[HN Gopher] MacBook Air M4
___________________________________________________________________
MacBook Air M4
Author : tosh
Score : 406 points
Date : 2025-03-05 14:06 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| goosedragons wrote:
| I think the most exciting thing is that the M4 model is $999 and
| not some older model.
| stetrain wrote:
| Yep. $999 for the latest M4 with the full 10 CPU cores and 16GB
| of RAM is a pretty good deal in Apple hardware terms.
| permanent wrote:
| This is amazing, yet silly to state "Up to 23x faster performance
| [4]"
|
| [4] against, 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Ten million times faster! (Compared to the Apollo 11 guidance
| computer)
| tr3ntg wrote:
| This gave me a chuckle
| HPsquared wrote:
| Depends what you mean by 'faster' ... I wouldn't be surprised
| if the AGC was more responsive (faster response on the screen
| to user input) than a modern computer. Early computers were
| often quite snappy.
|
| https://danluu.com/input-lag/
| attractivechaos wrote:
| The hardware may be ten million times faster, but the
| software...
| johnklos wrote:
| Considering that a modern Ryzen is 1375 times faster than a
| VAXstation 4000/60, and a VAXstation 4000/60 is around 1280
| times faster, at least in clock, than an AGC, that would mean
| the M4 would need to be about 5.6 times faster than that
| modern Ryzen.
|
| Hmmm... The M4 might be ten million times faster than the
| AGC, depending on the instructions per clock of the AGC and
| the VAXstation 4000/60 with which we're comparing it.
|
| https://zia.io/notice/ApcPNCgTyrYXpUQU2S
| kotaKat wrote:
| As someone that migrated to the M1 Macbook Air from a Mid-2014
| Macbook Pro... the Intel customers are still the ones they're
| trying to target, amusingly.
|
| If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade
| to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it
| dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance
| against their original M1.
| WonderAlmighty wrote:
| The page up to 2x faster than M1, but it's not worth
| upgrading from for the average person, your laptop should
| last longer than 4 years hence why they market to Intel Mac
| users.
| wil421 wrote:
| Why would you need onboard mobile? It's 2 clicks to trigger a
| mobile hotspot from your iPhone and there are very cheap LTE
| dongles on eBay. Not sure how much service would cost, most
| of us have reasonable download caps on our mobile plans. The
| dongles have better data plans than phones.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Convenience, security, and power-savings. I currently also
| use a Thinkpad X13s with onboard 5G and it's nice to not
| have to screw with it when you want connectivity.
|
| On my Verizon plan (Unlimited Ultimate), I qualify for two
| 'connected devices' to be discounted. My Thinkpad is $10/mo
| extra on my account for unlimited LTE. I'm not a heavy data
| user by any means and this works out well for me.
| addicted wrote:
| Why wouldn't I want onboard cellular connection instead of
| having to be dependent on the more finicky and less
| reliable Hotspot connection, hurting my ability to use my
| phone freely, and burning both my laptop and my phone's
| batteries at the same time.
|
| Besides, having a cellular modem also allows you to tap
| into both WiFi and Cellular seamlessly like your phone does
| to make your overall connection much more reliable.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to
| target, amusingly
|
| yeah i just checked mine, it says MacBook Pro 16" 2019 and
| the cpu is an intel i7. i don't know what to say, it still
| meets all my requirements, i don't feel any need to upgrade.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| My work laptop is a 2019 i7, my personal is a m3. There is
| a huge - very very noticeable difference. The thing that
| actually annoys me the worst with the intel though isn't
| the 'speed' per se but it's the shitty battery life and
| heat it generates (and the fan noise that causes).
| hwc wrote:
| I still love my M2 MacBook. I can't see any reason at all to
| upgrade.
|
| But I am glad that they continue to refine the technology.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Yeah, I have a personal m2max. The only thing that might
| get me to upgrade to the m4 is just being able to hand this
| laptop down to my sister or my parents for whom it is
| severe overkill for but they will use it for like 10 more
| years.
| dlachausse wrote:
| I see a lot of people requesting cellular modems in MacBooks,
| but the integration with iPhone hotspot connectivity is so
| good that I don't really see the point of it for most people.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Different battery, different bills
| antasvara wrote:
| The integration is fine, but it's not perfect. It kicks my
| wife off her iPhone Hotspot every time she closes the lid
| on her laptop. It also burns the battery on her iPhone,
| which is a concern in the exact situation you'd want
| cellular connection (places with no wifi often don't have
| outlets either).
|
| Anecdotally, I've also seen her get issues when going from
| an area with bad connection to an area with good connection
| (iPhone will disconnect).
|
| The experience with a non-iphone is also not seamless,
| though that's to be expected.
|
| Point being that reliable and easy cellular access on a
| MacBook would be a pretty nice improvement. This is
| especially true given how much of what people do on
| computers relies on the internet these days.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > The experience with a non-iphone is also not seamless,
| though that's to be expected.
|
| Dunno about that, I've been using Androids for
| hotspotting for years, and haven't noticed any issues.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Battery consumption and antenna efficiency are two major
| pain points. iPhones suck battery like a horse drinks water
| when in hotspot mode, and the large surface area of even a
| small MacBook Air would allow for some pretty interesting
| antenna design.
|
| And it isn't really ironed out to behave in Germany where
| on a train you have frequent losses of phone connectivity.
| Every time it loses signal, the hotspot drops out and
| disconnects.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| You can save battery in hotspot mode by using Bluetooth
| instead of WiFI, or even better connect the phone and
| laptop with a cord.
| reustle wrote:
| But that's an ok tradeoff. They offer a cellular iPad,
| why not MacBook.
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| They might once they are off Qualcomm modems (the new 16e
| is now an Apple modem). Qualcomm charges them a royalty
| fee per device sold.
| bgnn wrote:
| This is a weak argument. Qualcomm is charging for iphone
| and ipad too. They could do it if they wanted.
|
| The real reason is Apple wants you to buy an ipad for on
| the road. Laptops, according to them, are strictly for
| office/home usage where wifi is available.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| One benefit is that computer stays connected even if you go
| somewhere else with your phone.
|
| It's one of those small things that makes like a bit
| easier. On Lenovo/HP these have been around for years and
| they don't cost that much.
| hk1337 wrote:
| > If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity
|
| I don't even want that on my iPad Pro. I would rather tether
| it with my phone, mobile hotspot, or some other wifi
| connection.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Yeah, they trash idle/sleep battery life--or, at least,
| used to, back when I had access to lots of differently-
| configured iPads for my job--so you don't want it on there
| unless you _really_ need it.
| whstl wrote:
| _> the Intel customers are still the ones they 're trying to
| target_
|
| Definitely. I have ZERO rational reasons to upgrade from my
| lowest-spec first-gen Air M1. I use it everyday and speed and
| battery life are still way more than I need.
| bartvk wrote:
| I had someone tell me "an Air? You're a developer, you need
| a Pro" and I thought to myself, well this Air is frankly
| amazing.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Literally the only material difference between using my
| M1 Air and my work M1 Pro is the somewhat-better port
| selection on the Pro. Though even that doesn't have the
| single-most-useful port it could (aside from USB-C): a
| USB-A port.
| baq wrote:
| The extra ram in a pro comes in handy at a certain scale,
| but the price tag is oof.
| boogieknite wrote:
| few weeks back a professional ios dev looked at my m1 pro
| and ask why i had an air instead of pro. i might go air
| when i finally upgrade bc the new pros are giant compared
| to the m1
| svachalek wrote:
| Really? I have both an M1 Pro and M4 pro and never really
| noticed a size difference.
| boogieknite wrote:
| on reflection they had one with an HDMI port. maybe that
| was the difference
| cph123 wrote:
| I'm at exactly the same point with mine, it still feels
| like new even though it is nearly 5 years old.
|
| I have yet to update beyond Monterey though (even though I
| really should) in case it slows down a bit or the battery
| life isn't as good.
| auto wrote:
| This mimics my experience. I bought the absolute bottom
| barrel M1 when they launched to replace my 2014 MBP, 8gb
| RAM and 128gb of space. The HD space is annoying, but
| otherwise this machine is untouchable. I do game dev work
| bouncing between the MBA and my gaming rig, which is Ryzen
| 7 2700, 64gb RAM and a 3070, and with certain benchmarks,
| the MBA still wins, silently, on battery for hours. Still
| blows my mind.
| bartvk wrote:
| Mid-2014 MBP, that's amazing. Did you buy it new? And
| actually used it since 2014?
| transcriptase wrote:
| Not who you replied to but I'm on a Mid-2014 15 inch MBP
| retina, bought new and used nearly every day since and
| taken on dozens of trips.
|
| I had the battery replaced, the tab key replaced, and the
| screen refinished (anti-glare coating removed) for about
| $240 a couple years ago and aside from the fact it can't be
| updated beyond Big Sur 11.7.10 I have no issues.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Bought new since 2014, used all the way to launchday M1.
|
| I was riding the 'service battery' indicator all the way to
| the bloody end. 1148 cycles, max capacity 3735 mAh.
| bartvk wrote:
| Fantastic... seriously, kudos. I love it when people use
| up every last ounce of their hardware.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I have a Late 2013 MBP still going strong. Original
| battery, original charger, no repairs whatsoever, hours of
| battery life still. Wife stopped using it just two months
| ago when I upgraded her to my M1 Air.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| My 2014 got a little screwy around 2022 and eventually wifi
| stopped working entirely (I suspect battery swelling
| putting pressure on something) but if not for that I'd
| still be using it. Hell, I probably could have gotten it
| fixed, though I'd prefer to put that money toward another
| machine that'll last me 8+ years.
|
| I'm on a 2020 [edit: I got it as part of comp for a
| contracting gig, is why the overlap in years with my 2014
| MBP ownership, but didn't switch to using it for personal
| stuff until after that was over and my MPB wifi broke] M1
| Air now, so close to or in year 6 for that. No issues yet
| and battery life still stellar, should get at least 2-3
| more years.
|
| (Folks who are like "LOL who even needs 18 hours of battery
| life?", which is a common sort of post on Apple laptop
| announcements: well for one thing it's extremely nice to be
| hunting for outlets _even less_ often, and to maybe go on a
| whole light-laptop-use 3-day trip and not charge it the
| whole time and it 's still alive at the end of it, or to
| have that battery as reserve for charging your phone, _but
| also_ and perhaps most importantly, it means that a 30%
| degraded battery after several years of ownership still
| gets you 10+ hours of real-world use)
| rozenmd wrote:
| MacBooks last a ridiculously long time.
|
| I used my 2011 MBP daily until upgrading to a 2020 M1 air.
|
| I kinda miss the ridiculous heat output on winter mornings.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I think that was around the time when macbooks were "fast
| enough", especially since that was when SSDs became the
| default. I remember I got my first macbook around 2011/12 and
| at the time doing your own upgrade of memory and replacing
| the hard drive with an SSD was a pretty popular DIY upgrade
| (N=1).
| rsynnott wrote:
| > the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to
| target, amusingly.
|
| Yeah, particularly for the Air that makes complete sense,
| though. Consumer laptops tend to get replaced pretty slowly.
| I'll be upgrading from a _2016_ MBP (though not to the Air,
| given the lack of the 120hz screen; going to go for the Pro).
| dijit wrote:
| To be clear:
|
| 1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make
| huge strides every year so I can upgrade!
|
| 2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!
|
| 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice!
| (yes, not Windows though).
|
| 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y
| old?!
|
| Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old,
| because they are old.
|
| "Hey, you noticed things are slow? Well, this thing is a lot
| faster" is pretty good marketing if it's true, nobody except
| the very wealthy are dropping thousands of euros/dollars on a
| new device for 10% performance gains, however if it's _twenty-
| three times_ the performance of the Mac I currently own? Maybe
| it 's enough to convince me or someone like my Mum to splurge
| on a new device.
|
| Maybe my current Mac is not "good enough" anymore when 23x is
| the number on the box if I buy new.
|
| It's fair to compare with devices that you expect actual people
| to actually upgrade from, there's a lot of Intel macbook airs
| in the field.
|
| Heck, even some professionals are still on Intel macs:
| https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/25-of-...
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!_
|
| > _3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that 's
| nice!_
|
| > _4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are
| 3-5y old?!_
|
| 2 and 4 kind of contradict each other.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a
| lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and
| corporate buyers.
| stringsandchars wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle
| for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both
| personal and corporate buyers.
|
| My _personal_ laptop is a _2014_ MacBook Pro. I 'll be
| buying one of these new M4 Airs, and comparing to an
| _11-year-old computer_.
| ownagefool wrote:
| yeah, managed to eeek about 10 years from minimum spec
| 2013 mbp
| karlshea wrote:
| As someone that had a 2011 MacBook Pro for I think 9
| years and loved it, be glad you've skipped over the whole
| butterfly keyboard/Touch Bar era.
|
| I now have an M2 Air and have zero complaints, it's the
| best computing device I've ever owned. You're going to
| really enjoy the M4.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Since graduating from college in 1993, working in the
| graphic design industry full-time through 2019, I had two
| brand-new Macs (a PowerMac G3/800MHz, and a G5), the
| balance were hand-me-downs from other employees --- the G5
| in particular was especially long-lasting, though
| ultimately it was supplemented by an Intel iMac.
|
| Each year when Apple came out with new machines, we would
| make a game of putting together a dream machine --- ages
| ago, that could easily hit 6 figures, these days, well, a
| fully-configured Mac Studio is $14,099 and a Pro Display w/
| stand and nano texture adds $6,998 or so.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > these days, well, a fully-configured Mac Studio is
| $14,099
|
| Not surprising considering the CPU in the fastest
| "desktop" Mac before today was slower than an old Intel
| chips you can buy for ~$350 (e.g. the 14700k).
| mrexroad wrote:
| TBH, for non-tech folks that upgrade cycle has likely
| stretched a good bit beyond 3-5 years. 3-5 was the norm 10
| years ago, but I'd wager needs-driven upgrades, opposed to
| marketing driven, are closer to 7-10 years outside of
| obvious niches.
|
| Sample size one: My spouse is using either a 2013 MBA and
| wants to upgrade, mostly b/c the enshitification of web
| sites. Basic productivity was okay-ish for her work
| (document creation, pdfs, spreadsheets, etc), but even
| Gmail now suffers with more than a tab.
|
| Edit: thinking more, I don't know if I agree with myself
| here.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old,
| because they are old.
|
| It still makes claims like that arbitrary and meaningless.
| What does "23x faster" even mean, it's not like there are
| that many people who are upgrading from an Intel MBA yet are
| also fulltime Cinebench/etc. testers.
|
| > It's fair to compare
|
| Well yes. It's reasonably fair (realistically its not like
| any of those people this is targeted at would feel a
| difference between 10x, 15x or 30x) and obviously smart.
| latexr wrote:
| > What does "23x faster" even mean
|
| The measurements are in the linked footnote, they tested
| the "Super Resolution" upscaling feature of Pixelmator Pro.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Well yeah, I understand that this is based on some
| specific benchmark. Yet it's still some random arbitrary
| number effectively picked to mislead consumers.
|
| Especially when for the M1 (2x faster) they decided to
| use an entirely different Photoshop benchmark YET they
| they still show it alongside the 23x for the Pixelmator
| one (presumably the M4 is NOT 2x faster than the M1
| there..).
|
| That's just objectively slimy (even if mostly harmless)
| marketing...
|
| Also presumably Pixelmator's "Super Resolution" and
| Photoshop's "radial blur, content aware scale, diffuse,
| find edges" are also mostly GPU bound these days? Which
| again.. might not be the best indicator for "performance"
| for most consumers.
|
| Edit: Looking at some more general benchmarks the the i7
| (I7-1060NG7) from the last Intel MBA is "only" 4x
| (Geekbench MT), ~2.7x (Single-Core) or 2x (Cinebench
| single core) slower than the M4. Picking some highly
| specific "benchmark" that's several times higher than
| that is just dishonest.
