their Windows laptop shut and stuffing
| it in their bag at a moment's notice.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I assume if this hibernate option was viable, then
| people would be slamming their Windows laptop shut and
| stuffing it in their bag at a moment's notice.
|
| it's viable for me. sleep has never been consistent on
| any of the 10 devices I had, no matter the cost or build
| of the laptop. But that's the default settings when you
| receive a new Windows device and changing this means
| going deep into the settings (Control Panel\Hardware and
| Sound\Power Options\System Settings in case you're
| curious). So most people won't ever have that configured.
| It's probably at best what pops up if you google "how to
| fix windows sleep issue" or "my laptop not turning off
| when lid closed" kinds of stuff.
|
| That's one mantra Apple usually lives up to: "it just
| works". i.e. most of their defauls align with what a
| consumer expects, and is consistent with behavior.
| Windows/Linux can do almost everything a mac does, but
| you may have to spend days figuring out the settings and
| how they interact with your specific machine.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Follow the money.
|
| If you follow the money, you can see it flowing in to
| Apple's bank account from consumers.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| sure, trillion dollar company invested hundreds of
| billions over a decade to secure their own supply chain
| from parts to distribution.
|
| But I don't think every other OEM would have the same
| success even if it ended up being higher quality.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| They became a trillion dollar company by doing that.
| There was nothing stopping other enormous companies to
| compete on quality and customer service, but they decided
| against that. Follow the money indeed...
| acdha wrote:
| This is a lazy troll - for example, note how
| conspicuously people making that claim are unable to
| identify specific equivalent hardware at significantly
| lower prices or any discussion of the total cost of
| ownership over the service life of the device. Simply
| repeating a cliche forum comment doesn't contribute
| anything like those details could.
| pmontra wrote:
| > The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market
|
| Another way to look at that is "MacOS vs non-MacOS" laptop
| market.
|
| There is only one manufacturer of MacOS laptops. That helps
| keeping the number of models down. Same thing for the iOS vs
| non-iOS phone and tablets market. If you want MacOS or iOS
| you must buy Apple. Hackintoshes do exist but are a rounding
| error compared to the number of machines Apple sells. And if
| you want Apple, you must get MacOS and iOS. You can run
| something else on that hardware, but again we are writing
| about rounding errors.
|
| There are non-MacOS laptop manufacturers with even less
| models than Apple have. Maybe it's very niche but the
| Framework laptop has been popular on HN lately and it has
| only two models.
|
| On the other side if you want to buy non-MacOS, then HP,
| Lenovo or Dell have a zillion of laptops each, ranging from
| the very low end to the very high end. Some people pick
| features and look at which models are left with those
| features (that's me.) Some people pick a price tag instead.
| Probably the laptop is a commodity to the price tag people,
| much like gas. Who really cares about the gas company? If you
| need to fill the tank everything will do.
|
| And about
|
| > the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep
|
| this is something that Microsoft throw at us and we can't
| dodge it much. My laptop runs Linux and it's from the pre
| Hybrid Sleep era. I didn't investigate if Linux sleep works
| well with new laptops.
| caycep wrote:
| of note: MacBook Air actually has a decent GPU...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| About a year and a half ago, I was looking to get a new MBPro
| to replace my existing one. I loved the hardware, but having
| used Linux since the alphabet floppies, the software was
| always meh. So I was in Costco one day and they had cheap
| Lenovo ideapads (Ideapad 5 Pro 14") on sale for something
| like $700US. I bought one, put Pop_OS! on it and it's been
| running great since. Has and AMD processor, 16GB RAM and a
| 512GB SSD. It's really snappy and best of all it's pretty
| solid with no deck flex.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS
| software "meh" in comparison? I have a few friends who are
| Linux devotees yet watching them do stuff seems so tedious
| and slow in comparison to my workflows. Like I get that you
| can setup all sorts of keyboard shortcuts and stuff to do
| whatever you want, but that's also possible in MacOS, so
| what is it exactly that you can do better/faster in Pop_OS?
|
| For most of my Linux friends they claim it's because they
| prefer the customization, but in practice it really seems
| more like they just dislike the Apple ecosystem in
| principle. I have yet to find a workflow they have that I
| can't do more easily and faster in MacOS. Similar
| experience with working in git in the terminal vs GUI apps.
| So many devs swear the terminal is "faster and more
| powerful for git" but in practice I am doing basic git
| functions faster and with fewer errors than they are just
| using the GitHub desktop app.
|
| I would very much like to be proven wrong, I think OS
| competition is a good thing, I just want to see some
| practical examples.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| >I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS
| software "meh" in comparison?
|
| Having used Linux since forever ago, MacOs was "meh" to
| me because while it is _a_ unix, it was just different
| enough for me to find it "meh". IOW, I found it to be
| "meh" for the fact that it just wasn't Linux.
|
| You sound offended, don't be.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| I am not offended at all, just curious and your reply
| confirmed my assumption?
|
| Genuinely, how did you get offended out of that?
| opan wrote:
| I've got a M2 Max MBP I'm not using yet because there's
| no way to get sshfs/fuse working with free as in freedom
| software on macOS, and Asahi doesn't support external
| displays yet, so it can't take over for my ThinkPad T440p
| with either OS.
|
| Package management and package availability is much worse
| in the macOS world. Nix is weirdly broken, at least the
| ARM macOS packages. Homebrew is okay but not very good,
| similar to Chocolatey on Windows.
|
| When you need extra software for something on macOS,
| chances are it's proprietary and may even cost money.
| This is not the norm at all in the GNU/Linux world, and
| it comes off as quite disturbing to me. It's like a
| community of everyone scamming and mistreating each other
| instead of working together to improve things.
|
| I'm not even a dev, for the record. GNU/Linux is just
| what works best for me.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| Additional software being free by default is definitely
| an advantage Linux has, although usually not the benefit
| I see pointed to by most Linux users.
|
| That being said I am a dev and a designer and I can't
| think of any paid software I use beyond Figma (which is
| free for basic use) and Texts.app which doesn't have any
| free or paid equivalent on Linux.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > It's like a community of everyone scamming and
| mistreating each other instead of working together to
| improve things.
|
| I was saying this exact thing to a friend of mine who is
| big into apple products and suggested that you could
| technically do the things I wanted to do on apple
| devices.
|
| The general ecosystem between windows/linux/mac is very
| different. Windows freeware is all packaged and provided
| on sites last updated in 2002 and look like you'll get a
| virus despite the site being the defacto source.
|
| Linux software feels a lot more unified(despite n+1
| packaging schemes) and feels a lot more like a collective
| effort where anything is possible.
|
| Mac software wants you to break out your wallet and
| contribute to the APPL bottom line in order to get some
| basic custom functionality for some app written by a
| single developer that will be quietly given up on in a
| couple years.
| int_19h wrote:
| With Windows these days you can have a much better
| experience with freeware if you install it via WinGet.
| seszett wrote:
| > Asahi doesn't support external displays yet,
|
| It does if your machine has a hdmi port. It just doesn't
| support displays connected to the USB-C ports.
|
| To comment on the topic, for me the window management on
| macOS is a deal-breaker, I just never manage to make it
| do what I want without having to constantly fiddle with
| the windows to put them where I need them, and focus just
| works on a weird way.
|
| I tried amethyst (I think) and although it improves
| things, it really looks like a hack, a constant battle
| against the native behaviour.
| briffle wrote:
| My Asus zenbook 14 is around that price, has a 1TB disk, and
| 16GB of ram. I'm sure the processor on the M3 is faster, and
| probably a fair amount more battery out of it, but now I'm
| comparing a $1000 zenbook to a $1700 13' macbook once I add
| disk and memory, without the upgraded cpu.
| Solvency wrote:
| And it feels like a cheap piece of flexible creaky plastic.
| Macha wrote:
| But will probably outlive your MBP keyboard.
| akvadrako wrote:
| They are all metal.
| indymike wrote:
| At $700, you'll out-spec the mac on RAM and GPU but get a
| potato grade 1080p display.
| jwells89 wrote:
| As someone who likes to keep at least one machine dedicated
| to each major OS around at any given time, the thing that's
| frustrating about non-Apple laptops is that just about all of
| them, including machines costing well in excess of base
| Macbook models, make big tradeoffs somewhere or another. Very
| few are good all-rounders, even if many are better than
| Macbooks in one or two aspects.
|
| I would kill for a version of ThinkPad X1 Nano or X1 Carbon
| for example that had the battery life, silence, and unplugged
| performance of a Macbook Air for example, but no such machine
| exists even if I were to spend twice as much as the cost of a
| MacBook Air.
| Klonoar wrote:
| _> I would kill for a version of ThinkPad X1 Nano or X1
| Carbon for example that had the battery life, silence, and
| unplugged performance of a Macbook Air _
|
| Ditto on the Nano. I wind up looking at it every few months
| and then begrudgingly walking away because it just doesn't
| make any sense to buy.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I have the first gen and it's about the perfect size for
| an ultraportable in my opinion, and its screen, build,
| and general feel are great but its battery and CPU are
| underwhelming at best.
|
| The newer gens are even more confusing because they don't
| offer the cooler, more efficient U CPU variants, only the
| hotter more power hungry P variants, which exacerbates
| heat and battery life issues.
| skygazer wrote:
| I buy myself supposedly overpriced Macs and never have
| hardware issues, but buy family, that prefer Windows, more
| affordable $400-800 HP/Toshiba laptops. Over the last decade
| and a half, the HPs/Toshibas invariably have keyboard
| failures within a year or two, with ignored keypresses and
| key labels rubbing off, and internal fans seized, overheating
| problems. And those cheap plastic cases are never the same
| once opened. I hate them so much. Although, I suspect if I
| spent as much on a PC that I do on a Mac, we wouldn't have
| those issues, but I can't bring myself to spend that much on
| a Windows laptop.
| Thrymr wrote:
| The reliability issues are real. I have a MacBook Air that
| is 11 years old now, I haven't done anything but replace
| the battery, and it still works fine. The only real issue
| is that the memory is not upgradable, otherwise it would
| still be a generally useful machine (instead of just light
| web browsing and Zoom).
| Garcia98 wrote:
| > The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that
| there is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs,
| processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical
| quality control that confuse consumers and leave them
| unhappy. This is the flip side of choice in prioritizing,
| say, gaming performance over battery life while optimizing
| price or vice-versa.
|
| This is 100% it, Lenovo has been killing it lately with their
| Yoga/Slim series, but for every laptop they have that
| competes with a MacBook, they also have a myriad of other
| options that are just e-waste. At the end of the day, the
| average consumer is not going to do the same kind of research
| that a tech enthusiast might do, and Apple has a somewhat
| simple catalog (although incredibly overpriced once you step
| out of the entry configs).
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Hybrid sleep being broken is the #1 dealbreaker issue I have
| with my work-supplied XPS 9570. I know that machine is pretty
| long in the tooth at this point, but in some ways that
| actually makes it worse, that it's been all these years and
| Dell just shrugged and moved on.
|
| It _really_ doesn 't make me want to reward them with more
| money, only to find out what exciting new issues will be
| present and trivially reproducible for the entire next
| revision of the hardware.
| turtlebits wrote:
| I have yet to see a under $1.5k non-Apple laptop with a
| comparable high res / high quality display.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Depending on your use cases the software environment for the
| mac has never been worse right as the hardware has gotten so
| powerful and cool running. Major mac devs have totally
| abandoned the platform in recent years. Apple needs to rebuild
| good faith among developers especially game developers, or at
| the very least get ahead of the software drain and put and end
| to what factors have been causing it.
| r00fus wrote:
| > Major mac devs have totally abandoned the platform in
| recent years.
|
| Abandoning the (clearly lacking) Mac Store is not these same
| as abandoning the macOS platform.
| vultour wrote:
| And they have Linux integrated into the system. I'm amazed how
| many developers get a Macbook just to install Docker Desktop
| right after.
| postalrat wrote:
| Isn't docker's filesystem performance still terrible in macox
| compared to linux?
| sombrero_john wrote:
| Good enough for local development
| postalrat wrote:
| If you can get away with the performance of machine that
| feels 10 years older than it is.
| vundercind wrote:
| "Integrated"? It's still just a VM. They gave up on
| "integrated" with WSL2.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| "Linux integrated " is a very optimistic way to put it lol.
|
| Its Unix-like under the hood, with mostly same syntax for the
| terminal, but linux and MacOS are very fundamentally
| different.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| 999 for a laptop with _8 gbs of ram in 2024_ That 's pathetic.
| whalesalad wrote:
| In 2018 that would have cost 799. Considering inflation,
| Apple is doing pretty great right now with keeping their
| prices from going insane.
| justin66 wrote:
| The existence of an 8GB laptop in Apple's product line was
| also absurd in 2018.
| whalesalad wrote:
| fwiw the memory bandwidth is so high on these devices
| that it doesn't feel as bad as it should be.
| ephemeral-life wrote:
| Memory bandwidth doesn't matter for these types of
| devices, it is memory latency that matters. But best of
| all is actually having your application in memory and not
| having to do disk reads.
| kube-system wrote:
| That might be your opinion, but it isn't out of line with
| their competitors. You don't have to look particularly
| hard to find other premium thin-and-lights at 8GB and a
| ~$999 price tag. I think _that_ is ridiculous, because
| the Air is better than all of them.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's on par with normal pricing from MS.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| How much do they charge to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB? Or 32?
| kube-system wrote:
| On the Surface Pro 9, it is $300 to upgrade from 8 to
| 16GB. To go to 32GB, they require you to choose a higher
| tier processor which brings the normal retail price to
| $2599, but it currently has a $500 discount, so the total
| is $2099.
| starkparker wrote:
| And pretty much any M2 MBA model is across-the-board worse than
| an equivalent 18-month old refurb M2 MBP 13, available at the
| same price.
|
| With the size difference between the MBA and MBP almost
| eliminated, the M2 MBA was a superfluous SKU at launch, much
| less now.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| For the $999 you can find Windows laptops with a dGPU and specs
| upto at least 1TB/32GB. And also maybe OLED screens.
| MBCook wrote:
| Retina level OLED? Or 1080p?
|
| It boggles my mind people still buy 1080p laptops.
| samuell wrote:
| To me it doesn't really make sense to have the computer
| spend all those CPU cycles on pixels I don't even see
| (because of the size of a 13-14" laptop screen).
| giantrobot wrote:
| The CPU isn't the component spending the cycles. Also not
| seeing pixels is a feature. I am reading text roughly 99%
| of the time I'm on my computer. Shitty low DPI screens
| make my eyes ache and my head hurt. My Air's screen I can
| turn the overall brightness down yet still have great
| dynamic range. I can also see it from just about any
| angle unlike the typical shitty 1080p panel on the
| average PC laptop.
| samuell wrote:
| With what RAM? ... and what weight?
|
| For $1700 you can get a sub-1kg Asus ExpertBook B9 with 32GB
| RAM and a 2TB disk and a decent 12th 12 core Gen Intel CPU.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ExpertBook-i7-1255U-Military-B94...
|
| Not saying it is better in all respects, but definitely in
| some, meaning there are definitely alternatives.
| jhickok wrote:
| I think it's good to correct some exaggeration, but
| personally I would still prefer an 8gb M2 with small storage
| on a laptop that easily gets all day battery life. If it were
| going to sit on my desk 24/7 connected to a monitor, then I'd
| take the Asus ExpertBook. But as someone who travels and
| works from home but works all over the house or out of coffee
| shops, I would easily prefer the Mac.
| gs17 wrote:
| >personally I would still prefer an 8gb M2 with small
| storage
|
| And it would specifically have to be an M2 since they upped
| it to 256GB minimum. I have the lowest end M1, and the tiny
| SSD is a constant pain when combined with the lack of RAM.
| turtlebits wrote:
| 1080p - that's a non starter for me.
| MBCook wrote:
| Well the two reviews give it 1 star as a quality control
| dumpster fire.
|
| And the screen is 1080p from 15 years ago.
|
| No thanks.
| samuell wrote:
| Each specific configuration gets its own product page, so
| the distribution of reviews might be a bit random.
|
| Haven't had an issue with mine, except a bit noisy fan that
| was fixed with a recent firmware update.
|
| Battery life is stellar as well and I can easily go on for
| the work day and more with it, from what I've seen.
| jjice wrote:
| You're absolutely right that they make a damn fine laptop (the
| build quality stands out to me) and they do a great job in that
| market.
