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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#151

Post by nicky0 »

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…

As a developer, I say Air all the way.

Never noticed any thermal issues at all. It barely gets warm for me.

Make sure to get at least 16GB RAM.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#152

Post by p_ing »

12345hn6789 wrote: post #107
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…

You're comparing desktop prices to laptop prices. Yes they're ridiculous but you're not the target market.

No, they're not. SODIMM prices aren't radically different from DIMM prices and laptops (usually) use the same M.2280 NVMe drives desktops do.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#153

Post by jmyeet »

CountHackulus wrote: post #137
ljm wrote: post #41

They don't always hit the mark but I sort of miss the times when Apple would innovate more boldly with their devices. Apple Intelligence isn't it - it's just playing catch-up with a market that tries to slap AI onto everything it can think of. The hardware upgrades are always nice but there's nothing 'out there' like a touch bar or even a 'dynamic island'. Just more safe iterations.

The last time they "innovated" on macbooks we got a touch bar (ignoring M chips). I'm good with incremental improvements if we can avoid those gigantic blunders.

Don't forget this also came with the awful butterfly keyboard, allegedly to save 0.5mm in thickness. It had terrible reliability, Apple was forced to do replacements and IIRC required a motherboard replacement to actually replace.

And why did Apple do all this? To increase the Average Selling Price ("ASP") of Macs. That's literally it.

the new M4 Macbook Air for $999 is incredible value and that's what I want the Air to be: a good compromise of power and price. For example, the 12" Macbook made too compromises to be just a little bit thinner.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#154

Post by Moto7451 »

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

That’s roughly the Air I have still. I hate using it (prior to recently adding the cooler shim mod, it would thermal throttle constantly) but between a Hackintosh and my work Mac I haven’t felt the need to upgrade. I think sometime in this M4/M5 gen is when I’ll pull the trigger and retire the Hackintosh to gaming rig only status.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#155

Post by klausa »

electrograv wrote: post #131

I really wish Apple would make a MacBook Air variant with display quality on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro (ProMotion/120hz and XDR/HDR, at least). The screen quality is the only reason I currently use the Pro despite its chunkier weight, since the local compute/memory of the Air is already plenty for me (and most users). The iPad Pro proves that weight and battery life is no excuse here for the lack of state-…

I wish for that machine too; and the price delta between the Macs is why I expect this will never happen. And unfortunately, I'd rather spend the extra bucks than go back to 60hz.

Apple seems quite content with making 120hz a feature of "Pro" models across the line (iPads, iPhones, Macs).

Re: MacBook Air M4

#156

Post by LtWorf »

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

And the benchmark is probably jut using one hw instruction that didn't exist on that model and now exists, and is not representative of anything at all.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#157

Post by mcgrath_sh »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #133
mcgrath_sh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone who’s been laptop shopping recently, the problem with most non-Apple options is that in exchange for RAM and storage been cheap and/or upgradable, they make significant sacrifices in various areas compared to MacBooks. This is insanely frustrating to me, I don’t know why generic PC manufacturers can’t seem to manage to build a small laptop that is as good of an all-rounder as the Air is and not also come w…

I still occasionally use a 2013 Air when I need a laptop. How no PC manufacturer has been able to get close to Apple's touchpad in two decades is crazy to me.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#158

Post by overstay8930 »

electrograv wrote: post #131

I really wish Apple would make a MacBook Air variant with display quality on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro (ProMotion/120hz and XDR/HDR, at least). The screen quality is the only reason I currently use the Pro despite its chunkier weight, since the local compute/memory of the Air is already plenty for me (and most users). The iPad Pro proves that weight and battery life is no excuse here for the lack of state-…

I know Apple wants to differentiate ProMotion as a Pro feature, but even non-tech people I know are wondering why Android phones run smoother than iPhones. Stuff that would be completely unheard of purely because of how noticeable 60hz vs 120hz is.

Actual reputational damage is going on because of these poor decisions, I’m not surprised iPhones are struggling to obtain new market share. They just look like old and slow phones to most normal people now, “look how nice and smooth it looks” is such an easy selling point compared to trying to pretend people care about whatever Apple Intelligence is.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#160

Post by whstl »

cmrx64 wrote: post #113
codesnik wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ov…

The only time I got my M1 Air to actually somewhat heat up was when I was compiling Node.js from scratch, right after I bought it (prebuilt binaries weren't available yet apparently). So my experience matches yours.

I also do a lot of AI + Audio stuff, and it gets somewhat warm but not as much as when compiling heavy stuff.

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