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New MacBook Air

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Re: New MacBook Air

#321

Post by _bxg1 »

gregkerzhner wrote: post #219
_bxg1 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my 16" MBP, aside from the dongles situation (though I rarely need peripherals at all). It has the same keyboard mentioned here; feels great to me. The Touch Bar doesn't really bother me.

Recently upgraded from my 2015 15 inch MBP to the new 16 inch MBP (32 gigs of ram). Overall it big upgrade - the higher resolution and bigger screen are awesome, and my XCode builds are compiling faster. That being said, I hate the touchbar for a few reasons - Having to look at the keyboard to change volume is not an upgrade in user experience - The touchbar freezes for me once a week or so and I have to go to the co…

> Recently upgraded from my 2015 15 inch MBP to the new 16 inch MBP (32 gigs of ram)

Hah, that's exactly the upgrade I made except from a 2013

> Having to look at the keyboard to change volume is not an upgrade in user experience

Agreed; I wouldn't call the touch bar an upgrade, just a very tiny downgrade that doesn't matter much with the Escape key now separated back out

> The touchbar freezes for me once a week or so and I have to go to the command line to kill the process

Yikes, can't say I've had that happen :/

> The icons don't make any sense - (xcode dustcan anyone)?

You can turn off the application-specific touch bar buttons in your preferences and also customize what buttons appear. I have mine configured almost exactly like the old button top-row, except with an optional volume slider and a dedicated sleep button (which is nifty). But yes, just having the physical buttons instead would still be slightly preferable.

> the finger print sensor has never worked for me on any apple products and its a waste of space

It's just part of the normal power button, though? It doesn't take up any extra space

Re: New MacBook Air

#322

Post by ctvo »

pyrophane wrote: post #266

Keep in mind that probably the most important spec when considering a new laptop is one that is often not directly stated: the processor series. I'm not talking about i3/i5/i7, but rather U/Y/H. This letter determines the TDP (thermal design power/point) them machine is designed to run at. The TDP will govern the setting for the base clock speed, and, just as importantly, the throttling behabior under load. Processor…

This is underestimating modern processors and overestimating programming compute resource usage.

Your post may apply if we're working with 4K+ resolution video files, rendering and other activities, but the modern programmer, even compiling binaries, will be fine on a MacBook Air.

How do I know?

I use a 2 generation old Macbook as my primary personal development machine. I write Go, Rust, Java and TypeScript using the common tool chains for all those languages.

Re: New MacBook Air

#323

Post by xenonite »

pyrophane wrote: post #266

Keep in mind that probably the most important spec when considering a new laptop is one that is often not directly stated: the processor series. I'm not talking about i3/i5/i7, but rather U/Y/H. This letter determines the TDP (thermal design power/point) them machine is designed to run at. The TDP will govern the setting for the base clock speed, and, just as importantly, the throttling behabior under load. Processor…

So for peak load, it’s an upgrade compared to the previous generation MacBook Air. But for sustained load, it seems to actually be a downgrade, as the previous gen still had processors of the U series.

Re: New MacBook Air

#324

Post by PascLeRasc »

caycep wrote: post #319
tarasmatsyk wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha-ha, reading this from the 2015 MPRO 13", exact same experience. I've tried to move to DELL XPS 13 2 years ago on Linux, did not work for me, however with a new line of Dell's I am starting to thinking about repeating this experiment. Apple's 2016-2019 laptops were pretty unusable, hope they revert the touchbar too.. A question, has anybody tried System76 comparing to Dell/Apple?

I had a 2014. It is a great laptop, no doubt but I recall before several patches I had issues w/ USB 2.0 port connectivity. I had the screen replaced once. So it wasn't without its own set of bugs. Working beautifully now. My only beef is no NVME and it stutters a tad. If I could find a 2015 w/ 16gb/1 tb spec w/ NVME... I'm hoping the glitches in the 16" can be worked out, eager to see how the 14.1 will look... and I…

Is yours the retina 2014? Those can take standard NVMe M.2s with this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/Sintech-Adapter-Upgrade-2013-2016-201...

I've done this on a '14 13" MBP so I can help if you have any questions.

