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

bou.ke

181–190 of 348 posts

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

#181
post #161

Regardless of what computer that is, having what you think it is the best computer you ever had is such a great sensation, at least for me that I spend at lease 9 hours a day in front of it. In my case it's a Dell XPS, but it doesn't matter. Treasure this sensation, it won't last forever :)

I just built my first PC about a month ago and am still in that phase. Went from a 2013 laptop with integrated GPU to having a much nicer discrete GPU and the difference still blows me away on the daily :)

I suspect you would enjoy it that much even if it wasn't so much superior to your old laptop, but just because you built it yourself.

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

#182
post #59

tldr; I got a Macbook Pro M1 for $975 in mint-condition at a Best Buy and already put the return label on it. While Geekbench showed great results, actual usage of the machine and headaches ensued were contrasting. To put it bluntly - M1 machines are currently unstable. There are numerous Bluetooth issues [1], formatting issues [2], Wifi 6 issues [3], VPN issues [4], firewall issues [5], and shocking security issues…

I returned mine too

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

#183
post #98

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.

You adapt to those changes with time.

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

#184
post #123
post #96

Prediction: The M1 will make the web slower for most people. Web devs will buy the M1 because it executes their slow dev tools faster (npm ecosystem). Then they will test their web pages on the M1 and deploy them when they are "fast enough". Result: web pages will be even slower on mobile phones and non-M1 laptops. Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container - Nathan Myhrvold

Web devs do test against other hardware. They have to, google ranks webpages (partially) based on their performance.

In my experience, most of them don't. I would be surprised if even 10% of web devs do real performance testing on other hardware (i.e. with actual measurements).

Example: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357409

It's not limited to Google either. Try ordering food on a web app on your phone, etc.

For example I just loaded doordash.com in Chrome's mobile view, and it made 110 requests and consists of 7.7 MB of resources. It took 1.12 secs to load on a core i7 desktop connected to a wired network. How long do you think it will take on a phone with a slower CPU over a wireless network? For a web page that shows pictures of food.

FWIW I worked at Google for over a decade, and this was a problem that got worse over the entire decade. People talked about making the network slow to fix this systemic problem, but it never happened (at least while I was there). You also have to test on different networks, although admittedly the M1 doesn't make your network faster so that problem won't be exacerbated.

I still stand by the original statement; the M1 will make the web slower, assuming it's adopted by a bigger fraction of web devs than consumers (which seems very likely).

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

#185
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just... really good. It's an uncanny feeling that many haven't had for a while

its really not... I would advise you to try something outside of apple once the m1 dies on ya (in like a decade)

> its really not...

How so?

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

#186
post #83

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…

My maxed out 2015 13" Macbook Pro runs as strong as ever. I paid more up front and have had no regrets since, and no need to upgrade any of the internals.

How is your battery life, I only get around two hours. Changing it would cost me 200 GBP.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they ended up shipping the m1 macs running essentially SafariOS What on earth are you talking about

idk if you are at all familiar with arm computers but they have been out for a while, mainly running things like ChromeOS or for microsoft EdgeOS or "Windows 10 S" the strategy revolves around using web performance on arm to overshadown the general lack of optimized arm apps. as apples release of the M1 has shown, no apps are really optimized yet even 1 month after launch for an APPLE product... thats where the Safar…

Except the M1 Macs with Big Sur ship with Rosetta2, which mitigates a _lot_ of the issues associated with the architectural transition. Most consumers will not notice a difference.

You can't just ignore that and then make the disingenuous claim that it's anything like the Windows ARM situation, especially given the fact that Apple is throwing their entire weight behind the transition which will (eventually) result in most major applications being natively compatible. I'd be curious if anyone thinks that this transition is going to fail somehow

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

#189
I am no Apple fanatic. I'm a die-hard Linux user and open source proponent. I wouldn't touch the M1 with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole.

But with all that said... I kind of like articles like these. I enjoy seeing people happy with good tech because I like good tech. It pleases me that there are people getting this much enjoyment out of innovative and (I'll admit it) quite impressive hardware. So rock on, Apple fans. But when there's a Linux computer that is even a bit better, I hope you can tolerate me shouting from the rooftops, because you bet I will be!

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