| Spunkie wrote:
| The point is that benchmark is pretty useless and likely
| does not line up to what a user that is still running a
| intel air would expect the word "faster" even means.
|
| When normal users are thinking "faster" they are really
| thinking about snappiness/responsiveness, not number
| crunching.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Those benchmarks seem to be more GPU based as well. e.g.
| something like Geekbench (not that it's necessarily that
| representative either) is just 2-3x faster.
|
| https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m4-vs-
| intel_...
| kimbernator wrote:
| It's hardly the same person saying all of these things,
| though. Are you just annoyed at the variety of opinions that
| come from people on the internet?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Haha. Well, I guess it kind of makes sense in some way, Apple
| doesn't want to say anything negative about any generation of
| "M" processor, maybe?
|
| Up to 23x faster. Of course, the fastest Intel MacBook Air is
| pretty old. But 23X is pretty crazy, right? I wonder what they
| are comparing against. Int-8 matrix multiplications or
| something else that's gotten acceleration lately, maybe?
| factorialboy wrote:
| I love how even fair and justifiable critique of Apple needs to
| be hedged with the "Apple is great" prefix, such is the terror
| of the Apple downvote mafia on HN.
|
| /typed from my Macbook Pro M4 -- Love Apple -- This is great!
| zurfer wrote:
| M4 2x faster than M1.
|
| M3 1.6x faster than M1 (1 year ago).
|
| = M4 1.2x faster than M3.
|
| not bad, but Moore's law is dead for CPUs.
| p_ing wrote:
| Everyone who has been around since at least the Snail ads
| should be used to Apple's fluff and promptly ignoring it until
| benchmarks are released.
| LtWorf wrote:
| As I said in another comment, probably the benchmark is done
| just using some hardware instruction that didn't exist on
| those models and gets compiled to several instructions
| (possibly by a very very old compiler, while we're at it) vs
| something handwritten in assembly for the purpose of one
| specific benchmark.
|
| Does this mean it's 23x faster for normal workloads? Nah.
|
| Apple when they were pumping clang were also claiming that
| binaries produced with clang were much faster than those made
| with gcc. This was because they used a 15 years old version
| of gcc that didn't have any vector instructions (because they
| didn't exist at the time) and benchmarking using some code
| that was solely doing vector stuff.
|
| In short, they don't lie, but it's a lie :D
| totaldude87 wrote:
| Also to note, a typical macbooks' life span is more than
| ~5years - so are the target audience
| latexr wrote:
| You're making it seem like they're hiding that information
| under a footnote. The real text on the page, which is quite
| visible, is:
|
| > Up to 23x faster than fastest Intel-based MacBook Air
|
| And right next to it:
|
| > Up to 2x faster than MacBook Air (M1)
|
| The footnotes are there to expand on the conditions of the
| measurements.
|
| So not exactly misleading. On the contrary, it seems to me
| they're quite clearly saying "if you have an Intel or M1
| MacBook Air you have reason to upgrade. Otherwise, don't".
|
| https://i.imgur.com/pEWPXzK.png
| bitwize wrote:
| "Up to" is still doing a lot of work there. What kinds of
| workloads are we talking that get the big numbers, and what
| can we realistically expect on real workloads?
|
| I'm reminded of 90s advertisements in which the new G3
| processor was supposed to be so many times faster than the
| Pentium or even Pentium II. Their chosen benchmark: how long
| it takes to run a Photoshop plugin. On Mac OS pre-X, a
| Photoshop plugin got 100% of the CPU because there was no
| preemptive multitasking. Windows 9x versions of Photoshop had
| to share the CPU with whatever else was running.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| That's roughly the Air I have still. I hate using it (prior to
| recently adding the cooler shim mod, it would thermal throttle
| constantly) but between a Hackintosh and my work Mac I haven't
| felt the need to upgrade. I think sometime in this M4/M5 gen is
| when I'll pull the trigger and retire the Hackintosh to gaming
| rig only status.
| LtWorf wrote:
| And the benchmark is probably jut using one hw instruction that
| didn't exist on that model and now exists, and is not
| representative of anything at all.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It makes sense because that's who's upgrading.
|
| I've got an M1 Air and there's still no really compelling
| reason to upgrade. MagSafe and a nicer camera don't really
| justify it, especially when Continuity Camera is better than on
| the M1 _or_ M4.
| walthamstow wrote:
| In the days before USB-C, MagSafe was great. Tripping on the
| cable and it snapping off safely was really cool.
|
| These days, it's an anti-feature. I have USB-C for
| everything, why would I give that up?
| gloxkiqcza wrote:
| You don't give it up. USB C charging still works just fine.
| thiht wrote:
| People don't upgrade every year. I still have an Intel MacBook
| Pro (2020 I think?) that I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon
| because it still works great.
| vultour wrote:
| The first thing I noticed in all of these announcements is that
| every main comparison is against M1. Why are they comparing
| with hardware 2-3 generations ago? I don't care whether my
| Intel i9 has 50x the performance of a Pentium processor from
| the 90s, it seems like a disingenuous attempt to make the
| numbers as high as possible.
| jmull wrote:
| I don't think it's silly to state. That message is probably for
| intel macbook air users who may be considering an upgrade.
|
| (Anyway, I just ordered one for my wife, a soon-to-be-ex-intel-
| mac user. She'll probably be pretty happy about this,
| especially since she doesn't have an intel air as powerful as
| that one.)
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Apple Intelligence is a complete dud in my view, but fortunately
| it doesn't bother you if you don't use it, and it's all worth it
| for Apple to start shipping base configurations with a decent
| amount of RAM.
| sccxy wrote:
| But once you activate AI, then you are not able to uninstall
| this AI crap from your computer.
| spwa4 wrote:
| I don't know. On the one hand I kind of agree that AI
| products currently suck, especially the ones built into OSes.
|
| On the other hand, both using ChatGPT myself and the few
| usage figures they have released are _very_ impressive.
| trymas wrote:
| Anyone can comment on how Apple Silicon (M) MacBook Airs deal
| with heat?
|
| It's fan-less design, so how does it compare with MacBook Pros
| with same M chips?
|
| Does it throttle often? Can you have it comfortably on your lap
| in summer? Or unless you're running 1-hour long 4K rendering or
| machine learning training sessions - you'd never notice?
|
| UPDATE: what I am getting at - if you are developer and don't
| care about screen or battery differences - should you go for same
| spec macbook pro instead of same spec macbook air.
| earthnail wrote:
| Have an M2 Air. Never think about heat. In my experience it's
| just not an issue.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Agreed. It is wonderful to no longer have to use a "laptop
| desk" while in bed.
| kubb wrote:
| My M2 Air doesn't even get hot. But I'm not running intensive
| computing on it.
| thoughtpalette wrote:
| Also have an M2. I don't have any issues running multiple web
| servers, running vite builds etc. Usually 20 tabs open and
| Affinity Photo or something as well.
|
| No complaints whatsoever.
| ge96 wrote:
| I have a 2020 Macbook Air M1, use it for xcode, it struggles to
| build a basic react native based app with watch-widget, but man
| it is slick, I love thin laptops. I have a carbon X1 too
|
| Struggle as in the build takes 3+ mins
|
| In general though it's cool, maybe when charging it gets warm
| but I use it on a desk mostly
|
| A general gripe I have switching devices is the keyboard layout
| ha cmd+c vs. ctrl+c
|
| Stick to an ext keyboard I guess
|
| Edit: 16GB RAM is what I have I sometimes get the "out of
| application memory" message
|
| Anyway I use my computer for freelancing/working on multiple
| platforms, it was a good buy (used), alternatively I could have
| went with a mini but that screen is so good on a mac (although
| I develop with an ultrawide external monitor).
| codesnik wrote:
| you can remap modifier keys if you so inclined in keyboard
| settings, without additional software, and have separate
| settings per internal and external keyboard.
| ge96 wrote:
| Right, but physically I think the Mac left-most bottom
| button is fn or something instead of control but yeah just
| one of those things to deal with
| kccqzy wrote:
| You can remap that as well.
| Velorivox wrote:
| I have an M2 air. It gets a bit warm when I compile iOS apps,
| but otherwise I never notice any heat. If I open a few too many
| tabs or apps, though, I notice a bit of slowdown since I only
| have 8 GB ram.
|
| However, it is surprisingly functional and I don't strictly
| need any additional ram, which was surprising to me.
| ezfe wrote:
| If you're doing continuous tasks that max out the CPU/GPU it
| will eventually throttle. That's when you need a MacBook Pro
| codesnik wrote:
| I have M2 Air and using it for rails development, sometimes
| with multiple docker containers, but the most hungry usually is
| just chrome with 500+ tabs. It usually does not throttle at all
| and is barely warm. Unless in direct sunlight (it's black) or
| unless I put it on top of a blanket without an air gap below
| for half an hour. I'd say that's coolest macbook I ever owned,
| no burns or anything near it even on bare skin, unlike some
| older intel macbooks.
| cmrx64 wrote:
| The 2011 Intel macbook air I used when visiting home
| throughout college was downright _dangerous_ on a lap, but
| performed so much better than my Atom-based Aspire One that I
| felt compelled to learn to tolerate OSX, as a longtime Linux
| nerd.
|
| I eventually got the M1 Air for serious ocaml and rust
| development and found it would get quite toasty (tho never
| concerning) during big compile/test cycles, but generally
| only over several dozen seconds of full load.
|
| I upgraded to a 14" pro with an M2 Max and am reasonably
| happy with it and think it was an important upgrade for my
| productivity. In daily use, fans kick in rarely but when
| needed for a speciality job like TLA model checking, they can
| reject a lot of heat (= performance margin). Of course it
| would be nice if it weighed less (mine is 1.8kg after
| including a case), but as a side benefit the machine can play
| games (even emulated x86 ones inside Parallels!) so it's hard
| to say I'm worse off than my previous status quo of VSCode
| remoting into my big Linux desktop :)
| whstl wrote:
| The only time I got my M1 Air to actually somewhat heat up
| was when I was compiling Node.js from scratch, right after
| I bought it (prebuilt binaries weren't available yet
| apparently). So my experience matches yours.
|
| I also do a lot of AI + Audio stuff, and it gets somewhat
| warm but not as much as when compiling heavy stuff.
| LuciOfStars wrote:
| Warning about the case: MacBooks are _not_ built to handle
| hard cases and you _will_ destroy the hinge, screen, or
| both.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I have had a good experience with the KECC case.
| <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PYVK6P4> Two years and
| counting without issues.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I went from the 2019 16" MacBook Pro (Intel i9) to 2023 16"
| MacBook Pro M2 Max.
|
| It's basically the same without the fan noise, it's a lot
| cooler, and it seems to handle whatever tasks I throw at it
| just fine.
|
| I would probably go with the Air if I was a project manager,
| development manager, or someone that did not have to do much
| work with code.
| s_dev wrote:
| I have a M4 128GB RAM MacBook Pro -- it gets very hot after
| playing Civ VI or Civ VII for a couple of hours. If I limit the
| fps to 30 it's stone cold.
|
| Nothing else seems to make it sweat. Just games and presumably
| mining Bitcoin or other very intensive tasks.
|
| Devs/Gamers should always go for a Pro machine.
| huijzer wrote:
| > UPDATE: what I am getting at - if you are developer and don't
| care about screen or battery differences - should you go for
| same spec macbook pro instead of same spec macbook air.
|
| Depends on how much you care about the last bit of performance
| and how often you expect running into throttling. In my
| experience, it takes the M2 Pro multiple minutes of full load
| before the fan starts. I do a lot of Rust programming on
| smaller projects and I think the air would have been fine for
| me. Compilation takes at most a few minutes on the first run.
| For doing larger projects like LLVM, the pro is a better
| option. MLIR took 10 minutes to compile each time I pulled in
| new commits on main. Then throttling becomes an issue.
| wil421 wrote:
| When I tested a 15" MBP with an i7 and touch bar vs my M1 Air
| the Intel Mac throttled down 30% immediately and the M1 barely
| throttled towards the end. The test was a 4K transcode in
| handbrake and the M1 air was only 10-15 minutes behind.
|
| I'll try to replicate the test with an M3 13" vs the 15"
| touchbar intel. Don't have my MBPs at work.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I have an M2 Air and it's a pretty capable mobile dev machine.
| I do not notice any heat issues whatsoever.
| solardev wrote:
| I'm a web dev with both a M2 Max (in a Pro) and a M3 (Air).
|
| Never heard the fan come on a single time with either machine
| while developing. Heat has never been an issue. Battery life is
| superb on both. Pro has better screen but is way heavier. Air
| is much nicer to bring to a cafe.
|
| The only time I've ever heard the fan come on is when playing
| 3d games, especially non-native Apple Silicon games.
|
| If I were getting one only for development, I'd get an Air. If
| it were meant to be a desktop replacement workstation for work
| and gaming and movies and such, then the Pro.
|
| Both are easily more than fast enough for web dev. Not sure
| about other stacks (especially with heavy compiles or
| virtualization). I have a few services in Docker and that's
| fine (on both machines).
|
| It's just so so much better than the shitty old Wintel days
| that I don't even worry about it anymore. Lightyears ahead of
| any ThinkPad or Latitude, etc.
| onei wrote:
| I can't speak to the Airs, but I went from an Intel Pro to a M3
| Pro in a previous job and the battery life improved massively.
| I used to be able to heat my study by running a linter, but
| after the switch I remained chilly. I'm now on a M2 and have
| broadly observed the same.
| nicky0 wrote:
| As a developer, I say Air all the way.
|
| Never noticed any thermal issues at all. It barely gets warm
| for me.
|
| Make sure to get at least 16GB RAM.
| mikailk wrote:
| I think all Macs come with 16 GB at minimum now, so that
| should be easy! [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/30/24270669/apple-
| macbook-p...
| maxsilver wrote:
| > - if you are developer and don't care about screen or battery
| differences - should you go for same spec macbook pro instead
| of same spec macbook air.
|
| If you are doing normal developer things, the MacBook Air is
| 100% fine. I use mine daily (M3 Air 13in, 24GB RAM), it handles
| Rails + Postgres, it handles JS (Next.js + React), it handles
| Flutter (for desktop and mobile), it handles IntelliJ and
| RubyMine and DataGrip, it handles Android Studio and Xcode for
| iOS apps -- including Android/iPhone software emulators. I can
| load up large Docker projects with 12+ containers, totally
| fine. I occasionally play with LM Studio, no issues.
|
| Under all of the above, no throttling, no heat issues, works
| fine on laps, etc. Half the time, it's barely warm to the
| touch.
|
| ---
|
| The only time it gets hot for me, is running the CPU + GPU
| max'd out hard, for long periods of time. If I try to run FF14
| or Warframe via Crossover/Codeweavers for an hour or two, for
| example, it gets warm and throttles a bit. (Still works, no
| crashes, no issues, but it does get warm and throttle).
|
| 99%+ of developers are fine with a MacBook Air.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I play Football Manager on my M1 Air and I've never felt heat.
| This is a game that used to turn my Intel MacBook Pro into a
| testicle roaster with 2 hour battery life.
| metayrnc wrote:
| After getting the initial M1 Air, I am still struggling to find a
| reason to replace it. Still going strong with no hiccups!
| jghn wrote:
| Same. Each year I tell myself I'll get the new one. Each year
| when the new one comes out I notice that for what I use it for
| my M1 Air is still completely fine.
| mettamage wrote:
| The real win for me is that Macbook Pro M1 64 GB are now sold
| on market places within my price range.
|
| So yea, same.
| dmazin wrote:
| What do you feel is a good price for that?
