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New MacBook Air

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Re: New MacBook Air

#401

Post by mgkimsal »

partisan wrote: post #65
bjoli wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their (very) old keyboards are still amazing to type on. They went from high quality mechanical switches to bad rubber domes to okish rubber domes. The current magic keyboard is actually not bad, but I would still prefer the old alps switches.

I completely agree. My 2014 MacBook Pro purchased refurbished still has the best keyboard of all the devices I use. The Lenovo X1 I use for work is a close second. What I noticed in the image that made me excited about this device is the function keys. If the 16in MBP had function keys, I probably would have purchased one already. I do wonder if the top spec of the new MBA is going to hold up to my usage though.

not sure if the 2015 was any different from 2014, but it's still my favorite.

Re: New MacBook Air

#402

Post by foldr »

dsego wrote: post #296
Grustaf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not saying it's innovative or amazing, they are simply calling it a "responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience", which I guess is true.

Thereby implying that the only problem with the old new butterfly keyboard was the loud typing sound and not reliability.

No, because they're saying it's a refined scissor mechanism, i.e., a refined version of the old, pre-butterfly keyboard. This is 100% true.

Re: New MacBook Air

#403

Post by dilly_li »

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…

I have the very first-gen Retina Macbook Pro 15-inch back in 2012. Still work almost perfectly to this date.

The only problem is battery degradation (70%) and in reality it lasts <2 hours. But since I use it at home as a desktop, not a problem at all!

Re: New MacBook Air

#404

Post by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 »

skrtskrt wrote: post #132
wyclif wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Definitely going from 2015 MacBook Air to this new one for my personal at-home coding laptop, as long as I like the keyboard when trying it out. I had really been wanting to upgrade for Retina & better processor but I knew they would upgrade the processor and fix the keyboard if I waited for 2020... no reason to wait now. I don't run any crazy fat Docker stacks for my own stuff at home, so this is perfect.

why not the pro for a few more hundred dollars? or wait for the upgraded version in the summer? you get a noticeable performance boost, dedicated graphics card, touch bar, and so on?

Re: New MacBook Air

#405

Post by robbintt »

binarysolo wrote: post #394
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…

I wish I got this advice! I just replaced my 2015 MBP 15" max spec with a Mid-2019 version and that touch bar is annoying the heck out of me. At least it has a physical escape key I guess (I keep hitting F1/brightness controls on the Bootcamp side of things for everything). Fortunately so

You get used to it. But it's worse. But you get used to it. I would go back.

Re: New MacBook Air

#406

Post by LeifCarrotson »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #27
cytzol wrote: 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…

Marketing spin is not clear communication. It does not deserve praise. It's not mandatory, either.

None of:

> MacBook Air now features the new Magic Keyboard, first seen on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. 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.

says anything about "fixing problems that people wanted fixed" or "doing what people asked for." That would read:

> We used a lower-travel keyboard with a butterfly mechanism and alternative arrow key layout on recent models, and you said you didn't like it. We listened. The MacBook Air now features a proven scissor mechanism with a return to 1mm travel and classic inverted-T arrow key layout.

They're implying that they've come up with something new, which is a lie. That's not perfect.

Re: New MacBook Air

#407

Post by xemdetia »

iamben wrote: post #390
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…

Can someone explain chip speed and relevance in a way I'd understand pretty please? I dialled out of this stuff years ago - at a point when bigger numbers just meant better, but now they just seem the same? I'm still using a 2013 MBA as my primary machine day to day. It has an i7 and 8gb of RAM. I've been waiting for the keyboard change before I upgraded, but today I see my options are i5 and i7 (as 2013). I'd get 16…

For Intel chips i3/i5/i7 have generally represented feature ranges, so to really identify the chip you have to find out their product code or at least processor generation. Once you have that you can use ARK to distinguish between them. Here's an example of an older 2017 era desktop processor of i5 and i7: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?pro...

Complicating things recently is the introduction of the Xeon W and i9 lines, but for the most part the Xeon ones have yet more a new features and i9 are higher core counts to compete with AMD.

In broad strokes in the laptop space the majority of enhancements since 2013 I would say is higher RAM capacity (that Apple as a manufacturer has not to pursue compared to Lenovo, etc.), still yet lower overall power consumption to improve battery life, DDR3 to DDR4 ram, bigger L1/L2/L3 caches, and normal improvements to embedded graphics to support bigger onboard and external displays, and PCI-E enhancements for drives as NVMe-style drives are what I would consider the new standard.

Re: New MacBook Air

#408

Post by baddox »

geerlingguy wrote: post #332
ctvo wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It doesn't even take that much. Docker Desktop on MacOS is widely known to be terrible and have extremely poor performance. Running webpack-dev-server with filewatching through Docker nearly grinds my 2017 Macbook Pro to a halt. Obviously most node/webpack/JS stuff can run natively on Mac but it's not uncommon to see dev stacks that dockerize everything because that's how the production stack works.

Re: New MacBook Air

#409

Post by philzook »

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?

Wow, this is a common theme. I have a 2015 13" macbook which wasn't max specced out and I feel like I'm hurting these days RAM wise and HardDrive wise. I bought a super specced out 2020 XPS 13 2 in 1 because of reservations about the latest macbook pro 13 and I kind of hate it.

I think this is personal taste, but I just don't love the build as much, the trackpad, and ubuntu is acting pretty flaky. The camera and wireless chipsets are not immediately working right.

There just doesn't seem to be a perfect solution.

Re: New MacBook Air

#410

Post by djaychela »

jtreminio wrote: post #83
leetrout wrote: 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?

I was looking at this (2017 13" mbp with 512gb) - they offered me £380 for an 18 month old machine that cost me nearly £1700!

I bought the mac because it was an investment when I got made redundant and to hopefully shift careers.

Sold it for £800 privately (worst loss I've taken on any item), and now think I'd be lucky to get £700 for it as the price plummeted further once the 16" came out as people expect a 14" with a fixed keyboard.

Currently using a mid 2015 15". Better than the 2047 in every way, other than appearance.

They should have offered a lot more than price gouging resale value for it, imo.

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