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New MacBook Air with M2

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Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#291

Post by commandersaki »

chrisjc wrote: post #253

I'm sorry if this doesn't add anything to the discussion, but one of MKBHD's latest reviews discusses the differences between the MacBook Pro 13 and this new MacBook Air. The video does a great job of shining a light on all of the tradeoffs between the two devices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSdKnNj7ozk This little device is a beast!

What annoys me about MKBHD's video is that he complains about an ageing design like it's a bad thing for the general case.

I laud any manufacturer that's come up with a time tested design that doesn't change, which is why the IBM Thinkpads of the day were so popular.

But in this specific case, MKBHD is right, this is an Apple being lazy about design and probably reusing their existing parts and tooling just to slap on an M2 for a laptop that probably shouldn't exist anymore.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#292

Post by adolph »

chrisjc wrote: post #253

I'm sorry if this doesn't add anything to the discussion, but one of MKBHD's latest reviews discusses the differences between the MacBook Pro 13 and this new MacBook Air. The video does a great job of shining a light on all of the tradeoffs between the two devices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSdKnNj7ozk This little device is a beast!

Title "M2 MacBook Pro: Why Does This Exist?" is perfect. This is Apple back in Centra/Performa territory [0]. See also iFixit's "We’re Pretty Sure We Just Tore Down the New M2 MacBook Pro!?" [1]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJEaAINoQPo&t=223s

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#293

Post by dagmx »

thrwawy283 wrote: post #184
nicoburns wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have pretty good support except for the GPU at this point (admittedly I'm waiting for this until I install it on my machine). They've had to write all the drivers from scratch, so it was bound to take a while. But on the plus side the hardware interfaces seem to be stable across generations. M2 parity with M1 was implemented in 48 hours! So I'm pretty confident it will mostly be case of linux support continuously…

The GPU is important.. afaik the keyboard and trackpad aren't working yet in Asahi Linux. I don't expect Apple to support the Linux community. It feels like this is trending in one direction. It felt like things stopped being "favorable" to us when they stopped supporting OpenGL and made no effort with Vulkan. The touchbar and some wifi chipsets were poorly supported for years before M1 debuted. What has been impleme…

Hector has the keyboard working now https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1544408695295328256?s=21...

I might have missed a trackpad update but I don't think it will take them long.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#294

Post by Darmody »

chrisseaton wrote: post #190
Darmody wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come from linux and I feel like I've been given a machine for computer illiterate people who are going to do some office work at Starbucks. Stereotypical, yes, but that's how I feel. I need this basic software feature. Yeah? Too bad, the OS won't allow you to do that. Maybe you'll find a paid app that does it. I do pay for software but when you have to pay for basic stuff that should come out of the box, it's a no…

> When I'm told to learn to use it "the Apple way" what I understand is, "shut up and get used to it, you have no saying in how your machine or you should work". Well yeah that is kind of the philosophy - a single simple way to do things. Cutting down on customisation makes the system more stable and I think allows them to innovate more quickly. Don't confuse it with lack of power - it's a fully certified UNIX unlike…

    > Well yeah that is kind of the philosophy - a single simple way to do things.
Not being able to do something is very different from what you're saying. Not being able to do something, in fact, makes it more complicated because you need workarounds.

    > Cutting down on customisation makes the system more stable and I think allows them to innovate more quickly
Nobody is talking about customization. Missing features does not equal a simple way to do things.

    > Cutting down on customisation makes the system more stable and I think allows them to innovate more quickly.
How? How does that allow them to innovate more quickly? There has been no innovation in their UI for ages.

    > Don't confuse it with lack of power - it's a fully certified UNIX unlike most Linux distributions.
Don't confuse lacking a POSIX certification with the lack of power. The certification is just a badge you pay money for. Nothing else. It can't even run Docker properly.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#295

Post by solarkraft »

louissm_it wrote: post #269
nico_h wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MY only gripe with the M1 and M2 Air the lack of support for more than a single external screen. I feel like it's just a pure marketing play to only support more than one external screen on the 14" pro. They have Magsafe and two thunderbolt 3 / USB 4 ports, they could totally support 2 Apple studio displays, at least on the 24GB model.

