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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#111

Post by pqtyw »

dijit wrote: post #45
permanent wrote: post #3

This is amazing, yet silly to state "Up to 23x faster performance [4]" [4] against, 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air

To be clear: 1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make huge strides every year so I can upgrade! 2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps! 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! (yes, not Windows though). 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?! Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old. "Hey, you noticed th…

> Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old.

It still makes claims like that arbitrary and meaningless. What does "23x faster" even mean, it's not like there are that many people who are upgrading from an Intel MBA yet are also fulltime Cinebench/etc. testers.

> It's fair to compare

Well yes. It's reasonably fair (realistically its not like any of those people this is targeted at would feel a difference between 10x, 15x or 30x) and obviously smart.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#112

Post by kimbernator »

dijit wrote: post #45
permanent wrote: post #3

This is amazing, yet silly to state "Up to 23x faster performance [4]" [4] against, 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air

To be clear: 1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make huge strides every year so I can upgrade! 2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps! 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! (yes, not Windows though). 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?! Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old. "Hey, you noticed th…

It's hardly the same person saying all of these things, though. Are you just annoyed at the variety of opinions that come from people on the internet?

Re: MacBook Air M4

#113

Post by cmrx64 »

codesnik wrote: post #28
trymas wrote: post #5

Anyone can comment on how Apple Silicon (M) MacBook Airs deal with heat? It’s fan-less design, so how does it compare with MacBook Pros with same M chips? Does it throttle often? Can you have it comfortably on your lap in summer? Or unless you’re running 1-hour long 4K rendering or machine learning training sessions - you’d never notice? UPDATE: what I am getting at - if you are developer and don’t care about screen…

I have M2 Air and using it for rails development, sometimes with multiple docker containers, but the most hungry usually is just chrome with 500+ tabs. It usually does not throttle at all and is barely warm. Unless in direct sunlight (it's black) or unless I put it on top of a blanket without an air gap below for half an hour. I'd say that's coolest macbook I ever owned, no burns or anything near it even on bare skin…

The 2011 Intel macbook air I used when visiting home throughout college was downright _dangerous_ on a lap, but performed so much better than my Atom-based Aspire One that I felt compelled to learn to tolerate OSX, as a longtime Linux nerd.

I eventually got the M1 Air for serious ocaml and rust development and found it would get quite toasty (tho never concerning) during big compile/test cycles, but generally only over several dozen seconds of full load.

I upgraded to a 14” pro with an M2 Max and am reasonably happy with it and think it was an important upgrade for my productivity. In daily use, fans kick in rarely but when needed for a speciality job like TLA model checking, they can reject a lot of heat (= performance margin). Of course it would be nice if it weighed less (mine is 1.8kg after including a case), but as a side benefit the machine can play games (even emulated x86 ones inside Parallels!) so it’s hard to say I’m worse off than my previous status quo of VSCode remoting into my big Linux desktop :)

Re: MacBook Air M4

#114

Post by 12345hn6789 »

Surac wrote: post #30

is there an active linux support for the hardware?

Active Linux support has grinded to a halt. Hector Martin (the developer of asahi Linux) has ceased development. Umid temper your expectations. M3+ will likely never be supported https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/

Re: MacBook Air M4

#115

Post by netcraft »

metayrnc wrote: post #6

After getting the initial M1 Air, I am still struggling to find a reason to replace it. Still going strong with no hiccups!

agreed, which is awesome, the only thing that worries me is that they will drop support for it earlier than they have to when they want to force people to upgrade eventually. I hope to get 10 years out of my M1

Re: MacBook Air M4

#116

Post by mcgrath_sh »

kccqzy wrote: post #96
mcgrath_sh wrote: post #42

I have considered going back to Mac after about 5-7 years on Windows/WSL, but the storage premium is just too much to swallow. If the $999 was a base 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, I'd consider it. I just added another 32GB of RAM to my 2020 built desktop for $50. You can get a 1TB crucial M.2 drive for $70. I know I'm comparing apples and oranges, but the storage cost is too much, and 256GB is much too little. Edit: to…

Of course. Apple wants you to purchase their iCloud offerings and put your documents on iCloud Drive. I just buy lots of storage on my desktop and access it remotely. Tailscale makes it easy to do so.

True, I guess they do want to push iCloud. I just can't justify the pricing. Comparing the 15" to System 76, I get a bigger screen, TWO 2TB M.2 drives, and 64 GB RAM for $150 cheaper than a 15" with one 1TB drive and 32GB RAM. And the System 76 comes with a bunch of ports, too.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#117

Post by pqtyw »

WillAdams wrote: post #95
throw0101d wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps! > 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! > 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?! 2 and 4 kind of contradict each other. I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.

Since graduating from college in 1993, working in the graphic design industry full-time through 2019, I had two brand-new Macs (a PowerMac G3/800MHz, and a G5), the balance were hand-me-downs from other employees --- the G5 in particular was especially long-lasting, though ultimately it was supplemented by an Intel iMac. Each year when Apple came out with new machines, we would make a game of putting together a dream…

> these days, well, a fully-configured Mac Studio is $14,099

Not surprising considering the CPU in the fastest "desktop" Mac before today was slower than an old Intel chips you can buy for ~$350 (e.g. the 14700k).

Re: MacBook Air M4

#118

Post by artimaeis »

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #12

If you have an Air and use Intellij IDEA or any other Jetbrains IDE can you let me know how the performance is? This really looks like an amazing computer if it can handle long IDEA hours on medium projects.

Using Rider on an Macbook Air M2 (24 GB RAM) -- admittedly, pretty small/simple code-bases for the most part. Great performance. Only issues come when I need a lot of docker containers running too, especially if they're not ARM images. With that I don't notice performance issues - but the battery drain is noticeable at that point.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#119

Post by s_dev »

ada1981 wrote: post #81

Why are we back to MagSafe? I liked just having the usb-c on my air.

You can charge with both. The USB-C stuff is due to EU regulations and MagSafe because people love it as a charging cable type.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#120

Post by p_ing »

permanent wrote: post #3

This is amazing, yet silly to state "Up to 23x faster performance [4]" [4] against, 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air

Everyone who has been around since at least the Snail ads should be used to Apple's fluff and promptly ignoring it until benchmarks are released.
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