Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New MacBook Air with M2

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 796 posts

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#71

Post by senttoschool »

mrtksn wrote: post #65

Having a smaller volume and more power consuming chip than M1[0], I wonder if it will match M1 air performance and battery life on heavy tasks. The media engine will definitely provide smoother experience when working with sound and videos but I kind of suspect that on other tasks it will be about the same as M1, thus prolonging the Apple's software support for the original one. [0] Early reviews of M2 Macbook Pro in…

M2 Air has a bigger battery pack than M1 Air.

M2 is also just more efficient than M1 because the A15 is much more efficient than the A14.

Anandtech showed this in their A15 review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo...

So even if the chip heats up more, it's still going to be more efficient.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#72

Post by larrywright »

dijit wrote: post #31
franze wrote: post #21

Anybody got their head around why the new 13 Mac Book Pro M2 is more expensive than the Mac Air M2? Is it the (in my opinion negative UX) touchbar?

Larger battery, active cooling, afaik the storage options go higher.

If you’re doing anything heavy that will put sustained stress on the machine, active cooling is the important difference. While the laptops may have identical CPUs, with only passive cooling the Air is going to get throttled down after a bit whereas the Pro won’t have to. If you’re going to do something like video rendering you’d notice the difference.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#74

Post by capableweb »

Probably too early to tell, but anyone know how running Asahi Linux on this would be? Is M1 similar to M2 enough that stuff would just work?

I'd love to use Apple hardware again, but I cannot stand the Apple software and UX, so need my laptops and desktops to run Linux.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#75

Post by thrwawy283 »

I want it, but I'm not getting it until all the hardware works under Linux.

MacOS is great, but someday they will stop updating MacOS for this. I see it as a device with incredible longevity because of the fanless thermals and how it sips energy. I could see myself using it 10 years later. I want to run MacOS or Fedora Silverblue, with Silverblue being my true love. Immutable OS images HAH, downvoted in seconds. Would not be surprised if there are Apple employees brigading this.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#76

Post by gumby »

timmattison wrote: post #33
NoraCodes wrote: post #28

Looks like a neat laptop. I don't really understand why apple feels the need to forgoe articles for their devices, however. For instance, they write "MacBook Air features..." rather than "The MacBook Air features..." as would be grammatically correct in English.

They’ve been doing this with a lot of products for a long time. “Today we announce iPhone … with iPhone you can do anything!” I think it is very strange.

Even they find it hard to keep up this stupid convention. Ppl who work there of course say “the iPhone” but you even see it slip out frequently on stage at the big events. Even Steve Jobs, the originator of this convention and supposed stickler for detail used to say “the iphone” quite a bit.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#77

Post by mrtksn »

senttoschool wrote: post #71
mrtksn wrote: post #65

Having a smaller volume and more power consuming chip than M1[0], I wonder if it will match M1 air performance and battery life on heavy tasks. The media engine will definitely provide smoother experience when working with sound and videos but I kind of suspect that on other tasks it will be about the same as M1, thus prolonging the Apple's software support for the original one. [0] Early reviews of M2 Macbook Pro in…

M2 Air has a bigger battery pack than M1 Air. M2 is also just more efficient than M1 because the A15 is much more efficient than the A14. Anandtech showed this in their A15 review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo... So even if the chip heats up more, it's still going to be more efficient.

Sure but the thinner design might have reduced the thermal envelope, thus increasing the possibility of throttling earlier than the M1 version. For context, my M1 throttles down about %15 at room temperature after about 10 minutes on very heavy load.

I'm curious about the benchmarks and stress tests. Would be very cool if it is actually significantly better than the M1 on everything.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#78

Post by wslh »

lycos wrote: post #17

It's very tempting, but my MacBook Air M1 has been great and performance wise any improvement is probably barely noticeable in the day to day that I'd end up feeling like I just bought a new chassis. Which could still be nice.. although most of the time it's in clamshell attached to my monitor. I'll have to sleep on this!

Agree. Apple haven't added support for a second external monitor so the extra features are more performance and more battery. The performance of the M1 is incredible so it is not clear why to update.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#79

Post by CHY872 »

Darmody wrote: post #70

Am I the only one around here that doesn't like MacBooks? The hardware is fine, yes, except the glossy screen but the software is horrible. Everything is a pain in the a*.

As a software engineer, the software is pleasant. I have a Unix OS for development tooling and the standard set of applications (browser, preview, file management, IDE tooling) just work. It seems far more likely that something works first time than my desktop that runs either Windows or Linux (Windows example: clock somehow ends up 1 hour out of sync every week or two, computer sometimes locks up leaving me no control over mouse, screen flickers whenever my VR headset comes out of sleep moode. Linux example: I now have to enter my password 3 times in order to fully get into the operating system). Mostly I'm disappointed with the hardware - my late-2018 model is extremely slow for what it is.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#80

Post by gumby »

nojito wrote: post #47
NoraCodes wrote: post #28

Looks like a neat laptop. I don't really understand why apple feels the need to forgoe articles for their devices, however. For instance, they write "MacBook Air features..." rather than "The MacBook Air features..." as would be grammatically correct in English.

It's to prevent people from pluralizing the product name.

Good point, should it be “iPhones” and “MacBook airs” or “is phone” and “macbooks air”?

Apple needs to speak out on this issue. Why the coverup?

Post reply on HN