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New MacBook Air

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Re: New MacBook Air

#501

Post by fastball »

qayxc wrote: post #133
fastball wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought NodeJS was single-threaded?

NodeJS is, but neither modules nor backends have to be. It's quite common to spin up a bunch of docker containers that provide databases and backends locally. This is the point at which the MBA stops being a productive environment. I'm not saying this has to be the case for every project, but if your team uses local dev environments, it's quasi standard procedure at this point.

Right, but the GC was talking about developing JS applications on their computer, so presumably they were referring to compiling frontend JS projects, which multiple cores would not help, I think.

Re: New MacBook Air

#502

Post by vbezhenar »

Marsymars wrote: post #362
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.

Macbook Air has extremely bad cooling (on purpose, because it's thin and quiet). Don't expect it to boost well.

Re: New MacBook Air

#503

Post by dr_zoidberg »

lliamander wrote: post #485
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the suggestion. I was willing to wait a bit more to see that standoff: What will get me more bang out of the processor, the "super" architecture of Zen 2, or the coveted AVX512? The P1 comes with a 9th gen i7, I assume they'd eventually get a gen 3 with 10th gen i7 and then I'll be able to compare.

> What will get me more bang out of the processor, the "super" architecture of Zen 2, or the coveted AVX512? Bychance, have you seen the article from puget systems on how to use MKL with Ryzen[1]? It explores some of the different trade-offs between AMD and Intel for numeric computing. [1] https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AM...

Yeah, I'd seen that, great link! Waiting to see something like that with the mobile processors.

Re: New MacBook Air

#504

Post by cactus2093 »

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…

Where do you even find this info? Even on the Tech Specs page for the macbook air on apple.com it says "3.0GHz 6-core Intel Core i5 Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz 9MB shared L3 cache" and doesn't give the model number.

Re: New MacBook Air

#505

Post by vbezhenar »

aledalgrande wrote: post #470
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 find it a bit opaque that they do not advertise exactly which series/gen they are putting on the machine. Can't find it even on the Tech Specs page.

They don't advertise their memory models or disk manufacturer either. Probably typical customer does not care. Wait for teardowns if you're interested in those details.

Re: New MacBook Air

#506

Post by vbezhenar »

Silhouette wrote: post #494
vbezhenar wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter when you can afford that RAM? Just buy and forget about it, it's cheap enough. We used to land to the moon with CPU less performant than Apple's HDMI adapter cable, it's fun comparison but not very useful, that's just the way things are and it's not going to change anytime soon.

I realise it's how things are today and not going to change any time soon, but it still feels like we as an industry have moved all too easily in a very wasteful direction. Sure, with RAM you can just buy more, but it's symptomatic of a wider malaise. Other capacities, particularly CPU core speeds, have long since stopped increasing on a nice exponential-looking curve to compensate for writing ever more layers of eve…

I'm not sure whether curve is still exponential or not, but it's there. Single-thread performance is increasing every year a little bit and core count is increasing like never before. 16 cores consumer CPU is not a dream anymore.

RAM size slowly increases as well. 4 GB was enough 10 years ago. 8 GB was enough few years ago. Today I would suggest 16 GB as a bare future-proof minimum and one can buy 64 GB for a reasonable price.

We still have room for more layers. And it's not only about efficiency, it's also about security. Desktops are still not properly sandboxed, my calc.exe still can access my private ssh key.

Once performance growth will really stop, we will start to optimize. Transistor density will double every few years until at least 2030 and AFAIK there are plans beyond that, so probably not soon.

Re: New MacBook Air

#507

Post by TheKarateKid »

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).

Just because there are needs for high-end CPUs for some developers it doesn't mean that all programmers need them, as OP's comment implied.

Re: New MacBook Air

#508

Post by jamiesonbecker »

philzook wrote: post #409
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?

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 wire…

I have both the 2020 2-in-1 XPS 13 (32GB, core I-10) and I love it because it's a beautiful 2-in-1, but yes, camera and fingerprint scanner don't work at all, but only in the 2-in-1 version -- works great in the laptop version, which seems to have a different camera. Wireless works great, though, as does the trackpad. (Kubuntu 19.10, not LTS -- LTS didn't work very well at all for me.)

I also have a lower-spec'ed 2020 XPS 13 laptop (8GB, core I-10) that works perfectly across the board (except for the fingerprint scanner, which I wouldn't use anyway.)

I love the hardware on both. Absolutely love it -- more than my Macbook Air; no sharp edge where I rest my wrists, touch screen, phenomenal screen (4k, which is higher than Retina, or 1080p, which gives better battery life) etc. The 2-in-1 has a taller screen shape, so you can fit more lines in your coding windows.

If you care about camera, get the laptop. It's also a little bit cheaper -- I got it for about $950 from Costco. The only thing I don't like about the laptop is that the screen doesn't tilt all the way back. The keyboard is better on the laptop instead of the 2-in-1 as well -- more depth of travel, and the Delete key is in the right place instead of offset by the fingerprint/power sensor as on the 2-in-1.

I love the new Dell XPS 13 and think both the 2-in-1 and the laptop are better pieces of hardware than the Macbook Air, and I prefer the new Kubuntu 19.04 over Mac OSX as well. (I don't have a MBP so can't compare to the Pro.)

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