Live data from Hacker News

New MacBook Air with M2

apple.com

441–450 of 796 posts

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#441
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.

Unless Western leaders or US particularly, want a severe global recession to persist, I think they will eventually pursue whatever means necessary to weaken $ and help Europe, rest of world, perhaps with a new "Plaza Accord" type arrangement[0].

This is if one believes they actually care about stabilizing European industry and economy and not rather that they are keen on seeing global chaos for a period of time and a weaker Europe dependent on US instead of having close trade relations with Russia and a thriving domestic industrial sector (which they have with cheap Russian energy, which they don't with sanction and less supplied more expensive substitutes), in service to US's own relative position becoming stronger and maintenance of global hegemony.

Many analysts, particularly leaders form China, have opined on the nature of US periodic "harvesting" through dollar strengthening policy which crushes developing (and now even developed) countries so as to maintain their reserve currency status and relative global strength (even conceding that in short term everyone experiences pain as result). Great speech from Qiao Liang, a Chinese PLA Major-General articulating the nature of the reserve $ and the way US uses it as financial weapon particularly when they strengthen it to temporarily crush world economy [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

[1] http://chinascope.org/archives/6458

^From link General Qio Lian quote: "Not many people had a clear understanding of this at the time. People, including economists and financial experts, didn’t realize that the most important thing in the 20th century was not World War I, World War II, or the disintegration of the USSR, but rather the August 15, 1971, disconnection between the U.S. dollar and gold."

Precient insight into developing Ukraine crises, (speech made in 2015):

"Where else did [US] target? Ukraine, the connection between the EU and Russia. Of course there were some problems under Ukraine President Yanukovych’s administration, but the reason that the Americans picked it was not simply because of his problem. They had three goals: teach a lesson to Yanukovych who didn’t listen to the U.S., prevent the EU from getting too close to Russia, and create a bad investment environment in Europe."

^In the context of recent financial sanctions against Russian trade and currency, this is exactly what is happening across Europe right now.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#442
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I bought my partner an 8gb Air a couple months ago. I had reservations about that amount of memory but she insisted on not spending more money. As far as she's told me she's experienced no performance issues whatsoever as a non-developer (she uses her laptop for video conferencing, email, and web browsing).

I use my 8GB one for development (mostly web and Cocoa, but also some 3d stuff w/Metal) and the only issues are with things like Microsoft Teams or some other memory hog, but even my co-workers with 32GB machines suffer with those, so I guess it's alright.

I switched to running MS teams in safari as the app was terribly resource intensive. Unfortunately it’s only safari that works with voice/video calls.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#443

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 o…

They likely could have released the M2 without a year stagger but elected to release the M1 then the M2, because capitalism

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#445
post #387

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…

My super light and thin [1] Carbon X1 Thinkpad from about 5 years ago has 16gb ram, half TB SSD and still runs like a champ with 200 tabs open. It's just strange to see a premium brand product not being able to compete with same-category class products from a half-decade ago. [1]: Lighter, in fact, than this MB Air M2

You can spec it with or 16 or 24 GB and the CPU is going to be miles faster than your Thinkpad.

Sometimes I think people just want to feel good about their purchases… It’s 5 years old, it’s okay if it’s not top of the line anymore.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#448

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 interesting where our language goes. I do not say “The Windows” etc. when talking about software, but I definitely say “The iPad” etc. when talking about hardware.

I agree, that's very interesting! I also omit articles when talking about software, except when talking about a particular instantiation of the software; for example "Windows supports Nvidia hardware", but "the Windows installation on this device is broken". (And, indeed, "Windows installation is broken in the presence of NVMe drives" would mean, to me, that _all_ new Windows installers are broken for NVMe drives.)

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#449
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.

And the US price is also only $100 more than the nominal price of the base model of the original MacBook in early 2008, and $300 less adjusted for inflation.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#450
post #401

I spent an embarrassing amount on a lackluster early 2019 MBP. It's fine as a general purpose laptop but is just a little too slow for serious dev work, a little too heavy as the main travel laptop, battery life a little too short for my liking. I got an M1 for my work laptop maybe 4 months ago and it might honestly be the best laptop I've ever used.

In a somewhat similar situation with the 2019 16 inch Intel MBP. I wouldn't say it's too slow, but it does get embarrassingly hot during regular use. Enabling low power mode disables turbo boost and keeps it much, much cooler, but plugging into an external monitor enables the discrete graphics card and the laptop gets hot again.

Going to try to get a few more years out of it hopefully until Imagination Tech's hardware accelerated ray tracing solutions can make it to Apple's GPUs.

Post reply on HN