Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#121

Post by copperx » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

mrtranscendence wrote: post #77

agloeregrets wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally my only question. If they don't understand that then this is a massive market-research fail. I went Windows before the M1 Pro Macs just because I could not run two displays well on the Air (Displaylink sucks so so much).

On the contrary, I suspect they have market research to the effect that only a small proportion of users have or want multiple screens, and of those who do, they're likely to buy a more expensive model in the first place. Basically everyone I know has gone the route of a single large display, Mac user or not.

> Basically everyone I know has gone the route of a single large display, Mac user or not.

I've noticed that, too, which I don't quite understand. Dual displays were touted as a productivity multiplier back in the day. Is that not the case anymore?

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#122

Post by CoastalCoder » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

terramex wrote: post #34

jbverschoor wrote: post #23

How many external screens?

> Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and: > One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/

Thanks for that link.

For my next work laptop, I've been waiting to see if (sometime soon) there would be a MBP that supported external refresh rates > 60 Hz.

Given that the M2 MBA still has that limitation, I suspect not.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#123

Post by mullingitover » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #16

Just spent 4k on the M1 max. These chips are coming out too fast

If your purpose in buying a computer is to have the latest thing, and not because it does what you need it to do, you're gonna have a bad time.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#124

Post by monocasa » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

cowtools wrote: post #114

Kognito wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.

why does web development require so much memory and computing power?

Running a more or less complete stack of the backend can be a lot of containers.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#125

Post by w10-1 » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

w10-1 wrote: post #20

Pricing looks excellent ($1200 to start); I was expecting a bigger bump. We'll see about the 16G price and availability.

Urk: nothing above 8G memory listed on the apple store.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#126

Post by ZetaZero » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

zekrioca wrote: post #104

agloeregrets wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads. So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so as long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.

I really do not understand this. The 14" Macbook Pro (M1 Max) does support up to three external displays. What was the problem with these new Macbooks to not support at least two displays..

The M1 Pro/Max have multiple GPUs, one in each CPU cluster.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#127

Post by dylan604 » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

cowtools wrote: post #114

Kognito wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.

why does web development require so much memory and computing power?

I want to make fun of javascript here

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#128

Post by potatoman22 » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

grumpyprole wrote: post #111

Almost 10 years ago we purchased a MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for approx 2K UK pounds. It's really surprising and disappointing that a decade later these same specs essentially cost the same!

Those two numbers are the same

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#129

Post by ppeetteerr » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

grumpyprole wrote: post #111

Almost 10 years ago we purchased a MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for approx 2K UK pounds. It's really surprising and disappointing that a decade later these same specs essentially cost the same!

It's a lot faster and of higher quality now. Those numbers do not reflect the speed of the ram, the speed of the memory, the quality of the screen, or the performance of the CPU

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#130

Post by gjsman-1000 » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

UmbertoNoEco wrote: post #89

terramex wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Air too: https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/ > Configurable to: 16GB or 24GB Store is updated too, 16GB upgrade is 200$ and 24GB is 400$.

400 USD for a 16GB upgrade is daylight street robbery. The power of brands.

Actually, when you consider how many banks of memory it would take to obtain 100GB/s, it's a bargain. Desktop DDR5-4800 tops out at 38.4 GB/s, so you would need three, desktop DDR5 memory sticks to get that - but it would not even matter because a 12th Gen desktop Intel Core i9 can't handle more than 75GB/s at once. Now, DDR5 is falling in price, but low-power laptop grade DDR5 is still quite a specialized part, let alone with such bandwidth potential.

In a nutshell, not all RAM is created equal.