761–770 of 1001 posts
The biggest issue I have with macbooks is that they are ridiculously expensive. They are intended to be portable devices but bringing them anywhere outside my apartment or office is just a huge risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your laptop complaints are addressed by the MBP models, which aren't much heavier if that is your primary objection.
The 14" M2 Pro is 30% heavier than the M2 Air and 20% thicker. I don't really classify that as "not much". I have a 14" M1 Pro from work and a personal M2 Air and it's always surprising how much heavier the M1 Pro feels from my Air.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I missed that! and then it has one usb port, or two? If it has two plus magsafe and i had noticed, i might have bought that!
It has two USB-Cs and magsafe on the left side, audio jack on the right side. I wish it had an HDMI too. I might buy a USB-C-HDMI cable at some point.
In retrospect, I think i would have bought the Air! I somehow thought the Air still had only two USB-Cs, one of which would be occupied by power if plugged in. Which was not enough. Two USB-Cs plus a separate magsafe would, barely, be enough for me.
the price difference is not huge once I put in 16GB of RAM and a 1TB HD. But the smaller size of the Air is nice! I suspect even the Air is enough CPU for me, although the new M2 MBP seems like a lot more CPU I think.
One advantage that I have with the M1 Pro 32 GB RAM over my gaming desktop is that I'm able to run large ML models such as Bloom, Whisper, and Stable Diffusion with reasonable performance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you able to edit 4k video in FCP on the M2 Air with 16GB? I'm looking to upgrade, and I want to go for the lowest config M mac that I can get away with for smooth 4k edits.
I used FCP on an M1 Air with _8gb_ to edit 4K videos for over a year. Assuming you have enough fast storage (or are happy to use a proxy workflow), it certainly can be done, although everyone’s workflow is different. Assuming no storage speed bottleneck, timeline scrubbing was smooth up to about 2x forward or backward, from memory - after that you hit decoder limits. Proxy workflow gets around that too, though. Rende…
I plan on getting a re-furb, not sure if I can return one of those...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To state the obvious, Turbo Taxes website works on any device. No idea what an app would be needed for.
It's crazy that you basically cannot do your taxes in the US without purchasing commercial app...
https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
Any half decent state also offers free online tax returns. If all you are is an employee with stocks/bonds in a brokerage that gives you the necessary forms, it is super easy.
I'm waiting for HN to reach a consensus so that I can decide whether to buy this one or the M1 MBP.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have both a latest generation Thinkpad P1 Gen5 and Macbook Pro 16 inch M1 pro and while it is true that Macbook comes pretty close to being a perfect laptop, I still miss the productivity of a Linux laptop (for backend dev work). From what hardware POV you are correct, I wish though Apple would adopt Carbon Magnesium chasis that thinkpad uses. For same 16inch size, Thinkpad is noticeably lighter. I can happy lug my…
iTerm2 and lima [1] with a ARM64 Linux virtual machine w/ Rosetta (so I can still run x86_64 Linux code!) enabled me to fall in love with my MacBook Pro in this regard. i feel more productive than on a Linux machine now. MacOS is not without its developer power tools, if you dig around enough! [1] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima
More details here to avoid spamming this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34374176
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's crazy that you basically cannot do your taxes in the US without purchasing commercial app...
Oh you can. It's just a lot more work. You can do it with paper forms, a calculator, checks, and stamps, pretty much. You just are unlikely to know/find the rules for optimal results, and the process will take a lot longer. Not a fan of turbotax, but it's not _necessary_.
https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
It does some calculations itself, and some you have to do yourself, but it is very easy to use and file online, and get a pdf return to save for yourself.
Any half decent state also has had free online tax return filing for some time now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The M2 Air has MagSafe. (= Killing MagSafe has to be the singled DUMBEST product decision anyone ever made. I'm so glad they finally brought it back.
I thought killing MagSafe was pretty dumb, too, but every time I tripped over the USB-C power cable on my 2018 MBP it came right out, no problem. Plus it's really nice to be able to move the power cable to whichever side the outlet is close to. When I upgrade, I think I'd choose to continue using USB-C power if possible. I'll actually miss the Touch Bar. It's an interesting idea that seems useful, but isn't, except i…