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The 2020 MacBook Air

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31–40 of 223 posts

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#31

The ARM comparison in terms of power efficiency doesn't really make sense, does it? I guess he's right about the efficiency but there isn't a real competitive ARM-based laptop available right now, at least I haven't heard of one and even if there is one: Apple couldn't just go for ARM they'd have to adapt their OS for that and I assume by now there is a lot of code in there making use of x86 quirks not easily adaptab…

iOS, tvOS, and watchOS share a great deal with macOS (past the surface, they’re almost identical). They’ve probably had an ARM build of macOS running internally for years now, much as they had an x86 version of macOS years before the PowerPC -> Intel transition.

The transition will be harder for third party devs, but there having been popular ARM Apple platforms for over a decade will speed things up considerably. Many Mac apps will have ARM versions available overnight.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#32
post #15

It's hard to take Gruber seriously anymore. I haven't seen anyone with such an obvious bias for Apple and disdain for anything non-Apple so 99% of what he writes about Apple is going to be sunshine and butterflies. If you aren't going to say anything controversial, why bother even listening to you? I'll just watch Apple's PR videos and be happy.

[deleted]

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#33
post #9

I'm not sure why Apple gets all this credit for making a reliable keyboard, something the rest of the industry figured out decades ago.

The rest of the industry…? At work we have lots of Lenovo and HP laptops and those keyboards are, IMO, clearly inferior to my MBA 2012.

Even regular cheap Lenovos have great keyboards compared to most laptops. Newer HPs are supricingly good, keys are too flat though and makes typing painful. Dells are atrocious, which sucks because 8-yrs ago they had among the best keyboards (together with Lenovo Thinkpads). Thinkpads are still ahead of the pack but they've been cutting travel lately in the thinner models.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#34
post #15

It's hard to take Gruber seriously anymore. I haven't seen anyone with such an obvious bias for Apple and disdain for anything non-Apple so 99% of what he writes about Apple is going to be sunshine and butterflies. If you aren't going to say anything controversial, why bother even listening to you? I'll just watch Apple's PR videos and be happy.

Gruber isn't really an essayist. He's a diarist. His oeuvre is pretty useless if you just read one piece out of context. But it begins to be useful when you read a bunch of his stuff (preferably in order, as one would if they were following him over the years), and start compare-and-contrasting his takes on e.g. generation N of a product vs. generation N-1 of the same product; or between two different products released to solve the same problem in different ways at different times. There's a lot of detail to be found there, that you won't find in most takes.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#36
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 2020 mbp 14 inch should be just around the corner. I just replaced the battery in my 2013 mbp

How much did the battery replacement cost? Mine's still ok, but it probably won't be long before I'd consider a replacement. But that does rather depend on the price...

You can get a battery from Apple for $120.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#37
post #15

It's hard to take Gruber seriously anymore. I haven't seen anyone with such an obvious bias for Apple and disdain for anything non-Apple so 99% of what he writes about Apple is going to be sunshine and butterflies. If you aren't going to say anything controversial, why bother even listening to you? I'll just watch Apple's PR videos and be happy.

For someone with obvious bias, he seems to think the old MacBook Air was bad. I would think someone with an obvious bias wouldn’t be very critical of Apple products at all. Can you point to the bias in this article?

Funny how Gruber can always come up with a list of meaningful shortcomings of an Apple product... when he's reviewing the successor and painting it as a giant step forward.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#38

I don't see the reason to buy a such a compromised machine over a X1 Carbon or a XPS 13. No ports, crappy soldered everything, worst company for consumer rights, etc. They have nice screens I guess? And you can't deny the brand appeal of the Apple logo.

For the kinds of people who wouldn’t be running Linux on the other laptops, maybe they just like macOS better than Windows? It’s not like Hackintoshing is trivial. It’s not necessarily a developer machine.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the same price MacBook for the same price Lenovo, and you will see how the rest of the industry has clearly figured it out. Not shilling for Lenovo, but yeah, there's nothing special about it.

You can pry the x220 classic keyboard I've got on my x220 daily driver from my cold dead fingers.

And even if they did manage to pry it away, you can order a replacement keyboard and install it yourself without any special tools.
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