New MacBook Air with M2 • Hacker News Board

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#421

Post by lalaithion » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:16 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…

I have an 8gb M1 Air, and use it plugged into a 1440p monitor while watching video or in video calls. Maybe 4k would make a difference, I don't know—but most people don't have 4k monitors. 8gb is perfectly fine for me, and I'm probably in the top 10% of users as far as being a power user goes.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#422

Post by eric-hu » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

> Additional technical specifications and details on Apple accessories — including the 30W USB-C Power Adapter for $39 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter for $59 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter for $59 (US) compatible with the World Travel Adapter Kit for $29 (US), and the 67W USB-C Power Adapter for $59 (US) — are available at apple.com/mac. The 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter is available to customers in Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US.

Anyone have any idea why one would want a dual usb C power adapter when MagSafe is an option?

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#423

Post by smoldesu » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #416

smoldesu wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

I hear people say that today, but how is it going to feel in 2025, when you try loading up MacOS 16 on it? Given the trend of Apple's development, I don't think 8 gigs is going to be sufficient for most people going forward. That's basically iPad-tier memory constraints on a desktop-class operating system.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#424

Post by throw34 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #384

eropple wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having had an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM--under very light use it was great, but under anything a little more taxing (a good number of tabs, having Discord open, a relatively "light" creative app like Logic or Fusion 360) it would very rapidly not just get bad, but get stop-the-world awful. (edit: and as a sibling poster notes, plugging it into an external monitor made things a lot worse!) I don't know if MacOS's low-RAM…

I have a M1 with 16G ram. I don't think 8GB ram is even feasible - and that's coming from a user whose primary interface is terminal. 16GB is great though, never had a problem with RAM issue.

Usually it’s what’s being run inside the terminal that matters. ssh? no big deal. ffmpeg? can slow a machine down and can have a significant memory footprint.

YMMV

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#425

Post by mciancia » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #351

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.

> MY only gripe with the M1 and M2 Air the lack of support for more than a single external screen. Officially Apple specs out a single external screen, but using DisplayPort you can do more. The video below shows how to connect an unreasonable number of external monitors to an Apple Silicon laptop, but a two-external-monitor configuration doesn't seem too crazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jLAwSvs7vE

Displaylink doesn't support hidpi monitors on macOS with fractional scaling (unless they fixed it in last month or so). For me this is a deal breaker since I have 27" 4k monitors which IMO work best at 125%-150% scaling

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#426

Post by girishso » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #402

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

Because the $ is currently so strong against Euro, and others.

Is that going to change anytime soon? Genuinely interested because all currencies, other than USD are depreciating.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#427

Post by zitterbewegung » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:18 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

When Linus Tech tips did a review and tear down of the last Intel MacBook Air the design had no heat pipe and was just passively cooled. The first MacBook Air with the M1 design was equivalent but with an updated motherboard that had an M1.

The A12Z in the DTK is derived from the A12 which came out in 2018 so it probably was earlier than that.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#428

Post by aobdev » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #422

> Additional technical specifications and details on Apple accessories — including the 30W USB-C Power Adapter for $39 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter for $59 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter for $59 (US) compatible with the World Travel Adapter Kit for $29 (US), and the 67W USB-C Power Adapter for $59 (US) — are available at apple.com/mac. The 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter is avail…

The dual power adapter is in addition to, rather than instead of, MagSafe. The cable has the magnetic connector on one end and usb-c on the other. Dual ports just lets you charge your iPhone/iPad etc. at the same time.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#429

Post by krzyk » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #422

> Additional technical specifications and details on Apple accessories — including the 30W USB-C Power Adapter for $39 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter for $59 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter for $59 (US) compatible with the World Travel Adapter Kit for $29 (US), and the 67W USB-C Power Adapter for $59 (US) — are available at apple.com/mac. The 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter is avail…

Interoperability with every other hardware? Magsafe is only macbook, usb-c is non-Apple laptops, mobile phones, hearing aids, wireless headphones, etc.

And a large, ready to orther set of adapters to other standars. Magsafe doesn't have that yet, and judging from Magsafe 2, it almost won't have any.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#430

Post by distrill » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #422

> Additional technical specifications and details on Apple accessories — including the 30W USB-C Power Adapter for $39 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter for $59 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter for $59 (US) compatible with the World Travel Adapter Kit for $29 (US), and the 67W USB-C Power Adapter for $59 (US) — are available at apple.com/mac. The 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter is avail…

I kind of liked having everything run through usb c, including power. Charging from either side was nice, and being able to charge literally everything I own with a single charger was great.