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| Hey, as for OMSCS.
|
| I did some research and I'm deferring for a semester but
| tbh my motivation is pretty low. As per perception it seems
| decent but depending on circumstances it's def a much
| better idea to do an on campus programme.
| ohgr wrote:
| Yeah that. I only got rid of mine because I wanted the nice
| mini-LED screen on the 14" MBP. No plans to replace that one
| any time soon!
| mrtksn wrote:
| With M1 Air, Apple had to blow us away. People, including me,
| had hard time believing Apple's claims and many people were
| coping by looking at the Keynote charts and assuming that Apple
| must have tricked everyone by not giving proper scale metrics
| etc.
|
| When people put their hands on the real device, it was slaying
| almost everything on the market and soon it was clear that this
| thing is a revolution.
|
| You don't one up this easily. Apple claims 2X performance
| improvement over M1 Air and I am sure its mostly true but that
| M1 Air was so ahead that for a lot of people workloads didn't
| catch up yet.
|
| At this very moment I have 3 Xcode projects open, Safari has
| 147 tabs open and its consuming 11GB of my 16GB Ram and my SSD
| lifetime dropped to 98% due to frequent swap hits and yet I'm
| perfectly fine with the performance at this very moment and I'm
| not looking for immediate replacement.
| financetechbro wrote:
| How do you manage 147 open tabs and why have them all open at
| once?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Really bad habit, when I'm into something I open some tabs
| and if I switch to something else I keep opening new bunch
| of tabs.
|
| Once I no longer remember the older tabs I create a tab
| group from the current tabs in case there's a tab I care
| about and start fresh.
| apparent wrote:
| I have several hundred open on my M2 MBA and have no
| problem. Maybe it's because I use Brave? I don't know but
| have never had to think too much about it. I also don't
| have much RAM (either the base amount or up a little).
|
| I do restart my browser once a month or so, if things ever
| feel less snappy than normal.
| kome wrote:
| After getting my 2015 macbook air 11' I am still struggling to
| find a reason to replace it. Still going strong with no
| hiccups!
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Do you use it as a laptop, or is it hooked up as a desktop
| for the most part? If the former, I'd try one of the M series
| in the same role and see if you notice a difference in
| ergonomics.
| kome wrote:
| At this time (and historically), I mostly use it as a
| laptop, but I have also used it as a desktop for long
| periods with an external monitor. As a laptop, I love that
| it's so tiny. It's working very well so far... but I'm
| afraid that at some point, I'll have to switch to Linux or
| OpenCore Legacy Patcher. I'm still on macOS 11 (Big Sur).
|
| MS Office has already stopped updating, along with some
| other software (though not much, most still updates without
| issues). As long as Firefox keeps receiving updates for my
| system, most things will be fine.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| The battery life and performance improvements alone would
| be worth the upgrade to me at that point.
| netcraft wrote:
| agreed, which is awesome, the only thing that worries me is
| that they will drop support for it earlier than they have to
| when they want to force people to upgrade eventually. I hope to
| get 10 years out of my M1
| Hamuko wrote:
| My M1 Max Mac Studio also feels very good even though it's
| probably full of dust and cleaning it isn't reasonable.
| Spunkie wrote:
| Everyone I know that got an M1 cheaped out on the 8gb model and
| are now struggling to use a browser with heavy sites and
| multitasking(zoom) at the same time.
|
| But also apples upcharge on RAM is disgusting, so it's hard to
| blame them for picking the lowest spec model.
| postexitus wrote:
| _Cries in 4Gb Macbook Air 2013_ /s
|
| I am fine(ish) with the above setup, I don't know what you
| are talking about. 8Gb is plenty for website browsing.
| snovymgodym wrote:
| That's a rough era, new enough to have soldered RAM and old
| enough that Apple felt ok with 4GB in a base model.
| Spunkie wrote:
| It isn't depending on what "web browsing" someone is doing,
| which can be a pretty wide range now.
|
| 1 persons "web browsing" is no browser extensions, a couple
| of gmail tabs, some light blog reading, and maybe something
| as heavy as reddit.
|
| While another persons "web browsing" is running multiple
| browser extensions like grammerly, adblocker, etc. Along
| with a bunch of gmail tabs, plus a bunch of heavy "web
| apps"(think: miro, monday.com, google workspace/office365,
| photoshop online) and then throw 10s-100s of tabs of
| "research" on top of that.
|
| 8gb is quickly becoming unworkable for people that fall
| closer to the latter group.
| paxys wrote:
| Nor should you have a reason to replace it. The device is
| barely 4 years old. There was a time until very recently when
| laptops would be expected to last 10+ years _minimum_ with
| minor RAM and SSD updates.
| hwc wrote:
| Other than battery mass and screen size, is there a significant
| difference between the new Macbook Air and the low-end Macbook
| Pro?
| djaychela wrote:
| Active cooling on the pro.
| AdamN wrote:
| There are quite a few little differences like screen
| brightness, number of displays in can drive, faster unified
| memory, etc...
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/guide/macbook-air-vs-macbook-pro/
| whynotminot wrote:
| There is no difference in the number of screens supported
| when it comes to the base M4 chip.
| whynotminot wrote:
| The better screen and better keyboard are probably the most day
| to day practical reasons to upgrade. But that's countered by
| the extra weight and thickness of the Pro, too. So it's really
| a choice of mobility versus usage ergonomics.
|
| The Pro is also fan cooled, but with Apple Silicon I'm not sure
| that matters all that much at this performance band. If you
| need fan cooled performance you probably want to start thinking
| about a Pro level SoC, at which point you're all in on a Pro
| machine anyway.
| hwc wrote:
| Is the Pro fan cooled? I have never heard a fan on my M2 Pro.
| klausa wrote:
| Yes.
| methyl wrote:
| 120hz display
| stetrain wrote:
| Compared to the M4 MacBook Air, the base M4 MacBook Pro has
|
| - Larger display with higher resolution and DPI
|
| - Brighter display (1000nits vs 500nits) with mini-LED
| backlight, local dimming, and HDR
|
| - 120Hz display
|
| - 24hr battery life vs 18hr
|
| - Active fan cooling vs passive cooling
|
| - 6 speakers vs 4 speakers
|
| - 3 TB4/USB-C ports vs 2
|
| - HDMI port
|
| - SDXC card reader
|
| https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-M4,...
| kubb wrote:
| It's not enough of an upgrade from my M2 Air. I'm happy to wait
| for the next generations. But I wouldn't consider any other
| personal laptop than this one.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| I'm in the same boat and trying to suss out how much of a jump
| it'd be to the M4s, or if it's worth jumping to the pro.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| If you have an Air and use Intellij IDEA or any other Jetbrains
| IDE can you let me know how the performance is?
|
| This really looks like an amazing computer if it can handle long
| IDEA hours on medium projects.
| earthnail wrote:
| Using RubyMine on an M2. Performance is great.
| ezfe wrote:
| It's totally fine, so long as your build doesn't take so long
| (10+ min to throttle)
| jghn wrote:
| I have an M1 for reference, with only 8GB RAM which is the real
| limiter here. I *can* use Jetbrains IDEs and I *can*
| build/develop software on it. It's a bit sluggish but doable. I
| try to not code on that machine, but sometimes it's the only
| machine I have available when I need to look at something.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| Yeah, having just 8GB ram was the reason I never bought the
| older versions. This one starts at 16 so it picks my
| interest.
| jghn wrote:
| I do regret the 8GB with some frequency. There was a 2-3
| week shipping difference when they came out and I was
| impatient.
|
| That said, the fact that a 5 year old laptop with 8GB RAM
| is usable even for coding situations is astounding.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I use a 13 inch M3 Air (16 GB ram) with goland and pycharm.
| It's the best dev machine I ever owned, everything is a breeze,
| and the machine is super lightweight. I don't really notice
| thermal throttling... but then again i dont run LLMs locally or
| anything like that.
| volkadav wrote:
| I used[1] jetbrains tooling quite a bit on my m1 air and never
| had problems, though I did opt for the 16gb ram version. The
| newer models are presumably at least as performant if not
| better?
|
| ([1] These days my daily driver is an m1 mbp of some whizzbang
| 32gb variety, which only replaced the mba because my spouse
| wanted a travel machine and the mbp came for the low low cost
| of being caught in the late 2022 startup crash. For day to day
| ordinary backend dev work there really isn't a noticeable
| difference in my experience, except I guess the mbp is more
| awkward when working-from-couch. arm vs x86 was _sometimes_ a
| little awkward around launch, but I can 't remember the last
| time it was an actual hassle.)
| artimaeis wrote:
| Using Rider on an Macbook Air M2 (24 GB RAM) -- admittedly,
| pretty small/simple code-bases for the most part. Great
| performance. Only issues come when I need a lot of docker
| containers running too, especially if they're not ARM images.
| With that I don't notice performance issues - but the battery
| drain is noticeable at that point.
| dartharva wrote:
| Where does this obsession of making it as thin as possible even
| come from?
|
| I am pretty sure almost everyone will gladly trade the "thinness"
| for a few standard USB and HDMI ports.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| On the Air model? Its whole thing is being light and thin. On
| the Pro model, sure.
| janetmissed wrote:
| I used to hold the same opinion as you, but since getting a m2
| air I've really enjoyed how thin and light it is. It really is
| a noticeable quality of life improvement. Once you have a
| decent stockpile of usb c cables the port thing isn't really an
| issue anyways
| cyanmagenta wrote:
| > I am pretty sure almost everyone will gladly trade the
| "thinness" for a few standard USB and HDMI ports.
|
| I think there's a lot of people that want something as light
| and thin as possible to slip into your purse and take to the
| cafe.
| dartharva wrote:
| Light, sure. Thin?
|
| I have never seen any instance where a laptop's thinness
| ended up factoring in ease of portability.
| hwc wrote:
| I care more about total mass than thinness. But those things
| tend to be correlated.
| dartharva wrote:
| I doubt a few ports can add any significant weight difference
| to it.
| AdamN wrote:
| That's what the MBP product line is for. More ports and
| performance for more expense and weight/size.
|
| I know it seems like a champagne problem but the Pro really can
| get annoyingly heavy when traveling and the Air is dreamy how
| light it is.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Macbooks have been USB-C for 10 years. All my devices have been
| replaced since then. USB-C _is_ the standard USB port.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Steve Jobs.
| Kerrick wrote:
| The 13" model is only $300 more than the M4 Mac Mini whether
| comparing the base models or the 32GB RAM options. That's a
| pretty good value for a battery, screen, webcam, trackpad, and
| keyboard. The main thing you give up is the ability to connect a
| third large display when at your desktop, a few ports, and
| support for higher than 60Hz refresh rate on an external display.
| ericpauley wrote:
| I think it's highly unlikely that the M4 mac is actually
| limited to 60Hz for all external displays. I'm running a 1440
| ultrawide at 100Hz on an M2 right now. Instead this is likely
| the maximum px*Hz configuration supported, and smaller or fewer
| monitors are supported at higher Hz.
| r00fus wrote:
| I run a 49" 32x9 screen at 120hz on my M1 Air perfectly fine.
| et-al wrote:
| Was hoping for the rumored 24 hours of battery life, but it looks
| like the M4 couldn't squeeze that. Still 18 hours stated, like
| the M3 Air:
|
| https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-M3,...
|
| Looks like the only arguments for the M4 Air are:
|
| - 32GB RAM option
|
| - 2 more CPU cores
|
| - 100GB/s vs 120GB/s memory bandwidth
| klausa wrote:
| The CPU stays the same, it's the GPU cores that are upgradable
| on the baseline 13".
|
| There's a BTO 24GB RAM option.
| Surac wrote:
| is there an active linux support for the hardware?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Not for M3/M4, as far as I'm aware.
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| Active Linux support has grinded to a halt. Hector Martin (the
| developer of asahi Linux) has ceased development. Umid temper
| your expectations. M3+ will likely never be supported
| https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/
| chippiewill wrote:
| It's not ground to a halt, Hector is a single developer out
| of many
| dmazin wrote:
| I'd be tempted, but the MacBook Air M1 still kicks ass. I don't
| care if this is 2x faster. The M1 is still very fast.
| dabbz wrote:
| I need them to get rid of the notch. It's so obnoxious. I'll
| run my M1 Air into the ground until they get rid of the notch.
| chippiewill wrote:
| I don't get it. I don't even notice the notch, I'm not even
| sure how it's possible to see the notch considering it's in
| the middle of a black bar?
| ljm wrote:
| They don't always hit the mark but I sort of miss the times when
| Apple would innovate more boldly with their devices.
|
| Apple Intelligence isn't it - it's just playing catch-up with a
| market that tries to slap AI onto everything it can think of.
|
| The hardware upgrades are always nice but there's nothing 'out
| there' like a touch bar or even a 'dynamic island'. Just more
| safe iterations.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| What innovation is there from a laptop these days? Apple
| Silicon chips were the innovation we needed (better performance
| for better battery).
|
| Last time people cried for Apple to innovate they added the
| touch bar to laptops. Computers (and phones) are a mature
| product category where I don't want innovation, I just want
| them to be functional.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And butterfly keyboards. Don't forget their innovative trash
| can MacPro. Hockey puck mouse anyone? Apple has an impressive
| history of missing the mark.
| lifefeed wrote:
| It's been a while since they made a bold choice. When I bought
| an iPhone a couple years ago, even the apple store employee
| kinda shrugged his shoulders when I asked if the new 14 phone
| was better, besides the camera, than the cheaper 13.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The iPhone 14 added emergency satellite connectivity.
|
| That seems like a pretty big deal to me?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| .. if you are someone that even ventures into areas that
| lack proper cell coverage. I don't think most people do.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| This is me when I go to a state forest 20 minutes away,
| and about 2.5hrs drive from Manhattan. Anywhere with even
| a little elevation has abundant cell dead zones.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| If you live west of the great plains, you will always hit
| dead zones if you ever leave the city, even on the major
| interstates you will hit dead zones. This is an
| incredibly nice feature to have for tens (hundreds?) of
| millions of people in the just the US, let alone other
| countries. (this may hold true in the east as well, I
| don't live there)
|
| Extrapolating your personal experience to all use cases
| is generally a bad idea.
| bananapub wrote:
| what do you mean? they cut prices, improved battery life and
| improved performance, like they do almost every year. every few
| years they do something big like a new form factor or a new CPU
| architecture!
| foobarian wrote:
| > or a new CPU architecture!
|
| Ah maybe RISC-V! Wouldn't that be fun
| dmix wrote:
| I don't want innovation on Macbook hardware. It's perfectly
| good as it is.
|
| The only thing I'd want is something that'd make it last even
| longer like waterproofing the top keyboard layer.
| CountHackulus wrote:
| The last time they "innovated" on macbooks we got a touch bar
| (ignoring M chips). I'm good with incremental improvements if
| we can avoid those gigantic blunders.
| swat535 wrote:
| Right and I'm not sure consumers are willing to tolerate
| innovation.
|
| I recall the amount of hate touch bar got on HN and everyone
| asking Apple to revert back to building normal machines
| (which they did with Macbook Pro).
| jmyeet wrote:
| Don't forget this also came with the awful butterfly
| keyboard, allegedly to save 0.5mm in thickness. It had
| terrible reliability, Apple was forced to do replacements and
| IIRC required a motherboard replacement to actually replace.
|
| And why did Apple do all this? To increase the Average
| Selling Price ("ASP") of Macs. That's literally it.
|
| the new M4 Macbook Air for $999 is incredible value and
| that's what I want the Air to be: a good compromise of power
| and price. For example, the 12" Macbook made too compromises
| to be just a little bit thinner.
| ljm wrote:
| Didn't know it was a blunder until afterwards though right?
|
| Hence, innovation. Now you just get risk-averse updates that
| offer little reason to upgrade from previous models.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| They should do their "touch bar, delete ports, flat keyboard"
| innovations on a new Macbook Max or Ultra product line and
| see how it goes. The Air and Pro can stay traditional and
| keep the HDMI and headphone jacks etc.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Apple's innovation strategy is not to take risky moves. They
| are more of a fast, competent follower company. Even iPods were
| a slightly conservative implementation of MP3 players, which
| were already becoming a thing at the time (you could even get
| mp3 players with solid state, albeit flash, drives while
| Apple's iPods were still spinning rust).
