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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#171

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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.

For me as a professional, that's just fine; I never used the touch bar, but the fingerprint sensor was a great addition. Not worth upgrading for on its own, but a neat upgrade.

I think a macbook with a much better front facing camera would be good, teleconferencing is a multiple times a day use case for us. They did an in-between with the system that allows you to use your iphone camera(s) which do support more wide angles, but that doesn't work on my current work laptop as it's locked down and I'd have to lock down my personal iphone as well if I want the two to connect.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#172

Post by benterix »

sleepybrett wrote: post #145
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the fact that a macbook doesn't have storage on an m.2 slot is incredibly frustrating. My m1 drive failed and they had to replace the whole damn motherboard because they soldered the storage in. Just incredibly wasteful practice just to, i guess, shave a mm or two off the things depth.

Since their whole pricing strategy depends on users not being able to do RAM and storage upgrades, you can be sure they'd rather make the integration even more tight in the next models.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#173

Post by cph123 »

whstl wrote: post #138
kotaKat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that migrated to the M1 Macbook Air from a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro... the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly. If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.

> the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target Definitely. I have ZERO rational reasons to upgrade from my lowest-spec first-gen Air M1. I use it everyday and speed and battery life are still way more than I need.

I'm at exactly the same point with mine, it still feels like new even though it is nearly 5 years old.

I have yet to update beyond Monterey though (even though I really should) in case it slows down a bit or the battery life isn't as good.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#174

Post by LuciOfStars »

p_ing wrote: post #152
12345hn6789 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Re: MacBook Air M4

#175

Post by pqtyw »

latexr wrote: post #164
pqtyw wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

> What does "23x faster" even mean The measurements are in the linked footnote, they tested the “Super Resolution” upscaling feature of Pixelmator Pro.

Well yeah, I understand that this is based on some specific benchmark. Yet it's still some random arbitrary number effectively picked to mislead consumers.

Especially when for the M1 (2x faster) they decided to use an entirely different Photoshop benchmark YET they they still show it alongside the 23x for the Pixelmator one (presumably the M4 is NOT 2x faster than the M1 there..).

That's just objectively slimy (even if mostly harmless) marketing...

Also presumably Pixelmator's "Super Resolution" and Photoshop's "radial blur, content aware scale, diffuse, find edges" are also mostly GPU bound these days? Which again.. might not be the best indicator for "performance" for most consumers.

Edit: Looking at some more general benchmarks the the i7 (I7-1060NG7) from the last Intel MBA is "only" 4x (Geekbench MT), ~2.7x (Single-Core) or 2x (Cinebench single core) slower than the M4. Picking some highly specific "benchmark" that's several times higher than that is just dishonest.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#176

Post by knowaveragejoe »

mcgrath_sh wrote: post #123
12345hn6789 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fair. A better comparison would be System 76. Comparing the 15" to System 76, I get a bigger screen (16"), 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. For the same specs, it is $550 cheaper.

I've yet to find a non-apple laptop that's as ergonomically comfortable _as a laptop_ as the recent Airs. That's a premium unto itself, I don't know if it's $500 worth, but that's a less tangible part of the equation over raw horsepower.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#178

Post by ragazzina »

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 really wish Apple would make a MacBook Air variant with display quality on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro

>The screen quality is the only reason I currently use the Pro

Well why should they, you already bought the more expensive one.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#179

Post by LuciOfStars »

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…

Warning about the case: MacBooks are not built to handle hard cases and you will destroy the hinge, screen, or both.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#180

Post by crazygringo »

overstay8930 wrote: post #158
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 sl…

> 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.

Are they? I'm a tech person and I can barely notice it at all. And I don't think I have a single non-tech friend who is even aware of the concept of video refresh rate.

Whenever there's something that doesn't feel smooth about an interface, it's because the app/CPU isn't keeping up.

I've honestly never understood why anyone cares about more than 60hZ for screens, for general interfaces/scrolling.

(Unless it's about video game response time, but that's not about "running smoother".)

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