|
| Anecdotally, my Framework 13 AMD ran me 1500 and I ended up
| with 64 GB of ram, 2 TB of storage, and an AMD 7840U. I bought
| my RAM and storage separately to get that end cost, to be fair.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if the M3 actually outperforms my
| processor by a bit, but having way more RAM matters a lot to
| me. All that on top of being able to repair my own machine is a
| no brainer to me.
|
| I know most laptop users wouldn't care about this stuff, but I
| really hope Framework does well and helps bring repairability
| back to laptops.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| I'm torn as I consider getting my next laptop:
|
| * Framework is philosophically best, and they make solid
| machiness. * Macbook Air has just insane battery life and is
| so small.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Why would you be torn? To me it seems pretty clear cut.
| Does all your SW run on ARM mac AND do you need that long
| battery life? Then get a mac. Otherwise get a framework or
| something else.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Just remember that those Macbook batteries are glued in and
| still subject to degradation over cycles/time.
|
| A consumable component designed to be excessively hard to
| replace, to encourage you to upgrade sooner than necessary.
| (Not everyone lives near an Apple store, and _nobody_ wants
| to mail the laptop off for what should be such a basic
| service, being without it for who-knows-how-long)
| eastbound wrote:
| > Anecdotally, my Framework 13 AMD ran me 1500 and I ended up
| with 64 GB of ram, 2 TB of storage, and an AMD 7840U. I
| bought my RAM and storage separately to get that end cost, to
| be fair.
|
| HN used to say that System76 were the best laptops ever, so I
| bought two of them. They're an incredible pile of shit, in
| addition to the battery life or the clunky build, the fans
| turn on and off like my gamer boyfriend's PC back in 2001.
|
| System76 said they won't take them back, after I tried to
| give it to every intern.
|
| I'm absolutely flaggerblasted at what Linux or Windows users
| tolerate, it seems fine for them, since all of their laptops
| is like this! The problem is having low standards, and
| compared to this, they think their laptop is great.
| Klonoar wrote:
| > HN used to say that System76 were the best laptops ever
|
| Are you sure about this...? Every System76 convo I've ever
| seen on here has plenty of people chiming in to note that
| they're simply junk Clevo shells. It's a known issue with
| them.
|
| Ideologically I love System76 (and I would buy one of their
| desktops, if I was still a desktop man). I would never buy
| one of their current laptops.
| sircastor wrote:
| I've oscillated a lot on "my next" laptop over the years. For
| a while (at the height of the butterfly-keyboard/touchbar-
| madness) I thought about going to Linux for my personal
| machine. I haven't gotten there, but the Framework gives me
| hope that a really really excellent, serviceable, and
| _understandable_ laptop can and does exist.
|
| I would love if I could run macOS on a Framework.
| conradfr wrote:
| I would love the opposite ;)
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > but having way more RAM matters a lot to me.
|
| Just out of curiosity, why? I have ~200 tabs open in chrome,
| and have ~10 different apps open. Mac could handle it
| perfectly well due to reliance on swap and compressed memory.
| My swap used is 20 gb but really can't say that even when
| switching apps fast.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I mean, it makes sense now that they essentially merged their
| mobile and desktop architecture to be one for all. That plus
| full vertical integration means they can do a lot of things
| that'd end up costing double in a windows laptop to have a pale
| imitation of.
|
| With that said, the specs on a Mac air are extremely modest
| when you really look at them. Apple is simply optimizing to do
| more with less.
| technofiend wrote:
| You can, but you're getting a glorified iPad with a keyboard.
| Bottom-spec systems have 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage.
| What is this, 2012? As usual, making it a machine that's useful
| for light development or other more demanding tasks rapidly run
| you into Apple's usurious expansion pricing; what _should_
| (IMNSHO) be their bottom-end device with 16GB memory and 1TB of
| storage is $1,699.
|
| That will be a great little machine to use until it starts
| throttling. You'll need an MBP to keep consistent peformance.
| indymike wrote:
| > The degree to which Apple has kinda just "won" laptops is
| nuts to me.
|
| It's nuts that the entire rest of the industry basically has
| own-goaled Apple into a dominant position. Apple's playbook:
|
| 1. Model-year build stability over faster go-to-market on new
| components. 2. Better build quality. 3. Better battery life. 4.
| Better display, especially in value models.
|
| I'm leaving OS and UI out of the discussion.
| w0m wrote:
| that's also $999 for 8gb of ram (!!!), which will clearly
| throttle under any actual use.
| gs17 wrote:
| Newer macOS is actually really good about running with less
| RAM. The only problem is then your SSD will suddenly fill up.
| If either was upgradable, this would be no problem.
| bsder wrote:
| What's extremely absurd is that most models in the x86 space
| seem to have gone _backwards_ on screen resolution.
|
| My 5 year old Lenovo Carbon X1 14" is 2560x1440 while I can't
| buy a current X1 with anything above 1920x1200 for any price.
| WTF?
| bogantech wrote:
| What I will never understand is that the screen options
| differ depending on which market you're in.
|
| When I was looking at Thinkpads there was never any better
| options than 1920x1200 but if I switched to the US site I
| could order with the HiDPI OLED screen.
| edb_123 wrote:
| That sounds very strange. I got my Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen8
| (13th gen i7 U-series w/ 32 GB RAM) with a 4K 16:10 OLED
| display. Best laptop I have ever had, amazingly fast and
| lasts the whole day. When I did my research before buying, I
| know the X1 Carbon was available with at least a 2.5K OLED
| display.
| porphyra wrote:
| Hotter, heavier, and worse battery life, for sure. Slower is up
| for debate --- having more ram, more cores, and possibly
| discrete GPU is great for all sorts of things. The Ryzen 7840HS
| is not any worse than the M3 in multithreaded things.
|
| Just recently there was a Thinkpad P14S on sale for $999 that
| blows the Macbooks out of the water in terms of ram and
| storage, while having a high quality OLED display and a Ryzen
| CPU that can easily trade blows with Apple silicon. It is
| hotter and heavier and has very bad battery life, though.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/s/7CgJwku18K
| bluescrn wrote:
| But add the mandatory upsells to a sensible amount of RAM and
| storage, and the 'bargain' Mac will be rather more expensive.
|
| But yeah, there's still a real lack of Windows laptop
| competition these days, especially if you want a GPU. 'Gaming
| laptops' tend to come with severe heat/noise/weight/battery
| problems.
|
| (And why are competitors touchpads still shit-tier compared to
| Apple? Even on those bulkier gaming laptops where space isn't
| at a premium and the price is on the premium side)
| tonymet wrote:
| the intro price point unit is far too limited. once you start
| adding ram and storage the price is no longer competitive.
|
| e.g. $1,899.00 for 15'' 16GB ram + 1TB SSD
|
| i just bot a similar aluminum HP with Oled , Ryzen 7, 16GB ,
| 1TB SSD for $700
|
| the build quality is good, just a tick below apple. the fan is
| mild, not as good as apple.
|
| but $1200 premium for apple ? I had to say no
| vient wrote:
| For $999 nowadays you can get 13" Acer with Core Ultra 155H,
| 16GB RAM, and 1TB memory https://www.acer.com/us-
| en/laptops/swift/swift-go/pdp/NX.KP0...
|
| In $999 13" M2 Air you get 8GB Unified RAM and 256GB memory.
| Intel ARC seems to be better than M2 graphics. Weight is
| exactly the same. Usual downsides remain - fan and smaller
| battery life, although still pretty good.
| dividefuel wrote:
| My opinion is you can pick two: low cost, high build quality,
| good specs.
|
| No one matches Apple's build and screen quality. But their base
| models are pretty underpowered, and it's not until you're
| spending closer to $2k that you get specs that feel appropriate
| for 2024. On the Windows side, there are lots of cheaper
| options, many of which have beefier specs, but the build
| quality pales in comparison.
|
| The right tradeoff depends on your budget and what you really
| need out of a device.
| buggythebug wrote:
| Lots of worthless criticism. If you want the latest and greatest
| buy it. If you are upgrading from an Intel macbook air than get
| the m3 - who wants to buy last years version
| keiferski wrote:
| Kind of disappointing that they seem to have discontinued the 11"
| model. I bought one 5 or 6 years ago and it's still working fine.
| Compared to the 13" and 15" models, it feels so much more
| portable and lightweight.
| nicole_express wrote:
| Agreed here. Though the bezels have been reduced quite a bit, a
| similarly bezel-reduced 11" would be amazingly compact and
| useful in my book.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| If you want a really compact device all apple offers today is
| the ipad, and then you have to deal with ipad os. I feel like
| as long as the ipad exists they will not make a new 11 inch
| unfortunately.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Outside of pricing, why would one buy Air vs Pro these days? I've
| had OG Air back in the day and tapered form factor was great. I
| recently was in an Apple store and looked at pro and airs.. they
| felt same, and also air seemed heavy (compared to ye olde tapered
| one). Now with Pro at 14" and Air pushing to 15".. why?
| earthwalker99 wrote:
| For photo/video editors, the Pro screen alone is worth more
| than the entire laptop. To be clear, the Pro screen is equal to
| a professional HDR reference monitor, and the entire laptop
| costs less than a professional HDR reference monitor.
| silverlake wrote:
| The weight of the 13" Air vs 15" Air vs 14" Pro is 2.7 > 3.3 >
| 3.4 lbs. For developers who do development on remote machines,
| weight and form factor are more important. I would pay top
| dollar for a 12" Macbook with M processor because I do my
| focused editing on a big screen. Other people use their laptop
| for everything so a 15" screen is preferred. Also, different
| strokes for different folks.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The 14 inch is already so light imo its probably worth it to
| splurge just to get things like the non gimped screen
| dml2135 wrote:
| I have an M2 13" air for a personal computer and a 14" pro
| for work.
|
| The Air is noticeably lighter and much easier to throw in a
| bag without thinking about managing weight. The Pro is a
| fine weight for commuting, but for traveling longer
| distances, the weight definitely makes a difference. To the
| point where I'm seriously considering setting up a work
| partition on my personal machine so I don't need to lug the
| pro around on an upcoming trip.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| To me the 14" Pro feels like a brick, the 16" is a
| veritable paving slab. I want something I can toss in a
| backpack and not feel it's there, which the Air is still
| just about light enough for. That may be because I live in
| a very walkable and bike-able area in Europe, and I do lots
| of both, I'm sure the trade-offs are different if you drive
| everywhere.
|
| As for the screen, I think "gimped" is not doing it
| justice. I regularly use both, the Air's is a very nice
| screen in its own right and while there is a difference, it
| feels more like a relatively small increment on something
| already very solid, at least to me (I don't do any pro
| photo/video work). Same for the other differences, the
| Air's speakers are already pretty good, connectivity is
| fine (for me), I like not having a fan, it's way powerful
| enough for what I do.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Air has no fan which means no moving parts and no noise.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The only time I have heard the fans on my pro was when
| running games on ultra. If you hear the fans chances are if
| you had the air instead it would be throttling. Up to you if
| that is tolerable. I can't stand throttling so I got the
| macbook pro with two fans.
| Teever wrote:
| IIRC they have a fan it just moved air internally and is for
| all intents and purpose completely silent from the end user's
| perspective.
| 93po wrote:
| I have owned probably 7 laptops over the past 20 years and
| every single one with a fan turned into a rattling jet
| engine mess. Do modern laptops not do this anymore? It was
| at least half the reason I got the Macbook Air
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Macs fans are good, by the time my 2012 kicked the bucket
| a few months ago the fan still sounded the exact same as
| it always did. Different story with every other
| electronic fan I've owned of course but I guess
| thankfully apple doesn't buy the cheapest fan possible.
| Teever wrote:
| AIUI, because the macbook air's fan is contained inside
| the machine that has no external ventilation ports that
| means the fan is mostly moving clean air with no
| particulate in it that will eventually build up on the
| fan whihc make it perform poorly.
|
| I imaagine that the lubricant in the fan will still age,
| but that is also going to be less of an issue because of
| less dust contamination.
| foldr wrote:
| Where are you getting the idea that the Mx Airs have a
| fan? They don't.
| FredPret wrote:
| I have an M1 Pro that apparently has a fan - I've never seen
| or heard any evidence that it does actually exist
| lozenge wrote:
| The new Air supports two external displays.. if the laptop is
| closed (ie internal display is off). That's a pretty big
| caveat.
| samatman wrote:
| Better monitor, better speakers (much better in both cases),
| HDMI, SD. Fan, meaning less throttling on heavy workloads.
| Support for high-resolution and multimonitor setups. If any of
| these are attractive, you get the Pro.
|
| Apple's "Pro" branding has become increasingly meaningless but
| in the MacBook category, which I believe is where it
| originated, it's meant to suggest "media professional", a
| demographic which has reason to care about all of these things.
|
| There are even shades of this in the iPhone and iPads Pro,
| which have a few features which are mainly of interest to
| professional media types. For AirPods it just means "the
| expensive ones", and for Vision Pro it means "this is
| expensive". That's the main signal for phones and tablets as
| well, realistically.
| dataworm wrote:
| I think the parent meant the opposite: why buy an Air and not
| Pro?
| samatman wrote:
| They're cheaper for the same internal specs, so you save
| money if the extras you get with the Pro aren't compelling.
| Keyframe wrote:
| exactly, outside of pricing. I see people say Air is
| noticably lighter, but I may then have a heavy hand because
| 13 air and 14 feel almost the same in weight to me, unlike
| OG Air which was light and thin. Hence, why buy Air? it's
| not even smaller.
| wiseowise wrote:
| No noise, no dust inside, lighter.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Fan, meaning less throttling on heavy workloads.
|
| Surely you mean "more noise".
| gnicholas wrote:
| MBAs are much smaller/lighter. The MBA with its lid closed is
| just a little bit taller than the MBP with the lid open. I love
| my 13" MBA!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Its a 0.75lb and 0.17"difference though, you'd have to be a
| calibrated scale to notice that outside of side by side
| testing.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Framed differently: it's 37% taller and 25% heavier. In the
| context of laptops, this is pretty hard not to notice. I
| have an MBA and my wife has an MBP -- the difference is
| very easy to see/feel.
| turnsout wrote:
| Yeah I mean if you don't notice an extra 3/4 pound on a 3
| pound laptop, then more power to you--get the bigger one
| nicbou wrote:
| For me: price and weight. I frequently travel with my laptop,
| often with a single backpack or on a bike.
|
| The Air is also way overkill. I had a 12" MacBook before that.
| It ran the software that I wrote. I write markdown in Sublime
| Text and run python scripts.
|
| There just isn't a reason to get something beefier.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I could have probably gotten away with the air but there are
| times when it would be throttling with my uses. The extra io
| and other hardware upgrades are worth it imo. Especially the
| screen, its just bright enough on the pro to use the computer
| outside in full sunlight. I had a 2022 air at one point and
| that screen was just a bit too dim to use outside without
| finding shade.
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| Prices in Europe still very bloated compared with US.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| do not forget that US prices are quoted without sales tax,
| whereas most americans will pay sales tax on it adding 6-10%
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Still locking 16GB behind the top tier option. Seems like the
| only way they keep MBP sales from cratering.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| MBA in the last few releases has just been a gimped macbook pro
| vs a totally different paradigm of product as it was when steve
| jobs pulled the first one out of a manilla envelope. The weight
| difference isn't even that significant anymore its like a half
| pound or so. Eat a big burrito for lunch and you're carrying
| more than that around all day.
| blah-yeah wrote:
| I love my m2 mbp 14"
|
| Frankly, Apple is an amazing organization and I am extremely
| thankful that they've empowered product designers to bring us
| these amazing creations.
|
| Apple is one reason that I love existing in this era. Sure, there
| are others. But having Apple... enables me to bring a laptop + a
| backup battery (anker 737) practically anywhere and work all day
| without needing a direct electricity connection.
|
| Laptop + Phone + external battery packs = work all day
|
| The light weight, stay-cool-ness ... makes it so easy to work
| from.
|
| I love you Apple. So glad to not have to use Windows. Sure, Linux
| desktops distros are decent (despite bugs), but Apple "just
| works".