As someone who upgraded from an Intel Mac to an M1 mac, the memory is a non-issue. Three years ago I would have laughed if you said I would be happy with "only" 8GB, but now I am.

I thought I'd be happy with 8GB based on benchmarks and sensationalistic videos (thanks, Max Tech), but I absolutely wasn't. Apple silicon Macs or maybe Macs in general handle high memory pressure (graph in the red) terribly. The system will get extremely slow and laggy, develop audio issues and eventually lock up.

I ran into that all the time on the 8GB model (admittedly with multiple RAM-intensive apps and lots of tabs open), while it now happens very rarely on my 16GB model.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#297

Post by bentcorner »

z9znz wrote: post #264
bluedino wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200 to go from 8GB to 16GB is an atrocity.

These are not ram sticks, these are difference in the M2 chip itself. I'm not a chip designer, but I imagine there are more manufacturing quality challenges with the ones that have more RAM.

Don't they bin the chips? The lower spec chips have the same layout as higher spec ones but they have defects.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#298

Post by leadingthenet »

thrwawy283 wrote: post #212
eertami wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>enjoy macOS If you're wanting to use your laptop for development work, you're going to pick the best job for the task. Moving to OSX would not only slow things down due to how slow non-native Docker is (no it is not negligible, yes I have an M1 Mac and I have tested it in a side-by-side comparison), but you have much less control over your environment compared to Linux. The vast majority of the people I've worked wi…

I think we're getting faster at iterating on bringing up dev environments. Silverblue is my favorite, but it's becoming common for me to develop everything within a docker image. As quickly as we're committing to a project, we're updating the env and rebuilding that image at the same time? I'm new to this. I have a friend who's really big into k8s and ansible. Right now it feels like I'm toying around in 1 pod. He ca…

It's called docker-compose, and it's really simple compared to even a 1 pod k8s. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by bringing up a set of services.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#299

Post by claytongulick »

SenHeng wrote: post #224
johnfernow wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years. Even if Apple stops supporting it, you can still use it. In addition, Macs have insane resale value. So you can sell it in 5 years, and then buy a new one. This is a more reasonable approach than yours. Why is that? I still use my 2015 15" MacBook Pro which released 7 years ago, and I have no intention of replacing it anytime soon. This isn't the 70s, 80s, 90…

> The performance of an M2 MacBook would undoubtedly be much better, but am I actually going to be able to browse the web faster or write code any faster? I split my coding time between a 2017 retina MacBook and a 2018 Mac Mini. Code compiles very much faster on the Mini -> faster iterations. So yes, you may literally code faster on a faster computer.

I switched to surface book when mac jumped the shark in '16.

Went through a few generations of that, it was "ok".

Bought the cheapest 13" M1 I could because I had to debug some stuff on the iPhone, I was pretty angry about it.

That day I switched over to it as my daily driver.

The performance absolutely blew my mind.

Stuff I'd wait for one to two minutes to build on the SB would build in a few seconds on the M1.

Debugging + video call + building went from crushing my laptop to being not really noticable.

I was using it heavily for two days and realized I forgot to plug it in. Was only down to 50% battery.

I'm very far from being an apple fan boy, but this little laptop has completely blown my mind. Simply the best hardware I've ever owned, and makes me easily 2x as productive.

And that's all with the cheapest 8 gig of memory model.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#300

Post by jeffhuys »

duxup wrote: post #265

I gave the iPhone a try after a long time on Android (since the nexus) and I’ve been very happy. I’m going to give the Air M2 a spin for a work/ personal device too. Im excited.

Oh, man, you're in for a treat.

Make sure to enable Handoff - copy on your phone (Google Authenticator, for example), CMD+V on your laptop. CMD+Tab to something on your phone (a Safari tab, for instance) from your laptop, and vice versa. A lot of other neat stuff awaits you!

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