|
| Of course iPods became very popular because they put it all in
| a package that gave it a UX that non-nerds wanted to use. The
| flash drive style MP3 players... had tiny capacities, they had
| to be "managed" by the users. iPods, just dump your whole hard
| drive on the thing. That solid state memory is much better in a
| mobile device... I mean, my Sandisk player, I'll give it an A+
| on reliability. C- on capacity. Apple always gets a B in every
| field.
|
| Their next thing was supposed to be VR. But nobody could find
| an application for VR, so Apple's gimmick of taking something
| with a perfect idea and making a copy that is almost as good at
| the thing it does right, but which doesn't have any massive
| downsides, didn't work.
|
| They are in a tough spot now, the tech sector seems to have
| lost its dreamers and so nobody is making these A+/C- devices
| for them to level out.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| For me as a professional, that's just fine; I never used the
| touch bar, but the fingerprint sensor was a great addition. Not
| worth upgrading for on its own, but a neat upgrade.
|
| I think a macbook with a much better front facing camera would
| be good, teleconferencing is a multiple times a day use case
| for us. They did an in-between with the system that allows you
| to use your iphone camera(s) which do support more wide angles,
| but that doesn't work on my current work laptop as it's locked
| down and I'd have to lock down my personal iphone as well if I
| want the two to connect.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| The touchbar was a downgrade for me. Turns out my fingers go
| slightly above the key when typing certain symbols that are
| [shift]+[number key]. It took me a while to figure out why my
| laptop kept opening a music player seemingly at random a
| couple times per day, but it was because the touchbar was so
| sensitive that _slightly_ brushing it was triggering the
| "play" button.
|
| I ended up having to disable almost the whole bar to keep it
| from happening, just fill it with "blank" zones.
|
| I also can't reliably drag-n-drop with force-sensitivity
| turned on for the touchpad, so there's another "innovation" I
| have to turn off. I don't even have, like, dexterity issues
| or a disability or something, but it makes it so damn fiddly
| that my drag-n-drops drop too early about half the time.
| zactato wrote:
| I think the M1 was a pretty huge innovation. It's the first
| time a laptop felt portable and without compromise. I can get a
| full day of work out of my laptop without plugging it in. It's
| pretty wild.
|
| Before this laptops were simply things that were small enough
| that you could carry one from point A to point B, but they were
| still effectively tethered to a wall and desk for any non-
| trivial usecases.
| mhh__ wrote:
| This is what happens when you put the logistics guy in charge
| of the whole thing
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| I have considered going back to Mac after about 5-7 years on
| Windows/WSL, but the storage premium is just too much to swallow.
| If the $999 was a base 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, I'd consider
| it. I just added another 32GB of RAM to my 2020 built desktop for
| $50. You can get a 1TB crucial M.2 drive for $70. I know I'm
| comparing apples and oranges, but the storage cost is too much,
| and 256GB is much too little.
|
| Edit: to go to 32GB RAM is $400. To go to 1TB SSD is another
| $400. That is essentially doubling the $999 cost. $400 buys me
| between 4 and 6 1TB M.2 drives or 2-3 2TB M.2 drives.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Of course. Apple wants you to purchase their iCloud offerings
| and put your documents on iCloud Drive.
|
| I just buy lots of storage on my desktop and access it
| remotely. Tailscale makes it easy to do so.
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| True, I guess they do want to push iCloud. I just can't
| justify the pricing. Comparing the 15" to System 76, I get a
| bigger screen, TWO 2TB M.2 drives, and 64 GB RAM for $150
| cheaper than a 15" with one 1TB drive and 32GB RAM. And the
| System 76 comes with a bunch of ports, too.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| As someone who's been laptop shopping recently, the problem
| with most non-Apple options is that in exchange for RAM and
| storage been cheap and/or upgradable, they make significant
| sacrifices in various areas compared to MacBooks. This is
| insanely frustrating to me, I don't know why generic PC
| manufacturers can't seem to manage to build a small laptop
| that is as good of an all-rounder as the Air is and not
| also come with aspects that suck for no good reason.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| the fact that a macbook doesn't have storage on an m.2
| slot is incredibly frustrating. My m1 drive failed and
| they had to replace the whole damn motherboard because
| they soldered the storage in. Just incredibly wasteful
| practice just to, i guess, shave a mm or two off the
| things depth.
| benterix wrote:
| Since their whole pricing strategy depends on users _not_
| being able to do RAM and storage upgrades, you can be
| sure they 'd rather make the integration even more tight
| in the next models.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| My understanding is that the ram is basically in the
| Mseries die and therefore can't really be upgraded. The
| storage is pure malice or marketing pushing for 'thinnest
| laptop'
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > The storage is pure malice or marketing pushing for
| 'thinnest laptop'
|
| Kinda, the SSD controller is integrated into the M-series
| SoC so even if the storage were slotted (as it is in the
| Macs mini, Studio, and Pro) you wouldn't be able to use
| an off-the-shelf M.2 SSD since the storage is little more
| than raw flash on a card for those models.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Sure they could make their own new standard slot or
| whatever. Tossing out a perfectly good motherboard and
| cpu to replace some flash is god damned ridiculous.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| My preference is for slotted storage too, but it seems
| difficult to get that without trading off any number of
| other qualities in the process.
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| I still occasionally use a 2013 Air when I need a laptop.
| How no PC manufacturer has been able to get close to
| Apple's touchpad in two decades is crazy to me.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Near-MacBook trackpads can be found in nicer x86 laptops
| these days, but as always the monkey's paw curls and some
| other aspect(s) of these laptops invariably sucks. Fan
| runs too often and/or is noisy, heat isn't effectively
| managed, battery life is bad, screen becomes a flickery
| mess at low brightness, build quality is poor, laptop
| uses off the wall chipsets that Linux doesn't like...
| it's always _something_.
| chippiewill wrote:
| Most premium laptops these days have decentish touchpads.
| I can barely tell the difference between my Dell XPS
| touchpad and my macbook touchpad.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| What if your desktop fails?
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| You're comparing desktop prices to laptop prices. Yes they're
| ridiculous but you're not the target market.
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| Fair. A better comparison would be System 76. Comparing the
| 15" to System 76, I get a bigger screen (16"), TWO 2TB M.2
| drives, and 64 GB RAM for $150 cheaper than a 15" with one
| 1TB drive and 32GB RAM. And the System 76 comes with a bunch
| of ports, too. For the same specs, it is $550 cheaper.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| I've yet to find a non-apple laptop that's as ergonomically
| comfortable _as a laptop_ as the recent Airs. That's a
| premium unto itself, I don't know if it's $500 worth, but
| that's a less tangible part of the equation over raw
| horsepower.
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| I don't even necessarily object to paying a premium. If
| it was $200 to go to 1TB or 32GB RAM I'd probably be
| annoyed but still pay it. There is a difference between
| paying a premium and wholly unjustifiable prices.
| gefriertrockner wrote:
| What comparison are you trying to make? You are not
| painting a full picture, leaving the weight, CPU and
| battery life out of the equation. If you personally care
| about neither, yes the Air will not be the machine for you.
| lastgeniusua wrote:
| most non-Mac laptops have a spare slot for an SSD (and the
| original one is likely replaceable), with RAM being
| replaceable too. Why wouldn't the desktop prices apply here
| too?
| p_ing wrote:
| No, they're not. SODIMM prices aren't radically different
| from DIMM prices and laptops (usually) use the same M.2280
| NVMe drives desktops do.
| LuciOfStars wrote:
| Laptops are more complicated and difficult to engineer.
| Stop being dense.
|
| (Typed on my ThinkPad T480)
| p_ing wrote:
| Personal attacks are not OK.
|
| I opened my MSI GS66 to install a second M.2280 NVMe and
| upgrade both DIMMs from 32GB to 64GB RAM. It was easy...
| I think about six screws or so.
|
| (Typed on my M2 Air)
| LuciOfStars wrote:
| Yeah, sorry about that. Having a nasty day and haven't
| had my meds thanks to the scam that is insurance. Gotta
| watch myself. Have a nice timezone.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Lenovo charges $70 to go from 16gb to 32gb LPDDR5x and $45 to
| go from 512gb to 1tb nvme.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The whole point of Apple's pricing strategy over the past few
| years is that since they have a monopoly on storage/RAM
| upgrades, they can price base model computers at margins below
| what they'd normally be comfortable with, and then gouge users
| on the upgrade costs to claw back some of those margins. That's
| how they're able to charge $400 for an extra 16GB of RAM.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I doubt it. In corporate environments I see so many base
| models being used. Most office workers do everything on SaaS
| web apps anyway; they only need sufficient RAM to run a
| browser and browser-based apps. Having small amount of
| storage is a feature not a bug, because it prevents employees
| from downloading too much company proprietary information
| onto their laptops.
| znpy wrote:
| > they only need sufficient RAM to run a browser and
| browser-based apps.
|
| browser-bases apps are notoriously memory hogs, your point
| doesn't make much sense.
|
| the truth is that apple get away with cheating a lot on
| their OS as they swap aggressively and do very aggressive
| swap compression.
|
| the part about swapping aggressively is essentially
| overlooked by the entire industry: swapping to flash
| storage will wear it out faster, which is a huge issue when
| the flash chip is soldered and not replaceable. this will
| essentially create more e-waste (but they get to (happily)
| sell you a new laptop). so long for being green.
| sunshowers wrote:
| Everyone already knows this is what they do, they're just
| pointing out that it's abusive.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Abusive is a stretch. If you don't like it.. you're free to
| not buy from them?
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| Yes, but it's perceived as _abusive_ when two of the most
| feared devils come into play against you in a two-flanked
| attack: Network Effects and Vendor Lock-in.
|
| I feel cornered when my social circle all use iPhones and
| then they want to Airdrop me something and I just can't
| receive it. I'm an Android man, I cannot stand the blue
| pill Apple feels to me.
|
| Peer pressure is a serious threat, presented in the form
| of... _abusive behaviour_ indeed.
| webdever wrote:
| This is the type of comment only a apple fanboy would
| make
|
| * Brother trying to lock out 3rd party ink carts -
| abusive
|
| * Adobe switching to subscription only - abusive
|
| * Microsoft adding adware to windows - abusive
|
| * Apple charging 6x 3rd party price for 2TB of storage
| and 5x for 32gig ram - "don't buy if you don't like it"
|
| If the alternative was by 3rd party ram and install it
| yourself then I wouldn't consider it abusive. You can't
| install 3rd party ram nor you can you even get Apple to
| upgrade it later at their exorbitant "Apple Tax" prices
| wepple wrote:
| The first 3 break expectations or norms. Clearly labeled
| price and specs doesn't.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| The same solution applies: don't buy from them. Vote with
| your money.
| Keyframe wrote:
| I'm in another, bizarre camp. I'd pay double whatever they're
| charging for if I could run linux on it utilizing all of the
| hardware. Also, if notch went away, but that's another story.
| Unless someone knows of laptop hardware that comes close to
| both performance, comfort, and battery which can run linux.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Oddly enough I'd probably accept a much cheaper, shittier
| laptop if it ran OS X, but, I've been all-in on Apple
| hardware since 2006, so maybe I don't understand how bad the
| non-Apple laptops really are. Conceptually I'd be fine with
| Linux on the desktop -- hell I used to use OpenBSD as a daily
| driver -- but OS X is in my veins now.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Hackintosh
| chippiewill wrote:
| You really don't notice the notch on the macbooks, I can't
| even see it normally. Might be different on a Linux DE
| though.
| vvillena wrote:
| You can make the notch go away with third-party apps. On the
| Pro laptops the screen has miniLED backlighting, so the dark
| area stays purely black. Removing the notch this way leaves
| you with a 16:10 screen, so you still have more screen real
| state than in most other laptops.
| Kerrick wrote:
| Yep, it's not a notch cut into your available space. It's
| "wings" of extra pixels taking up what would otherwise be
| unused space.
| Tteriffic wrote:
| The notch was a big reason I was reluctant to upgrade from my
| M1 Air. But I hardly notice it. Only when it splits the menu
| bar items.
| sfcl33t wrote:
| I used Asahi on my company's M2 MacBook pro and it was
| incredibly nice. Had to return the laptop to them and Asahi
| is not supported on m3+...
| usefulcat wrote:
| The notch _has_ gone away, at least as of Sonoma on a 15 " M3
| Air, but at the cost of some real estate at the top of the
| screen. Basically they just don't draw anything at or above
| the lower edge of the notch, so it looks like the screen ends
| there even when it doesn't.
|
| I actually wanted to get the notch back so I could have as
| much vertical screen real estate as possible and was
| disappointed to find that there doesn't appear to be any
| reliable way of doing this.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I have exactly that setup, and I see a notch. Are we
| talking about something different?
| rafram wrote:
| It sounds like you've changed your screen resolution to a
| 16:10 aspect ratio: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1
| 7j5zo5/i_think_ive_fo...
|
| The notch is definitely still there by default.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The purpose of a professional machine is that it pays for
| itself when you make money using it. If that's not your case,
| then why do you need professional equipment?
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| I don't think 1TB of storage makes something professional
| equipment. I have well over 500 GB of photos. I want each of
| those stored locally where I control the data. Nor do I think
| 32 GB of RAM makes something professional. I'd prefer to
| future proof such a large purchase, and because I _can 't
| even go back to Apple in 3 years and purchase more RAM_ I
| have to decide right now what might be useful in 5-7 years.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's absolutely professional levels that you are
| demanding both in storage and RAM.
|
| Apple sells computers in the premium/professional market
| segment. They're not going to change that. If you're not
| making money from the equipment or if you can't afford it
| for consumer use, there's probably nothing that they will
| do for you, you're not in the intended customer segment.
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| Charging a 400+% markup for storage and RAM does not
| suddenly make a laptop professional. Sure, if there was a
| significant difference between screen size, chip, battery
| life, etc, you could argue the $999 one is a prosumer
| device and the $1799 laptop is a professional device. The
| _only_ difference between a $999 laptop and a $1799
| laptop is 768 GB of storage and 16 GB of RAM. I will even
| be generous and say that is a $700 difference because
| Apple tosses in two more GPU cores ($100) when you go
| over a certain amount of RAM. On Amazon, I can get a 1TB
| M.2 drive and 32 GB of DDR4 SODIMM RAM for $150 total. A
| premium from Apple on those components would be
| $300-$400. They are at $700-$800.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If you are buying professional work equipment, a
| difference of a few hundred dollars does not matter.
| Professionals in any field usually have equipment worth
| thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
|
| And if you're buying a computer as a consumer because it
| is a premium machine, well then you eat the price if you
| really want the machine, or you have to go for non-
| premium competitors.
|
| You're comparing McDonalds to a nice steak in a good
| restaurant. The good restaurant will charge dearly for a
| bottle of water while McDonalds gives you free refills,
| and so on. The business models are different and the
| market segments are different.