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I agree; actually being able to work outside again was
| something I lost with my old 16in intel pro, it couldn't keep
| itself awake more than 2 hours
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| My old pro did not have a screen bright enough for sitting on
| a patio with it either.
| jdashg wrote:
| I'm glad it works for you but I definitely use my windows z13
| thinkpad all day on battery.
| joshmlewis wrote:
| It's fascinating they used Excel in the product photos instead of
| Numbers. I wonder who actually uses Numbers these days? Or any of
| the Apple "productivity" apps for that matter.
| DanielleMolloy wrote:
| They are much better integrated with the system, their UI is
| great and they are plain and simple. It's not just Keynote that
| is good. I used Pages for a lot of private stuff like letters,
| and Numbers suffices for a lot of simple tables too.
|
| I avoid the MS Office suite wherever I can. Recently went
| through some lengths to deactive Microsofts intrusive updating
| background service (nearly as bad in slowing down my system as
| Adobes).
| e28eta wrote:
| Also free vs paid.
|
| I would be interested to find out how many individuals and
| families pay for Microsoft's software, when apple and google
| provide free alternatives. (Maybe constrained to families
| that use mac / iphone, Microsoft might be more popular for
| Windows families?)
|
| ie: For most people, if you're not getting free access
| through work or school, is it actually worth paying for?
| seuraughty wrote:
| I recommend installing office through the App Store to avoid
| that background service.
| askonomm wrote:
| I do. They are there and work just fine for my regular bleb use
| cases. I also edit Word files in Pages and export to Word just
| fine. Same with Numbers.
| hartator wrote:
| I wish they will bring back a smaller form factor.
|
| 12" MacBook despiste its CPU flaws was the perfect size.
| bhpm wrote:
| But more than a pound heavier than the current 13" MacBook Air
| hartator wrote:
| I think that's the reverse.
|
| MacBook 12" was only 2.03 pounds. Current MacBook Air M3 13"
| is 2.75 pounds.
|
| Sad times.
| blehn wrote:
| I really wanted to love the 13" Air but two things made me switch
| to the Pro after trying it for a few weeks. One is that the
| internal speakers suck in comparison to the Pro. I 'm not looking
| for audiophile quality from laptop speakers, but the Pro speakers
| are good enough for casually watching youtube videos, TV shows,
| podcasts, etc, whereas the Air speakers are harsh and tinny. The
| second is that the default resolution isn't .5x the native
| resolution, as it is for most Apple desktop/laptop displays. It's
| some weird in-between resolution that creates aliasing on text
| and such. If you bump it down to a true .5x, it's 1280x~800,
| which is borderline unusable for desktop browsing these days.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| The speakers on Pro are definitely audiophile range. To me the
| screen quality alone was enough to drive me away from Air.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| What's the Pro sweet spot currently for RAM/disk/screen?
|
| Edit: nvm, looks like the Air supports two external displays
| but the Pro only supports one.
| justusthane wrote:
| - MacBook Pro with M3 chip = one external display
|
| - MacBook Pro with M3 Pro chip = two external displays
|
| - MacBook Pro with M3 Max chip = four external displays
|
| Given that I would personally go for the M3 Pro with 18GB
| memory, but it depends on your needs of course.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is helpful, thank you!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Lets not gulp down the koolaid. The speakers on the pro are
| nice for a laptop but thats it, they are nice for a laptop. A
| basic bluetooth speaker laps it. Honestly they are balanced
| poorly and very "boomy" where I feel like I need to turn the
| volume up more than I have to just to start to discern spoken
| words from a sort of mumbly bassy sound.
| carlesfe wrote:
| I have an Air and I felt like its speakers were pretty decent,
| but my wife bought a Pro and they're just incredible.
|
| Sometimes I hear her watching some movie or show a few rooms
| away, and I can never know if she's watching it on the TV or on
| the Pro just by the audio alone. Those speakers do fill the
| room, and them some.
| matt_s wrote:
| Do a lot of folks actively watch media content on laptops these
| days?
|
| I have never really watched more than short content on that
| form factor. I like a bigger screen and a remote, watching
| anything like a movie on a laptop feels klunky.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You'd think it feels small but go ahead and sit in front of
| your tv and pull out your laptop. In terms of effective size
| from where I have the tv and the laptop, the laptop screen is
| bigger in my field of view. 40 inch tv too, no slouch.
| penjelly wrote:
| anecdotally i know of people who bring their laptops to bed
| for tv/movies
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| Yeah... My wife adamantly opposes a TV in the bedroom, but
| watching on my laptop is not a problem =/.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I'm curious what your comparison point was for the audio
| quality of the MacBook Air.
|
| In the Windows world, I rarely if ever come across a laptop
| where the speakers weren't clearly last in precedence for
| engineering and BOM consideration. Just astoundingly bad sound
| quality accepted as normal in the Windows laptop world, even in
| supposedly premium machines.
|
| In comparison, even the least impressive MacBook Air speakers
| are good.
|
| But if you were coming from another MacBook Pro when evaluating
| the Air I can see why you would have come away wanting better.
| The Pro machines are indeed a clear step up, and the larger 16"
| models are even better given the extra space they have to work
| with.
| justin66 wrote:
| As an Air user who pretty passionately hates hearing a laptop
| fan, my wonderment at the quality of the Pro's audio would end
| the moment I heard that fan whine.
| spinningarrow wrote:
| I haven't heard the fan on my Pro turn on in _years_.
| jim180 wrote:
| Although I'm still using Air with M1 chip and still love.
| However, that resolution thing, totally annoys me :(
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| This is also the case with Pro M1 Max. Font is very blurry.
| It's funny how they turn off "scaling/sharpening filter" when
| video is watched. I've tried a bunch of things to fix it and
| none of them worked.
|
| A 4K monitor I use works perfectly fine on Linux, but with
| Macbook Pro, even though resolution perfectly matches, it still
| has blurred font (the filter they apply completely changes the
| look of the font, even though I use the same one), everything
| just remains blurry and again, watching video disables it.
| iddan wrote:
| Since October, I've replaced my M-series 14" Macbook Pro for a
| M-series Macbook Air and I'm pretty glad with it. I can do almost
| anything I could have done with my Pro (Figma, coding, Docker)
| with so much less weight on my shoulders (commuting to work,
| working in cafes, etc).
| skadamat wrote:
| I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of
| supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops.
|
| I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it
| only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even
| though I don't need the extra horsepower.
|
| And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild
| ajross wrote:
| It's on-chip silicon, not a marketing feature. This kind of
| product design is just really hard. Mask sets get well into the
| billions of dollars, you can't just assemble a list of features
| as if they're all free. You need to decide upfront, often years
| in advance, what feature you think people will want to buy for
| the market you think you'll find yourself in. There are no easy
| answers.
|
| But just in general, Intel has always prioritized lots of I/O
| flexibility on its chips. If you look at the datasheets there
| have always been dozens and dozens of units on every SKU that
| are never plumbed out to ports on the device. Three or four
| display outputs, six or eight USB controllers, stuff like that.
| Apple is the opposite: they won't include something if they
| aren't absolutely sure they need it. So after the shift from
| x86 to Apple silicon, laptop users are feeling a squeeze on I/O
| that used to seem "free".
| skadamat wrote:
| In principle I agree. But the M3 chips are similar for the M3
| Macbook Pro and M3 Macbook Air. The PRO laptop is the one
| that only supports 1 display while the AIR supports 2 with
| the lid closed.
|
| The M3 Pro has more space and is more ... pro?
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple already said that a software update is coming to
| support dual displays for MacBook Pro.
| tylerhou wrote:
| Even if there are technical limitations that prevent Apple
| from adding more I/O easily, as a consumer it feels like
| artificial segmentation/limitation.
|
| Apart from the initial M1 MacBook Pro release, it feels like
| most products Apple has released in the last few years has
| always been missing one or two features, and the next release
| happens to have that feature. E.g. the first M1 Air did not
| have MagSafe even though the Pros did, and then Apple
| included MagSafe in M2 Air, but it didn't support multiple
| displays; now Apple is including multiple displays in M3 Air.
|
| It feels awfully convenient that each generation conveniently
| has a nontrivial feature upgrade.... Apple has less incentive
| to make each generation "complete" -- by delaying features
| (more) consumers will feel obligated to upgrade per
| generation.
| tyingq wrote:
| It does seem odd, though, to brand a laptop as "PRO" and
| limit it to 2 displays, then release a non-PRO device that
| can handle more.
|
| Edit: Better wording, I suppose, that the non-PRO supports
| two external monitors with the lid closed, the PRO supports
| 1. Still an odd overall offering/branding.
| dataworm wrote:
| The MBA still can't handle more than 2 displays, though. It
| only supports 2 displays when it's closed.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Eh, Apple was happy to squeeze even before then.
|
| I had a 2019 cheesegrater Mac Pro. With Catalina, I was able
| to drive two 4K screens at 144Hz in HDR10, because Catalina
| apparently supported DSC 1.4.
|
| Then they introduced the ProDisplay XDR with Big Sur which
| had people agog at "how were they able to drive this 6K
| display given the bandwidth limitations?"
|
| Well, the answer is because they absolutely
| nerfed/bastardized DSC 1.4 from Big Sur (and it's maybe only
| been updated in Monterey? Unsure, I no longer have the
| screens - ironically I bought an XDR) to make it happen with
| some proprietary magic: those same screens could now only be
| driven at 60Hz in HDR10 or 95Hz in SDR.
|
| Proof in the pudding was that my monitors (LG27GN950-B)
| actually allowed you to change the advertised/supported DSC
| version, and when I "downgraded" the monitors to DSC 1.2,
| performance actually improved, and allowed 120Hz SDR and 95Hz
| HDR.
|
| This happened with many many users, across many screen types.
|
| Apple studiously ignored it, and may still be. They simply
| don't care if you're not using an Apple display.
| znpy wrote:
| that's (quite literally) the price you pay in order to stay in
| the apple ecosystem.
|
| More-than-one-display is pretty much the standard on regular
| (non-apple) computers: you can drive as much as your system can
| sustain.
| skadamat wrote:
| Right but in this case the AIR is the consumer model and it
| supports 2 displays while the base PRO supports 1. So it
| seems counter!
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I am hoping the limit is just a MacOS thing, like how MST1.2(?)
| was supported on my old MBA(2015) hardware but not available on
| MacOS. I could Daisy chain DisplayLink monitors on Linux, but
| MacOS wouldn't let me, and I was limited to a single monitor.
|
| I use Asahi Linux on M2 now, and the USBC display support isn't
| done yet, but I am hoping it would be better than MacOS.
| dataworm wrote:
| Unfortunately it isn't. There are only two display
| controllers in the M1/2/3 and that can't be worked around in
| software. MST won't work in Asahi Linux because it's not
| present in the hardware. It worked on x86 Macs because the
| GPU supported it.
| nerdjon wrote:
| It sucks since the M series laptops have been amazing, with
| this one glaring problem.
|
| I have a great M2 pro machine, but officially it can only
| support 2 external monitors. I should be able to close my
| screen and power 3. I can do this with a dock so it's not a
| resources problem.
|
| I am curious what is different between the Air and the Pro that
| the Air can power 2 external monitors (it does say when the lid
| is closed) and the Pro can only power 1 regardless. Or is this
| a software update and the Pro page just has not been updated.
|
| I keep hoping that this is a problem that is only temporary and
| eventually it will be removed or as time goes on each series
| can run 1 more monitor or something.
| sciencesama wrote:
| I fixed this by using this dock Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4
| Workstation Dock - DK2131
| nerdjon wrote:
| I fixed my issue as well with a dock from UGreen and the
| DisplayLink software. Just unfortunate I had to do it.
| dodslaser wrote:
| I tried a DisplayLink dock once with my M1 Max MBP. It
| was incredibly laggy, pegged my cpu at 40%, and didn't
| let me set the correct resolution/scaling level for
| either of my monitors (horizontal 4k 32" and a vertical
| 4k 27", nothing exotic).
|
| A TB4 dock fixes most problems, but I have to hack the
| EDID to disable YCbCr and force RGB, or the colors look
| like absolute shit. The external monitors still look
| significantly worse under macOS than either Windows or
| Linux, and I have no idea why.
|
| External display handling is easily the worst part of
| using a Mac for me.
| askonomm wrote:
| > External display handling is easily the worst part of
| using a Mac for me.
|
| Using more than is explicitly mentioned that is
| supported, you mean? I mean yeah, duh.
| harkinian wrote:
| Relying on DisplayLink too. It's neat, but it's a hack.
| Uses a fair bit of CPU constantly and makes my Mac say
| "your screen is being observed." Was disappointing coming
| from my 2009 Mac Pro which could run 5 displays no
| questions asked.
| hinkley wrote:
| Wait, the M2 MBP is listed as 2 external monitors?
|
| I've been running three for a while. 2 Thunderbolt 3 + 1
| Thunderbolt 2 daisy chained. They work. There are a couple
| glitches, but they work.
|
| I'm on my work machine now but I believe it also works with
| the laptop open.
| bahmboo wrote:
| Keep in mind 2 displays are only supported with the lid closed.
| So the only change is that now you can use an external monitor
| in lieu of the internal display.
| jcynix wrote:
| Lid closed? Depends on the exact Macbook version ... The lid
| of my MacBook Pro (M1 pro, 16-inch, 2021) is open and
| actively displays stuff and additionally two external LG 4K
| monitors are directly connected to it via USB-C. The third
| USB-C port is in use for external disks, but maybe I should
| try sometime to connect a third monitor ...?
|
| But nevertheless, Apple's hardware strategy sucks ...
| bahmboo wrote:
| I was referring to the new M3 MacBook Airs. Other models
| are different as you point out.
| dataworm wrote:
| The 2 display limitation is for the base model Mx. The Mx
| Pro supports 3 displays and the Max 5. All three numbers
| are for internal+external displays.
| Tagbert wrote:
| that is what a lot of people have been asking for. Lid closed
| = 2 external monitors.
| jm4 wrote:
| I think even worse than that is that they still only put 8 GB
| RAM in the base and middle options.
| eurekin wrote:
| That's so extremely backwards in relation to everything else
| it's mind boggling. 16 gb being considered and priced at
| premium, where I had a single chrome tab eating 3gb easily
| few time's recently.
| superb_dev wrote:
| What website were you on? 3gb for a Chrome tab is just
| plain unacceptable in most cases
| threeseed wrote:
| So stop using Chrome.
|
| There are other browsers that are far more memory
| efficient.
| Dah00n wrote:
| [delayed]
| deergomoo wrote:
| I believe we are now in the 9th year of 8GB being the
| baseline Mac laptop RAM config.
|
| It's incredibly stingy. For a while you could make the
| argument that a lot of Air purchasers wouldn't need it, but I
| don't think that's the case any more. My wife has an M1 Air
| with 8GB and between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she
| quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance
| hitches.
| jandrese wrote:
| My wife has been complaining to me about how she regularly
| gets the "choose which application to terminate" dialog on
| her Air. I knew in my heart that 8GB wouldn't be future
| proof, but I underestimated how fast it would be a problem.
| She pretty much just runs Safari and Libreoffice Calc too,
| nothing that should really tax the machine.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| What? I've caught Safari using 22GB of memory another
| day.
|
| Open 1000tabs and it will kill any machine.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Any browser can use massive amounts of RAM if you open a
| lot of tabs. Especially if they are running a lot of JS
| that doesn't release its memory properly. There are some
| sites I can go to that just continue to chew away at the
| RAM as long as the tab is open.
|
| In any case, it's pretty easy for the OS to swap out
| browser data as it is chunkable by tab. Just because it
| had allocated 22GB doesn't mean that it was all active.
| Must was certainly swapped to SSD.
| Perepiska wrote:
| Since a person cannot look at 1000 tabs at the same time,
| most of the tabs can be frozen. I'm writing to you from
| Firefox which has 826 tabs right now.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Congrats, you are in the top 7% of users who uses this
| horrible browser.
| Dah00n wrote:
| [delayed]
| mrweasel wrote:
| That is interesting, I run Firefox, VSCode, containers
| and whatever code I'm working on. I never even need to
| look at RAM usage. It would be interesting to know what
| triggers the RAM limit in your case.
|
| The only application I ever need to terminate is Notes,
| which for some reason is extremely crash prone on the
| mac.
| sroussey wrote:
| I find that spouses never close apps, only close windows,
| or worse hide them and forget. If one of them is
| Photoshop...
| zarzavat wrote:
| That sounds like she is running out of disk space, not
| RAM.
| grecy wrote:
| > _" choose which application to terminate"_
|
| What is that?
|
| I've been using macs for decades, and I've never seen or
| heard of such a dialog.
| burnte wrote:
| This is why for my Mac needs I have a cheaper Mini. If I'm
| going to have to be stuck with 8GB or pay insane markups for
| 16gb, I'll get the 8GB Mini, and only do the purely Mac-
| centric stuff on it to minimize pain.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| This is my current plan as well. This allows me to do mac
| builds along with linux/windows builds for a reasonable
| price.
| Meninoyo wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's their gatekeeping.
