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The 2020 MacBook Air

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Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#101

Post by dangus »

pivo wrote: post #89
dean177 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8GB is absolutely fine for most people, but it is an expensive upgrade.

In my experience with family members who have 8G laptops, they are not fine. Even my mother who just uses a web browser, mail.app and occasinally Photos is not fine with 8G. Her MacBook Pro regularly ground to a halt. I replaced it with a used model that was almost exactly the same except that it has 16G and now she is fine.

I don't in any way believe you, sorry.

There's absolutely no way anyone with that workload is hitting RAM limits.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnuNs_Nu46Q

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#102

Post by dsrw »

abrowne wrote: post #42
JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not like the feel, but the keys don't stop working like the 2015-2019 MacBooks.

Pedantic: the bad ("butterfly") keyboards started with the 2016 models: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300#:~:text=2016

That link only refers to the MacBook Pro. The 2015 MacBook had a butterfly keyboard.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#103

Post by gowld »

ksec wrote: post #55

The most important thing to me about the new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air 2020 is ( hopefully ) the confirmation of price trend . $999 Retina Mac with 256GB Baseline Storage? Somewhere along the line in 2016, Apple's product value proposition went off. Everything from Mac to iPhone, they either had the same price but not as much improvement or a price hike with new feature. At first it was thought Apple is moving into…

> Baseline Storage

Macs don't have baseline storage! They have soldered-down sealed-in storage. Before that, it was fine to get minimal RAM and disk and upgrade it later, like every other OEM did to soak the whales without driving away cost-conscious consumers. Then the soldering-money-gun came and used artificially constrained RAM and SSD to enforce value-based pricing and profitably planned obsolescence.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#104

Post by bambataa »

ProAm wrote: post #64
chipperyman573 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What vanity projects?

Removing ports from MBPs for one.

I have a non-touchbar MBP with just two USB-C ports and nothing else. Two, on the same side, and one is always used for charging. So one free port on a pro laptop. I still can’t understand how they ever thought it was acceptable. Why bother moving to USB-C if you’re going to cripple their usefulness?

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#106

Post by kemayo »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #22

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…

If you're not actively following Mac stuff you probably wouldn't know, but there's been aggressive rumors for the last few years that Apple's going to switch to ARM for its laptops/desktops.

Here's a recent rumor summary: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/02/24/mck-arm-mac-202...

With the key motivator being:

> The reason for Apple to move Macs to its own in-house ARM chips is much simpler than that. (1) Apple’s laptop chips are better than Intel’s — they’re faster and more power efficient. (2) Using their own chips puts Apple in control of its own timeline for product updates. Why did it take so long for Apple to get the retina MacBook Air out the door? The one-word answer I was told by a high-perched little birdie: Intel.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#107

Post by mmhsieh »

scarface74 wrote: post #66
chipperyman573 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What vanity projects?

The $10,000 Gold first generation Apple Watch, the trash can Mac Pro, the 12” MacBook, and the dumpster fire last generation keyboards.

I liked the 12 inch MB models. Not a lot of good choices in the ultraportables category and 12 is where it's at for me.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#108

Post by insulanian »

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.

In short, macOS and hardware/software synergy.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#109

Post by dangus »

talkingtab wrote: post #45

Uh no. 8GB memory is not okay. 16GB is marginal but $200 more. Can you upgrade the memory?

8GB of memory is absolutely enough for probably 80% of people buying this computer. I bet you that around 80% are buying that base model.

Those folks are literally just writing Office documents and watching YouTube, doing school papers, etc. As long as you don't open dozens of Chrome tabs, there is no difference.

This was tested. It's on Windows, but Chrome is Chrome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnuNs_Nu46Q

You need 25 tabs to hit swap at all, and around 40 to bog yourself down. You can play AAA games on 8GB of RAM (until the PS5/Xbox Series X come out).

The truth is that RAM requirements for general purpose computing haven't changed in at least 5 years.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#110

Post by frandroid »

thelittleone wrote: post #81
yoz-y wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Soldering SSD to MacBook Pro motherboard. Eliminating the ability to remove it when logic board dies and retrieve data with a Simple USB adapter.

Is that Ive or Cook though
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