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| Odd, every steakhouse I have been to gives me as much
| water as I'd like, free of charge.
|
| I'm not comparing a hamburger from my local go-to to a
| steak from a steakhouse. I'm comparing the cost of the
| mash potatoes that comes with my hamburger ($5) and what
| they cost at a non-Apple steakhouse ($15). I don't go to
| the Apple steakhouse not because I find their steak
| unreasonably priced (it is a great value, actually), but
| because I refuse to pay $60 for mash potatoes, and if I
| don't get the mash potatoes, the steak has no value to
| me.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What I'm saying is that you're comparing apples to
| oranges.
|
| A steak in a nice restaurant and its accessories will
| always be more expensive than a burger meal at McDonalds.
|
| Apple has invested enormous effort into making high
| quality software. They offer the only operating system on
| the market which is any good at all. But their business
| model is selling hardware, so that's where they have to
| bake in all their costs. And their hardware is top notch
| as well. They could change their offerings to charge a
| high basic price on all their devices and then offer RAM
| and SSD upgrades for the low prices you are mentioning.
| But they choose instead to have a lower base price,
| knowing that the only people who need more RAM or storage
| (need, not want), are professionals who can pay for it.
|
| It's the same in a nice restaurant. You're not paying for
| the ingredients, but everything around it including
| staff, the environment and so on. That's why a beer is so
| god damned expensive when you go out.
| sunshowers wrote:
| A lot of consumers prefer high refresh rates.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| With thunderbolt 5 you can use fast external SSD enclosures.
| They end up working nearly as well as internal SSDs. And much
| cheaper.
| sfilmeyer wrote:
| Yeah, but I don't want my hard drive in an external enclosure
| for my laptop. I'm writing this comment from a macbook air,
| which is comfortably in my lap, thankfully only plugged into
| power.
| glial wrote:
| It's true that seeing that number next to $400 next to 16GB is
| agony, but a 32GB 1TB 15" M4 Air for $2k is a hell of a deal. I
| have the upgraded M1 Air and after using it for a few years,
| (1) I still have no reason to upgrade and (2) it's worth more
| to me than whatever paid.
| nsbk wrote:
| I'd love to buy that config as my personal laptop, but the
| problem is that my 512/16 M1 Air still works so well for my
| use case that I can't find enough reasons to justify the
| expense. M6 Air maybe!
| znpy wrote:
| Not sure about your use-case, but nowadays i don't do anything
| fancy with my laptop.
|
| So far I've decided that going forward I'll likely be getting a
| cheap baseline laptop (curretly eyeing a 16gb/512gb macbook air
| m4 or the upcoming framework 12) and then get some beefier
| desktop to remote into. i don't even need a gpu, the heavy
| stuff i do largely revolves around running virtual machines.
|
| I did most of my work in a screen session running emacs on a
| 48cpu/192gb ram machine in a previous job, and I did some tests
| and remote desktop nowadays is pretty good (way above the
| "usable" threshold).
|
| > That is essentially doubling the $999 cost.
|
| yeah, it sucks.
| godelski wrote:
| > storage premium
|
| I wanted to make a nice comparison chart: (prices are very
| rough but from NewEgg) DDR5 RAM (Single Stick)
| Memory Apple Desktop Laptop Server 16 -
| ~$40 ~$40 ~$60 24 +$200 ~$200 ~$50
| ~$100 32 +$400 ~$80 ~$80 ~$100-$200 2
| Sticks 64 - ~$200 ~$170 ~$150 128
| - ~$115 ~$310 ~$250 Storage Apple NVME (Gen
| 5) NVME (Gen 4) SSD HDD 256GB - -
| ~$50 ~$20 ~$20 512GB +$200 -
| ~$60 ~$30 ~$40 1T +$400 ~$150
| ~$80 ~$60 ~$50 2T +$800 ~$200
| ~$150 ~$100 ~$60 4T - ~$400
| ~$280 ~$200 ~$80
|
| Side Note: I recently bought a 11T HDD for $120...
|
| You can AT WORST buy the storage OUTRIGHT for cheaper than it
| is to UPGRADE. But in most cases you can buy more than double
| what Apple is offering for cheaper than it is to UPGRADE.
|
| I boycotted Apple for years because of these issues, but
| unfortunately I think this battle is lost. I gave up. I have a
| macbook Air. It is nice, but it is a glorified SSH machine.
| They must know this, because I'd prefer to get an iPad pro with
| a keyboard but run an actual fucking desktop OS. But then
| again, the fucking iPad isn't even good at the one thing it is
| supposed to be good at: writing... The 3rd party apps are
| leagues ahead of Apple Notes.
|
| What I can't figure out is: - Why are there no
| good competitors? - Why are there no good linux laptops
| with good battery life?
| Reeddabio wrote:
| I have a MacBook Pro from 2017 2.3 GHZ, and I am considering an
| upgrade. Is it worth it?
| bombcar wrote:
| The jump from Intel to M* is huge.
|
| Whether that's worth it for you - hard to say.
|
| You can get a good deal on a refurbished or used M* MBP and try
| it out. My 2021 M1 Max MBP is still going strong; so strong I
| just can't justify a new one.
|
| Biggest thing to note is how many external displays you want to
| drive. I got the M1 Max to drive my 2-4.
| _fzslm wrote:
| Absolutely. I had a 2017 machine and any Apple Silicon machine
| will run circles around what you already have.
| tosh wrote:
| night and day @ noise and battery life
| ksec wrote:
| They completely got rid of the M1 or M2 whatever baseline MacBook
| Air, and instead having the latest M4 at $999.
|
| That is along with their recent upgrade which bump All Mac model
| to 16GB Baseline. In Apple's History, the M4 Mac mini and M4
| MacBook Air are perhaps the best value for money in the entire
| History of Mac. I actually dont even record anything that came
| close.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| In summer 2022 I picked up an M2 Air (24GB/1TB/10-core GPU) for
| 1939USD with edu discount. Today the M4 equivalent is 1479USD,
| and the M4 (aside from being faster) can go to 32GB RAM instead
| of 24GB, and has Wifi 6E instead of just 6 (why not 7?).
|
| I said I'd buy the next Air as long as it had 6GHz wifi support
| (6E, eventually 7) but now that it's out it's just not enough of
| an upgrade for me (a lot of money for 25% more RAM, CPU
| performance, and 6GHz wifi).
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Been using Airs since 2011, 2012 model lasted me to 2018 upgrade
| (Retina finally) but now I snagged the m4 pro Mini and it's so
| small I brought it to the birthing inn with me and (with the help
| of a universal remote) just used the room TVs as a monitor. It's
| so small that I can just throw it in a bag with a
| mouse/keyboard/HDMI and even a PS5 controller which I do
| appreciate my wife tolerating Jedi Cal joining us in the
| postpartum wing over PS5 streaming from the console at home,
| quite doable and the Mini's built in speaker is quite a charmer
| all things considered! I ran it from inside a drawer under the
| baby "kiosk" and it definitely outgunned the in-room speakers
| that were clearly gimped (similar to putting your phone into the
| right enclosure amplifies the sound).
|
| At home when not at my desk I've been using screen share to
| remote in from the 2018 Air, this is the first time since 2018 I
| bought a new computer and it's oddly nice having it not be a
| laptop, don't have to worry about the precious built-in screen or
| keyboard.
|
| Caveat may be if I wasn't working remote perhaps it would be
| different but not sure, using the 2018 Air as a client for the M4
| Pro has been pretty solid for my current purposes and it's nice
| still having an Intel Mac for the edge case backwards
| compatibility development needs.
|
| Whoops didn't mean to make a blog post in here...
| zabzonk wrote:
| the latest intel ultra chips are also pretty good, and so are the
| laptops using them, such as the asus zenbooks
| thawab wrote:
| 16 GB RAM included in base model. For $200 more i can bump it to
| 24 GB RAM, So that i can open Chrome and firefox at the same
| time.
| almosthere wrote:
| I just bought the m4 mac mini at Costco about a month ago. I have
| been slightly irked I didn't wait for this so I can walk it away
| from my desk sometimes. I really hate the idea of a return since
| I'm still in the window but....
| jkcchan wrote:
| costco returns are notoriously generous, no questions asked.
| electronics might be a shorter window but i think it's very
| accepted to return
| spwa4 wrote:
| I wonder if this macbook air will finally come with
| "replaceable" storage, like the m4 mac mini did.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The best thing about "Apple intelligence" so far is that it made
| Apple eat their shoe and upgrade their base model's memory to
| something usable
| hackathonguy wrote:
| I love that the base model starts with 16GB of RAM here. The
| value of these computers is incredible - I purchased a Macbook
| Pro in 2021 and it's still powering through every task I throw at
| it. Before Apple started making their own chips, I felt like I
| had to upgrade every 2-3 years to prevent my laptop from becoming
| a hurdle in completing every day tasks (remember when tab
| management was a thing?). Really happy with these machines.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| AI is finally forcing them to do it
| ada1981 wrote:
| Why are we back to MagSafe? I liked just having the usb-c on my
| air.
| kome wrote:
| magasafe saved my laptop several times in the last 10 years
| paxys wrote:
| Yeah, while I don't mind MagSafe, I'd 100% want an extra USB-C
| port instead.
| atonse wrote:
| Is there a particular use case where you'd need the extra
| (I'm assuming you're wanting this for on the go use cases,
| otherwise you'd probably use a hub at your "home" location)
| paxys wrote:
| Any hub actually worth using (Thunderbolt ports, high
| enough charging wattage, dual displays, 2.5Gb Ethernet)
| will run you like $300-$400, which is almost half the price
| of the Macbook. I'd rather have a couple more ports on the
| device.
| jamespo wrote:
| But if the extra usb-c port is taken up by a charger
| what's the benefit?
|
| Also the air physically can't accomodate USB-A, ethernet,
| hdmi etc.
| paxys wrote:
| You're not charging your laptop 100% of the time. The Air
| runs like 12 hours or more on a single charge. A Magsafe
| port is useless all that time.
| s_dev wrote:
| You can charge with both. The USB-C stuff is due to EU
| regulations and MagSafe because people love it as a charging
| cable type.
| klausa wrote:
| USB-C on Macs is literally 10 years old this year, this has
| nothing to do with EU.
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| Both work fine for charging, so seems like best of both worlds
| to me.
| MichaelTheGeek wrote:
| Looks good.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| For all the talk of the "Apple Tax", point me to a comparable
| laptop from another company at this price point. I don't think
| there has been one since Apple started the M series.
| ylee wrote:
| 20 years ago, when I helped cover IT hardware including AAPL
| for a large investment bank, our analyses consistently showed
| that Apple products were comparable in price to competing
| products _with comparable specs_.
|
| I agree that Apple Silicon has given Apple an additional leg up
| on the competition, even aside from the more-than-competitive
| price.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Agreed. My (former) x86 Macbook was the best out there at
| that price. The only other laptop I found that was comparable
| (this was ~10 years ago) was the Thinkpad Carbon X1 (and the
| Thinkpads in general back when they were still high quality;
| not sure I would buy one now), but it was similar in price to
| the Macbook.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| I don't think you can find anything in this form factor that
| would match the single core performance of M4.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This is actually reasonable.
|
| I just brought 2 laptops in the last 12 months, so I'm not
| rushing to buy this, but it's a great deal for the typical
| person.
| electrograv wrote:
| I really wish Apple would make a MacBook Air variant with display
| quality on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro (ProMotion/120hz
| and XDR/HDR, at least). The screen quality is the only reason I
| currently use the Pro despite its chunkier weight, since the
| local compute/memory of the Air is already plenty for me (and
| most users).
|
| The iPad Pro proves that weight and battery life is no excuse
| here for the lack of state-of-the-art display tech in the MacBook
| Air. And as for cost -- the base 14" MacBook Pro M4 (at $1600)
| isn't significantly more expensive than the 15" MacBook Air M4
| configured with same CPU/RAM/SSD (at $1400).
|
| It's really quite a shame that the iPad Pro hardware is in many
| way a better MacBook Air than the MacBook Air, crippled primarily
| by iOS rather than hardware.
| klausa wrote:
| I wish for that machine too; and the price delta between the
| Macs is why I expect this will never happen. And unfortunately,
| I'd rather spend the extra bucks than go back to 60hz.
|
| Apple seems quite content with making 120hz a feature of "Pro"
| models across the line (iPads, iPhones, Macs).
| torstenvl wrote:
| Portability is a pro feature.
|
| The truth of the matter is that Apple does not currently sell
| a single premium device. Every single one requires serious
| compromises.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| I know Apple wants to differentiate ProMotion as a Pro feature,
| but even non-tech people I know are wondering why Android
| phones run smoother than iPhones. Stuff that would be
| completely unheard of purely because of how noticeable 60hz vs
| 120hz is.
|
| Actual reputational damage is going on because of these poor
| decisions, I'm not surprised iPhones are struggling to obtain
| new market share. They just look like old and slow phones to
| most normal people now, "look how nice and smooth it looks" is
| such an easy selling point compared to trying to pretend people
| care about whatever Apple Intelligence is.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _but even non-tech people I know are wondering why Android
| phones run smoother than iPhones. Stuff that would be
| completely unheard of purely because of how noticeable 60hz
| vs 120hz is._
|
| Are they? I'm a tech person and I can barely notice it at
| all. And I don't think I have a single non-tech friend who is
| even aware of the concept of video refresh rate.
|
| Whenever there's something that doesn't feel smooth about an
| interface, it's because the app/CPU isn't keeping up.
|
| I've honestly never understood why anyone cares about more
| than 60hZ for screens, for general interfaces/scrolling.
|
| (Unless it's about video game response time, but that's not
| about "running smoother".)
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Yeah I think when they say non-tech people they mean a
| subset of people who know a bit about refresh rates
| (example being avid PC gamers for instance), but I'd still
| say the vast majority of people cannot tell 60 to 120. That
| or its not something they think about.
|
| Certainly if they had both side by side they may be able to
| notice a difference, but in everyday use it makes no real
| difference to the vast majority of people. Anecdotally even
| though I do use Android myself, everyone around me still
| think iPhones look the smoothest (albeit most of them have
| never even touched a quality phone running android)
| Ataraxic wrote:
| It's one of those things where once you have used it, you
| will notice it. Given most iOS users aren't swapping
| between pro and non pro models, it's not something you
| think about.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| They don't know the words but they definitely notice it.
| "Why is it so smooth/rough?"