|
| I looked at the price for m3 and if it would have 16gig it
| would literally be perfect for just 1k but nope 8 more gigs
| cost you an arm and a leg
| geodel wrote:
| You really are in market for Apple laptop and 200 dollar
| more for extra 8GM RAM is arm and a leg for you?
| pquki4 wrote:
| You forgot to mention the 256GB SSD.
|
| I had a Macbook Pro 2015 with 256GB SSD. (Base model was
| 128GB). It was a very painful experience even back then.
| Yet almost ten years later, we are here, still paying
| $200 to upgrade to 512GB, when almost every Windows
| laptop comes with 512GB. FYI a 1TB NVMe gen 4 drive costs
| less than $100.
| yumraj wrote:
| No, what's worse is Apple, or is it random _self-styled
| influencers_ , spreading the false narrative that Apple
| Silicon magically requires less RAM and people actually
| believing that.
| lynguist wrote:
| No, but Apple tends to have faster RAM (way more
| bandwidth), faster SSDs, and macOS tends to have a better
| memory compression algorithm.
| yumraj wrote:
| > macOS tends to have a better memory compression
| algorithm
|
| Compared to what? Linux? Windows?
|
| Are there any published benchmarks anywhere, otherwise
| this just proves my point above.
|
| > Apple tends to have faster RAM (way more bandwidth),
| faster SSDs
|
| Yes, sure, due to its integrated nature, but that does
| _not_ reduce the RAM requirement. My 8GB M1 MBA, which is
| used as a home browsing-only laptop, is almost always in
| yellow on memory pressure once we have a few tabs open.
| pquki4 wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hmWPd7uEYEY
|
| I am sick of people making claims without quoting any
| numbers about real-life performance.
| chongli wrote:
| I disagree, and I always upgrade the RAM even though I don't
| like paying more. Why? Because it puts pressure on developers
| to keep the bloat under control.
|
| Think of an alternate universe where Apple does the opposite:
| every new model they push the envelope and double the
| baseline RAM compared to the previous year. In that world
| you'd have all the software growing in memory use without
| bound. Consumers would be forced into a treadmill of computer
| upgrades like we haven't seen since the 90's when CPUs were
| skyrocketing in performance every year.
|
| For anyone who forgets what the 90's was like, here's an
| example with Mac models:
|
| 1990 saw the launch of the Mac LC which had a 16 MHz Motorola
| 68020
|
| 1999 brought the Power Mac G4 at up to 500 MHz
|
| That's a 31-fold increase in clock rate (and several times
| that in overall performance) in the same timespan we're
| discussing. Software that was written for the G4 had no
| chance of running on the LC (ignoring CPU architecture
| differences).
|
| MacBook Airs are the mainline consumer machine these days.
| Apple does not want users to feel like they need to upgrade
| them every year (despite what people say).
| jabradoodle wrote:
| What do you mean by mainline consumer machine? MacBook
| market share is less than 20%
| Ensorceled wrote:
| What does market share have to do with which market you
| are targeting?
| pquki4 wrote:
| > It puts pressure on developers to keep the bloat under
| control
|
| If you are talking about "native" apps, maybe. Otherwise,
| nah. Cross-platform apps based on web like Teams and
| Spotify won't put too much effort on performance as long as
| it is not too slow. And if you haven't realized, most of
| the stuff you interact with is online. People just shove an
| entire website.
|
| As for professional apps -- if you can't run a heavy
| audio/video editing application smoothly, I'm pretty sure
| that's your problem. Developers can put more effort into
| optimizing for 8GB RAM, but at the end of the day these
| workflows require large amount of memory, and after a
| certain point it is not worth to optimize for this segment
| of users
| chongli wrote:
| I'm talking specifically about native, non-professional
| apps targeted at regular consumers (such as grandma, aunt
| Suzie, little Billy working on his science project).
| These are the kinds of apps that are published on the Mac
| App Store. Apple specifically includes Performance as a
| section under its App Store review guidelines. I bet if
| you submit an app that gobbles up more than 8GB of RAM
| and starts swapping like crazy on a baseline Mac, you'll
| get rejected by the review team.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I disagree, and I always upgrade the RAM even though I
| don't like paying more. Why? Because it puts pressure on
| developers to keep the bloat under control.
|
| Shouldn't you be doing the opposite then? Keeping the
| baseline amount so you can know what it's like for people
| without a large budget and stop patronizing the
| applications without acceptable footprints in that
| circumstance?
|
| > In that world you'd have all the software growing in
| memory use without bound.
|
| We already live in that world. In the 90s you could run
| Netscape Navigator on a machine with 8 _megabytes_ of
| memory. I 've seen individual browser tabs use more
| _gigabytes_ than that.
|
| And not all of this is Electron bloat. The Stable Diffusion
| XL model is ~13GB. In general the quality is going to be
| proportional to the model size. So for the thing to get
| better, people need machines with more memory. And 8GB is
| _already_ too small.
| chongli wrote:
| _Shouldn 't you be doing the opposite then? Keeping the
| baseline amount so you can know what it's like for people
| without a large budget and stop patronizing the
| applications without acceptable footprints in that
| circumstance?_
|
| I'm not a developer of native Mac apps. If I were, I
| would definitely have a baseline machine for testing.
|
| _The Stable Diffusion XL model is ~13GB_
|
| That's not a baseline consumer application. See my other
| reply (re: grandma and little Billy). If you're
| developing a native Mac app for grandma and little Billy,
| Apple probably doesn't want you shipping a 13GB model
| with it. This is an example of the point I'm trying to
| make: find a way to compress the model so the end user
| doesn't have to deal with that kind of bloat (or host it
| in the cloud).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I'm not a developer of native Mac apps. If I were, I
| would definitely have a baseline machine for testing.
|
| You expect every developer to buy a second Mac? They're
| all doing what you're doing and paying more for the
| machine with more memory because _other_ applications
| need it, and then their application runs fine on _that_
| machine so they don 't even notice the problem for the
| people with 8GB.
|
| > That's not a baseline consumer application.
|
| It will be before any of these new machines go out of
| support.
| thfuran wrote:
| >We already live in that world.
|
| Nah, the treadmill stalled out years ago.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The CPU treadmill did because Moore's Law petered out.
| RAM keeps getting cheaper and applications keep using
| more of it.
| thfuran wrote:
| RAM usage has barely budged for years. Taking the '90s as
| baseline again: In 1991, you could get a brand new
| PowerBook 100 with 2 MB of RAM. In 2001, you'd get a new
| PowerBook G4 with 128 MB of RAM, a 64-fold increase. But
| in 2013, a MacBook Air came standard with 4GB, and we're
| looking at only 8GB in 2024.
| balaji1 wrote:
| The RAM being so low is confusing. Given RAM is one of the
| cheaper components. I guess they do some smart swap memory
| using SSD - but my Air laptop struggles to run PowerPoint,
| few browser tabs and video calling at the same time.
| jsz0 wrote:
| Obviously a planned obsolescence tactic. If the base models
| were 16GB there's a fine chance Apple wouldn't see another
| dollar from those customers for another 10+ years at minimum.
| The average customer doesn't understand their memory
| requirements and cannot be expected to predict how they may
| change in the future. It's the only thing they got left they
| can use to trick customers into buying a machine that will
| need to be replaced sooner.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Look, I'm not happy about the base ram situation either, I
| really do think they should put in 12/16GB at minimum.
|
| But at the same time, I've never seen non-techies complain
| that they can't open a few tabs, reply to a few emails,
| watch youtube, listen to music, and study on their base
| laptops. They're _amazing_ for that.
|
| If we need more memory to accomplish the above tasks any
| time soon, we're in a sad state of software development and
| bloat.
| cstrat wrote:
| Agree it is crazy, I am writing this from my M1 Air with 8GB
| of RAM and I am yet to ever have a real issue with a RAM
| limitation... the OS does an amazing job juggling RAM.
| seam_carver wrote:
| The m3 mbp is getting macos update to match MBA m3 display
| support, so you'll get 2 external displays with lid closed too.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/04/14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-...
| system2 wrote:
| I can do 4 monitors with my lid closed with my Dell XPS 13.
| It is crazy to see an Apple Laptop that costs $2000+ cannot
| do a laptop that costs $1000. People with money really don't
| know how to shop.
| wilg wrote:
| It is also possible they consider other factors besides one
| additional external monitor.
| DavidPastrnak wrote:
| * $1,499
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Really? I just recently tried out (and took a photo of) an m2
| macbook pro with 2k displays attached, lid open and screen
| mirroring on. 4 screens with 60" tv in the distance. Would
| that really not work on an m3 mac?
| wmf wrote:
| The M2 supports two native display outputs. If you have
| more than that you must be using janky Displaylink dongles.
| bombcar wrote:
| The M1 Max supports many more, so it might depend on
| _which_ M2 you have.
| android42 wrote:
| Stuff like this is why I can not switch to Apple, I would not
| expect or even think to look up which Macbooks can support at
| least 2 displays if they otherwise had decent enough specs for
| them. Who knows what else I am failing to consider?
|
| I don't want to waste time migrating to a new system, only to
| find out I need to return/resell it, or later down the road
| find out another arbitrary/artificial limitation Apple has set
| that I either have to find a work around for or suck up until I
| can switch machines again if none exist.
|
| This is unfortunate since there are some features that have
| made it very tempting to switch.
| Tagbert wrote:
| They just changed it so that, with the laptop lid closed, the
| M3 Airs and MBP support two external monitors.
| brocket wrote:
| I feel like I accidentally discovered a huge hack for this by
| upgrading to a 49" DQHD monitor. It's the exact same resolution
| as two 27" 1440p monitors so it's like any Apple silicon chip
| has always supported dual external displays. And it was a much
| better overall value compared to buying 2 displays + over-
| specced macbook.
| miles wrote:
| Do you mind sharing the monitor model? Found the Samsung
| LC49G97TSSNXDC for $999[1], but also a reddit thread about
| some issues with it and a 2019 MacBook Pro[2] (which is
| admittedly Intel rather than Apple silicon-based).
|
| [1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-
| odyssey-49-1000r-curved...
|
| [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace/comments/mb9
| vnv...
| brocket wrote:
| Samsung CRG9 (previous sale at Costco for $749, currently
| $849) connected through HP USB-C Dock G5 (models are
| confusing, exact one I bought was
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RGC9QSL/). I'm using
| original base M1 Macbook (currently $749 at Costco) and
| have had zero issues with the monitor. Without the dock you
| might need a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter like mentioned in
| reddit comments you linked to, but I already had the dock
| from a previous workstation and everything just worked when
| I plugged it in.
|
| Considering minor Macbook upgrades can get you into >$1500
| price territory pretty easily I think this a fantastic
| value. If you wanted to buy my full setup right now it
| would be $849 + $749 + $145 = $1745 but you're getting
| "dual" monitors and dock that can be reused with any modern
| machine, making it easy to switch between work and play. I
| can even plug my Steam Deck into it. :) (No affiliation
| with any of these products!)
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| I have two Samsung Ultrawides, one at home, one at work.
| They both work perfectly fine with my M2 Max MBP, including
| at 120Hz. I have connected them directly and via a Lenovo
| TB4 docking station. No issues either way.
|
| One thing you should be aware of is that having two
| seperate monitors can be an advantage for Window management
| on macOS. With two monitors, I can swap spaces on one of
| them and keep everything as is on the other. With only one
| it's not that easy.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Apple will do anything it can to "gate".
|
| If it can identify something people will pay more for, while
| not quite putting off most people, it'll do it, no matter how
| mad.
|
| So if most people think 8GB is fine for a laptop, they'll buy
| it, and everyone else pays through the nose for more.
|
| Most people only want one extra screen? That's what you get on
| the base machine and you must pay (alot) for more. If one day
| most people need two, then you'll get two.
|
| Apple seem to spend a lot of design time on how to extract the
| most money out of those willing to pay, no matter how annoying
| it is.
| anfelor wrote:
| You can use more external displays using a dock and DisplayLink
| Manager though. I got three extra monitors to run on my M1 Air
| with no problems that way.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Does the M3 MBP get more displays that a MacBook Air with an
| M3? I thought it was a hardware limitation with the processor.
| drooopy wrote:
| So, the cheapest configuration with 16 GB of RAM (and still with
| a measly 256GB of SSD) begins at EUR1479 (previously incorrectly
| stated as EUR1700) in the EU with VAT and that's with the older
| M2 chip. As for the external display thing, you basically have to
| "sacrifice" the laptop's screen and built in keyboard and
| trackpad in order to use a 2nd display. Jesus wept. CORRECTION:
| The price for 16/256 is at EUR1479.
| Trollmann wrote:
| Where in the EU? In Germany they ask for 1429EUR for the
| configuration you specified.
| drooopy wrote:
| That was my bad. I was looking at the 512 GB model + an
| additional 8 GB of RAM. Even so, EUR1429 for 16 GB of non-
| upgradeable RAM in 2024 is ludicrous.
| Trollmann wrote:
| Oh I agree, just thought that there was a place in Europe
| were the prices are even more outrageous.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You can get open box macs from some retailers a few months
| after the sku releases for huge savings sometimes almost 20%. I
| got a mbp for like over $400 off iirc from best buy with three
| cycles on the battery. At that price it didn't even make sense
| to go with apple refurbished.
| dataworm wrote:
| I don't think many people use a laptop with an external display
| without closing the lid. Laptops are terrible for ergonomics
| and the only solutions are using a stand with a separate
| keyboard and mouse or closing the lid and using it like a
| desktop. In both cases the built-in keyboard and trackpad
| aren't being used.
| swyx wrote:
| my biggest regret of 2023 is buying the MBA with M2 chip. it is
| so underpowered compared to the MBP - no right hand ports, lower
| memory, no support for 2 monitors - that it was not worth the few
| hundred dollars saved and lighter weight which was something i
| thought I valued.
|
| so just a word of advice to fellow devs - go for the MBP. if
| you're on here you need it.
| darknavi wrote:
| I have a 14in MBP M2 and it only has two USB C ports on the
| left-hand side. Apple's fractured line up is confusing at best.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They still sell a macbook pro lite with a single fan
| unfortunately. You need to throw in for the higher core count
| chip to get the actual macbook pro.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The battery life is crazy on the m3s, supposedly better than m2
| due to more e cores. I use mine all day and can get away with
| charging it overnight.
| flippy_flops wrote:
| Is M3 the same single core speed on all platforms (e.g. air vs
| pro vs mini, etc)? In other words, would m3 mbpro single core
| benchmarks be basically the same as this new air?
| AndroTux wrote:
| Yes, basically. If you're running long-term heavy load, the
| lack of fans in the Air will of course throttle it. But for
| short bursts they will perform the same.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The thermal situation is sort of interesting. The lowest spec
| macbook pro has 1 fan. The middle spec and the max have the
| same 2 fan setup though. This would imply the coolest running
| one is probably the 11 core. You could probably pin those p
| cores all day.
| hit8run wrote:
| Only caveat is the 60hz display imho.
| luka-birsa wrote:
| Is anyone else annoyed that Apple are extra shifty with
| performance comparisons these days, comparing to M1 and not to M2
| MB Airs?
|
| I opted for a M2 Air in October seeing small differences in M2
| pro vs M3 pro, so I guess I was right - the difference must be so
| small that Apple can't stomach the difference.
|
| I'd rant about how they try to market new models with more and
| more stupid marketing when they don't have anything to show, but
| I guess this only means I don't need to upgrade for a while since
| they are all out of proper innovation...
|
| Imagine being a fanboy for Apple this days. Nothing to look for.
| They are so blatant in extracting value and not bringing anything
| new to the table, probably best compared to Nokia in it's heyday.
| rayiner wrote:
| The 24GB memory limit is pathetic in 2024.
| plandis wrote:
| What are you doing on a MBA that utilizes all 24GB? I'm legit
| curious because I feel like applications that need a ton of ram
| probably also want better perf than the MBA can provide anyways
| or come in a better form factor than a laptop.
| tptacek wrote:
| I have a 64G '21 M1M and it feels pretty silly. I wouldn't
| trade the memory back for money, but I would trade half of it
| for weight or for battery life.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm still very happy with my M1 Air.
|
| But I also rarely do much on it aside from web browse and write
| small Flutter and Golang apps.
|
| I'm disappointed with the low ram and storage specs, but you also
| get a laptop that'll last until the unreplaceable battery dies.
| sciencesama wrote:
| Does this have 120hz promotion yet ??