Re: New MacBook Air

#325

Post by alexhutcheson »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #203
nfoz wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like the XPS 13, I also recommend to look out for their "business laptop" Latitude 7xxx series (12", 13", 14"). They tend to have more ports, physical buttons on the touchpad, and slightly better keyboards. YMMV

Nice. Thanks. I do indeed want more ports than the current new XPS 13s. Looks like they come at a premium. 8th-Gen CPUs (vs. 10th in new XPS) with a few more ports for an extra few hundred bucks? I will keep looking though for their latest model. Thanks again.

eBay is full of cheap refurbished Latitudes, because businesses are constantly replacing them with something newer.

Re: New MacBook Air

#326

Post by LoveKebabble »

aarongray wrote: post #273
tarasmatsyk wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha-ha, reading this from the 2015 MPRO 13", exact same experience. I've tried to move to DELL XPS 13 2 years ago on Linux, did not work for me, however with a new line of Dell's I am starting to thinking about repeating this experiment. Apple's 2016-2019 laptops were pretty unusable, hope they revert the touchbar too.. A question, has anybody tried System76 comparing to Dell/Apple?

I think System76, Lenovo, or Tuxedo is a better choice than Dell XPS for Linux from a reliability standpoint. Additionally, if you plan to do full disk encryption, the XPS line has all sorts of issues. https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-Developer-Systems/XPS-1...

Weird - I've got a newer Dell XPS and am making this post with WDE enabled and have had 0 problems. Anecdotal I know, but I've ran pretty much every major Linux distro (Ubuntu/Fedora/Manjaro) and am currently running Regolith linux.

I've not noticed any hiccups or problems at all around encryption.

Re: New MacBook Air

#327

Post by IggleSniggle »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #286
GrumpyNl wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that price i buy a descent laptop.

Anything past 1995 can play Descent.

This. This right here. This is what matters. The only questions are: Joystick, joystick with keyboard, or keyboard with n-key rollover

Re: New MacBook Air

#328

Post by dfinninger »

72deluxe wrote: post #276
mFixman wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly never understood the hate for the touchbar. It allows me to be much more granular with volume and brightness, and I never really used F-keys anyway.

As a developer, how would I step into, step over, step out in Xcode without function keys?? (Continue being ctrl-cmd-Y is the worst shortcut ever). It truly hampers my development because I have to look at the touchbar to see where on earth those keys are (F6, F7) or step in/continue in Chrome (F10, F11). Also, where on earth is the escape key??

In Intellij IDEA when debugging the touchbar has a debugging-specific menu with all those controls. I don't find myself needing to look at the touchbar all that often. My muscle memory has adjusted over the past couple years I guess.

Re: New MacBook Air

#329

Post by mark_l_watson »

tarasmatsyk wrote: post #257
climb_stealth wrote: post #182

After using the latest Macbook Pro 13" for over a year I have recently had my 2015 Macbook Pro 13" repaired. Both are max specs. It was a $600 bill, but it has been so worth it. The keyboard just works, it doesn't run hot and the fan doesn't blast under the slightest load, the performance is much better, the battery lasts longer and the external screen + keyboard and mouse are detected every single time without havin…

Ha-ha, reading this from the 2015 MPRO 13", exact same experience. I've tried to move to DELL XPS 13 2 years ago on Linux, did not work for me, however with a new line of Dell's I am starting to thinking about repeating this experiment. Apple's 2016-2019 laptops were pretty unusable, hope they revert the touchbar too.. A question, has anybody tried System76 comparing to Dell/Apple?

I use a MacBook and a fully loaded (with GPU) System76 laptop. I really like both, for different purposes. The System76 is much faster for large builds and is obviously much better for deep learning training. The MacBook is light and portable. I like having two laptops, at extremes of the weight/portability vs. computational power spectrum.

Re: New MacBook Air

#330

Post by abledon »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #258
abledon wrote: post #230

1 mm key length is not enough. they should have 2011 style keyboards still.

1mm of key travel (not "length") is what they have in the external keyboards they've been selling since 2015, and it's just fine. While this is obviously subjective, I'd argue it's the best keyboard Apple has made since the days of the Apple Extended keyboards. The 2011 laptop keyboards are the same keyboards they used up until the butterfly switches, they don't have as nice a "feel" as the Magic Keyboards, and it's…

"30 %" seems like a good amount more. also https://twitter.com/variety/status/1226710675554091008

every year they get worse

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