Live data from Hacker News

New MacBook Air with M2

apple.com

731–740 of 796 posts

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you given a notched device a fair shake? Not suggesting you haven’t, but I never notice the notch on my iPhone I figured it would drive me nuts

I could tolerate it on a phone, although I'd rather just have a rectangular screen with a bezel for the camera. The whole phone UI can be designed to accommodate it, and it's exceedingly rare that I fullscreen anything on a phone. On a monitor, it would drive me insane; I'm regularly running things full-screen.

> I'm regularly running things full-screen.

well then you won't see the notch, full screen apps are letterboxed across the top

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#733
Sorry if I missed it, but I was sure they would have introduced touch screens along with M2. Normally I don't care for touch, but surely it would be good for running iOS apps more seamlessly.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#734
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you using the Air for development? How does it hold up?

Docker performance isn't great compared to what I'm used to on windows, but it's usable. Experimental docker features that are billed as potentially increasing performance by huge margins completely break my bind mounts. My stack fits very comfortably in the base 8 gigs of RAM. Some of my dependencies have bugs in the ARM builds that make me use docker overrides to x86 containers instead of aarch64.

I also had to troubleshoot some errors where dotenv operates a bit different between macOS and linux.

Overall, feels slower than what I'm used to. Community has a few rough edges to work out in an Apple silicon world, but half my growing pains are just moving to macOS in general. https://captionsearch.io is my "try new tech" project so it's part of the experience.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#735
post #658
post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't experienced the microphones on the ARM MBP 16", but with its Intel predecessor. And there the microphones are excellent and not drowned by fan noise (assuming of course, you don't run huge compute tasks in the background during the calls, never encountered anyone doing so). I can't imagine the ARM MBP to be more noisy than the Intel one. But specifically: the MB Air doesn't have a fan, so you won't hear fan…

Even on the Intel i9 MBP 16" having a call is a huge compute task that will unleash the fans. Regardless of Zoom, Meet or whatever videoconferencing I use.

That i9 was quite the little heater

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#737
post #92

Would be the perfect laptop if it could hook up to 2 external monitors instead of just one. For that reason, I have to go for the M2 Pro.

Not meant as a sarcastic question but why not get a mac mini/studio instead?

It is a fair question. I've been doing this, with a maxed out 2018 mac mini through the blackmagic eGPU to the XDR Pro display as my main workstation.

I have the 2018 macbook air as my portable. It's abysmal, but I can use it to work on the couch if I have to.

I am going to try the M2 air to replace both the laptop, the mini and the eGPU. Quite a lot of hardware traded out for one single solution.

I don't like keeping multiple machines up to date and spending time doing the same updates or having to go back to one to push some branch I forgot about.

That said, I'm counting on the MBA M2 to deliver graphics to the XDR on par with the blackmagic and if it can't I may return it, get a cheaper M1 MBA and either wait out the M2 mini or pick up a studio.

I do have a second 4k monitor that I'd prefer to be able to drive--I can with the Intel box and eGPU. But I don't really use it and with the XDR it isn't really necessary.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#738

If you want one and if it's anything like the M1 devices right now, expect to wait till mid August or later if you want anything beyond the basic specs. Even now, M1 MBPs with 32 or 64GB RAM are a good 5-6 weeks out.

same for Apple Stores?

Apple stores carry basic models and a select few upgraded SKUs in store, though the highest availability will be the two base models they offer.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#739

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…

> The worst experience I've had was telling my dad MacOS Catalina couldn't be installed on his $3.5k iMac. Just in case you'd be ok with unofficial way - there are patchers to enable macOS install on older machines: https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/install-macos-catalina-unsu...

Isn’t that backwards? He wants to install Catalina on M1/M2 hardware. So do I :(

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#740
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're coming from Windows or another OS it definitely takes time to get used to the "Apple way" of doing things. Also you need to expect that a lot of the applications you're used to being free in other OS cost $10-35+ each on Apple. Apps like SetApp are great for this and trying new applications out but that's a $10 monthly fee. It'd still take me awhile (a year+) to buy the apps I use at $10/mo so I just pay th…

I come from linux and I feel like I've been given a machine for computer illiterate people who are going to do some office work at Starbucks. Stereotypical, yes, but that's how I feel. I need this basic software feature. Yeah? Too bad, the OS won't allow you to do that. Maybe you'll find a paid app that does it. I do pay for software but when you have to pay for basic stuff that should come out of the box, it's a no…

Meh I don't think I've ever really needed to rely on finder, when I do most of my file manipulation I just drop down to a bash shell.

"To cover the basic" --> I think this is a situation where our personal preferences are being conflated with the basics because I've certainly never really had to pay out any significant amount of money to be able to do all the basic things I need from an OS.

I'm a full-time software engineer and the quality control that Apple puts into their new MacBook M1 has easily made it my best and most productive system (before being on Debian, and before that on a windows 10 machine).

Unlike a lot of people, I don't really give a crap about spending tons of time "accessorizing" my OS. To me it's merely a means to launch the applications and tools in which I can get work done (photoshop, blender, Clion, bitwig, vs code, etc).

Post reply on HN