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New MacBook Air with M2

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Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#491

Post by robbintt »

Pulcinella wrote: post #450
pc86 wrote: 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 hardwar…

I use these with few or no problems. The heat dissipation is pretty much solved by charging on the right side. My life is full of usability hacks, I don't mind one more.

The biggest frustration for me with a mac now is that it's becoming a toy OS like windows. It becomes more and more cumbersome to run programs that aren't in the app store. As a result I've been cultivating an ubuntu/plasma(kde) practice on a gaming desktop outside of working hours.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#492

Post by timdev2 »

abrouwers wrote: post #348
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'm a current Linux Desktop (plasma) user, who is really tempted by this machine, given my 6 year old thinkpad is showing it's age. I'm not sure I can get used to MacOS's window management, even though the rest of the OS looks great. I'm definitely not a power user on linux (mostly sticking to defaults), but things like not being able to adjust the green button to maximize a window? Ugh.

There are a number of utilities to improve window management on MacOS. I find rectangle[0] works reliably, without trying to do too much. Easy keyboard shortcuts to maximize, snap to 50% left/right, or quadrants.

[0]: https://rectangleapp.com/

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#493

Post by michaelchisari »

pc86 wrote: 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.

I got the M1 iMac with only 16gb RAM when it came out and it's incredible how fast it is. My previous machines were top-of-the-line intel Macs and the M1 blows them out of the water, performance-wise.

I can buy the lowest-end M-series models from now on and feel confident I'll have more than enough power. Gonna save a lot of money going forward.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#494

Post by jmull »

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…

For a frame of reference, one full frame buffer for a 4K monitor is around 32MB. Put another way, you can have about 32 of them per GB of RAM.

Not that you can’t use plenty of GPU RAM, but 8GB gives you a lot of room to work with. (Video decoding need all that much — probably three buffers worth per stream, and at the size of the video, not the screen.)

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#495

Post by kayoone »

Pulcinella wrote: post #450
pc86 wrote: 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 hardwar…

I had the same issues with a 2019 16" MBP. Annoying fans as soon as I connected an external display, getting very hot, okay performance. Switched to a M1 Pro 14" and couldn't be happier, as far as work laptops go it's the best I ever used since switching to macs in 2009.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#496

Post by hn_saver »

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.

Single core, huh? It's 8 core

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#497

Post by peanuty1 »

hn_saver wrote: post #496
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.

Single core, huh? It's 8 core

I think they meant single core performance.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#498

Post by watersb »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #427
conductr wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

? My M1 MacBook Air is passively cooled, but has a heat pipe that feeds into a heat sink that's at least as large as the M1 system heat spreader.

- Detail image: https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2020/11/19115445/MBA_M...

- iFixit Teardown feature article: https://www.ifixit.com/News/46884/m1-macbook-teardowns-somet...

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#499

Post by jmyeet »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #433
jmyeet wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

I think you’re overstating the technical weight going into this decision. I think it’s almost all marketing.

Remember the 16gb iPhone? It really just existed to make the 32/64gb models look more reasonable and so Apple could say “From $lower_price_point”.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#500

Post by amelius »

kalleboo wrote: post #206
thrwawy283 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) We are now 2 generations in without full Linux support for the hardware. 2) I used my Powerbook G4 for 12 years; this is mostly because I was a kid with no money. When I got something else, my sister used it for another 3 years. With thermals as they are in this device, instead of selling it after 4-5 years I'd rather keep it for one-off projects as a server like a Mac Mini. I know laptops aren't designed for serv…

"2 generations" sounds a lot more dramatic than "2 years" (and it's not even 2 years yet, the first M1 Macs were released in November)

2 years is a big chunk of a lifetime in tech.

Plus there is no guarantee that Apple will ever allow Linux again.

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