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Yeah I think when they say non-tech people they mean a
| subset of people who know a bit about refresh rates
| (example being avid PC gamers for instance)_
|
| no, he didn't say that. he said they comment on the
| difference between apple and android (their perception).
| you have to take that as a given.
|
| that "it's because refresh rate" is his hypothesis, so
| yes argue that, but not by changing his evidence.
| pishpash wrote:
| Just tried ProMotion vs. 60Hz on MBP, no/very little
| difference I can see. Sure it's just me but for me all
| the claims here are way exaggerated/psychological, almost
| like audiophiles being able to "hear" stuff that doesn't
| exist in a blind test.
| klausa wrote:
| As one of the upthread comments mentioned, this is
| something that probably varies with sensitivity between
| people.
|
| But I am quite confident I'd be able to tell 60/120hz
| with a 100% accuracy within 5s of being able to interact
| with the device.
|
| Probably under a second on an iPhone, ~2s on a Mac with a
| built-in display and slightly longer on iPads and bigger
| displays. Add ~2 extra second if I'm using a mouse
| instead of a trackpad.
|
| It is _that_ noticeable to me.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| They definitely are not. Not even most tech power users
| understand refresh rates let alone can easily spot the
| difference.
|
| Still a nice to have, which Apple recognizes.
| klausa wrote:
| I actually call BS on the "not-being-able-to-tell".
|
| I will give you that most people outside of this websites
| audience will not be able to _tell_ it's because of the
| refresh rate.
|
| But I am quite confident if you take most of 120hz iPhone
| users phones out of their hand, turn on low battery mode,
| most will be immediately able to tell that something
| _feels_ off.
| stringsandchars wrote:
| > I actually call BS on the "not-being-able-to-tell".
|
| I actually call BS on your BS.
|
| I don't believe that people are standing with two phones
| in their hand - an Android and an iPhone - and comparing
| them the way that people here are suggesting. I don't
| think I have ever seen anyone do that IRL, and I don't
| believe anyone actually does it.
|
| People go to the Apple Store to get their iPhone or to
| some other store to get their Android phone, because they
| are interested in either platform, and absolutely not
| thinking about hopping from one to the other based on
| some imperceptible screen-refresh 'smoothness'.
| klausa wrote:
| That's... not what I said at all?
|
| The only claim I made is that if you toggle between
| 60/120hz on people's devices, they will be able to tell
| the difference.
| jjcob wrote:
| i used an android phone for a year with a 90 fps display.
| When I switched back to an iphone, it felt slow to me. i
| couldn't tell what the problem was, the brand new phone
| just felt sluggish. a year later when using my partners
| iphone pro, i realised that the sluggishness must be
| because of the refresh rate.
|
| i think once you get used to 90 or 120 fps, then 60fps
| will just feel choppy. no need to compare them side by
| side.
| meindnoch wrote:
| If you try using a 60hz screen after a 120hz one, it will
| feel very sluggish and choppy. As long as you don't get
| used to 120hz, you'll be fine with 60hz.
| brk wrote:
| I've never really felt this way, and have used all kinds
| of screens of various resolutions, sizes, technologies,
| etc. For 99% of the typical use cases (chats, email, doom
| scrolling, etc.) there just is not a big enough
| perceptible difference for most buyers.
|
| Screen refresh rate arguments are starting to have hints
| of audiophile discussions.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I flatly will not buy any monitor, laptop, phone, tablet,
| or TV with a refresh rate below 120hz. I had 120hz 1080p
| over DVI-dual link in 2010. I can accept graphically
| demanding games going down to ~50 fps, but for UI
| interactivity and navigation, I'll take 120hz+ only.
| mvanbaak wrote:
| And there you are, watching a movie on that 120p+ tv. You
| do k ow the movie is only 24p right?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Going 60hz - 120hz: "Meh, I guess it's smoother?
| Whatever..."
|
| Going 120hz - 60hz: "WTF? Why is it so choppy? Am I
| accidentally in low battery mode?"
|
| It's similar to going back to non-retina displays after
| getting used to retina resolution.
| electrograv wrote:
| Yes, human visual perception exists along a spectrum of
| temporal, spatial, and chromatic resolution that varies
| from person to person -- I've even met some people who
| can't perceive the difference between 30hz and 120hz, while
| to me and most people I know, the difference between 60hz
| and 120hz is enormous.
|
| So you could make the same argument against high DPI
| displays, superior peak screen brightness, enormously
| better contrast ratio, color gamut, etc. Also speaker
| quality, keyboard quality, trackpad quality, etc.
|
| Where does this argument end? Do you propose we regress to
| 60hz 1080p displays with brightness, contrast, and viewing
| angles that are abysmal by modern standards? Or is the
| claim that the MacBook Air's current screen is the perfect
| "sweet spot" beyond which >99% of people can't tell the
| difference?
|
| I think the market data alone disproves this pretty
| conclusively. Clearly a significant enough percentage of
| the population cares enough about image quality to vote
| with their wallets so much so that enormous hardware
| industries continue to invest billions towards make any
| incremental progress in advancing the technology here.
|
| To be fair, I think there's strong data to support that
| modern "retina"-grade DPI is good enough for >99% of
| people. And you can argue that XDR/HDR is not
| applicable/useful for coding or other tasks outside of
| photo/video viewing/editing (though for the latter it is
| _enormously_ noticeable and _not even remotely approaching_
| human visual limits yet). But there's plenty of people who
| find refresh rate differences extremely noticeable (usually
| up to at least 120hz), and I think almost anyone can easily
| notice moderate differences in contrast ratio and max
| brightness in a brightly lit room.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Lol, reminds me of audiophile discussions when most
| people listen to youtube streaming a recompressed version
| of an mp3 someone uploaded.
| toxik wrote:
| It's not imagined though, I use my partner's phone
| sometimes and every time I used it I thought it was
| broken because the UI jitter was so jarring at 60Hz.
| Actually I'm still not convinced her phone isn't broken.
| Also her flashlight resets to the lowest brightness EVERY
| time it's cycled.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _because the UI jitter was so jarring at 60Hz_
|
| See this is what confuses me.
|
| If the UI jitter on their phone was "so jarring", it's
| not because it's 60 Hz. It's because the phone's CPU
| isn't keeping up.
|
| Like, nobody watches a video filmed at 60 fps and then
| watches their favorite TV show or a motion picture at 24
| fps and says "the jitter was so jarring". And that's at
| less than half the rate we're even talking about!
| Similarly, even if you can tell the difference between 60
| and 120 Hz, it's not _jarring_. It 's not _jittery_. It
| 's pretty subtle, honestly. You can notice it if you're
| paying attention, but you'd never in a million years call
| it "jarring".
|
| I think a lot of people might be confusing 60 Hz with
| jittery UX that has nothing to do with the display
| refresh rate. Just because the display operates at a
| higher refresh rate doesn't mean the CPU is actually
| refreshing the _interface_ at that rate. And with certain
| apps or with whatever happening in the background, it isn
| 't.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > Like, nobody watches a video filmed at 60 fps and then
| watches their favorite TV show or a motion picture at 24
| fps and says "the jitter was so jarring". And that's at
| less than half the rate we're even talking about!
|
| Those have motion blur.
|
| > Similarly, even if you can tell the difference between
| 60 and 120 Hz
|
| I don't know why you're phrasing this so oddly doubtful?
| Being able to tell the difference between 60hz and 120hz
| is hardly uncommon. It's quite a large difference, and
| this is quite well studied.
| electrograv wrote:
| It's deeply flawed logic at best (or an intentional red
| herring at worst) to cite the existence of pseudoscience
| discussed elsewhere, as an argument against real science
| being discussed here.
|
| There is a well-understood science to both auditory and
| visual perception, even more concretely so for the visual
| side. The scientific literature on human perception in
| both categories is actively used in the engineering of
| almost every modern (audible/visual) device you use every
| day (both in hardware design, and software such as the
| design of lossy compression algorithms). We have very
| precise scientific understanding of the limits (and
| individual variation) of human visual and (to a slightly
| lesser extent) auditory perception _and_ preferences.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| It's not about whether people can perceive the
| difference. They don't care.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It just feels more "fluid" and real, and then you get used
| to it and 60Hz feels jittery. I have an iPad pro, and its
| honestly made me consider going with an iPhone Pro (I still
| have just the non-pro model), although not quite yet.
| However, I notice a huge difference between scrolling on my
| phone and scrolling on my ipad.
|
| Its the same thing about retina vs. the previous
| resolutions we had put up with. Yes, you don't need them
| for text, but once you get used to it for text you don't
| want to go back.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| On smartphones you interact with the UI in a more direct
| way, which probably makes the input latency even more
| obvious.
|
| For me 120Hz is noticeable immediately when scrolling,
| though I also don't find it important enough to warrant a
| higher price aside from gaming.
|
| What I find more important is a high pixel density, though
| on phones that's less of an issue as with PC screens - I
| have yet to find one comparable to the ones in current
| iMacs.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I switch between refresh rates ranging from 60hz and 240hz
| every day and while I certainly notice the difference,
| unless I'm running games I adjust and forget about it in
| seconds. While VRR 120hz+ on all Apple device screens would
| be nice it's not exactly a dealbreaker... it's not like
| rendering my IDE with 2x+ extra frames changes much of
| anything.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I'm not surprised iPhones are struggling to obtain new
| market share. They just look like old and slow phones to most
| normal people now
|
| Literally the only people I know with non-iPhones are:
|
| * People who can't afford one
|
| * People who want a folding screen
|
| * People who are conceptually anti-Apple
|
| Apple have over 50% market share in the US, talking about
| "struggling to obtain new market share" seems bizarre.
| jghn wrote:
| * People who have been left behind by Apple's push towards
| phablets
| nordsieck wrote:
| > People who have been left behind by Apple's push
| towards phablets
|
| It's my impression that Apple really tried to service
| this market - that last model was probably the iPhone 13
| mini. I assume that there just isn't enough demand for
| smaller phones to justify the effort to develop them.
|
| I was honestly hoping that we'd get a small phone as the
| iPhone SE 4. But it seems like that's not to be. At
| least, if the 16e is the closest we'll get to an SE in
| the near term.
| momoschili wrote:
| yup, I bought a 13 mini and was happy that Apple was one
| of the companies that supported this form factor. That
| being said, the 13 mini sales numbers speak for
| themselves and I understand why this kind of phone isn't
| released every year. I'm holding out that Apple
| recognizes that most of the users of the 13 mini aren't
| serial upgraders and will continue refreshing the segment
| every 5 years or so
| jghn wrote:
| Yeah I'm holding out that they've decided to just refresh
| the small form factor on a slower cadence. I also have a
| 13 mini, we'll see how long I can hold out.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Unfortunately the 12 and 13 mini were badly timed when
| stores closed for COVID. Actually holding one of them to
| use it is really what sells the smaller size, IMO.
|
| I have my 12 mini still but it's showing its age.
| Probably have to suck it up and get a big phone next
| upgrade.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I was curious about the SE4 since I had an SE2 and
| Verizon let me trade in the SE2 for the SE3 for free.
| Based on the rumors of what the SE4 was going to be, we
| did get an SE4, it was just rebranded as the 16e. The
| rumor was they were gonna get rid of the button and go
| with the more recent iPhone style and such. I wonder if
| they will rebrand the Apple Watch SE as an Apple Watch
| 10e or something along those lines.
| yellowapple wrote:
| * People who like being able to run software outside of
| the hardware vendor's walled garden
| petesergeant wrote:
| Interesting, although in my head I'd class that in the
| same way as the folding screens; iPhones that don't have
| the dimensions you want, one way or another
| ndiddy wrote:
| Where do they go? Apart from random Chinese vendors like
| Unihertz who sell low-spec devices and you're lucky if
| you get one version update, the smallest Android phones
| I've seen are Samsung Galaxy phones, which are about the
| same size as an iPhone 16. Asus and Sony used to make
| small phones, but they've stopped in the last couple of
| years in favor of making phablets.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| * People who like to _think differently_ and customize
| their phones without relying on jailbreaking.
| petesergeant wrote:
| That tiny proportion fits nicely into conceptually anti-
| Apple
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Not necessarily. There is some overlap, but not 100%.
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| >I'm not surprised iPhones are struggling to obtain new
| market share
|
| Apple has >80% of the total operating profit in the
| smartphone market. The new entry level phone went up in price
| $200. Why do you think they do/should care about market
| share?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Rumored to change next year
|
| https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/iphone-17-just-
| tipp...
|
| Would be nice if the laptops followed suit
| whynotminot wrote:
| Have never heard anyone in my life that isn't an engineer
| comment on Pro Motion. Not even in an accidental sort of
| "hmmm why does my phone just feel faster" kind of way.
|
| This is a feature that really only matters to the Hacker News
| crowd, and Apple is very aware of that. They invest their BOM
| into things the majority of people care about. And they do
| have the Pro Motion screens for the few that do.
|
| Even I -- an engineer - regularly move between my Pro Motion
| enabled iPhone and my regular 60Hz iPad and while I notice it
| a little, I really just don't see why this is the one hill
| people choose to die on.
| electrograv wrote:
| You have to understand that your own perceptual experience
| is not identical to that of all other humans. Without
| recognizing that, we will inevitably end up talking past
| each other endlessly and writing each other off as {
| hallucinating, lying, exaggerating, etc } for one of us
| claiming to perceive something important that the other
| does not.
|
| It would be no different than arguing about whether we need
| all three primary colors (red, green, blue) with someone
| who is colorblind (and unaware of this). Or like arguing
| whether speakers benefit from being able to reproduce a
| certain frequency, with someone who is partially or fully
| deaf at that frequency. And I truly mean no disrespect to
| anyone with different perception abilities in these or any
| other domains.
|
| Recognizing that large differences exist here is essential
| to make sense of the reality - that something that seems
| completely unimportant or barely noticeable to you, could
| actually be a hugely obvious and important difference to
| many others (whether it's a certain screen refresh rate,
| the presence of a primary color you cannot perceive but
| others can, an audio frequency you cannot hear but others
| can, or otherwise).
| whynotminot wrote:
| This is why I led with this part, unrelated to my own
| perception:
|
| > Have never heard anyone in my life that isn't an
| engineer comment on Pro Motion. Not even in an accidental
| sort of "hmmm why does my phone just feel faster" kind of
| way.
|
| I would also argue the crowd that insists everyone needs
| Pro Motion is doing exactly what you accuse me of --
| assuming their needs and perception must also be everyone
| else's. When clearly the market has said otherwise, given
| Apple's success for many, many years with 60Hz screens.
| electrograv wrote:
| _> I would also argue the crowd that insists everyone
| needs Pro Motion is doing exactly what you accuse me of
| -- assuming their needs and perception must also be
| everyone else 's._
|
| I am not seeing this alleged crowd of people insisting
| that everyone needs 120hz/ProMotion. This seems to be a
| red herring.
|
| I _am_ seeing a crowd of people (including myself) saying
| that _we experience 120hz /ProMotion as a huge
| improvement over 60hz,_ so much so that we will never buy
| a product without this ever again (so long as we have the
| choice).
|
| I furthermore claim that while not everyone is a member
| of this crowd (obviously), it represents a sufficiently
| large share of the device-buying population to justify
| steering billions of dollars of hardware and software
| industry to support this, which evidently _has happened
| and increasingly continues to happen._
|
| If this crowd were an insignificant minority as you seem
| to imply, then 120hz displays would be a fad that fades
| away in all but the most niche markets (e.g. pro gaming),
| and yet we're seeing _precisely the opposite_ happen --
| 120hz displays are growing in popularity by expanding
| broadly into increasingly non-niche consumer device
| products _everywhere_ , from laptops to tablets to
| phones.
|
| _> When clearly the market has said otherwise, given
| Apple 's success for many, many years with 60Hz screens._
|
| Arguing that the market doesn't want/need it now because
| Apple succeeded without it in the past, is completely
| absurd -- just as nonsensical as trying to argue that
| computers don't ever need any more memory because they
| sold just fine with less in the past.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Well I guess if you don't see it it doesn't exist.
|
| Apple sells Pro Motion displays. If it matters to you,
| you can buy them. They aren't refusing to serve this
| market, they just don't prioritize it with their lower
| cost products.
| 0x457 wrote:
| 120Hz on Android IMO is: try once, say "damn that's smooth"
| and then disable to save battery life.
|
| I only ever used Pixels as android phones, so my experience
| is limited to that.
| ragazzina wrote:
| >I really wish Apple would make a MacBook Air variant with
| display quality on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro
|
| >The screen quality is the only reason I currently use the Pro
|
| Well why should they, you already bought the more expensive
| one.
| electrograv wrote:
| I've considered trying an ultralight PC laptop with a
| superior screen. But the sad state of reality is that:
|
| (1) Windows these days feels like a constant battle against
| forcibly installed adware / malware.
|
| (2) Linux would be great, but getting basic laptop essentials
| like reliable sleep/wake and power management to work even
| remotely well in Linux continues to be a painful losing
| battle.
|
| (3) Apple's M series chips' performance and efficiency is
| still generations ahead of anyone else in the context of
| portable battery-powered fanless work; nobody else has yet
| come close to matching apple here, though there is hope
| Qualcomm will deliver more competition soon (if the silicon's
| raw potential is not squandered by Microsoft).
|
| Just because Apple's competition has been complacent and
| lagging for many years, doesn't render irrelevant any
| feedback to Apple regarding what professional laptop users
| would like.
| olyjohn wrote:
| You don't buy a PC and try to run MacOS on it do you? Then
| why do people keep buying random laptops and then
| complaining when Linux doesn't run on it? You buy a laptop
| from a vendor who designs them to run Linux out of the box.
|
| Also, Apple's power management isn't flawless either. It
| used to be fantastic, but I've never, ever seen a laptop
| that has to charge for 15 minutes before you can even boot
| it from a flat battery. This seems to happen if I leave my
| laptop powered off for more than a few days. Like, turned
| completely off, not sleeping with the lid shut.
