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New MacBook Air

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81–90 of 587 posts

Re: New MacBook Air

#82
post #16

The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments. That sentence made me check again... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Macbook_white_redjar_2006... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MacBook_Air_1b.jpg ...and yes, it's the same layout of the arrow keys that was there 14 years ago. If they were advertising new full size arrow keys that would definitely be worth mentio…

Apple recently converted all laptops to an annoying non-inverted-T arrow key layout that users generally didn't like. They are advertising the switch back to the old style that people actually liked.

I still mis-hit one of the arrow keys about 20% of the time with the annoying 'full size left and right' arrow key arrangement. Going back to inverted-T makes perfect sense. It was an experiment that failed.

Re: New MacBook Air

#83
post #5

I wish they would offer customers of the previous gen a coupon. Mine has been serviced and given a new keyboard and it still double types. No chance I’m buying another one any time soon.

You can trade-in for a new machine.

Or do you mean partial refund when you say coupon?

Re: New MacBook Air

#84
post #67
post #3

Anyone here who has experience working with JS/TS development tools (vscode, yarn, webpack, Node.js etc.) on a recent MacBook Air? I wonder if the performance is noticeably worse than a 13” MacBook Pro for this type of work.

I have a 2017 Macbook Pro and the main project I work on brings it to its knees. This is a front end project with a nodejs graphql server, TypeScript, eslint, VS.Code, webpack. I think actually the linting is the worst CPU drain, but all in all with the graphql server and front end tooling running at once, it makes my laptop slower than running the .NET core back end it connects to. Kind of annoying. Working with a s…

There's something wrong with your setup &| stack. I've run a full stack locally, a build setup with a watcher, a django/gunicorn setup with file watching, mysql/redis/rabbitmq, and i barely nudge the cpu.

I'm betting your if you cpu is hot constantly while developing, it's file watching that's the issue. I had to do some work to get things to use proper file system events in macos and not just polling with my legacy gulp project. try installing fsevents if it's not already?

Re: New MacBook Air

#85

It's a shame there isn't a way to try the keyboard in person due to all the retail shutdowns.

If you have an external 'magic keyboard' the feel is similar. Less mushy than the old 'chicklet' keys on the 2015-and-earlier laptops, but less stiff/unmoving than the butterfly keys on the 2016-2018 laptops.

Re: New MacBook Air

#86
post #51
post #19

The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments. This isn't progress. This is the baseline. Apple have gone from bad to OK, and they're celebrating as though they've achieved something amazing.

So is this a not-broken keyboard design? I have the (now) previous-generation Air, and need a keyboard repair. Would be seriously tempted to just buy a new one if I was confident the keyboard wasn't absolute garbage. Typing on it was fine when it worked, but it double-spaces, and a couple of the other keys are now wonky. Never had a keyboard die on me before this -- Mac or otherwise.

This is essentially the same type of keyboard from before the crappy design you ended up with. I've had a MBP 2014 since release with that keyboard and I love it. I can't express enough how good it feels to type on (although some personal preference).

I also tried out the new version of that keyboard on the recently-released MBP. It feels almost the exact same as the old one, just a slightly more shallow depth.

Hopefully that's helpful.

Re: New MacBook Air

#87
post #19

The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments. This isn't progress. This is the baseline. Apple have gone from bad to OK, and they're celebrating as though they've achieved something amazing.

We all (most of us anyway) wanted them to go back to the scissor design. Are we going to now complain that they did what the community has been begging them to do? Was butterfly a mistake? Yes. Were they slow to correct the issue? Yes. Now that they fixed it we should be happy about it. As far as talking about it being amazing, its called marketing spin. This is how it works. However, those two sentences do not say a…

The two sentence above clearly oversell the product: "refined", "delivers", "help you fly", plus all the details for something that is already known... It's not because everybody is doing glorified marketing, which often results in being deceptive, that we have to be okay with it.

Re: New MacBook Air

#88
post #81

- Quad core processor - Scissor keys - No touch bar MacBook Air, the new MacBook for Pros.

Exactly what I was thinking when I read the spec sheet: 'I wonder how many developers will go for the maxed out version.'

Re: New MacBook Air

#90
post #23

Apple got some custom chips from Intel again. https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ ==== 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i3, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz, with 4MB L3 cache Configurable to 1.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz, with 6MB L3 cache; or 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz, with 8MB L3 cache 8GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X onboard memory Intel Iris Plus Graphics ==== https://ark.…

They better fix the cooling system though, last year Air had a passive system without a heatpipe between the CPU and system fan and people complained.

TDP seems to be a bit higher here, so let's see if they've managed to do something better than just blowing air (heh) into the chassis.

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