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| How is Apple able to use the MagSafe connector in the EU?
| abhorrence wrote:
| Presumably because the computers can also charge via their
| USB-C ports.
| cialowicz wrote:
| I'll venture a guess and assume it's because they can also
| charge via USB C, or maybe the EU law only applies to phones
| and tablets.
| bertil wrote:
| I think the rule only applies to device of a specific size (but
| that size might be laptop). Either way, Apple offers USB C as
| an option. You can have proprietary features (like MagSafe for
| all other Apple devices), but you must offer USB C to sell in
| the EU.
| deergomoo wrote:
| They also charge via any of the USB-C ports.
| jdc0589 wrote:
| > all in its strikingly thin and light
|
| how about we make them thicker, so there's enough room to keep
| the screen from eventually touching the keys when closed and
| permanently marring it after a few years. I guess, its only been
| happening since 2007, probably not enough time to come up with a
| solution.
|
| /rant
| moolcool wrote:
| For what it's worth, M1 series MBPs are quite a bit thicker
| than the touchbar era Intel MBPs
| lavela wrote:
| I'm always a bit irritated when editors still use inch
| measurements exclusively, when it's only used in 3 countries
| officially still.
|
| Not talking about screen sizes obviously, but I really don't have
| an intuition for what 'less than half an inch' thickness is and
| I'm sure there are a _lot_ of people who use English as their
| interface language outside of the US.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| It's the US Apple website, what do you expect? Of course the
| measurements will be in football fields and eagles/freedom
| units.
|
| Go to other local websites and the specs will be in the local
| units (most likely metric), but even in Europe, display sizes
| or car wheels are almost always denominated in inches.
| lavela wrote:
| If it is the US website I'm just asking where the
| international english website is I guess. Choosing UK or
| South Africa doesn't make the inch go away.
|
| This is totally fine for companies targeting US domestic
| markets I guess but I suspect Apple sees itself as an
| international company and they should have the budget for
| proper internationalization.
|
| Maybe they just don't care for people to know how thin the
| Air is, but the number of search results for 'thin' on the
| page let's me think otherwise.
| karaterobot wrote:
| To be fair to the editors, the inch measurement is just coming
| from Apple, that's how they refer to it. If the editors
| converted the model name into centimeters they'd be using a
| different name than Apple, and probably losing some search
| traffic as well. But I feel your pain: it's not even a great
| description, because the screen isn't 13 inches, it's 13.6 or
| something like that.
| lavela wrote:
| I can deal with the screen sizes, as they are used everywhere
| ( it's similar to e.g. 3.5mm jack I guess) and you know
| what's meant by that, but stating the thickness in inches got
| me.
| coolliquidcode wrote:
| I get it. It'd be nice if all these major companies used both
| in and cm. Americans have to go back and forth with metric a
| lot and it would be useful to think of every day items in terms
| of both inches and cm.
| wyre wrote:
| You didn't ask, but 'less than half an inch' is around a
| centimeter. 1 inch = 2.56 cm; .5 inch = 1.28 cm
| FredPret wrote:
| Why is # of countries or # of people important?
|
| It's the total spending dollars that's important. By using US
| customary units, you get 25% of the world GDP in one easy-to-
| do-business-with entity.
| lavela wrote:
| Funny how you say total spending and then argue with a
| percentage but aside from that do you really want to argue
| that Apple doesn't care about the total spending of, say,
| India just because they make up a smaller percentage of the
| world's GDP?
| FredPret wrote:
| > Funny how you say total spending and then argue with a
| percentage
|
| ... so? Total spending is the key factor; Apple gets
| exposure to 25% of the total human economy by catering to
| one polity which is also the easiest one to do business in.
| That's a no-brainer if I've ever heard one.
|
| By contrast, India's economy is only 3% of the world total.
| [0]
|
| It's interesting to note that this understates US dominance
| in luxury products - due to being rich-person-friendly,
| they actually have far more than 25% of the world's rich
| people - 38% according to page 28 of [1]
|
| Which market would you rather target?
|
| [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?mos
| t_rec...
|
| [1] https://www.ubs.com/global/en/family-office-
| uhnw/reports/glo...
| lavela wrote:
| How is this an either-or situation if you could just
| provide an additional internationalization for 'preferred
| language english' + 'IP outside of US'?
|
| 'less than an inch (11.5mm)' would still be a better
| specification if you want to have a version where you
| rather err towards US customers.
|
| I'm not offended by seeing inches, just irritated that
| you wouldn't cater to the rest of the world.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's not either-or and they _do_ cater to the rest of the
| world. But when they release something new, they 'll
| always try to make it work for their US customer base
| first.
|
| If you check these specs in a month, it'll probably tell
| you the size in mm. I just checked the iPhone page from
| here in Canada and it says this: 5.77 inches (146.6 mm)
| lavela wrote:
| It says 11.5mm in my mother tongue already. Might just be
| a slip-up then.
| regus wrote:
| Here is a question for all you Mac experts:
|
| I purchased an M1 Mac Mini and I regret it, I should have gotten
| a laptop because I often find myself wanting to use my computer
| outside of my office. I am not doing anything crazy with this
| thing, just photo editing and light coding.
|
| Is there any reason why I should choose a Pro over an Air at this
| point?
| xutopia wrote:
| Honestly if you don't see the point with your use case go for
| the cheaper option.
| damuellen wrote:
| Am I the only one who is bothered by the cut-out for the webcam
| and the rounded corners of the screen? Fortunately, laptops are
| just toys for me, and I save a lot of money by not buying one
| from Apple anymore.
| kypro wrote:
| I love the rounded corners honestly. The screen feels more
| natural with it. The camera notch however bothers me daily. The
| most annoying bit about it is that the notch is so large that
| the mouse cursor can get lost in the dead zone behind it.
|
| It's awful design... It would had been forgivable if it was
| just a small circular camera cutout, but I'm guessing they
| didn't do that purely because they wanted to be different. Plus
| to go with a circular camera cutout on their Macbooks would
| suggest that it's not a great design choice on the iPhone
| either.
|
| It's the only thing I genuinely hate about my M3 Macbook.
| Almost everything else is great.
| nodesocket wrote:
| I currently have a 16" M1 Max and thinking about picking up a 15"
| M3 Air. My understanding is the M3 is faster in single core
| performance but the M1 Max is faster in multi-core because of
| obviously more cores. Am I really going to see a performance
| difference switching from M1 Max to M3 or should I splurge and go
| for M3 Pro or M3 Max?
| seam_carver wrote:
| M3 MBP will also get 2 display support when the lid is closed in
| a macOS update.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/04/14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-...
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| Source?
| dataworm wrote:
| https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/04/m3-macbook-pro-multi-
| di...
| seam_carver wrote:
| Added
| dataworm wrote:
| The M2 MacBooks should also get that because the hardware
| supports it. The M2 Mac mini allows to connect 2 displays over
| USB-C if you don't use the HDMI port.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The M1 mini could connect 2 displays as well. I'm pretty sure
| one of the two display controllers in the laptops is
| hardwired to the internal screen.
| numbers wrote:
| I was recently buying a Dell laptop for my sister and it boggles
| my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework is an except)
| still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for consumer laptops. I
| didn't enjoy the process of looking through dozens of various
| lines that Dell has and then other companies like Lenovo and HP
| earlier in the process, just to find a "mid-range usable computer
| with a decent screen".
|
| If you didn't know anything about laptops and wanted to buy your
| first one, it would be a nightmare to figure out what all those
| seemingly random numbers mean on most non-Apple laptops.
|
| Apple continues to simplify the laptop naming scheme, we're at a
| point where it's simply:
|
| Air OR Pro
|
| Small screen OR big screen
|
| All other details can be configured in the buying flow but
| there's not much to think about if you just want a simple laptop.
| skadamat wrote:
| Definitely agree with the simplicity of purchasing an Apple
| computer compared to other laptop manufacturers. Headphone
| brands and monitor makers also suffer from this same fate :/
| rchaud wrote:
| Not that simple when there are multiple generations of each
| on sale, with wildly different prices should you change the
| storage or RAM toggle.
|
| The MacBook Air used to have a multiple USB-A ports plus
| video, now it 2 ports that have to handle everything. So now
| the dongle/no dongle question has to become considered as
| well.
| skadamat wrote:
| Agreed that even Apple products have gotten confusing. But
| still 1-2 orders of magnitude less I feel than other
| laptops?
| jpalomaki wrote:
| I think the lineup and config options on Apple laptops
| and tablets are carefully planned to make you spend more
| than you intially thought.
|
| You start with the idea of cheap model, then start going
| the ladders up.
| danieldk wrote:
| Maybe, but I know plenty of non-tech people that just buy
| the baseline MacBook Air and are happy with it.
| gumby wrote:
| > The MacBook Air used to have a multiple USB-A ports plus
| video, now it 2 ports that have to handle everything.
|
| I doubt this is much of a constraint in the real world.
| Most people plug power in, perhaps an external mouse, and
| that's it. (They should be plugging in external storage for
| backups, which might require an extra port, but I doubt
| most people do in practice).
|
| > So now the dongle/no dongle question has to become
| considered as well.
|
| I'm pretty much USB-C only at this point, but even before
| then I never understood the fixation on "dongles".
| danieldk wrote:
| Not everything. MacBooks have MagSafe for power, which
| frees a port for power or having to use an adapter with
| power passthrough.
|
| Though it's not a big issue in practice. When at home or
| the office, I just plug into a display with a USB or
| Thunderbolt hub. On-the-go, the Apple adapter works great.
|
| Having to plug more than one cable is annoying anyway when
| you move between desks.
| harkinian wrote:
| I hate dealing with USB-C, but on laptops, it hardly
| matters. Pretty rare that I'm plugging in anything besides
| power.
| izacus wrote:
| Oh come on, you're overexaggerating a bit. If you follow your
| pattern with Apple, you'll end up with a measly 8GB/256GB model
| which will only be useful for basic browsing.
|
| (And with more and more Electron apps, might struggle even with
| that once you hop onto a video call.)
| Seanambers wrote:
| "will only be useful for basic browsing" nah.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > you'll end up with a measly 8GB/256GB model which will only
| be useful for basic browsing.
|
| I must be doing something wrong then. I've got one of those
| measly models and I do quite a bit more than just basic
| browsing without any problem. Video calls are the least of
| that, and they work fine.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Video calls require trivial amounts of memory and no real
| storage at all. Video _editing_ , on the other hand, would
| pretty quickly fill up a 256GB drive. If you want to play
| with the fun new AI stuff, 8GB of RAM isn't enough.
|
| Modern machines also have a nefarious failure mode. It used
| to be that you needed more memory to cache the hard drive,
| but SSDs are pretty fast and that doesn't matter as much
| anymore. So now you have the opposite problem -- if you're
| out of memory and start swapping you don't notice as much,
| because SSDs are pretty fast. Except that now you're
| silently wearing out your SSD. Which in the Macs, is
| soldered.
| sva_ wrote:
| > I'll have you know, my 2023 $1300 laptop is capable of
| doing video calls
|
| Weird flex
| lcmatt wrote:
| I have the base level M2 Air and it's anything but a basic
| browsing machine.
|
| Runs everything I throw at it development wise, while a good
| few other things are open and it has never felt slow. Compare
| that to any Windows laptops with the same spec and it would
| be chugging along with just Chrome open.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >chugging along with just Chrome open
|
| This is just FUD. Even my kids 2017 laptop doesn't "chug
| along with just Chrome open". It can run chrome and a game
| too just fine.
| superb_dev wrote:
| I do all of my development on a measly 8GB/500GB model. The
| only application that has performance problems for me
| VCVRack, and that's only after I surpassed 900 modules
| threeseed wrote:
| Video transcoding is done on the GPU and has nothing to do
| with memory/storage.
|
| And there isn't a trend towards more Electron apps.
| Increasingly developers are using Tauri which is Rust based
| and extremely lightweight.
| jshier wrote:
| Is there a single popular Tauri app? What are the most
| popular?
| threeseed wrote:
| The point is that it's growing:
|
| https://github.com/tauri-apps/awesome-tauri
| vilunov wrote:
| Tauri is not that much different from Electron honestly.
| threeseed wrote:
| That is simply not true. My Tauri app is 38MB:
| https://github.com/harana/search/releases
|
| Electron Framework alone on macOS is 356MB.
|
| And this is reflected in memory usage as well.
| 015a wrote:
| Anyone who says the 8/256 Airs are throwaway machines has
| literally never used one. Full stop. You have an opinion
| about what 8gb of memory is capable of, which is influenced
| entirely by Intel CPUs and Windows. It hits different on the
| M1 platform and MacOS.
| bmitc wrote:
| Have you ever tried to trade in an Apple prdoduct? They ask you
| to enter the serial number and then bizarrely ask you to
| indentify to device. You basically have to refer to MacRumors
| to get it right. Apple has the same problem, if not worse.
|
| Dell has XPS 13, XPS 15, and XPS 17 and now the plus
| designation. It's pretty easy.
| quenix wrote:
| I've traded in multiple and only ever had to enter the serial
| number.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Huh, the xps itself has 36 SKUs in Germany. Then there's
| Latitude, Inspiron, Vostro, Alienware, Gaming Pro, Mobile
| Precision Workstation...
| superb_dev wrote:
| I've done a trade in a few times with Apple and it's always
| been simple. There's a serial number on the device, or you
| could just select it from devices attached to your account
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Disregarding that there are 10 different laptop product lines
| to choose from, if I've already somehow decided that what I
| want is an XPS and I want a 13 inch screen size, my first two
| search results are
|
| - XPS 13 Laptop
|
| or
|
| - XPS 13 Laptop
|
| https://i.imgur.com/2SHL91Y.png
|
| I gather that one of these is a newer revision than the
| other, but it's a lot more confusing than "M2" and "M3". I
| need to know whether I want (up to) a Core Ultra 7 155H vs a
| Core i7-1250U, and whether (up to) Intel Arc Graphics is
| better than Intel Iris Xe graphics.
|
| Scrolling down further adds the XPS 13 Plus and XPS 13 2-in-1
| Laptop. How does XPS 13 Plus compared to XPS 13 Laptop? What
| about to the _other_ XPS 13 Laptop, is it better than both?
| Or is this a weird side-grade where you get a different form
| factor which is in some ways nicer, but then also comes with
| all the dumb parts of the Apple 's "Touch Bar" and none of
| the good parts? (that's my 10 second interpretation of the
| product, but more clueless customers will have absolutely no
| idea)
| harkinian wrote:
| I like how one is Intel i7 and one is Intel 7. Mind that
| the i7 is a -U, which is totally different from a -H or a
| desktop i7.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Have you ever tried to trade in an Apple product? They ask
| you to enter the serial number and then bizarrely ask you to
| indentify to device._
|
| Yes, Apple changed to a randomized serial number format in
| 2021. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/14/apple-preapres-
| for-rand...
|
| So, if you have a device made after that transition and Apple
| doesn't already know the details (e.g. because you didn't buy
| it direct), they'll also need to know how much RAM and SSD
| space it has.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| But they manufactured it. They couldn't keep a database
| mapping serial numbers to specs?
| CharlesW wrote:
| That's a great point. My guess is that Apple doesn't
| share that data with their trade-in partners, which would
| include the web-based trade-in estimator. I don't recall
| having to share this when I brought stuff into an Apple
| Store for an in-person trade-in.
| whalesalad wrote:
| You can identify your machine here:
| https://checkcoverage.apple.com
|
| It's also available inside of the about this mac screen.
|
| Multiple orders of magnitude easier than the PC laptop space.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I've traded in multiple Apple computers over the years and
| never had to refer to some external site like you say.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I just tried their Apple "Trade In" Tool.
|
| They ask for serial which you can copy and paste from the
| "About this Mac" dialog box that is in MacOS.
|
| From there it asks you the year of your laptop which is also
| in the same dialog box.
|
| From there it asks you which CPU version and core count you
| have (for M series laptops with multiple options.) To get
| this info, you click on "More Info" on the same dialog box(In
| Sonoma you also click System Report and it is all there).
|
| Afterwards it just asks the condition of the laptop (ie, does
| it turn on, screen cracked etc.)
|
| I don't see why you would need MacRumors for this.
| croes wrote:
| It pretty easy with no competitor for the MacOS segment.
|
| All those numbers try to hide that they basically sell all the
| same.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Apple continues to simplify the laptop naming scheme, we're
| at a point where it's simply: > Air OR Pro > Small screen OR
| big screen
|
| The weird part of that argument to me: to arrive to that point
| you've already made a ton of choices that need to be educated.
