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The 2020 MacBook Air

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Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#71

Post by yoz-y »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #51
mortenjorck wrote: post #21

"Jony Ive was the hero long enough to become the villain" may be an overdone take at this point, but this just continues to prove it true. Ive led Apple's design org through a renaissance that lasted two decades, but it ultimately collapsed in a string of vanity projects that put a serious dent in Apple's design credibility. Maybe it was not having Jobs as a counterbalancing force that wasn't afraid to say "no;" mayb…

What vanity projects?

I think there are three: the golden watch, the coffee table book and the Apple Park. Although the park seems to have worked out really well in the end.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#72

Post by seppin »

rsync wrote: post #62
JohnTHaller wrote: post #19

Pro Tip: The MacBook Air line of today has taken over for the MacBook line of old. It's not like the original air which was so much thinner and lighter than everything else. Thickness of the 13" MacBook Air is 0.63" vs 0.59" of the 13" MacBook Pro and weight of the Air is 2.8lbs vs 3.0lbs for the Pro. The MacBook Air is the lower-end MacBook now.

"Pro Tip: The MacBook Air line of today has taken over for the MacBook line ..." OK, I think that is correct. But then what is the MacBook Air now ? I am typing on a 2015 11" MBA that is, in my opinion, the high point of laptop design and execution ever . With this laptop, Apple solved the laptop - the same way that they solved the tower form factor with the original Mac Pro.

I prefer the newer keyboard, but otherwise I agree. My 2014 11'' with 16GB RAM performs better than a 2018 MBP.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#73

Post by _raoulcousins »

dmitriid wrote: post #67
chipperyman573 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What vanity projects?

- Touchbar - Keyboard - Shaving off more and more millimetres off notebooks when no one was asking for at the expense of functionality - The disaster that is Apple's current approach to software design - Mice that have to be charged from the bottom - Apple pencil that can only be charged by sticking it into iPad's lightning port - Moving audio jack the the right on the laptops when 99% of world's headphones have cabl…

Is the audio jack an apple thing? I'm on a four year old Dell and it's on the right.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#74

Post by hadlock »

Niccizero wrote: post #27

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.

Apple laptops are the de facto tool of silicon valley engineers and as a result they're the gold standard for developer toolchains

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#75

Post by panzagl »

cpach wrote: post #9
minikites wrote: post #3

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.

The problem is, PC laptops used to have great keyboards until they all decided they had to be just like Apple.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#76

Post by scarface74 »

dkarl wrote: post #37
enos_feedler wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He criticized the feel of the previous generation keyboards when he first had a review unit. This was before the reports came back of actually issues.

He never owned a laptop of the previous generation to have any personal long term issues. He famously still uses an old Apple ADB keyboard.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#77

Post by lainga »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #65
Niccizero wrote: post #27

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.

There are certainly reasons to prefer whatever an "X1 Carbon" or "XPS 13" may be over a MacBook. But I wouldn't exactly call the latter "compromised". In fact, would the addition of whatever ports people want and the ability to switch the GPU (or whatever soldering prevents you from doing) not be the exact definition of a "compromise", i. e. turning a product that works excellently for some and not at all for others…

The X1 Carbon is the flagship ThinkPad model from Lenovo. The XPS 13 is a similar offering from Dell.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#78

Post by scarface74 »

CapriciousCptl wrote: post #26

Absolutely glowing review. Personally, I'm not as enthusiastic about its design. My 2016 Dell XPS 13 (Ubuntu) with a 4k screen is lighter at 2.6lbs and smaller without a bezel around the screen.

Of course and most Mac users are just dying to use Linux....

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#79

Post by dangus »

Niccizero wrote: post #27

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.

The X1 Carbon and XPS 13 both have soldered RAM.

The XPS 13 has no USB-A ports, the only port advantage is a microSD slot. I might remind you that SD cards have a huge speed disadvantage compared to USB 3.0/3.1 storage. It's somewhat low key, but I think SD cards are on the cusp of being obsolete and are already for many workflows.

"Worst company for customer rights" kind of conveniently forgets Lenovo's own missteps (Superfish).

Every time I compare Dell the comparison falls apart due to the lack of configurability. Want 16GB of RAM? Want the high DPI display? Congratulations, you must now buy the highest model, which has no price advantage over the Mac.

Sure, Apple is ripping you off by forcing you to buy their soldered storage (arguably, 99% of XPS buyers will never replace the storage themselves, either, or they'd have to pay a technician to do it), but at least they aren't gatekeeping the nice screen and RAM choice to the top model.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#80

Post by ksk »

minikites wrote: post #3

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.

A bit salty, but definitely a kernel of truth there :P

Their earlier power adapters were notoriously susceptible to fraying (aka fire hazards), and the bricks had no grounding IIRC. I'm completely out of their ecosystem so I don't know if that's been fixed. (Again one of those things other manufacturers figured out years ago)

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