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The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

bou.ke

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Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#131

Post by duskwuff »

politelemon wrote: post #85
messe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS Big Sur deliberately cripples VPN and firewall on it so that select Apple softwares can bypass them That was debunked: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/k0c00f/macos_big_sur_d...

Read the thread carefully. The vpn part was shown to be normal, not the firewall. The original problem was with the firewall, there were only passing mentions of the vpn which op tested. Also problematic, the op released no data. Whether that works for you depends on your pov.

The "firewall" was Little Snitch -- which was implemented using a framework intended for per-application VPNs.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#132

Post by IkmoIkmo »

webmobdev wrote: post #28

Yeah, right - if you choose to ignore the following: You can't upgrade the RAM, you can't upgrade the SSD, it doesn't have replaceable battery and you are forced to run a crippled OS on it (macOS Big Sur deliberately cripples VPN and firewall on it so that select Apple softwares can bypass them, allowing Apple better access and control over your data and softwares). (And if you don't care about any of the above, then…

As an owner of a 2015 Macbook Pro, I'm pretty okay with that. Haven't upgraded anything the past 6 years.

Honestly I'd like an SSD and RAM upgrade but it's not that big of a deal. It costs money, too, and there's a bunch of stuff that doesn't improve with it like the CPU and battery which are key. And secondarily, any improvements to formfactor, screen, webcam, keyboard etc, although that's not as significant nowadays.

I'd rather just sell it for a few hundred bucks now that I'm 6y in, and get a replacement machine with twice the battery and a much better CPU. I think even without resale value $1200 or so machine cost me like $16 a month and I think I use it about 300 hours a month, or about 5 cent per hour. It's quite negligible part of my hourly/monthly wage. With resale value it's probably even 25-30% less, maybe 3.5 cents per hour.

If I were to have spent money on upgrades, it'd be a bit cheaper than a full replacement - resale value, but at best it'd get me to 2 or 2.5 cents per hour. But I'd miss out on improved CPU, battery etc.

Not being able to upgrade parts isn't that big of a deal to me. Back in the day it was, as within 2-3 years I felt I saw noticeable better experiences on the market with new parts. But today I'm quite fine purchasing an experience and having it last the next 5-6 years, before I upgrade. At which point I want a full upgrade, rather than only a few parts.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#133

Post by mojuba »

alphadevx wrote: post #24

In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is this still surprising?

Not always. I'm somewhat disappointed with my 2020 16" MBP that I bought after owning a 2015 MBP for 5 years. This one is faster for sure, but also noisier, gets hot often for no good reason (even with the lid closed for the whole day!), takes 7-8 seconds to wake my Eizo monitor, while the previous one would take only a second to do the same.

To be honest and quite unexpectedly the 16" MBP is not the best Mac I ever owned, despite the hype. The display is amazing, the speakers are incredible for a laptop, I'm also glad the T arrow keys are back, but everything else is a disappointment.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#134

Post by DennisAleynikov »

messe wrote: post #119
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is what people meant prior to the m1 coming out with "macs are a horrible deal" they used to be priced at roughly 3x markup compared to the market. they finally fixed their co-dependency with intel and suddenly wow the price gouging goes out the door because gasp the macbook air could have always been the pro it was just never possible with using old chips. ANYTHING using arm absolutely FLIES open your eyes peop…

> they used to be priced at roughly 3x markup compared to the market Were they though? With comparable displays and build quality, I think their laptops have been competitive with the upper end of the market for a while now, with maybe a 10-20% markup on that.

fair, if you wanted good build good luck finding one outside of apple

I was more mad at the general markup relative to similar intel chips in say a Dell or HP ultralight

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#135

Post by _huayra_ »

breck wrote: post #40
croes wrote: post #21

More RAM would be nice.

Would always be nice, for sure, but for Deep Learning I use a big cheap box with loads of RAM and the 16GB in my M1 MBP with the 1TB SSD seems plenty good so far. I don't have use cases yet where I notice a problem (other than yeah, overhead of having to do DL jobs on a different machine). What causes you to hit the limits? I don't do any video editing, so I could see that being a slowdown for that use case.

Being able to locally run the integration tests for my work on my 32GB thinkpad has been a godsend during the 'rona times. If I only had 16 (or even 24) I'd have to carefully consider whether I should close Firefox to run them.

These tests spin up a bunch of containers and run certain components with instrumented runtimes that take up gobs of RAM, so having a fat laptop is very useful.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#136

Post by webmobdev »

breck wrote: post #30
dukeofdoom wrote: post #4

I'm reluctant to buy it because of ports, and tiny amount of drive space. Waiting for the 14 inch, hoping for more ports, larger base hard drive, and new design for similar cost of upgrading the air.

I got the 1TB SSD. Wouldn't call that tiny. Then I have external arrays for bigger datasets. How much space would you need? IIRC they go up to 2TB or maybe even 4TB.

It's expensive and is still not upgradeable is the point.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#137

Post by ngrilly »

bla3 wrote: post #19

I love my M1 MBP, but I use my 16" MBP more day to day. The larger screen seems to be more important to me than the noisiness and shorter battery life. Definitely looking forward to bigger arm macs.

Same. I used to have a Macbook Air 13" and a friend convinced me to switch a Macbook Pro 15" for the screen size. Now I couldn't see myself coming back to 13".

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#138

Post by sfblah »

dharma1 wrote: post #115

Bought one for my kid, been testing it out and it’s so good that I’m tempted to buy one myself - much better than any of the recent mbpro’s I’ve had. Super responsive while staying cool on the lap, completely silent and all day battery life. Can’t wait for mbpros with miniled display and more arm cores later this year.

My kids use Chromebooks. Macs are a little pricey.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#139

Post by _ph_ »

mbesto wrote: post #98
alphadevx wrote: post #24

In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is this still surprising?

You must be new to Macs. I'm still on the MBP 2015 and it's "the best computer I've ever owned". Everything since then has technically upgraded parts, but the regressions (touchbar, butterfly keyboard mishaps, etc.) are not worth the upgrade. That's why this is surprising.

I just switched from a 2015 MBP to the current 16" MBP and it is an amazing computer and a significant upgrade towards the 2015 one. The keyboard is nice, the screen much better, great sound and speed. I also like the touchbar. So the 16" is an easy buy. Though of course, you now might want to wait for an ARM based one.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#140

Post by derimagia »

kgwgk wrote: post #48
alphadevx wrote: post #24

In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is this still surprising?

The latest computer is usually not "the best you've ever owned" when you "downgrade" from last-year top-shelf to entry-level.

This isn't going to be as common. Either way it's not surprising.
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