|
| You decided on the form factor: you don't want a convertible
| (neither a Surface like tablet + keyboard, nor something like a
| Yoga).
|
| You decided to forgo touch.
|
| You decided you don't really want to game. You also evaluated
| you don't need anything Windows or x86 only.
|
| Then sure there's about 10 models. But at that point is it much
| complicated than say, choose from the DELL XPS line ?
| Longhanks wrote:
| In my experience, most people looking for "just a notebook"
| don't care about any of those things. They want a low
| maintenance, high performant (for day-to-day tasks, not
| gaming) portable computer with a great battery that runs
| Chrome, Office and Spotify, and comes with great customer
| service - nothing comes close to being able to bring your Mac
| to the next Apple Store.
| zdragnar wrote:
| You could just get a Chromebook for that and save yourself
| a ton of money. It's what my wife did, and she's not wanted
| anything else for seven years.
|
| It isn't close to an apple device in terms of materials or
| performance, but at a tenth of the cost of a pro it makes a
| lot of sense.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| Laptops in my household are a mix of Macs and
| Chromebooks. All are >5yrs old. Love the resilience and
| useful life of both.
| eropple wrote:
| I've had a couple of Chromebooks and enjoyed them, but I
| never found one with a keyboard that didn't feel terrible
| to type on. Does one exist today?
| zdragnar wrote:
| I'm guessing if you want quality materials, you have to
| pay for it. I don't know if the pixel line of Chromebooks
| are still a thing, but even if they are you can just get
| a higher end laptop with more appropriate levels of local
| SSD storage and an actual OS for what I remember Google
| charging for them.
| lupire wrote:
| Higher end Chromebooks run Linux well.
| eropple wrote:
| That's why my actual laptops are Thinkpads and Macs, sure
| --but I can hope, right?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If I gave these requirements to my parents they'd go to a
| random computer shop and come back with probably a random
| 13 or 15 inch DELL. And that's what millions of people get
| at work as a standard supplied computer.
|
| I am not saying the mac isn't good at filling that niche,
| just that people who really don't care about computers also
| don't care if it's a mac, and will probably be fine with
| any recent default configuration machine from a major
| maker.
|
| PS: > bring your Mac to the next Apple Store
|
| You need an Apple Store. In my experience people have come
| to terms with shipping devices and waiting for repairs.
| Cloud sync helps a lot in that respect, as keeping another
| computer around has become decently manageable.
| Klonoar wrote:
| _> If I gave these requirements to my parents they 'd go
| to a random computer shop and come back with probably a
| random 13 or 15 inch DELL._
|
| And if _I_ did that, they 'd also come back with that
| DELL - and then I'd be stuck doing tech support for them
| for however long the thing lasts. I cannot begin to count
| the number of times they've gone and bought some junk
| computer that they got upsold on.
|
| This is not an experience unique to me, either. The non-
| Apple laptop segment is (mostly) a broken experience in
| comparison.
| sroussey wrote:
| > And if I did that, they'd also come back with that DELL
| - and then I'd be stuck doing tech support for them for
| however long the thing lasts.
|
| I stopped doing tech support for family members using
| Windows. THAT was the main reason they changed to Mac.
| And now, hardly do any support for them at all.
| sva_ wrote:
| > nothing comes close to being able to bring your Mac to
| the next Apple Store.
|
| Ah really? Ever heard of worldwide on-site next day repair
| warranty?
| macinjosh wrote:
| And in my experience most people looking for "just a
| notebook" don't want to pay the prices Apple demands.
| Especially when they see prices on the non-Apple laptops.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| People just shop by price and look. XPS and Yoga target
| specific segments of the market.
|
| The average punter buys whatever crap they have on sale at
| Target or Best Buy.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Then sure there 's about 10 models. But at that point is
| it much complicated than say, choose from the DELL XPS line
| ?_
|
| Yes. A thousand times more complicated. I usually get Apple
| gear for myself, but am always asked to help friends and
| relatives with PC laptop buying decisions...
| mbreese wrote:
| You're going about your decision tree backwards. People don't
| say "I don't want a touchscreen" or "I don't want to game".
| You don't make decisions based upon what you _don't_ want to
| do... you make them based upon what you _do_ want to do.
|
| I was talking with my dad recently, and he wanted a new
| computer that could handle email, a little Excel, Facebook,
| and some other light web browsing that didn't get stuck in an
| infinite reboot loop for system updates (which somehow his
| Windows got stuck somehow). There are a bagillion options for
| Windows laptops that fit those needs. He ended up not being
| able to make a decision and is still using his same old
| laptop.
|
| Whereas my son wanted a desktop computer that would support
| playing Valorant at 60fps at 1440. That narrowed things down
| substantially and ended up building one to his specs.
|
| If a Mac fits your requirements, then you have far fewer
| decisions. And that's part of the point. For the a long time,
| Apple has stuck to a restricted set of SKUs. This is by
| design. It's not that they couldn't offer a touchscreen, or a
| convertible, or a xMac. It's that they've been there... had
| many form factors and SKUs and it almost killed the company.
|
| Even if you say you want a Dell laptop -- have you ever tried
| to browse their site? If you say you want a laptop you're
| presented with 68 options (I just did this). 68.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >If a Mac fits your requirements, then you have far fewer
| decisions.
|
| That's what OP said? Because now you have already decided
| you don't want to game, etc.
|
| >Even if you say you want a Dell laptop -- have you ever
| tried to browse their site?
|
| This is the iPhone versus Android discussion all over
| again. Yes, many will be happy with the iPhone, but they
| also often didn't know they had the option to buy an
| Android phone that could do something the iPhone couldn't
| that they'd like to be able to do (like copy&paste or
| whatever). Ignorance is bliss for some. Others want the
| choices, and Apple have nothing for those buyers.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Even at a logistical / production level.. having all theses
| different units, options, suppliers, information,
| incompatibilities, tests, after sales.. insane.
| okasaki wrote:
| If you know what you want then most sites will have filters to
| narrow down the choices very quickly. If you don't know what
| you want and nobody told you what you need then any model is
| probably fine.
|
| I don't get it. What's so great about Apple's lack of choice?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > then any model is probably fine
|
| Er, no. You still need something. You just don't know what.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| This was Apple's secret - they punch bigger with large
| quantities of components.
|
| When the original iMac came out, it was by far the #1 computer
| SKU. It was way better than competing products at the price
| range because of those economies of scale.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I finally made the switch to Apple after being thoroughly
| frustrated with Windows laptops.
|
| It's not even close to a competition. Macbooks are just so far
| ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them.
|
| Most Windows laptops have abysmal batteries, to the point that
| you can barely call them laptops. The trackpads are downright
| unusable. The keyboards are a hit or a miss. And for some
| reason, so many companies are still shipping laptops with 1080p
| screens in 2024.
|
| Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the same
| as a Macbook anyway.
|
| Increasingly feels like most manufacturers have given up on the
| laptop as an innovation center and are happy to just scrape up
| the consumers who can't or won't buy Apple.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I'm still using an original M1 Air and the thing is used
| nearly all day for light casual web usage, and I only plug it
| in about two times per week -- the energy efficiency is no
| joke. This kind of battery life really spoils you and when
| you see other laptops that nearly require the plug charging
| all the time, tethered, you realize what a big deal these M
| chips are for true portability.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I end up forgetting my charger when I go on trips because
| 99% of the time when I unplug my laptop at home (to use in
| a different room), I never need the charge cable. It used
| to be 50% of the time I'd take the cable with me, so I
| could be somewhere else for 2+ hours. Now I so rarely bring
| the charger that it just doesn't even occur to me when I'm
| unplugging the thing to pack.
|
| It's night-and-day compared to the Intel MBPs.
| CadmiumYellow wrote:
| I've been out of the house all day (6+ hours) with my M1
| Pro and it's only just starting to get close to needing to
| be plugged in. What have I been doing all day? Just running
| the 23 different docker containers required for my local
| dev environment. This thing is an absolute beast.
| anakaine wrote:
| I'm one of those industry long timers who can and will use
| just about anything, and has occasionally over the years
| owned macs of various form factors. For the past decade
| thanks to corporate work I've been entirely Windows and Linux
| based.
|
| I picked my daughter up an m1 macbook air about a year ago.
| It was an absolute delight of a machine to use. Light weight,
| no fans, no hot bits during general usage, long battery life,
| a screen that didn't upset my eyes, and importantly the OS
| just got out of the way during general usage.
|
| I wound up buying myself an m1 air about 6 months later.
|
| My only gripe is that I wish it had more RAM, but even then
| the unified memory approach has made my expected ram usage vs
| actual ram usage a bit of an odd thing. It consistently uses
| less ram than I'd normally anticipate. That said, more ram by
| default would help fill in those times when I do load it up.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I picked up a M3 Macbook Pro and this thing works like an
| absolute beast.
|
| I currently have Photoshop, Illustrator, VSCode, multiple
| Chrome windows - each with 20-40 tabs - and this thing is
| not even sweating.
|
| I get 8-10 hours of useful work out of it even on battery.
|
| Completely changed the way I work
| danpmurray wrote:
| How much RAM does it have, and have you ever wished you
| had more?
| internetter wrote:
| I can answer this. I have a very similar workload to OP.
| I've found myself with resolve, affinity photo, chrome,
| vscode, spotify, ect open simultaneously, and have had
| absolutely zero struggle on my 8gb air.
|
| If you become "enlightened" you can notice that sometimes
| when you, say, open your spotify window after a long time
| elsewhere, the spotify is briefly unresponsive. Not in a
| way you _notice_ , more in the sense that if you are
| looking for it, you can see hints it is swapping.
|
| The only time I wish I had more is when I got into iOS
| development and began running VMs on my mac.
| piva00 wrote:
| My MacBook Pro M3 has 36GiB RAM and does all of the
| comment above + music producing (dozens of VSTs on some
| 1-2 dozens tracks) + projection mapping and can run some
| LLM models locally like the Mistral ones.
|
| I've only managed to hear the fan when chatting with a
| LLM, for anything else it's been an absolutely silent
| beast.
| bombcar wrote:
| I have an M1 Max with 32GiB and similarly - never had it
| complain or noticed it unhappy about anything, or felt I
| needed more RAM or CPU.
|
| It's going to be hard to justify upgrading this thing for
| _awhile_.
| varispeed wrote:
| I have M2 Pro 16GB from a client. It's comfortable for
| typical dev work - tons of tabs open, Docker, VS Code
| etc. Though the swap is about 20GB now and sometimes it
| lags. Still it beats any Intel or AMD laptop I ever had
| in terms of performance. This machine is on a whole
| another level.
|
| My own machines are M1 Max 32GB and they fare slightly
| better.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I have an M2 Air with 24gb and it has no problems running
| Brave with 800-ish tabs, development workloads (a bunch
| of VSCode projects, several docker containers, lots of
| iTerm terminals), low-end CAD and 3D printing apps,
| CaptureOne and a bunch of Electron apps in parallel with
| room to spare. I've found I can fit more into those 24gb
| than into the 32gb of the Intel Mac I had before that
| (however that's possible).
| fdsfdsafdsafds wrote:
| >800-ish tabs
|
| You're never going to read those, before the links rot.
| bredren wrote:
| What were the things that held you up from making the
| switch?
| exe34 wrote:
| > Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the
| same as a Macbook anyway.
|
| The opposite ("macs are overpriced") is something I've never
| been able to understand. Back in 2013 when I bought my
| current laptop, the mac book air was the thinnest, lightest,
| longest battery life, nicest keyboard, and a bunch of
| superlatives I don't remember, and it was somewhat over
| PS1000. The closest non-mac "ultrabooks" I could find in
| shops at the time cost the same, and felt like cheap rubbish.
| And this laptop just refuses to die, and handles my workload
| just fine after all these years. I'm dreading the day I have
| to replace it.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _nicest keyboard_
|
| When have MacBooks ever had the nicest keyboard? They have
| pretty good keyboards, but I have 10 year old ThinkPads
| with keyboards that I prefer.
| aembleton wrote:
| Keyboard feel is very subjective. Different people like
| different things about keyboards.
| exe34 wrote:
| Are thinkpads considered "ultra mobile" (or whatever the
| buzzword is nowadays)? I thought they were more hefty?
| The thin/lightweight laptops from back then had crappy
| clickety keyboards.
| mhb wrote:
| Of course they were heftier, but "nicest keyboard" and
| "nicest keyboard given ridiculous thickness constraints"
| are a world apart. No idea what you mean about crappy
| Thinkpad keyboards. The old Thinkpad keyboards are widely
| acknowledged to have been great.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The opposite ("macs are overpriced") is something I've
| never been able to understand.
|
| It's simple: People without much money have basic needs and
| want a ~$600 laptop but Apple doesn't sell one.
|
| It doesn't matter if the $1000 Macbook has better battery
| life than a $1000 Dell because they don't have a $1000
| budget.
| eropple wrote:
| I'm not sure those people are the intended Macbook
| audience, though. How many of those people wouldn't be
| roughly as productive using an iPad or something? I've
| found myself doing almost all my non-development, non-
| media stuff on an iPad Air as of late and the
| environmental constraints have been really helpful for
| focus.
|
| (My iPad Air was $599 new, and I use a shockingly
| pleasant $30 case-and-keyboard combination for typing--
| no, it's not a mechanical keyboard, but c'mon.)
| lupire wrote:
| iPad has a tiny screen and a tiny keyboard. It's not a
| laptop.
| eropple wrote:
| As far as screen size goes, my iPad is about the same
| size as my 11" Air was, though not widescreen. And the
| keyboard's small, but Apple has prior art there too and
| you can get a bigger iPad if you really want to (though,
| sure, it costs more).
|
| It's not a laptop, no--but that's also not inherently a
| bad thing. If you _need what a laptop can do_ , sure. I
| have a 32GB M1 Max for a reason. But more and more it
| seems obvious to me that the median computer user doesn't
| need that, and the affordances from overlap with their
| more accustomed part of the ecosystem (their phone) are
| strong and pretty valuable.
| sib wrote:
| That's different from being "overpriced."
|
| Overpriced would be "costs more than it should for what
| it is," not "costs what it should but is more product
| than I can afford."
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Overpriced would be "costs more than it should for what
| it is," not "costs what it should but is more product
| than I can afford."
|
| But it's also that, because their bottom configurations
| are weird/crippled.
|
| It's hard to find a PC laptop with a 4k screen for much
| less than $1000, but then the $1000 machine has 12 cores
| and 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Apple's $1000
| laptop has 8 cores and 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage,
| i.e. overpriced.
|
| Okay, but DDR5 is ~$3/GB and NVMe SSDs are ~$0.10/GB, so
| really that's only a value difference of like $100 and
| you could just upgrade it. Except that Apple charges
| $25/GB for DDR5 and $1.28/GB for storage and then solders
| everything, so you'd actually have to pay an extra $800.
| Except that the Macbook Air isn't _available_ with 32GB
| of RAM, or more than 8 cores, so then you need the Pro,
| which is even more.
| exe34 wrote:
| I probably can't justify the expense myself anymore -
| last time I had a hefty student discount. But this
| doesn't make them overpriced, it just makes me poor.
| bombcar wrote:
| Apple does partially cover that market, but only via
| refurbished.
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FGN63LL/A/refurbished-
| 133...
|
| The thing that's really sad is that the _build quality_
| on sub $1k laptops is just such shite
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Apple does partially cover that market, but only via
| refurbished.
|
| That's not the same thing. If you're budget conscious
| then you presumably need to keep it for a long time, but
| now you've got a used battery and a machine that will
| fall out of support sooner.
|
| > The thing that's really sad is that the _build quality_
| on sub $1k laptops is just such shite
|
| The secret to this one might be refurbished Framework
| laptops. Sure, you've got a used battery, but now it's
| easy to replace and costs $50 instead of $250.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you
| can 't even compare them._
|
| They are awesome, but not perfect.
|
| Way over-priced storage and RAM upgrades, can't connect
| multiple monitors unless you pay up, and you're stuck with
| MacOS. Any one of these could be reason enough for people to
| look elsewhere.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears.
|
| I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is
| the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I have to buy a
| DisplayLink adapter to do what the Intel macbooks did with
| zero problem.
| dangus wrote:
| It's not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-
| targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use.
|
| To me it's not really relevant what the old computer
| models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available
| today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips
| had different strengths and weaknesses. It's a different
| design entirely.
|
| I'm split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation
| trick or a legitimate design limitation where adding more
| display support is expensive in terms of die size.
|
| Doesn't matter though, because companies doing serious
| work are supposed to know to buy the business versions of
| laptops. They don't buy Dell Vostro consumer grade PCs,
| they buy Dell Precision/Latitude/XPS business systems.
| Apple _tells_ you right in the name of their system: Pro.
| If you're a professional you buy the Pro model. If it's
| too expensive then buy something else.
| wubrr wrote:
| I work on a m2 pro and the external monitor issues don't
| end.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Only the M2 & M3 Max chips support more than two external
| monitors[1]. Those start at $3200, and are overkill for
| the vast majority of use-cases.
|
| There's no excuse for a $2000+ machine to not support
| more than two external monitors. DisplayLink on MacOS is
| far from ideal, either: it works alright, but it has to
| use the screen recording functionality in the OS, which
| causes anything with protected content to freak out.
