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New MacBook Air

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Re: New MacBook Air

#361

Post by ecnahc515 »

Silhouette wrote: post #215
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I'm deciding between 32GB or even 64Gb, just to be on the safe side. Because nowadays you're running Slack, Spotify, several messengers, Firefox, Chrome, IntelliJ, Docker and Kubernetes on your local machine.

Which is kind of horrifying, if you stop and think about it. You're wondering whether you need another 32G of RAM to run a basic working environment, a glorified text editor, and some communications software. I used a BBC that could do that in 32K of RAM in the 1980s! Obviously I'm not really suggesting the functionality today is equivalent, but the idea that ultimately you're meeting the same basic needs yet it now…

We don't have the same basic needs. People are running VMs on their laptops so they can test things in an environment similar to production without having to run extra servers for every developer/sysadmin to test with. Back in the 80s you're QA and Production environment were very likely the same!

I'll admit that modern text editors and communication software have grown resource hungry, but a lot of that comes from being able to deliver a strong, cross platform experience. I remember desktop Java doing much of the same with just as bad resource usage. Same with applets.

Re: New MacBook Air

#362

Post by Marsymars »

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…

The CPUs in the new MBA have 9W TDPs.

OEMs can still control load performance, it's not entirely determined by TDP.

Anandtech has a good article: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-dr...

Depending on OEM settings and cooling capacity, it's possible for Intel CPUs to indefinitely run at greater than their base clocks and TDP.

Re: New MacBook Air

#363

Post by ecnahc515 »

hobofan wrote: post #118
ehutch79 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a dumb question, but you're talking about using docker, right? Doesn't docker spin up an entire vm for containers? That does seem pretty heavy for a MBA of any generation?

> Doesn't docker spin up an entire vm for containers? (It generally does not. Instead it uses more lightweight isolation primtives. That has always been one of its main selling points.) EDIT: see reply > That does seem pretty heavy for a MBA of any generation? It very much depends on what you are running inside the containers. I regularly have a dev environment with ~8 relatively lightweight containers running on my…

The context is on MacOS. Docker is a Linux technology, it runs Linux containers, thus it requires a Linux VM to run Docker on a Mac.

Re: New MacBook Air

#364

Post by Sangeppato »

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…

Yep, so many people don't think about that when they look at laptops and it's so annoying.

FWIW, the Y CPU in the Air is set at 9W instead of the usual 4.5W

Re: New MacBook Air

#365

Post by morpheuskafka »

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 why there is a huge difference between 8-gen or greater Intel CPUs on mobile. As of 7th gen, the only mobile CPUs that had quad-core were the HQ-series 45W TDPs which required a totally different cooling design. Then, with 8th gen, all the regular low-TDP CPUs got quad core and the 45Ws started offering six-core.

For example, the only ThinkPad of that generation's T-series that had one was the T470p which had a significantly different design in terms of batteries, thunderbolt features, etc. to accommodate the significantly larger cooling system. With the very next year's model, all the models got quad-core with their usual low-voltage/low-power (and low battery usage) design.

Re: New MacBook Air

#366

Post by tommoor »

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…

programming != running a text editor.

A lot of usecases involve running a replication of the server environment locally in resource intensive containers

Re: New MacBook Air

#367

Post by gregkerzhner »

_bxg1 wrote: post #321
gregkerzhner wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

nice... thank you for finally help me get rid of those ridiculous application specific buttons.

Re: New MacBook Air

#368

Post by AgloeDreams »

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #228

> 720p FaceTime HD camera > 8GB 3733MHz LPDDR4X memory I know cost usually isn't the top priority for people buying Apple products, but both of these starting specs seem pretty disappointing considering the price and for 2020. Perhaps someone realized keeping the cam resolution down is an effective method of capping FaceTime call costs. I will say, I am happy to see the transition to LPDDR4.

Agree on the first item, They need to throw iPhone front facing cameras in these.

Second item isn't bad for the base cheapest model.

Re: New MacBook Air

#369

Post by CamperBob2 »

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?

Last time I remember that happening was Porsche's recent launch of the 992 generation 911, in which they poked fun at the fried-egg headlights on the 996. If they can do it, so can Apple. They are both Jedi-level marketing orgs.

Re: New MacBook Air

#370

Post by dr_zoidberg »

dimitar wrote: post #289
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…

If you are running something computationally intensive isn't a desktop more suitable? 45W will get your laptop pretty warm and noisy and will drain your battery.

I'm on a 7200u (i5, 15W) and I could really use the extra oomph (rounding things, it'd be 40% extra performance assuming a cubed increase in power consumption vs performance improvement -- which is pretty close to what I've seen in practice) of it being 45W.

Been looking at the newer gaming notebooks, and I'm waiting the "real world confrontation" of 10th generation i7s (specially those that have AVX512) vs Renoir (lots of cores, AVX2 on a single instruction and (not as much as desktop) lots of cache), since I run some numeric heavy code and it's not quite clear how they'll stand up to each other.

Why do I run this on a notebook and not a desktop? Because I'm always on the move, and I can pack the notebook and go anywhere I have to and be able to work with or without internet connection (which is sometimes the case).

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