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New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

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Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#111

Post by cbuq »

cgriswald wrote: post #36
cpuguy83 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touch Bar, no... but Touch ID?

Like I said, I'm not sure. The vast majority of people I know who have an Air or MBP have an older model without Touch ID. They might appreciate it if it is there, but they won't miss it in its absence. The only two people I know who've ever owned one that had it both returned it because they otherwise hated the device. For me personally, Touch ID makes sense on a phone, because I can do it with a single hand. For a…

I think Touch ID on a laptop / desktop would make a lot of sense. I don't actually know any of my passwords.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#112

Post by VibrantClarity »

rarecoil wrote: post #68
jerf wrote: post #67

Is this even going to be noticeable at all out of benchmarks? Nominally, my personal system has something that can do 2GB/s, but in normal operation, as programs and OSes do their thing, the software is incapable of making requests quickly enough to come even close to saturating the bandwidth. I'm not sure if you dropped a part in there that maxed out at 512MB/s that I could even notice. Amdahl's law codifies the obs…

> I'm not sure if you dropped a part in there that maxed out at 512MB/s that I could even notice. I've done exactly this. I tried to run an NVMe drive and a SATA drive back-to-back in the same laptop to see if I could notice any difference in my day to day workload. I couldn't, and because of that I bought a 2TB SATA SSD instead of 2TB NVMe. SATA usually still has better power consumption than most NVMe drives, and t…

Which OS did you test this on? Every time I have used a Windows device with an NVMe drive the difference is immediately obvious, but on my Hackintosh and Linux boxes I haven't noticed any difference at all.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#113

Post by wtallis »

cultus wrote: post #104
josteink wrote: post #51

Are these new T2-based Macs usable with Linux yet? Honest question. Edit: For the downvoters, it’s a real concern: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/11/06/mac-t2chip-linux/

It is not, and it won't be in the foreseeable future. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202567

Patches have been posted to the linux-nvme mailing list adding support for 2018 and newer Apple NVMe. It looks like there are two main ways in which Apple's violating the spec, both of which can be reasonably handled by adding device-specific quirks to the driver. I expect these patches to be cleaned up and pass review in time to be shipping in stable kernels before the end of the year.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#114

Post by JoshTko »

awinder wrote: post #98
asark wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's prices used to be non-insane. Marked up, yes, but not nuts. Wasn't even that long ago. You'd have people post stuff about "look I can get a PC that's just as good for 40% as much, what a ripoff!" but it'd always turn out they were choosing worse parts. These days, though, between price hikes, mediocre to poor base memory amounts and disc sizes, and massive markup on upgrades, it's not true anymore. Their pric…

Apple's had this model for over a decade at least where the base models are fairly priced but you can really make the thing uncompetitively priced through outrageous ram/storage upgrade pricing. That's exactly where things go off the rails -- in fact, it's pretty apparent to me that Apple is normalizing profit margins over expected upgrade volumes (so that entry level machine sells at lower than the profit margin app…

Auto manufacturers, Airlines, everyone does this.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#116

Post by raverbashing »

lukifer wrote: post #48
filleokus wrote: post #18

I like fast SSD's as much as everyone else, but it's not like those disks are a slouch. 1.3 GB/s is still plenty fast, especially for those who are in the market for the Macbook Air. It's probably however the first time, I can remember at least, where Apple downgraded a newer model in such an unequivocal way. I mean newer CPU's have had different multicore/single core tradeoffs, the inclusion of a dedicated GPU have…

> where Apple downgraded a newer model in such an unequivocal way Also of note: the maximum SSD capacity dropped as well. Formerly the Air could be spec'd up to 1.5 TB, now 1 TB is the max.

1TB is plenty for the MBAir cases

Especially now that there is "the cloud" (and external hard drives)

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#117

Post by lostlogin »

lukifer wrote: post #48
filleokus wrote: post #18

I like fast SSD's as much as everyone else, but it's not like those disks are a slouch. 1.3 GB/s is still plenty fast, especially for those who are in the market for the Macbook Air. It's probably however the first time, I can remember at least, where Apple downgraded a newer model in such an unequivocal way. I mean newer CPU's have had different multicore/single core tradeoffs, the inclusion of a dedicated GPU have…

> where Apple downgraded a newer model in such an unequivocal way Also of note: the maximum SSD capacity dropped as well. Formerly the Air could be spec'd up to 1.5 TB, now 1 TB is the max.

The price for the 1.5 was truely ridiculous. It would be interesting to know how many they sold.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#118

Post by xnyan »

threeseed wrote: post #89
bleomycin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest bummer of these machines is apples lack of vp9 hardware decoding in macos, it makes 4k youtube unwatchable. For high motion content (mountain biking videos) 4k is the only way to watch even on a tiny laptop screen due to youtube’s horrific compression. Its an absurd limitation considering the hardware has full support for it! I know it sounds insane but I returned mine for a quad core 13” mbp just to brut…

Google could support H.264 or H.265. The only reason they don't is because they want to push their format.

Is it unreasonable of Google not to want to use a royalty free codec that's controlled by the MPAA?

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#119

Post by StrangeDoctor »

School-Cotton wrote: post #100
wedn3sday wrote: post #87

My philosophy has been for a long time that if you're doing anything thats even remotely taxing your laptop, you shouldnt be using a laptop for it.

Why?

Parent is making the reasonable assumption that laptops are mainly dumb terminals with batteries, but takes an unreasonable step in stating that’s the only thing they are good for.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#120

Post by cmroanirgo »

fjp wrote: post #27
cgriswald wrote: post #6

> Before you go and start casting aspersions at Apple, the move makes a lot of sense. It'd be one thing if it did this and raised the price, but it actually lowered the price by $100, and the education discount brings it down to $999, making it the most affordable modern MacBook laptop ever (the outdated MacBook Air does not count). Which is fine for the entry-level model. Is it true for the more expensive model? The…

I actually think the current MacBook Air configuration with Touch ID & Retina - $1100 - is basically exactly what I (and many people) want in a personal laptop. It's light, easy to use, plenty fast for anything I do on a regular basis, and the Retina display is excellent. Unless I have reason not to trust it, Touch ID is the perfect way to log in when you: 1. want to have your computer lock after a short period of in…

Just looked at the new specs. The obvious differences to my maxed out mba 2013 is double the ram (16gb) and double the ssd (1tb). Losing those few ports I have is a bit of a blow though (but that's long standing gripe with newer mba), and is the one thing holding me back from an upgrade, but the above upgrades are a definite sweetener in the deal.
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