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571
| dangus wrote:
| Sure, but most people don't use more than two external
| monitors. Most people don't use more than one.
|
| The people who complain about specs per dollar were never
| Apple's customers. "Why buy an Audi when a Dodge Neon
| SRT4 costs half as much and goes faster?" It has been
| this way for 40 years now. This just isn't how they
| operate. When they design a product they don't start from
| the specs, they start from how people use the product.
|
| There are much cheaper ways to own a Max system if that
| specific spec is something you're desperate for. For one
| thing, Apple themselves is selling the current model for
| $2700 refurbished. $500 off and it's the exact same
| system with a brand new battery and full warranty.
|
| Also, you should never buy a Mac without the student
| discount at the very least. Anyone can get it.
|
| Finally, a used M1 Max system will cost you under $2000
| and is barely 3 years old.
|
| Keep in mind that if you were buying a MacBook Air in
| 2010 you were paying over $1800 in today's money.
| wubrr wrote:
| > The people who complain about specs per dollar were
| never Apple's customers. It has been this way for 40
| years now. This just isn't how they operate. When they
| design a product they don't start from the specs, they
| start from how people use the product.
|
| Ahahaha, I love how when any apple discussion starts to
| turn technical and detailed, the arguments about macbooks
| having superior hardware/quality/software immediately get
| abandoned in favor of some vague notion of 'blah blah
| DESIGN blah PEOPLE blah PRODUCT'. LOL. Cool story bro.
| dangus wrote:
| Well, what PC people do is they hyper-focus on one
| specific spec like number of displays supported or price
| per GB of RAM but can't see the forest for the trees
| beyond that.
|
| If I just do the same thing with Macs I can win arguments
| just as easily. Find me a laptop with the kind of
| performance per watt specs as the M3 systems. Find
| another laptop of the same size/weight/power draw that
| can match the M3 Max's performance at anything close to
| the same battery life. Find me a completely fanless
| Intel/AMD PC that performs as well as the MacBook Air and
| gets the same or better battery life. Find me a PC laptop
| where you can feed a RTX 40X0 mobile GPU with over 100GB
| of RAM. Find me another laptop that uses TSMC's most
| advanced chip lithography.
|
| PC spec monkeys will basically say it's not a real laptop
| because it can't support 800 external monitors and
| there's no print screen key and it doesn't have a
| parallel port etc etc. These are all specs that don't
| matter to 99% of users.
|
| Hell, if you're the kind of person who has a triple or
| quad external monitor setup, that means you've spent
| around $1000 on just displays. That probably means you
| can afford $3,000 for a MacBook Pro with a Max chip or
| maybe pay $2,000 for a used one. And if you didn't spend
| $1000+ on those displays, that means those four displays
| are probably so bad that you're better off looking at one
| 4K display or two decent quality ultrawide displays.
| wubrr wrote:
| > Well, what PC people do is they hyper-focus on one
| specific spec like number of displays supported or price
| per GB of RAM but can't see the forest for the trees
| beyond that.
|
| Not at all, there are many examples of various types of
| specs in this thread, where apple fanboys suddenly go
| mute :)
|
| > If I just do the same thing I can win arguments just as
| easily. Find me a laptop with the kind of performance per
| watt specs as the M3 systems. Find another laptop of the
| same size/weight/power draw that can match the M3 Max's
| performance at anything close to the same battery life.
|
| So the only example you can come up with is performance
| per watt? (Your second question is basically the same as
| your first). M3 very good in that category, I don't
| disagree, it's apple's latest/best processor, and it does
| slightly outperform AMD Ryzens in that category[0]. Of
| course, when you take price into account, apple M
| processors are not even close to best :).
|
| > Find me a PC laptop where you can feed an RTX 4080
| mobile with over 100GB of RAM
|
| Hilarious that you bring this up when macs don't even
| support CUDA and basically useless when it comes to the
| the most important aspects of having a GPU today...
| gaming and deep learning...
|
| > Those laptops don't exist, unless it's a Mac.
|
| Yeah, nothing but apple exists in an apple fanboy's mind.
|
| [0]https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-
| cpu_performance_...
| fragmede wrote:
| The excuse is that this is Apple, and the solution to
| problems with them is to buy more things. In this case,
| get a $1,500 ultra wide curved monitor which is better
| than dual head.
| wubrr wrote:
| Also note that 'support multiple external monitors' here
| actually means 'kinda support some monitors sometimes'.
| Just google and read the hundreds of threads about
| external monitor issues on M2 pros.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| Celerons from 10+ years ago support 3 monitors and 32GB
| of RAM. There is no excuse.
| ponector wrote:
| Few years back I had a MacBook pro 2019 and an old ultra
| wide LG screen with resolution 25:9 and HDMI only input.
| Apparently, official Apple's USB to HDMI connector cannot
| handle screen resolution 2560*1080 at that time.
|
| Thing that was possible at 300$ windows laptop cannot be
| done on 2500$ machine with 60$ connector.
| firecall wrote:
| I was amazed to see the new Air models support dual
| external displays!
|
| > Apple unveils the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with
| the powerful M3 chip The world's most popular laptop is
| better than ever with even more performance, faster Wi-
| Fi, and support for up to two external displays -- all in
| its strikingly thin and light design with up to 18 hours
| of battery life
|
| EDIT:
|
| mmmm... no.
|
| >Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air
| with M3 now supports up to two external displays when the
| laptop lid is closed
|
| FFS Apple.
|
| I guess it's something of an improvement at least :-/
| dangus wrote:
| Price: if that's the major qualm that's not really a
| product flaw. The best product usually commands the highest
| price.
|
| Stuck with macOS: technically not true, Asahi Linux exists.
|
| Connecting multiple monitors: a legitimate negative
| limitation unusual at the MacBook Air price point, but
| still something that only a small fraction of consumer
| laptop buyers care about.
| wubrr wrote:
| > The best product usually commands the highest price.
|
| apple products being the perfect exception :)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I agree 100% with what you've said, but this sentence:
|
| > Way over-priced storage and RAM upgrades, can't connect
| multiple monitors unless you pay up, and you're stuck with
| MacOS.
|
| Basically boils down to "Apple is selling a much better
| product, and they know it." I.e. your first bullets (over
| priced storage, RAM, charging for multi monitor support)
| all just boil down to "Apple charges more because they
| can". The "you're stuck with MacOS" is obviously true but
| just highlights that Apple has _always_ been about
| optimizing hardware and software together.
|
| If anything, I think the "dark times" for Apple laptops was
| the late teens during the era of stuff like the butterfly
| keyboard, the touchbar, and too few ports. I think Apple
| consumers have consigned themselves to paying more for a
| much better product. What they're not willing to do (as
| much anyway) is to pay a premium for a _crappier_ product.
| The butterfly keyboard especially was such a disaster ( "We
| shaved .2 mm off the width, all at the minor expense of any
| key randomly stopping to work at any time!") Admitting
| mistakes in big corporations is hard so I'm glad they just
| jettisoned all that stuff.
| wubrr wrote:
| > Basically boils down to "Apple is selling a much better
| product, and they know it." I.e. your first bullets (over
| priced storage, RAM, charging for multi monitor support)
| all just boil down to "Apple charges more because they
| can".
|
| Not at all. Apple is selling a 'brand' and most of their
| success is down to marketing. They know they can charge
| more, because their average customers don't really
| understand what they're buying.
|
| Would love to see hard numbers on the claims of
| 'apple/macbooks are just much better'... :) I just read
| ~20 apple fanboy comments in this thread making absurd
| claims about 'apple is way better than everyone' based on
| nothing but anecdotal experiences and BS.
| piva00 wrote:
| Have you ever used a Apple computer for long, like 1-3
| months?
|
| I ask because I used to be like you, calling Apple users
| "fanboys", throwing hard data from benchmarks in
| discussions, being proud of my true h4ck0rz Linux
| installation on a IBM ThinkPad for work that was a pain
| in the ass to maintain in working state, had to stop
| updating after too many hours spent troubleshooting. Or
| relegate myself to working in Windows on ThinkPads.
|
| Until one day I begrudgingly accepted a Intel MBP at a
| new job some 15 years ago, I was going to install Linux
| on it anyway so didn't care. Started using macOS in the
| meantime, it had the shell utilities I needed so I kept
| using it while checking how you install some Linux on it,
| the UI worked flawlessly, the OS was a breeze to learn,
| after a few months I had barely had to troubleshoot
| anything, I'd just turn it on and work.
|
| I never went back, I want my tools to work well and found
| a tool that worked much better than anything else I had
| used before.
|
| When something better shows up I'll be very excited to
| try, unfortunately nothing in the past 15 years has
| changed my mind.
|
| Not everyone likes it, and that's ok, but calling
| satisfied customers "fanboys" is a tad bit immature. The
| product works, and works well.
| wubrr wrote:
| > Have you ever used a Apple computer for long, like 1-3
| months?
|
| I've used many apple computers for the last ~10 years. I
| work on them daily.
|
| > I ask because I used to be like you, calling Apple
| users "fanboys"
|
| I'm not calling 'apple users' fanboys, I'm calling people
| who are literally fanboying in the comments fanboys.
|
| > Started using macOS in the meantime, it had the shell
| utilities I needed so I kept using it while checking how
| you install some Linux on it, the UI worked flawlessly,
|
| Ahahaha, there are soooooo many bugs in the macos UI and
| macos in general, many of these are well known and have
| existed for years.
|
| > the OS was a breeze to learn,
|
| What kind of point is this? You said you've used Windows
| and Linux before... what else is there to learn for
| macos? A few new shortcuts?
|
| > I'd just turn it on and work.
|
| I turn my windows and linux laptops on and they just
| work! Magic!
|
| So again, you didn't make a single rational argument for
| why macbooks and macos are actually better... literally a
| fanboy.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Ahahaha, there are soooooo many bugs in the macos UI
| and macos in general, many of these are well known and
| have existed for years.
|
| What's the point of this? I didn't say it was perfect and
| bugless...
|
| The point about turning it on and working is that I never
| had an issue where my soundcard simply stopped working
| (many times on Linux), nor issues with sleep mode not
| working and draining the battery (many, many times on
| Linux), nor my graphics configuration randomly going out
| of whack and KDE/Gnome getting stuck in a bizarre
| resolution.
|
| Maybe I should just disengage, you sound a bit deranged
| in your quest, best of luck!
| wubrr wrote:
| > What's the point of this? I didn't say it was perfect
| and bugless...
|
| You literally said 'UI worked flawlessly'... but yeah,
| disengage and continue spamming apple BS like it seems
| you do in 80% of your recent posts.
| thomaslord wrote:
| These days I want Apple's hardware (the M chips
| specifically, but the trackpads/screens/cases are nice
| too) but can't stand their software. While I'm not a big
| fan of Windows either, it at least provides basic window
| management features by default.
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| > you're stuck with MacOS
|
| Interesting way of thinking about probably the biggest draw
| of the hardware.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Depends. To me, software is the thing that will keep me
| from Apple products. IMO Linux and Android are light-
| years ahead and are becoming even further ahead every
| year.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I have a hard time considering Linux "light years ahead"
| when they still can't even figure how to do HDR.
| aae42 wrote:
| i'd say the M processors are the biggest draw...
|
| but yea, i agree, probably the 2nd biggest draw
| qwertox wrote:
| > And for some reason, so many companies are still shipping
| laptops with 1080p screens in 2024.
|
| I am in the group of people who go for Full HD. It's enough
| for me, my eyesight is relatively bad. Then again, I use 3
| monitors.
| nacs wrote:
| You'll like the way Apple does their screens even more
| then. They're 3-5k screens but they essentially scale up
| their UI 3X so it still looks like a 1080p except 3x
| sharper.
|
| They are what Apple calls "Retina" displays.
| goosedragons wrote:
| If you can't see the extra sharpness it's not really a
| pro...
|
| A 13"-15" 1080p screen is pretty similar PPI to a 27" 4K
| display. This is pretty nice because if you have both at
| the scaling level elements are the same size on both.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| meanwhile Mac Studio users waiting for 5k monitors @ 144hz
| makeitdouble wrote:
| There's a volume zones of people who want "a laptop and
| nothing more", will pay for better materials and Apple has
| perfected that segment with a few caveats [0].
|
| To your point, then comes the lower end ("just give me
| something cheap"), the corporate middle ("the same laptop as
| at work"), and the super high end (gaming, CAD, anything
| needing special software or a discrete GPU), with the
| outliers (linux etc)
|
| IMHO windows laptop nowadays are for people who either don't
| really care, or have already a very specific target or
| limitation.
|
| For instance Lenovo or Asus definitely care about pushing
| laptops' limits and design. A lot. IMHO more than Apple.
|
| [0] resistance to abuse isn't there. A macbook's screen will
| be dead pretty quick if not handled with appropriate care. A
| Lenovo Flex for instance will take it a lot longer.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > For instance Lenovo or Asus definitely care about pushing
| laptops' limits and design. A lot. IMHO more than Apple.
|
| It's a bit more nuanced. Lenovo/Asus seem to be
| experimenting a lot more, but more like by throwing
| (relatively) easy-to-build variations at the wall to see
| what sticks, then release a few more polished SKUs. Apple
| doesn't really do that, but they do attack those limits and
| design aspects they care about very aggressively and with a
| ton of resources (e.g. battery life pre-M1, manufacturing
| tolerances).
| wubrr wrote:
| > Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you
| can't even compare them.
|
| ...
|
| > Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the
| same as a Macbook anyway.
|
| So macbooks are way ahead of everyone... unless you take
| price into account? What?
|
| If you look across all new laptops and take screen, keyboard,
| specs, price into account - macbooks aren't even in the top
| 10.
|
| > Increasingly feels like most manufacturers have given up on
| the laptop as an innovation center and are happy to just
| scrape up the consumers who can't or won't buy Apple.
|
| What 'innovation' has Apple introduced in the last 10 years
| other than their M chips? Most of their 'innovation' is just
| marketing for people who don't know what they're buying.
| bluecalm wrote:
| I think ThinkPads are better than MacBooks. You can get P14
| with 32gb of RAM, 1TB SSD, very fast and quiet CPU (AMD U
| series), decent battery, 2.8k OLED screen and it weights
| 1.34kg (weight between 13 inch and 15inch new Airs).
|
| It also has imo better ports and a track point.
|
| The problem is that Windows sucks more and more with every
| iteration and there is nothing Lenovo or other manufacturers
| can do about it. Lenovo also keeps shipping hot and loud
| Intel CPUs which hurt reputation of the ThinkPad line and may
| confuse new buyers. Still if you know what to choose you will
| get more for your money with P14 than Macbook air imo.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Offer and support desktop Linux?
|
| Windows keeps dropping the ball and Linux just stands there
| looking at it on the ground.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I think that Canonical is doing an excellent job. It's
| been at least a decade that you could easily install
| Kubuntu on most computers and things would just work with
| no configuration. It's easy to use for the vast majority
| of use cases and reasonably secure.
| fragmede wrote:
| Fortunately there's Linux which is has a great number of
| fans on Thinkpads. It's not for everybody, but Thinkpads
| are great for it.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I'll take a good trackpad over the trackpoint any day.
|
| I also find something weirdly repulsive about the plastics
| they use on ThinkPads. A true Macbook alternative shouldn't
| be using much plastic at all, though.
| dave78 wrote:
| Maybe I'm odd, but I much prefer the Thinkpad's body to
| the Macbook (I have both). I don't like the coldness of
| the metal chassis, either on my palms or on my legs if
| using it away from a desk. Thinkpad plastic does not feel
| cheap or weak to me, so that's not an issue.
|
| I also can't stand the Mac keyboard, especially compared
| to the Thinkpad.
| ponector wrote:
| >>Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the
| same as a Macbook anyway.
