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MacBook Air with M5

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Re: MacBook Air with M5

#111

Post by mixtureoftakes »

mft_ wrote: post #55

Looking at the M5 Max specifically, two thoughts: 1) The price for a 14" model with the most powerful Max processor with 128GB of RAM ($5099 with all else left at the default settings) doesn't seem to have jumped hugely considering what's being going on with RAM prices in the world. 2) Interesting/disappointing that they aren't offering a model with even more RAM, further jumping on the local inference train.

Yeah and also they still want to get at least some sales on the mac studios and mac pros with ultra chips, 256gb m5 max wouldve straight up killed both of those products.

We can have nice things but nobody is going to hurt themselves to give out things that are the very best possible, theres probably a lesson in this

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#112

Post by lghh »

kibwen wrote: post #97
r0fl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years

[flagged]

Mine shipped with one. It's not perfect, but it's always been more than capable for me. Did yours not boot into anything on startup?

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#113

Post by delfinom »

zarzavat wrote: post #86
nagisa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air has no thermal connection to the chassis for the purpose of making it safe to have in contact with skin. People have been modding theirs to make this contact, though. And been getting a significant performance boost out of it.

I believe we are talking about slightly different things. Yes if they thermally coupled the body to the processor, then a small patch of the body would get very hot, burning the user. However, the fact that the aluminum gets hot during prolonged use means that it is acting as a heat sink and cooling the CPU compared to a body made of plastic. Thermodynamics, it's the law!

>However, the fact that the aluminum gets hot during prolonged use means that it is acting as a heat sink and cooling the CPU compared to a body made of plastic. Thermodynamics, it's the law!

Not really. It's picking up "stray heat" that is radiated from the copper heatsink inside and conduction from the air in the fan system. It does not improve cooling the processor in any kind of manner. If it were plastic, the plastic would get warm too. Maybe it'll be a 2 degree difference.

Direct contact or bust.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#115

Post by zem »

nosioptar wrote: post #94
bearjaws wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Air is going to run laps around the X1, in literally every benchmark you can come up with besides "its not open source". I have that same processor in a much bulkier thinkpad and it thermal throttles instantly doing basic office multi-tasking, with the fan running constantly. Also its made out of metal.

Thinkpads have track points, macs don't. That benchmark is really important to me due to RSI. Track points save me a buttload of hand pain.

interesting, I had to stop using my trackpoint because it was giving me rsi in my index finger. the track pad hasn't given me any issues.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#116

Post by LoganDark »

packetlost wrote: post #105
bhouston wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MBA is an absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs. I use it (MBA 15" M3) with a large complex TypeScript code base, and it is fast and amazing at 24GB of ram or more. PS. The biggest speedup I got this past year (10x) was switching to native TypeScript (tsgo) and native linting (biome or oxlint).

It's a bit slow, but still workable for Rust too. I prefer doing my daily work on a much more powerful 9955HX though.

Makes sense; according to Geekbench, 9955XX has about a 25% lead in multi-core over the base M4, and about a 5% lead in multi-core over the base M5. And more cores, so better for parallel Rust compilation.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#117

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

kibwen wrote: post #97
r0fl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years

[flagged]

Why is the finder the way it is? Is it actually easier to use than (whatever the normal file browser windows and linux uses is called) if all you ever use is macs?

Most of the other quirks I can work around (though the default alt tab behavior not picking up windows of the same app is an insane default) but the finder is just unusable.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#118

Post by regularfry »

mft_ wrote: post #55

Looking at the M5 Max specifically, two thoughts: 1) The price for a 14" model with the most powerful Max processor with 128GB of RAM ($5099 with all else left at the default settings) doesn't seem to have jumped hugely considering what's being going on with RAM prices in the world. 2) Interesting/disappointing that they aren't offering a model with even more RAM, further jumping on the local inference train.

Production question, then, for those who know about these things: how far ahead would Apple have locked in their prices for buying RAM for this line, for the units that are part of the initial release?

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#119

Post by wpm »

TingPing wrote: post #61
saghm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there are a decent number of people finding Asahi stable enough for regular use: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1quko4w/how_via... I imagine there are still some rough edges (and it seems like distro choices are probably a bit lacking at the moment if you prefer something outside of a few specific mainstream options) but given how niche ARM support was before the first M1 machines, the pro…

Asahi is great on earlier models but it will certainly not support the M5 before its already multiple models behind.

That's only because they are focusing on upstreaming all of their work into the kernel first. A handful of them spent a small amount of time building some device trees for M3 and it didn't take them long to get to the point M1's were at at the first release of Asahi.

I imagine once a lot of the cleanup and maintenance is done on what they have, they'll be in a better spot to accelerate support for other SoCs, and it probably won't be half a decade before the M6 or whatever is supported.

All said, Apple could just spend a tiny tiny amount of their warchest and just ship some goddamn drivers for Linux a la Boot Camp and save the Asahi team the time divining it from the tea leaves.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#120

Post by elxr »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #101
elxr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of us are either at home, work, friends/family or a rotating set of a few local cafe's, all of which are in our wifi auto-connect list, and have their phone hotspot for the rare occasion there is no wifi. So the minority that goes further than that doesn't matter? Also "rare occasion there is no wifi" is a very city-centric view, and a bit out of touch. We're talking about a trillion dollar hardwa…

Not saying a minority of users doesn't matter, just saying it's bad business to increase the price of an entry-level laptop by $200 for a minority user who has alternative solutions that are free or cheap. Apple traditionally keeps a simple line-up of 3 or 4 models per product category. And each product has limited simple upgrade options consisting of normal vs expanded ram/storage/cpu. Could they technically create…

> Could they technically create 300 models with every permutation? From cellular, to touch-screen laptop, oled/led screen, different ports, battery sizes etc.

Nice slippery slope.

All they need is 2-3 higher-end configs to start with (aka people who are already spending more on RAM/storage) with an additonal checkbox for 5G/cellular. It may not be optimal for business, but there's a market for it, I guarantee you.

They literally make $200 ipad keyboards that are extremely unremarkable yet they still sell well.

They make a vision pro, that can't even do a quarter the things a $1000 macbook can do; and still build them to this day, despite the massive complexity of that hardware combined with the tiny target market.

But a cell modem in a computer is too niche? You know the ipad has had modems right? Is a macbook any less deserving of a modem (or any less difficult to add a modem too) than an ipad?

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