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New MacBook Air with M2

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Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#431

Post by krzyk »

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…

> enjoy macOS

This is not something, a person that wants Linux, will enjoy.

> It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years. Even if Apple stops supporting it, you can still use it

I'm not sure, my friend has M1 Macbook Air and he complains that it looses performance after a year.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#432

Post by 2143 »

marricks wrote: post #312
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

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…

> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background?

How about a college student who contributes to large open source projects? (eg. Chromium or Firefox — I don't know if their memory footprint situation improved so these examples might not be valid today, but they definitely were back in the day). Don't underestimate college students ;)

People who complain about 8 GB being too low probably have a good reason.

I know I needed more than 8 GB because my 8 GB memory laptop always had it full (and was using swap) whenever I was using it for software development (and this laptop was already an upgrade from 4 GB).

However, I also know that I don't need more than 24 GB, because my utilization never reach anywhere close to that in practice.

The problem is more pronounced on computers with memory that cannot be upgraded.

> asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people.

Where I'm at, the F10 BMW 525d used to come with a creamy smooth 6 cylinder straight six motor. Made a little over 200 hp and 460 Nm of torque.

Later, they changed the engine to a highly tuned 4 cylinder with nearly identical power and torque (still called "525d"). Infact, the 4 cyl motor has a little over 10 horses more than the 6 cyl, but it came at a higher rpm.

The driving experience was noticeably different. The 6 cylinder engine just felt effortless; in-gear acceleration (which matters during overtakes) was simply better. The 4 cyl motor felt strained.

Also, there's the other point that you'd know if you're into engines — straight 6 engines are inherently balanced and yadda yadda (=> no engine vibrations => very smooth), while other configurations need balancer shafts (which can't really be perfected), so the straight 6 engines are slightly more "clean" from an engineering perspective.

Sure, 120 km/h is 120 km/h regardless of cylinder count, but that's not the point. Environmental considerations are also a different matter.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#433

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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 think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the circumstances.

I think Apple has a far better understanding, backed by actual data, of the circumstances than you, or indeed anyone here. My wife is still using her 2015 Air and has yet to plug it into anything, let alone 4k or 5k monitors that appears to be the "end game scenario" for posters here.

If you are posting on HN, then 8GB is not enough for you. I bought a 16GB M1 Air and it was great, and the day it came out I bought a 64GB M1 Max. But 8GB is more than enough for most of Apple's customers, and I'm sure they have the data to back that up.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#434

Post by asadlionpk »

senttoschool wrote: post #24

Do we still need Mighty App? M2 is significantly faster than Xeon and Epyc in single core speeds which is what matters the most in web browsing speed. There's also no latency that Mighty has. Just get yourself a 24GB M2 Macbook.

I feel Mighty will have to quickly pivot to more value-added features than just streaming browser. I love the founder and I know PG loves them too but I have doubts about their future... I strongly wish I am proved wrong.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#435

Post by noir_lord »

girishso wrote: post #426
PKop wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

USD is the global reserve currency - when shit goes sideways everyone jumps on the dollar and that pushes it's value up and the value of the other currencies down.

In the case of the EU/Euro you've also got an active shooting war, massive inflation and the economic damage that the UK did both to itself and the EU and a bunch of other stuff.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#436

Post by dijit »

mciancia wrote: post #418
ST2084 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete hot air. It’s about PCIE lanes

How so?

There's a lot that goes into this and it's not Apples (heh) to Oranges.

a normal Intel machine has some kind of southbridge, this means a traditional CPU that has 16 PCIe lanes total (this is actually the standard for intel) can have more than just 16x lanes, usually a PCH can add another 20 with an internal PCI switch.

Great in theory, but it does mean you can be constrained in bandwidth since that switch is limited to 16x on the upstream, in fact usually there's only 4! upstream PCIe connections to the CPU and there's some natively attached items (like the USB controller and some lanes of a GPU).

Apple's M-series CPUs do not have any southbridge or PCI switch, you get the full bandwidth of the lanes; this is why Apple M1 can run all of its ports at native speed at the same time, (where most laptops can't).

It also means that when you dedicate PCIe lanes for graphics, they can't just take away bandwidth from inactive ports.

It's only when they increase the die area and add more lanes that they dedicate more lanes to attachable graphics.

It's not a soft limitation, it's a trade-off.

They're banking on the fact that casual consumers won't use more than 2 displays (1 internal, 1 external); and that casual consumers would prefer more ports.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#437

Post by adrr »

smoldesu wrote: post #423
adrr wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do people upgrade? I still see a bunch of old safari versions in our web traffic. It’s the biggest thorn in my side supporting them.

One thing that is a problem is that web pages get bigger and bigger and more resource intense. I doubt my 2011 air could handle a modern day web page with videos and a bunch of css transforms like on the apple site.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#439

Post by b3morales »

hedgehog wrote: post #393
ch4s3 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like it cuts against the core of the f what Apple is, but it’s possible if Cook is succeeded by someone with no connection to old leadership.

They've built pieces of that already: https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/ I'm not personally very excited about living inside that sealed of a bubble.

Even if that's their plan, it will be at least another decade before that service is viable to be a hard requirement, completely replacing local builds.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#440

Post by piyh »

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!

I bought an M1 Air the day of the M2 announcement. $780 shipped on ebay for a mint laptop with 3 battery cycles. Battery life will be about the same, screen is good enough, 20% multicore boost is not worth an extra $450. M2 does look great though.

Looks like M1 prices have dropped even more since I bought.

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