| electrograv wrote:
| _> Then why do people keep buying random laptops and then
| complaining when Linux doesn 't run on it? You buy a
| laptop from a vendor who designs them to run Linux out of
| the box._
|
| Because:
|
| (1) Laptop models designed to run Linux out of the box
| are very scarce, with very few options to choose from.
|
| (2) Of the few that do exist, I've never seen any even
| remotely close to being competitive with Apple's laptops
| (in terms of hardware quality, and good performance with
| excellent power efficiency / fanless / thermals / battery
| life).
|
| Part of that is due to Apple's monopoly on the
| superiority of their M series chips. But the rest I
| assume comes from less R&D investment generally in the
| Linux laptop space due to it being such a small niche,
| unfortunately.
| stetrain wrote:
| Because some people would pay the same price (or even more)
| as a MacBook Pro to have a great screen in a thinner, lighter
| laptop that shouldn't cost Apple that much more to make.
|
| Like how the MacBook Air was originally a premium-priced
| product instead of an entry-level product in Apple's lineup.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| how about because it's ridiculous that a $2200 laptop cannot
| correctly show photos taken by the company's own $600 phone?
| People mentioned being stuck at 60hz, but it's also one of
| the few remaining non-xdr displays that Apple offers.
| r0fl wrote:
| Price drop
|
| Double the ram
|
| And yet a complaining comment makes its way to the top. This
| blows my mind! People will literally complain no matter what
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Wait until you hear that the new iPad Air doesn't give
| permission to run a Kubernetes cluster on it. Happens every
| year
| ProZsolt wrote:
| Doesn't matter to me if I still have to buy the chunky Pro to
| get a decent display.
|
| The current Air is great as an entry level device, but there
| is an underserved segment here.
| kokada wrote:
| Hell, I would be happy if Apple at least enabled the
| virtualization instructions that are already available in the
| Mx chips inside the iPads, and allowed e.g.: something like UTM
| in Apple Store with Hypervisor support. It would be a good
| differentiator between the cheaper iPads running Ax chips vs
| the more expensive iPads running Mx.
|
| Considering the powerful hardware, the form factor and the good
| keyboard (I have a used Apple Magic Keyboard paired with our
| iPad Air M2), if I could virtualize an actual Linux distro to
| get some job done in the iPad it would be great. But no, you
| are restricted to a cripped version of UTM that can't even run
| JIT and because of that is really slow because of that.
| gloxkiqcza wrote:
| If Apple offered macOS VM as a (paid) app for iPads I would
| buy one.
| webdever wrote:
| As others have said, they do this on purpose. It's the same
| with memory. I'd probably switch from a Pro to an Air if I
| could get 64gig ram (for LLM work) but they'd rather charge me
| $4800 instead of ~$3200 (guessing the price given the top end
| 32gig Air is $2800)
|
| It's frustrating because I'd prefer a lighter device. In fact,
| even the Air isn't that light compared to its competition.
|
| I'd happily pay +$500 ($5300) for Macbook Air PRO if it was
| effectively the same specs as Macbook Pro but 1.5lbs lighter.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I'm not sure a Macbook Air with only passive cooling would be
| the best machine for running an LLM that would fit into ~40GB
| of GPU accessible memory.
|
| > I'd happily pay +$500 ($5300) for Macbook Air PRO if it was
| effectively the same specs as Macbook Pro but 1.5lbs lighter.
|
| You basically want a macbook pro. I don't think it could be
| that thin with active cooling that such a configuration would
| require.
| electrograv wrote:
| I have absolutely no problem paying a premium for an upgraded
| display. The problem is that Apple does not offer that option
| for the MacBook Air.
|
| The MacBook Pro has an amazing screen, which is why I bought
| the MBP. But the MBP compromises increased weight (which I
| don't want) in exchange for more performance (that I simply
| don't need). And we know this compromise is not needed to
| host a better display, as evidenced by the existence of the
| iPad Pro.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the MacBook Pro is a _fantastic_ product
| and I don't regret buying it. It just feels like a huge
| missed opportunity on Apple's part that their only ultra-
| lightweight laptop is so far behind in display tech vs their
| other non-laptop products (like the iPad Pro which is lighter
| still, just crippled due to iOS limitations).
|
| I would gladly pay even more than the price of my MacBook Pro
| for a MacBook Air with a screen on par with the iPad Pro or
| MacBook Pro. Or even for an iPad Pro that runs OSX!
| jpalomaki wrote:
| It's actually quite crazy that we need to get those bulky pro
| models just to get the basics like better screens and more
| memory. The performance between the Air and Pro is anyways
| pretty much the same, except for long running tasks where pro
| benefits from active cooling.
|
| Wonder if we are going to see some changes here with the
| upcoming M5 models.
| tosh wrote:
| no nano texture? :(
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I hope apple starts adding more colors to the lineup, the blue
| looks great
| noxepy wrote:
| Everything is cool although it's too bad they had changed the Air
| design. I have MBA M1 and I have to admit I'm a big fan of that
| design.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Is this the first Macbook Air to support multiple monitors? I'm
| kind of surprised that's not highlighted instead of buried down
| in the page.
| LuciOfStars wrote:
| Nope, M3 did too.
| stetrain wrote:
| The M3 series was able to support two external displays with
| the laptop closed.
|
| M4 can do two external displays with the laptop screen active
| as well.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Doing it with the laptop open is what I'd be interested in,
| as that's been my working style for years. I've had a couple
| of Airs, but ended up having to use a Display Link hub and
| software to support multiple displays, which wasn't ideal.
| ant6n wrote:
| No Nano-Texture Option. I actually returned an M3 Macbook Air I
| got for xmas because I find it too reflective, waiting and hoping
| for a non-reflective Macbook Air.
|
| If Apple had made it clear they weren't gonna release a non-
| reflective screen for the Macbook air, I might've just kept the
| M3 or perhaps gotten the heavy Pro. Now I don't feel like getting
| any of these.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Official post: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/03/apple-
| introduces-the-...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43266521)
| d_silin wrote:
| Man, Apple laptops even with all their quirks are light-years
| ahead of the median. I have a reasonably modern ThinkPad and
| MacBook Air M3 with similar specs, so I can feel the difference.
| jhasse wrote:
| Why wouldn't they, when the pricing is ahead of the median,
| too?
| d_silin wrote:
| M4 Air pricing is very competitive too. At $1200, 16GB/512GB
| configuration feels right on money. Pros, yes definitely more
| pricey.
| highfrequency wrote:
| Nice to see a $1000 Air again in spite of inflation. For
| comparison, M2 Air was released in 2022 at $1200 with 8 GB RAM.
| cxie wrote:
| Looking at this entire Apple product launch day, I'm struck by
| how Apple's silicon strategy keeps extending in both directions.
| Kalanos wrote:
| 16GB base!
| shawnz wrote:
| Nice to see they're finally supporting dual external displays
| even out of clamshell mode on the Air!
| ruuda wrote:
| My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no
| manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs
| nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good
| build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was
| perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which
| is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years
| later ... But now Dell discontinued XPS, and their new
| Pro/Premium models have worse specs in almost all ways. The only
| non-Apple thing that I can find that even comes close, is a bulky
| 16" ThinkPad.
|
| And then there is Apple who pack everything I want in a sleek 14"
| or 15" device, plus a very fast CPU and battery life that is
| years ahead of anything else ... Why is there no competition
| here? I'm willing to compromise on battery life, and I don't need
| the fastest CPU, just a good quality work laptop where I can run
| `cargo build` / `docker pull` without worrying about filling up
| the disk, and mostly just a browser aside from that. Why is the
| gap _so_ large?
| elif wrote:
| I'm not sure why you want 4k resolution with a 14 inch screen
| to use commandline tools and a browser.
|
| My hunch is that relaxing this seemingly arbitrary requirement
| will result in many suitable notebooks
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| >I'm not sure why you want 4k resolution with a 14 inch
| screen
|
| You do realize we had 1440p phones in 2015-2016 right?
|
| HiDPI is not new, and it's clarity amazing. Stop buying huge
| low res screens for ripoff prices in 2025
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Pixel density is important for crisp small text, so cli on a
| 14 inch screen and maybe web browsing would be good reasons
| for a 4k display - it would be the only reasons for me at
| least.
| ruuda wrote:
| Especially for the command line and a browser which are
| primarily rendering text, pixel density matters so much! Why
| look at pixelated text when you can have print-quality crisp
| text? I never want to go back to low pixel density displays!
|
| I had an XPS 15 with 4k display in 2016, yet in 2025 it's
| somehow difficult to find a laptop with that pixel density?
|
| I wonder the same with phones actually, my Nexus 6P from 2015
| (10 years ago!) had an amazing 518 ppi display. When the
| modem died I got a Pixel 2 which had only 441 ppi, and the
| display was a really noticeable downgrade, text looked
| significantly uglier, I could see the pixels and hinting
| artifacts again. I expected high pixel densities to become
| mainstream to the point where every screen has a density at
| the limit of what the human eye can perceive, yet here we are
| 10 years later, and Google's flagship phones have only
| 495/486 ppi, worse than the Nexus 6P!
| RohMin wrote:
| First time I've heard someone say a thinkpad is bulky
| trinix912 wrote:
| Maybe they've only seen the older ones (like the ubiquitous
| T420) which were admittedly pretty bulky.
| ruuda wrote:
| I should have said "large" then, I could only find a 16"
| model with the specs I want. It's not bulky in the sense that
| a gaming laptop is.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I also have a 4-year old XPS15. The SSDs and RAM are super easy
| to upgrade. There are two internal SSD slots (one shipped
| empty). Dell charges not-quite Apple-scale arms and a legs for
| RAM/SSD upgrades, so I bought mine Dell-minimal and immediately
| upgraded them both and have bumped them up as prices come down
| for new parts. The upgradability was a major reason I went for
| the XPS15 instead of the XPS13 (my previous machine)
| RandomBacon wrote:
| I thought the XPS 17 was the only one with the extra SSD
| slot?
| nihilist_t21 wrote:
| Naw I have a 15" one (9510) and it has two M.2 slots.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Well you just made my day, I do have that second M.2 slot
| (XPS 9500) and am very much running out of space.
| m01 wrote:
| Can you upgrade the storage of your XPS laptop?
|
| Maybe check out the Framework laptops? For example the
| Framework 13's new screen is 2.8k @ 256PPI apparently [1],
| which has slightly more pixels than the Macbook Air M4[2]
| (obviously pixels isn't everything), but you can get up to 8TB
| NVMe storage + an extra storage expansion cards if you're happy
| to sacrifice ports and up to 96GB RAM. [3]
|
| [1] https://community.frame.work/t/framework-laptop-13-deep-
| dive...
|
| [2] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/
|
| [3] https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-
| amd/conf...
|
| EDIT: typo + formatting
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The main problem with the Framework 13 at this point is
| underwhelming battery life. I have one of the newly announced
| models reserved in hopes that the new CPU improves that to a
| reasonable degree, but if reviews come out and that turns out
| to not be the case there's a substantial chance I'll cancel.
| intrasight wrote:
| I honestly don't understand battery complaints. Cafes have
| plugs. Airplanes have plugs. Were are people working for
| hours without power?
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| its a huge convenience to never need one.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| There's a number of benefits to long battery life besides
| being able to work for long stretches unplugged.
|
| - Longer cycles means cycle count accruement and thus
| degradation is slower (sometimes dramatically so)
|
| - For longer trips, charging can be done overnight with a
| tiny trickle-charging phone brick, which is also better
| for battery health
|
| - No need to bring a brick, cable, or power bank for
| shorter trips
|
| - Impact of phantom drain during standby is greatly
| mitigated
|
| - Laptop will more often than not have enough charge to
| be used whenever you pick it up, without having to leave
| it plugged in all the time
|
| - Bluetooth and wifi can be used liberally without fear
| of chewing through battery too quickly
|
| - You as a user spend a lot less time thinking about your
| laptop's battery
|
| There's also secondary effects, like a machine being
| efficient enough to have long battery life generally also
| reducing its heat output and making it more practical to
| keep cool with a slow fan or passive heatsink.
| buildfocus wrote:
| I upgraded to the AMD board and the larger batteries and
| this improved significantly - 7/8 hours of real usage now,
| which for me is fine. On linux with minor tweaking. Depends
| what you need, but surely for most people a full workday
| without power is manageable!
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Are those numbers with power saver mode turned on? For
| what this laptop is being used for I don't need much
| muscle and would rather need to charge less frequently.
| buildfocus wrote:
| No, normal usage with no special power saver options.
| Turning off WiFi+minimal brightness+power saving etc
| pushes it further, but I'm rarely in a scenario where I
| want to do that for more than a couple of hours anyway.
|
| I've heard Windows defaults or more advanced Linux games
| can do better, but at this stage I don't feel the need.
| klaas- wrote:
| I'd say the primary problem of framework is security updates
| for bios etc
| walterbell wrote:
| Were they delayed?
| reissbaker wrote:
| Personally I've been a huge fan of my Framework 13, and am
| planning at some point to swap out the mainboard with the new
| one they released -- it's pretty nice that you can do that
| (and they sell a desktop case to put the old mainboard in, so
| you end up with a faster laptop and a spare desktop
| afterwards!).
|
| Battery life is the main downside, although it doesn't bother
| me too much -- running manufacturer-supported Linux is very
| nice and worth having to charge more frequently. It uses
| USB-C anyway, so it's just one cable for all my devices --
| doesn't feel like that big of a deal.
| pachico wrote:
| Can't be any happier with my Framework laptop.
|
| Give it a read and do a simulation of how much it would cost
| you to replace the part that forced you to buy a new laptop.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Seems like you haven't actually looked into it if that's the
| impression you got, because both Thinkpad (X1) and Framework
| (13) make a laptop that fit your requirements. The X1 carbon
| even offers a 4k OLED option if you want it.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| The original post:
|
| > everything I want in a sleek 14" or 15" device
|
| The X1 carbon we have in our house has a 13" 16:9 screen,
| which I hate.
| pja wrote:
| Latest X1 Carbons have 14" 16:10 OLED screens: https://www.
| lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
|
| Or pick up a Framework 13 which has a 13.5" 2880x1800 16:10
| screen: https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-
| amd/configurat...
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > Latest X1 Carbons have 14" 16:10 OLED screens'
|
| Ah, that is an excellent improvement!
| dsego wrote:
| A lot of new windows laptops (finally) have a 16:10 ratio
| or even 3:2 on microsoft surface.
| ruuda wrote:
| I've been browsing the Lenovo (and others') website for
| weeks, and the only two laptops it shows with 2TB storage and
| 4k display are the ThinkPad P1 and P16s.
|
| The ThinkPad X1 and Framework 13 have a much lower resolution
| display. Also, I appreciate Framework's mission, but it's not
| the build quality that I'm looking for.
| cgio wrote:
| There should be no questioning on matters of personal
| taste, but I will offer my experience with the 13 FW, which
| is that build quality is pretty great already, but also you
| get the option to maintain it longer term, such as changing
| hinges etc. which gives confidence on longevity. I also
| have a Macbook M1, and I have found myself reaching for the
| framework almost exclusively now. It feels great to work on
| a machine that you feel like you own a bit more than any
| other. Macbook is also great, I think one of the best
| machines I ever owned, but it gradually loses first place
| to Framework.
| barake wrote:
| If you use the product filter it only shows laptops that
| come pre-configured with 2TB of storage. If you choose a
| custom build you can configure the latest X1 Carbon with 32
| GB RAM, 2 TB storage, and a 2.8k display.
|
| If you choose the custom build route some even can ship
| with Fedora or Ubuntu, so presumably Linux support is
| reasonable.
| gavinray wrote:
| Gen question: why do people care how bulky a laptop is?
|
| I buy gaming laptops because they're the only powerful laptops
| and their size has never bothered me when traveling
| somanyphotons wrote:
| The thickness can change wrist ergonomics of typing
| JOnAgain wrote:
| I returned my MacBook pro due to weight. After years with an
| air, I can't go back. I'll get the new air.
| gloxkiqcza wrote:
| Do you only ever travel by car? Serious question.
| gavinray wrote:
| Mostly, but also take it when I fly, along with a mouse +
| mouse pad. The weight has never bothered me, usually the
| backpack with the laptop in it is the lightest bag and then
| I have a much heavier carry on as well.
| timeon wrote:
| So that makes sense it is not issue for you if you mostly
| travel by car. But it can be for those that use bike or
| public transport or just walk. (As example last time I
| used car about two months ago).