|
| It is not correct, unless you select minimal amount of ram
| and SSD. Select versions with proper amount of memory and
| MacBook becomes much more expensive than comparable windows
| machine.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Most Windows laptops have abysmal batteries, to the point
| that you can barely call them laptops.
|
| I've been positively delighted by my two Intel Alder Lake
| laptops I use during travel for play (ASUS Vivobook S 14X
| OLED, 12700H CPU) and work (Lenovo V14 G3, 1255U CPU)
| respectively. I can get 4 to 8 hours off of them depending on
| use with the charge limited to 80% for longer overall life,
| and as I just mentioned the hardware are quite powerful in
| their own right.
|
| >The trackpads are downright unusable.
|
| Both of my laptops I just mentioned have wonderful touchpads.
| Frankly though, this absolutely will vary by several country
| miles depending on manufacturer and even model. I suppose I
| got lucky here.
|
| >And for some reason, so many companies are still shipping
| laptops with 1080p screens in 2024.
|
| I'm gonna be honest: I _fucking hate_ screens bigger than
| 1920x1080 (or x1200 for 16:10 screen ratios). My laptop for
| play has a 2880x1800 screen, but I 've got it rendering at
| 1920x1200 because so many programs just assume pixel
| densities around that area and either can't or won't handle
| scaling.
|
| I also have to still do some scaling up even at 1920x1200 or
| 1920x1080 at laptop screen sizes anyway because everything is
| so small, but it's still less compatibility headaches
| compared to physically denser pixels.
| chx wrote:
| The problem is the storage is not removable in the Apple
| Macbooks.
|
| It is disturbing it didn't sink the Macbooks. It speaks
| volumes of how little people care about their own data. About
| their own privacy. There should've been zero sold. It truly
| is dismal and a very large systemic problem a laptop like
| this is sold.
|
| Because when it breaks, are you going to wipe it and restore
| from backup? No. You will just hand it over to a repair
| person and even an ethical shop much less Apple doesn't even
| have a chance to hand the disk back before handling it. An
| unknown amount of complete strangers will access your
| _everything_. Your medical records, your banking, your
| private photos, _everything_.
|
| And people pay real world money for this, money they worked
| hard for. It's _unfathomable_ to me.
| robbie-c wrote:
| Won't it be encrypted with FileVault?
| mgdev wrote:
| Turn on FileVault. Don't give anyone your password.
|
| Pretty fathomable.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Nobody has access to anything unless you give them your
| password. Macs have full disk encryption built in. If you
| aren't using FileVault, you are doing it wrong.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| I've been an Apple only user the last 20 years, but they
| simply lost me with the garbage they sold since 2016. The M
| series was too little too late. It also didn't help that
| macOS didn't get better anymore and the yearly release cycle
| only made it more buggier. I'm happy with AMD finally
| catching up to intel and nvidia with a performance to price
| ratio Apple will never deliver.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I think System76 also has a pretty simple evaluation process.
| You mostly just select the form factor you want and then
| configure it. Also, unlike Apple, they make it easy to get a
| machine exactly tailored to your needs. They don't force you to
| pay $$$ for an expensive processor when you just want a bit
| larger SSD and some extra memory...
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Okay, without googling tell me: what is an Apple model number
| Z15T_5108?
|
| > All other details can be configured in the buying flow but
| there's not much to think about if you just want a simple
| laptop.
|
| You would think so, but unfortunately not. Apple is quite good
| at upselling and their price gating for screens, ram etc. is
| very opaque. In other words: whether you want the air with non-
| sabotaged specs or the pro or the pro pro or the pro max is not
| simple.
| 015a wrote:
| > the air with non-sabotaged specs
|
| Anyone who says this has never used an 8/256 Air post-M1, and
| is complaining about them hypothetically. They're fine.
| They're fantastic computers.
|
| You can upgrade to 16/512, which puts the machine at $1500.
| This is $200 cheaper than a Dell XPS 14 16/512. "But the Dell
| has dedicated graphics" no it doesn't. "But, well, the Dell
| has a higher resolution display" no, its actually 1080p, the
| Air is higher resolution. "But, but, the dell, its, uh, no
| wait never mind don't buy Dell, buy a (insert some other
| brand)" the thing a lot of people really don't want to accept
| about Macs, right now, is that they're actually so extremely
| obviously the best computer money can buy that its
| irresponsible to buy anything else at $1000 and above (unless
| you're gaming or doing AI, but get a desktop at that point).
| eropple wrote:
| Just checking: are you saying that the M2 and M3 make
| 8GB/256GB viable, or that they were for the M1 Air too?
| Because I had an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM for a while, and
| that thing was _painful_. I haven 't had to be careful
| about how many tabs I had open in a browser for a long time
| --but I also haven't had 8GB of RAM in a long time, either.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Meanwhile, HP elitebook with current AMD chip,
| 2560xwhatever, 120Hz screen, 1TB of storage, 32GB of ram,
| both replaceable, 1200EUR. Comparable macs cost at least
| twice that, so color me highly unimpressed that twice the
| price gets you a nice machine.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I didn't enjoy the process of looking through dozens of
| various lines that Dell has and then other companies like
| Lenovo and HP earlier in the process, just to find a "mid-range
| usable computer with a decent screen".
|
| Newegg's feature selector is pretty good at sorting through
| this. Just uncheck all the bad screen resolutions and CPU
| models and see what's left. Bonus: Require at least 32GB of
| memory in an exact power of two, excluding all the junk that
| solders 8GB to the system board.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> it boggles my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework
| is an except) still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for
| consumer laptops_
|
| And the crazy thing is, despite Dell having 170+ laptop SKUs
| they don't use that fact to actually have a wide range of
| products.
|
| You'd think with 170 different SKUs they could produce an
| ultrabook with ports, wouldn't you? A modernised version of the
| E7270? Apparently not, though.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| This will sound slightly provocative but I genuinely wonder:
| why would anyone buy anything else than an apple laptop?
| Gaming? ideology? budget constraints? lack of familiarity with
| MacOS?
|
| They are marginally more expensive, but they also very easy to
| sell second-hand. I'm speculating that the monthly cost is on
| par with a PC.
| harkinian wrote:
| If you need Windows programs for your work, or need the
| ports, or want to play games, that kinda answers the
| question. The Mac laptops are otherwise just better for most
| people. And the often-repeated "every user is different" is
| not really true; most people fit the mold.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >most people fit the mold.
|
| Which mould though? I'd say most fit the Windows mould, but
| I'm guessing you mean the Apple mould.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Lots of people doesn't see Apple laptops like you obviously
| do. Ask provocative questions and you'll get likewise
| answers. For my needs and my opinions:
|
| - The software is worse. Linux is better. Windows has much
| broader options. I run both.
|
| - I game.
|
| - Ideology? Yes, Apple is an awful company.
|
| - Familiarity? I have used it enough to know it cannot do a
| lot of things I need, want, like, etc.
|
| - Budget? Yes, but not because it is too expensive, but
| because it cannot do anywhere near what Linux and Windows can
| do (for me) for way less.
|
| >I'm speculating that the monthly cost is on par with a PC.
|
| What is the monthly cost of a Mac that can run games, run old
| software I require for work and hobbies and (importantly)
| isn't locked down in either hardware or software so I can use
| it for something completely different later in life?
| thomaslord wrote:
| I don't like MacOS these days, I like the idea of being able
| to repair my computer if something breaks, and I want the
| option to at least attempt data recovery if I have a drive
| failure.
| precompute wrote:
| Ah. Apple fanboys and their partly-usable, overpriced laptops
| with notches. You have to buy ONCE, it's not like you have to
| worry about what other laptop you could've bought every single
| time you use one. Do the research, buy a $600 laptop. It's
| usually adequate for everything except gaming.
| varispeed wrote:
| Is your system your enemy? Serious question.
|
| Having suffered through many Dell laptops (flagships) I'd
| rather flush the money down the pan than buy one machine from
| them.
|
| What Dell is selling in comparison to Apple is legacy
| technology with shoddy workmanship.
| freeAgent wrote:
| If a normal person just wants a "simple laptop," they can go to
| Best Buy or whatever brick and mortar and pull one off the
| shelf. They don't need to dig into hundreds of SKUs unless they
| want to do so.
| sircastor wrote:
| I remain a little disappointed they didn't hold onto the wedge
| form-factor. The MacBook Air in the most recently form-factor is
| very thin, very light, but not to me what the definitive aspect
| of the MBA is, and why it's not a MacBook Pro. Being mildly
| thinner and supporting only one monitor feels like an intentional
| design handicap because... well we have to.
| therealmarv wrote:
| This Laptop has two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports. So how do I connect
| two external monitors + e.g. a USB Hub to this laptop WITHOUT
| buying an expensive Thunderbolt Dock??? Are there adapters
| available?
|
| Is it only this one with HDMI from Apple?
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MUF82AM/A/usb-c-digital-a...
|
| are there others with USB-A with Displayport or USB-C Display
| connection?
| freetime2 wrote:
| A lot of USB-C monitors offer built-in usb hub support. So you
| would plug the monitors into the laptop, and the peripherals
| into the monitors.
| therealmarv wrote:
| my two 32" USB-C (displayport over USB-C) monitors do not
| have that
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Price Ladder
|
| Apple has some of the most amazing Price Laddering I've ever
| seen.
|
| Folks complain about only 1 external monitor support, etc.
|
| This is all part of Apple's price laddering strategy.
|
| MKBHD does a good job describing it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDPwpIFs-I
|
| Here it's visualized (for iPad)
|
| https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/50966-100692-nov-20...
| xyst wrote:
| I can appreciate the aesthetics of the "air" line but have been
| burned in the past due to poor heat dissipation. Hope apple has
| improved over the number of years, especially with "apple
| silicon"
| pbnjeh wrote:
| Will these, like previous models, have varying SSD performance
| depending upon how many chips are populated resulting in varying
| parallelization of SSD operations?
|
| If so, knowing those configurations would be useful. I have a
| friend I recently told to wait for the M3 models (and for reviews
| of same and for the initial bugs, etc. shakeout to subside).
|
| I'm also wondering about the reported/speculated internal bus
| width and bandwidth differences between the M2 and M3.
| Supposedly, the M3 is/would be a bit narrower, hopefully making
| up the resulting impact upon performance through other
| improvements.
| markstos wrote:
| I just had a MacBook Air M1 die suddenly, perhaps because the
| case has no heat venting.
|
| All data was lost because the storage is not removable.
|
| Replaced it with a Framework which will more repairable and has
| removable storage.
|
| Basics matter.
| fkkffdddd wrote:
| I'd still do a backup, yes, even if storage is removable.
| markstos wrote:
| No need to choose. Framework drives are removable and
| backupable.
|
| Apple choose to make a nonrepairable, non-upgradable product.
| stilldavid wrote:
| ... but it is back-uppable.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| > Apple choose to make a nonrepairable, non-upgradable
| product.
|
| They can get away with it because other manufacturers are
| lazy.
| jrockway wrote:
| > All data was lost because the storage is not removable.
|
| I have removable disks in my workstation but that has never
| saved me from data loss. The most common cause of data loss is
| an errant "rm -rf" or "git checkout" or whatever. The second
| most common cause is the storage media failing (bad sectors,
| flash wear, etc.). On portable devices, I imagine one of the
| most common causes of data loss is losing the device itself.
|
| The only way to prevent these classes of data loss is with
| backups. "One is none."
| captainbland wrote:
| I am wondering at this point if Apple is going to make it a full
| decade without upgrading the base memory capacity.
| frogpelt wrote:
| Hilariously, if you compare the new model to BOTH the 2017 Intel
| model and the 2020 Intel model the performance comparison is the
| same.
| jcadam wrote:
| Finding a laptop that runs Linux natively and acceptably is
| always a challenge. My Dell XPS 9315 touts linux support, but
| only with an older version of Ubuntu using custom drivers (as I
| discovered after purchasing it). So I've got manjaro running that
| took quite a bit of coaxing - though the built-in webcam has
| never, and probably will never work with any linux other than
| Ubuntu 20.04, and the APM has always been extremely wonky (also,
| much BIOS and config tweaking to get it to work acceptably).
|
| In any case, if these ARM-based macbook pros can run linux native
| with minimal fuss, I'd buy one -- but AFAIK, they're not there
| yet.
| coolspot wrote:
| Next time look into Lenovo. I have a Legion 5 Pro with Ryzen
| and RTX 3070. Everything just works running Linux.
| tasuki wrote:
| I have a ~2018 Dell XPS that runs Ubuntu and Debian fine.
|
| I still prefer the ~2017 ThinkPad X1 Carbon, despite the much
| slower CPU, half the memory, worse screen, and the coating
| peeling off. Not sure why I prefer it, perhaps some combination
| of it being lighter, quieter, and the screen opening 180deg
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >Finding a laptop that runs Linux natively and acceptably is
| always a challenge.
|
| Its pretty easy to do a compatibility check on forums before
| purchasing. My IdeaPad Gaming works flawlessly with Manjaro,
| even supports the charging settings and performance modes.
| jcadam wrote:
| Yea, yea, I know. The one time I just assume it'll be fine,
| because Dell sold a developer edition of the 9315 with ubuntu
| pre-installed. Then I receive it and find the linux support
| is a total kludge with custom drivers and disabling most of
| the power management features in the BIOS.
| lynguist wrote:
| It's good but they should've upped the memory from 24G to 32G. In
| my opinion a new Macbook Air only makes sense when you can get
| more memory. And I still think it's the best laptop.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Even the Pro M3 tops out at 24GB of RAM. On the bright side,
| you can get a Pro M3 MAX with 36GB of RAM for not much more
| than a loaded Air.
| lynguist wrote:
| But it's chunky! I love the Air for its lack of chunk and
| lack of fans! For me it's a precision machine that's pure joy
| to use; I just want more RAM.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I get it! My MacBook Air M1 is honestly perfect. I'm
| considering a Studio upgrade only because I find myself
| working on ridiculously large (24K x 30K) 16 bits-per-
| channel image files lately.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| A great laptop but also a bit of a heartbreaker for me.
|
| The quality of the 16" MacBook Pro (Liquid Retina XDR?) is way
| ahead of the MacBook Air... which is a shame, because my dream
| form factor is the 15" MacBook Air. The 16" is so bulky and
| heavy.
|
| (On the other hand, most of the time I hook my 16 up to Apple's
| Studio Display, which is definitely not ProMotion or anything
| exceptional!)
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Fun fact, the M3 Air is exactly the weight of one m3 air at room
| temperature; at 15C, one m3 of air at 1ATM is 1.23kg, which is
| the exact same weight as the M3 Air.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| And for contrast, the M2 Air (1.24kg) was a tiny fraction of
| the weight of air on one m2 (10332kg) at 1atm. In other words,
| the relative weight of the latest MacBook Air has increased by
| a factor of ten thousand! I know Jony Ive was keeping the
| products lightweight, but I didn't realize it would get this
| bad without him...
| jedberg wrote:
| Ok this is really a fun fact! That had to be intentional right?
| I wonder if they added something to it just to make this true.
|
| If it wasn't intentional they should incorporate it into their
| marketing -- "exactly the same weight as air!"
| nonoesp wrote:
| I've been streaming and recording locally with OBS in 2K (1440p)
| with an M3 Max MacBook Pro and it works like a charm--with a Sony
| ZV-E10 being capture by Elgato HD60X.
|
| I can even develop and run Apple MLX code while I'm streaming. (I
| lose a few frames when generating images with Stable Diffusion or
| load big LLMs like Gemma 7B.)
|
| My MacBook Pro M1 wasn't there for streaming and recording at the
| same time. But even an M1 Max could do the job as well.
| koalaman wrote:
| The hardware is so great but mac os is so far from my liking.
| It's such a shame that the OS options are so limited on these
| machines. (I'm aware of asahi)
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Still no internal fan though?
| ACV001 wrote:
| They are good but still blurry on most external monitors.
| greenavocado wrote:
| I strongly recommend using KDE for your laptop and desktop
| dekhn wrote:
| My kids both needed computers and when the MacBook Air M1 came
| out I bought a couple for $1200 each (I normally spend $2000 on a
| new laptop). I wanted decent performance, compatibility, and
| battery life, and ideally something that would survive a typical
| teenager's treatment. I'm not a mac person- I would be happier
| with a Windows or Linux PC or laptop.
|
| It looks like they have had the laptops for 3.5 years now, and
| I've never heard a single complaint about performance or
| compatibility. One reports the battery life has dropped
| tremendously. But frankly, these things are basically reliable
| appliances. I was expecting both to be completely broken by now
| and have been very pleased.
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