New MacBook Air with M2 • Hacker News Board

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#411

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

senttoschool wrote: post #94

thrwawy283 wrote: post #75

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. Woul…

I don't think you're downvoted because of fanboys. I think you're downvoted because: 1. Linux is coming to Apple Silicon sooner or later. You can buy now, enjoy macOS, and then install Linux later. 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…

> It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years.

Why ever not? I have 14 year old laptops that run fully up to date Linux just fine. Why can unpaid volunteers do better than one of the most profitable companies on earth?

> So you can sell it in 5 years

That just makes the looming end of support someone else's problem, it doesn't actually solve anything.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#412

Post by thrill » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #370

marricks wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? People complaining about low ram sound like the bros asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Just complain about price, yeah, it is expensive! --- This is coming from someone who does light gaming on an 8gb m1 MacBook Air and has plenty of tabs open. I don't see lag. Then again, I…

Sounds like Apple. For a premium price they give you only bare minimum and if you want anything more you can pay thousands of dollars in pure premium and profit for Apple. Of course sheep will keep buying these things.

There's no reason to insult people.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#413

Post by uneventual » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #280

The pricing outside the US is outrageous though. Those are very expensive laptops. €1520 for the base version with only 8GB lol

It’s basically the exact same pricing as the US. $1 ≈ €1 today and $1200 * 1.25 for VAT equals $1500.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#414

Post by evo_9 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #407

evo_9 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to a single ultra wide 38 from LG and it was a huge improvement over my dual monitor setup. I’m on M1 Air, and switched my work pc to the same.

I've been really considering an ultra-wide and have heard extremely polarized opinions on it. Is there anything specific that you prefer over two widescreen monitors?

The lack of a center bar was a bigger deal than I expected. Being able to extend my SQL window to the full screen seeing all columns for example, beyond 'just nice'.

Same with code, not always but sometimes I need a wider view.

There are a lot of subtle gains that I'm probably forgetting about and really only one negative that I've run into - games don't play super nice on the ultra-wide, but that's not really what I use this machine for.

Oh another bonus I forgot - watching shows / movies on it is really nice. I have very rarely considered this but with an 18 month old, you find you have to squeeze in time here/there, we had to stop the new batman movie on HBO with 20 minutes left... I probably would not have ever watched the ending (it was pretty good!) if I didn't have that display, it was a nice way to spend 20 minutes during lunch and I've been watching movies/shows on it randomly during lunch since. It's pretty great for this use too.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#415

Post by throw34 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #392

carlycue wrote: post #39

This thing is going to sell like hotcakes. The combination of single core CPU and graphics performance, device thinness, battery life in this laptop is unmatched. It’s funny how Apple came back from the worst the Mac has ever been to the best in a span of few years. Johnny I’ve doesn’t dictate things around Apple anymore but the silicone chips team now does.

Wonder how long these M chips were in R&D and meanwhile they were just watching everyone on the internet complain how crappy mac laptops were but they knew this was coming

Probably somewhere around two years before the M1 announcement is when development started.

It’s a lot of work to design one of these parts.

https://anysilicon.com/asic-design-flow-ultimate-guide/

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#416

Post by adrr » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #394

1123581321 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SoC contains hardware decoders and external monitors don't require a lot of video memory per se.

> and external monitors don't require a lot of video memory per se. That depends. Your average 1080p display doesn't really use a ton of video memory, but a 5k display connected to an internal 1440p display? That's a pretty huge framebuffer. AFAIK, Quartz also has a separate video buffer for each individual window, ranging from 50-150mb for the average application. Add it all up, and I agree that 8gb is pretty low, e…

How many people are using external display on an entry level laptop? Think of all you family members and friends who aren’t in the software field. I don’t even use an external monitor on my personal laptop and its MBP 16” Pro with 32GB of ram. At most I side car an Ipad but that is more power user stuff.

Air with 8 GM of ram is perfect for a personal laptop where your primary focus is web browsing, watching media and occasional video/photo editing.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#417

Post by numpad0 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #355

marricks wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? People complaining about low ram sound like the bros asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Just complain about price, yeah, it is expensive! --- This is coming from someone who does light gaming on an 8gb m1 MacBook Air and has plenty of tabs open. I don't see lag. Then again, I…

Remember it's not 8gb of dedicated RAM. It's 8gb shared with the video subsystem. Let's see how far that goes when you plug it into a 4K monitor and/or do anything that requires GPU acceleration (which can include simply decoding video). I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the circumstances. At least this thing has the option for 24gb though. I just wish that was a stocked model so you could just walk into a…

This just occurred to me: They should add DRAM interface to M chips. Or maybe a RAM over PCIe device. Those RAM chips are gigantic off-die cache, can't replace RAM.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#418

Post by mciancia » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

ST2084 wrote: post #270

dijit wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could totally support 2 Apple studio displays, at least on the 24GB model. What are you basing this assumption on?

Complete hot air. It’s about PCIE lanes

How so?

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#419

Post by Aperocky » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

senttoschool wrote: post #64

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!

For M1 owners, just wait for M3. It should be on TSMC 3nm which will be the next true node shrinkage.

M1 owner but since 2020, so probably the among the longest users.

I'm tempted.

I also think 3nm is going to beset with production problems, I don't think it's coming around anytime near.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#420

Post by sleepybrett » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

Are there any performance comparisons between the new m2 and the m1 pro/max you can get in the 14" form factor (that has three tb4 ports, hdmi, a card reader and MAGSAFE!)?