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New MacBook Air

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Re: New MacBook Air

#331

Post by marcus_holmes »

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...

Adding Purism to this list.

Slightly more pricey, but worth it. Typing this on one.

Re: New MacBook Air

#332

Post by geerlingguy »

ctvo wrote: post #322
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 th…

You haven't been forced to deploy something that builds a local K8s cluster and builds and runs 10+ containers just to get a microservices app up and ready for development, I see... (only partially /s).

Re: New MacBook Air

#333

Post by dijit »

dimitar wrote: post #281

So I got a 2019 Air just before the COVID-19 emergency in my area. I was looking for a small and light machine to carry around, with a little bit of coding and browsing mostly. I would have probably picked the most basic retina model with the dual-core processor (not like my 15m load average is ever bigger than 2.5) - I don't know about the keyboard and the graphics though, they seem ok so far. Did I screw up? I don'…

if you contact them, they will likely upgrade it, Apple tends to let you bring a machine back if one has been released 3 months after you bought yours.

Re: New MacBook Air

#334

Post by acidburnNSA »

nfoz wrote: post #204
acidburnNSA wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No prob. Another option for ultraportable with good ports, 10gen cpu and touchpad buttons (my personal obsession lol) is the Vaio: https://us.vaio.com It's pricey but their SX14 is almost surely my next laptop. I'd buy one but they don't sell directly to Canada, and -- as of the border closure this morning -- I couldn't even go to the US to get one if I wanted to! Crazy times indeed.

I'm trying to upgrade from a 2013 VAIO which I totally love so that's also a good tip. Crazy times indeed.

Re: New MacBook Air

#335

Post by Spivak »

dbbk wrote: post #199
squiggleblaz wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does it say "we stuffed up, and in response to your feedback we've gone back to basics"? Sometimes, people want to hear acknowledgement of error.

Are you seriously expecting them to say "our previous product was bad, this one is good"? When has any tech company ever done that?

I mean Domino's managed to pull it off.

Re: New MacBook Air

#336

Post by marcus_holmes »

duiker101 wrote: post #268
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 am thinking of going to Dell from an 2014 MBP, what did not work with Dell on your last experiment? The latest XPSs look very nice.

I tried dual-booting an XPS15, which did not go well [0]. I understand the 13's are more Linux-compatible, but I got so badly annoyed by Dell Support I'm never buying Dell again.

[0] the drive management software didn't like GRUB, and would complain that there was no drive if GRUB was installed. Repeated reboots later, it would suddenly say "oh look, a hard drive!" and boot into Windows, removing GRUB in the process. Dell Support were worse than useless at diagnosing the problem, let alone fixing it (still unfixed, the machine is now a rather shitty games machine)

Re: New MacBook Air

#337

Post by Joeri »

72deluxe wrote: post #284
inertiatic wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was handed a 2017 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM at my current job while waiting for my actual laptop to be delivered, and it was a nightmare. I keep a lot of tabs open to look things up, but nothing excessive on that machine. I also run VSCode or Pycharm and would also bring up 5-10 containers at times. It seriously hurt not only my productivity but also my mood afterwards just by having to put up with it for weeks.…

It is odd because these memory issues are very real, but if you ever say "wow, devs are getting lazy and these 'desktop' apps that rebundle Chrome are really killing my machine (eg. Slack, Skype) with inordinate quantities of logic in javascript" you get shouted down. It's bizarre. If everyone used the native toolkits we'd have far less memory usage and everyone (even the memory-constrained) would have a good experie…

I remember feeling the same when I was forced to upgrade from 32 mb of ram to 128 mb of ram to run the combination of browser, chat and IDE on windows NT4, back when they moved from hand-optimized assembly to mass-produced C++ for most software.

With every layer of abstraction added to ease development the hardware requirements go up. You can build things fast, or you can build fast things, doing both is tricky.

Re: New MacBook Air

#338

Post by rpdillon »

Scarbutt wrote: post #313
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…

Practically, that means that the new Air will not be capable of running sustained workloads much above its base clock speed, which makes it unsuitable for many programming-related tasks. Does that still holds when using the power adapter?

OP's comment was about thermal dissipation, which, if anything, would be a more difficult problem with the power adapter (since the processor doesn't need to be throttled to conserve battery, for example). So, yes.

Re: New MacBook Air

#339

Post by asdkhadsj »

ctvo wrote: post #322
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 th…

In fairness, as a Rust dev my computer sounds like it's a jet engine anytime I compile. I wouldn't even think about using a slimmer CPU. Not that you're wrong, it's just where my head is at haha.

Re: New MacBook Air

#340

Post by BattyMilk »

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…

I'm a FE developer (Mainly React/Node/React Native Development) and I'm still using a 2012 13" Macbook air (8Gb) as my daily driver at home. There's a noticable difference between it and my work (granted still relatively old) 2017 MBP 17". Running builds and an entire test suite maybe take twice as long but it's overall very usable and I see no reason yet to upgrade.
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