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| If you don't travel from your house with it I understand your
| confusion, the weight is a factor when traveling. I never
| have back pain, but when I do, its because I'm carrying a
| heavy laptop around on my back.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Even around the house it makes a difference in my opinion.
| My 12" X1 Nano is much nicer to carry and use around the
| house than my 16" M1 Max MBP is, and so the Macbook spends
| most of its life docked. The MBP comes with me when I
| travel because it's my primary computer, but reduced size
| and weight would be welcome. If only the 14" MBP didn't
| sacrifice cooling capacity as much as it does.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I travel with my laptop a lot, but much prefer a beefy
| workstation for all the work I do when I get where I'm
| going. The weight of the laptop is not a big deal, even my
| big Lenovo P53 (~30mm thick 15.6" black brick) is only 3
| kg.
|
| I do use an Osprey 22L hiking backpack for my daily driver,
| it's got a waist belt to transfer weight to my hips, a
| chest strap to keep the shoulder straps together, and
| internal semi-rigid frame... but that's more for all my
| other stuff, and for activities I do in the woods far from
| stuff like 'laptop computers'. Even if it's just in a
| handheld briefcase, 3 kg is not a lot. That's about as much
| as a water bottle - which I also have in the backpack, as
| well as a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that also weighs a
| few kg.
|
| I herniated a disk a couple years ago due to a waterskiing
| accident, but I've fully recovered and even while dealing
| with that injury, walking around airports and so forth with
| any laptop is not not strenuous.
|
| In hindsight, I wish I'd gone for the big P73, I miss the
| giant 17" screen of my old 40mm thick, 3.5 kg Dell
| Precision... but the OLED on the P53 is beautiful. 17" UHD
| OLED when, Lenovo?
| tasuki wrote:
| > I never have back pain, but when I do, its because I'm
| carrying a heavy laptop around on my back.
|
| Just how heavy is your laptop?
|
| You need a better backpack I think? I regularly carry 10kg
| of groceries in my backpack over two kilometers. It never
| gave me any back pain.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It will. Just give it 10 years.
| jamwil wrote:
| We most certainly do not do the same sort of travelling.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Do you carry your laptop to work every day? If you do, do you
| have other carry it between meeting rooms or from building to
| building?
| gavinray wrote:
| I did for a few years. The power cord was the only
| cumbersome part of that since the charging block is so big.
|
| I'd usually unplug it if I had to move to another room and
| only bring the laptop itself.
| maleldil wrote:
| Try walking a few kilometres with a 3kg gaming laptop on your
| back or standing up inside public transport.
| tasuki wrote:
| Yes, I'd rather carry a lighter laptop, but that's mostly
| because of _all the other stuff_ I want to carry in my
| backpack (eg groceries). If walking "a few kilometres with
| a 3kg gaming laptop on your back" is a problem for you,
| you're rather out of shape.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I weekly carry about 10kg of groceries in my backpack about
| 2.5 km. Doesn't even register as anything exceptional.
| dayvid wrote:
| It's really nice to be able to take a laptop out and start
| working on an idea wherever you are. Macbook Air makes me
| more productive and home or anywhere because it's less of a
| hassle to boot up the laptop.
|
| I have a gaming laptop, even 14", and I can't stand the boot
| up time and needing a thick power brick cable to get things
| going. I barely use it as a result and use my Steam Deck
| more.
| jghn wrote:
| I have (at least) 2 laptops at any given time. They fit into
| 2 categories:
|
| 1) Is 99% of the time actually on my lap when I'm using it.
| It's (usually) the one I take with me when I leave the house.
| I care very, very much about its size and weight. It's an M1
| Air and I wouldn't mind if it was a bit smaller/lighter.
|
| 2) Is 99% of the time sitting on my desk, plugged into my
| KVM. It almost never leaves my house. I don't care how bulky
| it is. However, I prefer medium-ish form factors in case I do
| need to travel with it.
|
| Any laptops I have over 2 will usually be in the 2nd bin, but
| sometimes the 1st.
| webdever wrote:
| When I'm walking around S.E. Asia and it's 90 degrees and
| humid I care about every extra gram.
|
| Even an Air is too heavy IMO compared to say an LG Gram. But,
| I need the specs and the screen so I lug around a MacBook Pro
| 16" at 4.6lbs - often I have to lug around 2, my corp one and
| my personal one.
|
| Given an iPad Pro 13" is 1.3lbs they "could" (for some
| definition of "could") make a 16" device with keyboard closer
| to 2 lbs.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| you have the choice to go with the AMD Ryzen AI Max processor
| which rivals the M4. And gives similar battery life and
| performance.
|
| Or the Intel Lunar Lake processor.
|
| Both have extremely good laptop options - the Lenovo Yoga Aura
| edition is pretty much macbook quality.
|
| And runs LLMs (https://github.com/intel/ipex-
| llm/blob/main/docs/mddocs/Over...)
| ako wrote:
| Hope lenovo ships the amd max in a P1 type laptop. I have an
| almost 5 year old thinkpad P1gen2 with Core i9, 64GB, 2.5Tb
| disk, T2000 discrete GPU, 4K oled touch display running
| Linux. Something similar that runs LLMs faster would be nice.
| The GPU is limited by only 4GB. Also, something that does not
| run out of battery power in less than 2 hours.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| The Asus ROG Flow Z13 with 128gb unified memory and the AMD
| Ryzen AI Max amu would be my first non-M4 laptop pick.
| Surprised how under-reported this device is.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > Why is there no competition here?
|
| Mobile. A lot of games I played as a kid have mobile apps, and
| in some cases, I don't know if its the case for all of them,
| the userbase is mostly on their phones. I can only imagine this
| is the case for a lot of things.
| tw04 wrote:
| Why not a surface laptop 7?
|
| https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/microsoft-surfac...
|
| Wtf is with the downvotes? It literally hits every requirement
| he had, and the surface laptops are some of the best
| windows/nix laptops on the market.
| ruuda wrote:
| It seems I can configure it with at most 1TB of storage, and
| the display is lower resolution, but aside from that it does
| look like a nice device.
| meowkit wrote:
| I have an M1 for personal use, and recently got a Surface
| L7 for work. Build quality wise, its the closet thing
| you're gonna find to a macbook that runs windows.
|
| I also run a custom Windows desktop and a synology NAS, so
| I like to consider myself mostly agnostic.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I think it's always been that way. The choices for a "flagship"
| laptop were always MacBook, ThinkPad, or XPS for at least the
| last 15 years.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > Why is the gap so large?
|
| I think it appears large for a couple of reasons. First is that
| Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of
| really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible
| there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K
| OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. Second is that many companies
| try to limit SKUs for their off-the-shelf products and 2TB or
| 4TB apparently aren't moving units. People who really want that
| model can just go buy a bigger drive to drop into it.
|
| That said, one last thing to consider is that while 14"
| Macbooks are very capable for their footprint, they are heavier
| and thicker than some other options. If weight is the concern
| there are 16" laptops that are thinner and lighter than the 14"
| macbook. The LG Gram Pro 16 2-in-1 weighs 0.5lbs less and is
| 0.10" thinner than an MBP14 and has two ssd slots.
| indymike wrote:
| I've been using LG Gram laptops running linux. They are
| fantastic. My current daily drive is 3lbs, 17" display, 32GB
| RAM i7 CPU, and I bumped the SSD to 2TB. It is lighter than my
| 13" Macbook air and cost $1200 at Costco. Oh, and battery life
| is 14-16 hours of use.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| Yes, LG Gram laptops are amazing. Surprised they're not more
| popular.
| hu3 wrote:
| These are great. They run stock linux too and it just works.
|
| My coworker has one. It will probably be my next portable
| workstation.
| huang_chung wrote:
| > My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow
| no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent
| specs nowadays?
|
| Panasonic Let's Note. Your welcome.
|
| It's repairable, upgradable, and has a * _removable battery_ *
| (unheard of in 2025).
| ruuda wrote:
| From the pictures, it looks like this device does not have
| the kind of build quality that XPS and MacBook have.
| scrlk wrote:
| They use a magnesium alloy chassis, which IMO, is superior
| to aluminium. Lighter and more dent resistant.
|
| Frankly, I'm not sure why people think that laptops with
| CNCed aluminium chassis are the pinnacle of build quality.
| rafram wrote:
| Wow, that is an extraordinarily ugly laptop. Reminds me of a
| classic Onion bit:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
| fossuser wrote:
| There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical
| integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per
| watt on their chip designs).
|
| Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you
| care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious
| tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or
| choose for non-quality reasons.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| No vertical integration is what did intel in because they
| both do fab and design. TSMC won because they aren't
| vertically integrated into anything.
|
| Apple is better because of actual superior technology. The
| chips are custom made and no one can match the technology
| yet.
| fossuser wrote:
| They have superior technology because they control the full
| stack and have taken more and more ownership of it over the
| years (most recently building their own modem in the iPhone
| 16e). They could design chips for an exact set of
| constraints (originally iPhones) and then expand that to
| the mac. Intel with x86 had to support legacy and tons of
| different devices (and bad leadership caused them to ignore
| efficiency and later ignore gpus). Other laptop
| manufacturers have to run other people's software and few
| really make their own underlying hardware to the extent
| apple does.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| No they don't all their technology is equivalent to
| what's in the industry save their chips. Which btw is
| manufactured by TSMC so the chip itself is not vertically
| integrated.
| fossuser wrote:
| My argument is they were able to develop the chip because
| of their control. The constraints allowed them that
| freedom and the constraints come from the top down
| integration and control.
|
| I'll bow out here because I can just tell this won't be a
| worthwhile thread.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Apple is better because they're not competing on price
| which is why they can afford to bring so many things in
| house. That's how they can afford the talent and other R&D
| resources.
|
| We get what we pay for.
| buildfocus wrote:
| Is the performance gap so huge? Power efficiency yes,
| absolutely, but for peak performance last I saw the last AMD
| vs M3 benchmarks were a slightly slower single core, and a
| little faster in multicore. Doesn't seem as world changing as
| described.
| guhidalg wrote:
| Yes. No other laptop can sustain peak performance as long
| as the M-series Macs. The only thing that competes is a
| dedicated desktop with a big cooler and fan.
|
| Mac laptops feel faster, even if the synthetic benchmarks
| say otherwise.
| margorczynski wrote:
| You mean plugged in or battery?
| ddingus wrote:
| I think this has a whole lot to do with the memory
| throughput, as well as great efficiency.
|
| My M1 still holds right up! It is the smallest RAM model,
| and even that is not the end of things.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't agree. Compile times are definitely and very
| noticeably quicker on my Intel gaming laptop (that's
| actually a few years old now) vs my M3 MBP.
|
| That said, I've never once felt that the M3 MBPs are
| sluggish. They are definitely super quick machines. And
| the fact that I can go a full day without charging even
| when using moderately heavy workloads is truly jaw
| dropping impressive.
|
| I'd definitely take the power performance over that small
| little extra saved in compile times any day of the week.
| So Apple have made some really shrugs judgements there.
| Aeolun wrote:
| My $2000 linux desktop is still faster and snappier than
| the $4000 macbook, but it's the only thing laptop sized
| that does that.
| ericmcer wrote:
| The leap from intel to the M series chips really left
| everyone else behind. I can't even use my 2019 Macbook
| anymore it feels so sluggish.
|
| I have an M3 Pro and it blows all my old computers out of the
| water. Can handle pretty insane dev workflows (massive Docker
| composed environments) without issue and the battery life
| feels unfair. I can put in an 8 hour workday without my
| charging cable, I don't think I have turned it fully off in a
| few months, it just chugs along. It really embodies the "it
| just works" mindset.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > But now Dell discontinued XPS
|
| https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/scr/laptops/appref=xps-p...
| ?
|
| Sure doesn't seem to be discontinued at all?
|
| And just checking the XPS 14 it has both 2tb and 4tb storage
| options, and the 3.2k OLED screen is higher resolution than
| what Apple's 14" offering contains _and_ it 's 120hz.
| otterley wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-
| de...
|
| Current models at the time of the announcement may still be
| produced and then inventories depleted, but those will be the
| last of them.
| znpy wrote:
| > bulky 16" ThinkPad.
|
| I'm surprised nobody mentioned the thinkpad x1 extreme laptop.
| It was basically the lenovo/thinkpad response to the xps 15.
| It's way thinner than the ThinkPad T16/P15 lines.
|
| they claim it's a 16" laptop but only because they made the
| bezel smaller enough to fit a larger display in the same space.
|
| it's usually mostly on par with the dell xps but i'm not sure
| about the specs though... my personal laptop is a rusty
| thinkpad x270 (i'm torn between the newly announced m4 macbook
| air or the upcoming framework 12) and i've been issued a m3
| macbook pro for work.
| vander_elst wrote:
| The price point seems quite interesting, a framework laptop costs
| more...
| eitland wrote:
| > And with groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute, Apple
| Intelligence can draw on larger server-based models, running on
| Apple silicon, to handle more complex requests for you while
| protecting your privacy.
|
| Most interesting part of it.
|
| Wonder if someone can verify this?
| paxys wrote:
| This doesn't have anything specifically to do with the new
| hardware. They've had the ability to securely offload
| operations to their cloud-based LLM since the launch of Apple
| Intelligence.
| calibas wrote:
| Why does an extra 16 GB of memory add $400 to the price?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Because it's GPU and CPU ram.
| wuschel wrote:
| I wish the M4 Macbook Air models would have a nano texture
| display option.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I guess Apple has moved enough production out of China to supply
| US customers without needing to fear tarrifs, given the price
| cut.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Apple hasn't priced in tariffs yet, if the 20% tariff in China
| stays, then it will definitely affect their prices eventually.
| If they just have to move final assembly to another country
| though, they should be able to recover in a year or so as
| FoxConn opens up a factory in Vietnam (assuming Trump doesn't
| get specific about Chinese made components, but those should
| pale in comparison to South Korea/Taiwan's supplied products).
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > If they just have to move final assembly to another country
|
| They started shifting production out of China several years
| ago.
|
| For instance this 2023 news item.
|
| > Apple is continuing to reduce its reliance on China for
| production of its most popular products, moving to India and
| Thailand for key manufacturing.
|
| https://www.channelnews.com.au/apple-moves-iphone-macbook-
| pr...
|
| Things have only accelerated since.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The trackpad on my Macbook Air stopped working after 2.5 years.
| The Apple warranty in only 1 measly year. Apple wanted nearly
| PS500 to fix it. Caveat emptor.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Did I upset the Apple fan boys?
| margorczynski wrote:
| I would go for it but the subpar OS I'm forced to use with the
| computer puts me off completely. But I understand the logic
| behind it and that you don't make margins like Apple just
| peddling good hardware, that's a quick recipe to end up like IBM.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| > Support for up to two external displays
|
| In the base model. Finally.
| switch007 wrote:
| Once you bump the RAM and disk, it's not too much of a leap to a
| Pro.
|
| 13" M4 Air, 24GB, 512GB - PS1,399
|
| 14" M4 Pro MBP, 24GB, 512GB - PS1,779 at Costco.
|
| For that you get amazing speakers, way better screen (with
| correct scaling), more performance, better chip, better battery,
| better mics, TB5 ports and HDMI/SD ports.
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