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Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

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Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#161

Post by koyote »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #81
wwweston wrote: post #38

Macbook Pro "improvements" over the last 3-7 years: * No more matte display * RAM soldered to the board * SSD soldered in * remove all ports except USB-C * make keyboard worse * remove function keys, replace with touch surface that's redundant at best But it's very thin! And even thinner was the recent Macbook, and if the law of "diminishing returns" matters as little as the usual defenses of all the above tradeoffs…

I really (really!) appreciate how thin they are. The new 15in is as heavy as the old 13in. Really nice when you have to carry it around all the time. The biggest pain point is the lack of ports (4 ports including power) is not enough. The older models had around 5+ ports and still required dongles. Everything else aside from the keyboard is a minor issue (e.g. getting more ram today versus in the future is just a que…

But thickness != heaviness.

My Thinkpad X1 is lighter than the Macbook Pro and has more ports.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#162

Post by jefft255 »

asimilator wrote: post #140
jonplackett wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. What’s the point in an external GPU you can’t even use for deep learning. Why do apple get nVidia so much anyway?

... everything else people use GPUs for? There are other use cases :).

Most scientific use cases need CUDA, not just DL ;) Also it is arguable that nvidia high-end GPUs is the best in terms of gaming performance.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#163

Post by myhf »

IgorPartola wrote: post #17

Why does choosing an Apple product always require a degree in Apple marketing and design? I generally like their products but you need to do so much research about everything from the weird ass product names (does Air even mean anything anymore?), to where exactly in the product cycle each product is. Am I about to buy something that will be upgraded in a week?

> where exactly in the product cycle each product is

See https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#164

Post by nfoz »

brandonfro wrote: post #137
nfoz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current recommendations are a bit lesser known: - Purism https://puri.sm/products/ - Vaio https://us.vaio.com/vaio-sx14/ - Dell Latitude 7390/7490 (not the "New 7300/7400" which look to be a downgrade, sadly) And if you're in Japan and have money and are really stylish: - Panasonic Let's Note https://panasonic.jp/cns/pc/products/lv8k/

“...and are really stylish...” classic! That thing is hideous in my humble opinion

Fair enough. I'm in love, which perhaps blinds me.

Their Premium site gives a better gallery: https://ec-club.panasonic.jp/pc/premium/

And their colour/aesthetic customizations exceed anything I can find in the west: https://ec-club.panasonic.jp/pc/sp/customize_letsnote/

Panasonic has even had partnerships with e.g. Star Wars to have unique laptop-backing options, which is a bit wild for a business-series laptop.

But sadly they seem to have discontinued their best-looking and most interesting option: the MX. It was a 12.5" laptop with a rectangular touchpad (that had real buttons). It was a Yoga-style touchscreen (with stylus), and had all the ports you could want (e.g. vga, ethernet, SDcard). Just ~3lbs but also certified as semi-tough, and with good keyboard travel.

But then the killer feature: two batteries. One internal, but another one removable (yet still fits flush on the bottom when connected). When you remove that battery, you can charge it from the wall / by USB. That means you can hotswap your batteries and keep charging them -- infinite battery life!!

It's just so interesting to me. Such a creative engineering marvel, not even mentioning the circular touchpads they have on their other models. We don't see anything close to this in the west -- instead we are constantly complaining that our laptops keep losing features that we want. Why!?

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#165

Post by pier25 »

opportune wrote: post #147

Why the fuck is Apple getting rid of the option to not have a touch bar on Macbook Pros? They already made it so high-performance macbooks require them but at least you had the option to pick a worse performing model with the actual keys. Does the touchbar really do that well in focus groups? It is pretty universally reviled among all the techie people I know. It breaks one of the most basic principals of a keyboard…

Maybe they are trying to get rid of their touch bar stocks :)

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#166

Post by asimilator »

jefft255 wrote: post #162
asimilator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... everything else people use GPUs for? There are other use cases :).

Most scientific use cases need CUDA, not just DL ;) Also it is arguable that nvidia high-end GPUs is the best in terms of gaming performance.

There are other reasons to pick AMD. Better Linux drivers. Business practices that I'm more comfortable supporting (they tend to be more open, e.g. non-proprietary, free to use FreeSync vs proprietary G-Sync). Stuff like that.

I'll take a small performance hit for that.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#167

Post by rayiner »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #138
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary view: https://medium.com/@hkdb/ubuntu-18-04-on-lenovo-x1-carbon-6g...

How is that a contrary view. That guy seems very happy with the Ubuntu and X1 combo. Though he does spend a long time obsessing about the battery, after his initial take was "yup, it's good enough for me".

The guy initially declares “everything works out of box.” But then he spends a long time “obsessing about the battery” because without good battery life, a laptop is useless as a laptop. As Apple understands, alleviating battery anxiety is key to selling laptops.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#168

Post by justinclift »

gnicholas wrote: post #125
b212 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder how many people use Macs mainly in clamshell mode. I’ve been doing this for the last 10 years or so because working on a laptop is a huge ergonomy antipattern and Apples keyboards are famous for giving RSI.

I would do this but the fan runs much more when closed. As is, I use my 2017 MBP exclusively with the wireless keyboard from my 2008 iMac.

Generally putting something a few mm thick between the two halves, to give an air gap, helps.

Sometimes means the screen won't turn off, so it needs to be manually disabled/turned off instead.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#169

Post by snowwrestler »

leetcrew wrote: post #118
snowwrestler wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Air is only slightly thinner and 0.25 lb lighter than the 13” Pro. I’ve had an Air since 2012 and just compared the two, and got the Pro. There’s essentially no difference in portability. But there are significant differences in capability and price. I think Apple killed the 12” MacBook because for most people, an iPad is a better ultraportable than a laptop. The folks who are really adamant about laptops with Ma…

oddly enough, the 12" macbook is the only apple device I was ever interested in. it seemed like a great alternative to an xps 13 if I ever wanted to get into the mac world. lots of devs these days only need a computer capable of running an ssh client. if that's you and you also have a workstation, why not get the thinnest, lightest laptop out there that runs your favorite OS?

If all you need is an SSH client, then an iPad with a keyboard cover might work just fine.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#170

Post by gambiting »

saurik wrote: post #31
gambiting wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current Air might as well be fanless. The fan is nowhere near the heatsink on the CPU, once it finally kicks in it only pushes the air through the case, its impact on the CPU temperatures is minimal.

"It has a fan, but the fan is useless" is worse than merely having a useful fan :/.

Yep. The only saving grace is that it takes a loong time for the fan to finally kick in, it's pretty much impossible to make it run with anything less than 100% CPU load, and even then it takes a few minutes to kick in.
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