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The 2020 MacBook Air

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Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#191

Post by taylodl »

Here's my perception of the markets for the MBA and MBP based of anecdotal observations:

The MBA is for students, the sales force, and road warriors. These people value ultra portability and long batter life and typically don't have highly demanding use cases necessitating a lot of processing power and storage.

The MBP is geared toward the so-called power user who needs portability. That portability is typically moving between meetings or between facilities where they work. They're generally always close to a power source.

This has been my observation since the MBA was first introduced. I'd love to see Apples' product personas to see how close my experience is to their expectations.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#192

Post by ebg13 »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #146
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.

I don't think you're making the argument that you think you are. For the right mental comparison, imagine the iPad CPU in the laptop housing with all of the laptop's cooling.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#193

Post by scarface74 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #128
scarface74 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like in 2007 when he called the “sweet solution” of web apps for iOS a “shit sandwich”?

Yeah. He used to have relatively few takes like that (although I think historically he's been more willing to be critical of Apple's software than hardware).

Besides the Mac keyboards, what was there to criticize about Apple hardware?

He was never in the market for the trash can Mac Pro as a buyer or a reviewer.

He never liked the Apple Watch before the 5th gen watch. He’s a big fan of analog watches.

He buys the newest phones every year, but he doesn’t buy Macs or iPads that often.

If you want to see Apple fans who often criticize Mac hardware and software, check out the Accidental Tech Podcast. Marco and John criticize Apple hardware and software all the time.

Marco is famous for dropping money on Apple hardware

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#194

Post by protomyth »

dean177 wrote: post #58
talkingtab wrote: post #45

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

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

We see a difference that made us change our minimum specification to 16GB for any machine we buy. We do the same for Win 10 these days. The biggest problem are the browsers and the fun educational companies software that does evil, required things.

We learned our lesson from the MacBook Airs that we bought with 4GB.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#195

Post by _bxg1 »

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…

It's the George Lucas Effect

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#196

Post by Sangeppato »

mnm1 wrote: post #178
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…

What? An almost maxed out mbpro in 2014 cost around $2800 (512gb/16gb/i7). The same laptop is now priced over $4000 (2tb/64gb/i9). They are roughly equivalent just under top of the line laptops. They are absolutely going for luxury and the prices are unbelievably high.

I think that these kind of comparisons are quite hard to make. Even back in 2014, Apple offered 16GB of RAM on the base model 15", just like they do today, but they now use much faster RAM (obviously) and give you many more options. The RAM prices didn't dramatically drop either in these 5 years.

The 2014 model you're considering was actually the 2nd configuration offered by Apple itself at the time (the cheapest with a dGPU), so I would compare it with the 2nd configuration offered by Apple today. This means the 16" with an i9, 16GB, 1TB and a Radeon 5500M that costs 2799$.

You could argue that getting the same amount of RAM 5 years later is not acceptable and you would actually be right, but today you still get double the cores/threads, much faster RAM, double the storage (and, again, much faster), a much more powerful GPU and a better display. So I'd say that the only big issue of today's MacBooks compared to 2014 ones is the RAM price.

It's not like competitors started putting more RAM in their laptops though, today 8Gb is still the standard.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#197

Post by systemvoltage »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #69
everetm wrote: post #35

Any opinions on mba 2020 vs xps 13 2020? Bezels = xps Color = mba? Ports = xps? Webcam = both bad? Keyboard = maybe mba?

MacOS

This cannot be stated enough. Why is it so difficult to understand for most people that MacOS is a much larger part of the equation than simply comparing mac vs. pc hardware?

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#198

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

ebg13 wrote: post #192
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you're making the argument that you think you are. For the right mental comparison, imagine the iPad CPU in the laptop housing with all of the laptop's cooling.

You can’t buy one of these mythical setups. I think people bring up the bench marks as though there’s going to be another architecture change. Maybe. But for now the Air is still faster than your phone in general.

Don’t get me wrong. The A series chips are amazing. But the benchmarks have looked very impressive for years. Nothing has come from it except fantasising.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#199

Post by theluketaylor »

pjungwir wrote: post #129

I have a late 2013 Macbook Air and I love it. I do most of my work on a Xubuntu desktop, but the Air is great for travel, working outside, or carrying around the house. I use it every day. I bought it to replace a heavy plastic dual-boot Dell laptop that was falling apart. It felt weightless and the battery lasted 10+ hours. Every time I see a new Apple laptop now I dread that I'll have to go back to a non-Apple Linu…

Fellow lover of the 2013 air. I maxed it out on everything but storage when I bought it (core i7, 8 GB ram) and I'm glad I did, since a computer I planned to own for a couple years and then swap upwards has put in 7 years of hard labour. The battery capacity is down to 70% (plus in the last couple months shuts down below 50% when it's cold) and I'm on my third charger due to cable fray, but this remains the best computer I have ever owned. When the retina macbook pro arrived in 2015 I assumed it wouldn't be too long before high res screens trickled down to the whole lineup. I'm not sure I've ever been more wrong about product direction. I have been waiting for years for Apple to release something that hit the size, performance, versatility, and value I have gotten from my air.

I was tempted by the 2016 macbook pro non-touch bar, but it was so expensive for what you got I just couldn't justify replacing my air.

I was incredibly disappointed by the 2019 retina air. Finally a retina display the air had been needing for years, but the performance wasn't great. That would be forgivable, but the price was just too high (plus the keyboard they saddled it with really didn't seem pleasant to type on).

This time they seem to have gotten the 2013 air recipe right. I wouldn't turn down a couple USB-A ports to avoid dongle hell, but otherwise this seems as close to the 2013 successor we're going to get. I have an order in for the 2020 air with the core i5 upgrade and in case it winds up needing to serve another 7 years I got 16 gb of ram. We'll see if I miss my air enough to return it and switch back or not.

I'm really hoping apple announces arm macs in the next year or 2 as I'd love to have the ipad pro guts inside a roughly air sized form factor. I use the console and other general purpose computing things far, far too much to make the leap entirely to iOS, but mac os running on the ipad pro would be a great spiritual successor to the macbook air line.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#200

Post by pfranz »

mx24 wrote: post #14
cpach wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ThinkPads are well known for having great keyboards. Apple’s do not compare.

I think it's fair to compare. Excluding Apple's recent scissor switch keyboard, they've both been reliable and serviceable. They've both had a following over many years. Aesthetically, I've preferred Apple's keyboards and I'm sure many people feel conversely.
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