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The 2020 MacBook Air

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Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#141

Post by robotresearcher »

bambataa wrote: post #104
ProAm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> I still can’t understand how they ever thought it was acceptable.

> I have a non-touchbar MBP.

You or your employer bought it. This leads them to believe it was acceptable.

[edit: this comment was pedantic and unhelpful. I do understand what the parent meant. See another comment down thread.]

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#142

Post by basch »

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?

The replies may be a long list of hardware snafus, however Apples largest hurdle to complete dominance is their lack of cloud services, their subpar cloud services (compared to Google and Microsoft), their refusal to allow users to set competing services as default (change is in the air?), their confusing and cumbersome iterations of the same concept (Photos especially), and the duality of iOS/MacOS vs Windows 10. They are making the same mistake Microsoft made for too long, where Microsoft wanted all Microsoft software to drive sales of Windows licenses.

- Apple has few top tier "services." Music is one, the app store is another they do offer. Maps has somewhat caught up to be good enough, but if I were a google maps user I wouldnt choose to switch. Photos and Device Backup are a mess.

- Apple should take being a software services company more seriously. If buying Adobe is out of the question, they need some kind of paid revenue stream such as Adobe Creative Cloud or Office 365, something that non-Apple users will buy and use. One of the smartest thing Apple ever did was release the iPad and make it work with Windows. Apple needs that gateway drug that draws non apple users back in without forcing a hardware purchase.

- I can use Google Photos on Windows, OneDrive on Android. Apple forcing an all or nothing into their ecosystem incentivizes me to choose nothing. AppleTV on Samsung tvs was a smart play, make more of them.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#143

Post by diebeforei485 »

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…

Apple tends to use roughly the same physical design over many years, and every new physical design is usually accompanied by a price increase. Generally speaking, every new physical design requires a lot of work and upfront cost - so this is arguably fine.

Except the 2016-2019 models (except the new 16-inch model) didn't offer good value - largely because the "redesigned" keyboard was unreliable, the touch bar was laggy, and the thermals (super thin design) were not very great, leading to performance and heat issues.

They pushed the touch bar way too hard. I thought the virtual esc key in Terminal would be fine, but it ended up just being laggy and frustrating. The 2018 touchbar is somewhat marginally less frustrating, but people shouldn't have to deal with a laggy esc key after paying $1800.

Also - they were selling 'Pro' computers with 128GB of storage. Ridiculous.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#145

Post by com2kid »

dangus wrote: post #101
pivo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Plenty of websites will happily leak gigs of memory if left open. Browsers now try to aggressively lower resources given to background tabs but stupid still happens.

If his mother frequents just one or two misbehaving sites, a few GB of memory can easily vanish. Not to mention CPU and even GPU utilization can shoot up...

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#146

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

ebg13 wrote: post #54

The only interesting part of this was the performance comparison chart showing that Apple's ARM chips from 2018 and 2019 are significantly faster than the 2020 Intel chip. MacBook Air 2020 (4-core Core i5) 1,127 2,854 11″ iPad Pro 2018 (8-core A12X) 1,118 4,477 iPhone 11 Pro (6-core A13) 1,321 3,387

Can the iPad and iPhone sustain the performance? I think that’s the kicker. Your regular laptop even an air will have a fan. The A series chips look amazing on paper but iPad and iPhones don’t have the cooling for sustained performance.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#147

Post by whatshisface »

nostromo wrote: post #24
safog wrote: 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.

He clearly prefer's the Apple ecosystem and general approach. There's nothing wrong with that. He does call out Apple when he disagrees with something they've done. As someone that also prefers the Apple approach but has frustrations with a lot of their decisions, I appreciate his analysis.

You should switch to the Linux approach, where you are guaranteed to only ever be frustrated by your own decisions. ;)

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#148

Post by Ididntdothis »

prewett wrote: post #137
Ididntdothis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully they will make the MBP “pro” again and focus on features and power instead of thinness.

I have a 2018 MBP, 2.9 GHz i9, 32 GB ram, Radeon Vega 20. The thing is like a portable server, I'm not sure what more features and power a laptop user would realistically neeed. (Obviously real servers are more powerful, but I worked at a company that ran MMO game servers written in Python [i.e. not that fastest] off of similarly spec'ed hardware a few years ago, it's certainly sufficiently for all of my development…

CPU power is fine. I wouldn’t mind having at least one USB-A port and HDMI port so I don’t constantly have dongle anxiety when I am traveling. I would also prefer a bigger battery even if it makes the laptop thicker.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#149

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

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?

$1k display stand

$400 casters without locks

camera-bump sticking out of iPhone that makes it rock on a flat surface

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#150

Post by dsego »

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.

What's the battery life with Ubuntu and 4k?
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