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New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

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Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#181

Post by exadeci »

cgriswald wrote: post #6

> Before you go and start casting aspersions at Apple, the move makes a lot of sense. It'd be one thing if it did this and raised the price, but it actually lowered the price by $100, and the education discount brings it down to $999, making it the most affordable modern MacBook laptop ever (the outdated MacBook Air does not count). Which is fine for the entry-level model. Is it true for the more expensive model? The…

For such a small price drop wouldn't it be better to buy a used 2018 then?

Better specs for cheaper...

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#182

Post by mkagenius »

endorphone wrote: post #127
who_what_why wrote: post #13

1.3 GB/s vs 2 GB/s read. I think it's perfectly reasonable given most users aren't going to be doing high I/O, and if they did, they'd just get a MBP.

It's perfectly reasonable and wouldn't be noticed by the overwhelming majority of users. There is a point of diminishing returns for most uses, and this is far beyond it. Further this sort of single-sample analysis of a vendor like Apple's products is always folly. Apply doesn't advertise specific SSD units, speeds, etc, and we know that they often vary them within a product, sometimes with multiple variants on the m…

> It's perfectly reasonable and wouldn't be noticed by the overwhelming majority of users.

Apple used to launch new phones/macs with these kinds of changes, and people used to buy them for these kinds of changes -- just a little bit thinner, just a little bit more battery. And suddenly people won't notice this. I am sure if it were the other way around, Apple would have claimed to have invented a new device and would have sold them as something new. And people would have gathered in queue to buy them.

And when you do the reverse, suddenly its okay.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#183

Post by ksec »

xnyan wrote: post #122
ksec wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the relation of High Motion Video, ( Sports ) to Video Codec and Resolution. Why cant H.264 not be used? ( Which is the standard used world wide now for All Sporting Events )

It's a huge topic and I'm not a professional, but tldr Google's implementation of h264 compression is not suitable for high motion video and the changes they would need to make in order to make it suitable are not worth it in view of the trade offs of size and other factors. Why can't a $1K general purpose computer efficiently decode a royalty-free codec (hint - it may have something to do with the fact that apple ha…

>Why can't a $1K general purpose computer efficiently decode a royalty-free codec

Well the Codec is Royalty Free but not Patents Free. You only get to use it as long as you don't engage in patent litigations against Google.

And Apple does not have an major stake in H.265 or H.264 or every H.26x codec. It has a very minor stake, in the an Open Codec, not closed. Comparatively Speaking every H.26x Codec is more open than VPx and even the new AV1 Standard [1] . So this is far from WMV or RMVB.

I wonder if Google will support EVC / MPEG-5 as it is Royalty Free.

[1] https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2018/12/why-i-am-sceptical-abou...

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#184

Post by rarecoil »

tylerhou wrote: post #91
jotm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, NVMe is so fast, few people will ever need the speed. You'd have to, what, record raw video to fill it that fast? What other uses are there? Do OSes have optimisations to better use swap space?

I bought one as an upgrade disk because IMO they are easier to install. I don't need to worry about mounting, routing a cable, etc.

SATA SSDs also come in M.2 format.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#185

Post by rarecoil »

VibrantClarity wrote: post #112
rarecoil wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure if you dropped a part in there that maxed out at 512MB/s that I could even notice. I've done exactly this. I tried to run an NVMe drive and a SATA drive back-to-back in the same laptop to see if I could notice any difference in my day to day workload. I couldn't, and because of that I bought a 2TB SATA SSD instead of 2TB NVMe. SATA usually still has better power consumption than most NVMe drives, and t…

Which OS did you test this on? Every time I have used a Windows device with an NVMe drive the difference is immediately obvious, but on my Hackintosh and Linux boxes I haven't noticed any difference at all.

Arch Linux and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC. While it may be slower to use Windows, the difference hasn't been immediately obvious. I use Windows for gaming and browsing only and stay in Arch most of the time.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#186

Post by lukifer »

symlinkk wrote: post #160
lukifer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went for the 1.5TB, despite the storage upgrade being more than the computer itself. That storage point is my bare minimum to keep existing personal files (plus headroom); I was happy to pay it, it's a great machine. :D

Jesus why not put your files on an external hard drive or in the cloud?

Why would I want to carry around another device to dangle off the side, or worse, have to futz with tethering or spotty wi-fi or latency? I'd much rather have all my stuff (music in particular) consolidated and instantly on tap.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#187

Post by oarsinsync »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #61
oarsinsync wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the perfect solution, but I think changing your user-agent to iOS makes youtube deliver x264 instead of vp9

This Chrome extension will do it in a cleaner way: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihd...

Does anyone know of a similar Safari extension? Battery life remains a concern, and switching from vp9 to x264 is great, but then having to deploy Chrome instead feels like a 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards situation.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#188

Post by viraptor »

jandrese wrote: post #172
viraptor wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get the same from other companies at similar price. Just with a traditional fingerprint scanner rather than touch id (Same thing really), or a face unlock (which at least works when you have wet hands)

My experience with traditional fingerprint scanners on laptops is that they're extremely picky and won't work if you are a bit sweaty or the air is dry or the day of the week starts with a T or something. Having it fail to read your finger several times on a login pushes me back to regular passwords. The enrollment process takes forever for each finger too. Also, it doesn't work in Linux.

That is in many ways not true. I'm a happy user of a fingerprint scanner on Linux (for login and sudo). It actually took about the same time to enroll as touch id. How the scanner deals with moisture depends on the model so it's not all the same. Lenovo x1 for example it's in my experience just as bad as touchid on that scale.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#189

Post by NikkiA »

dpedu wrote: post #166
catacombs wrote: post #142

At this point, why bother buying a new MacBook?

There's proper F-keys and Escape on this one!

And now they can say 'look, consumers reject our 'real F-keys' version, so there's clearly a preference for the new macbook pro with touchbar' and ignore all criticism.

Re: New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

#190

Post by rickyc091 »

tlobes wrote: post #140
fjp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the current MacBook Air configuration with Touch ID & Retina - $1100 - is basically exactly what I (and many people) want in a personal laptop. It's light, easy to use, plenty fast for anything I do on a regular basis, and the Retina display is excellent. Unless I have reason not to trust it, Touch ID is the perfect way to log in when you: 1. want to have your computer lock after a short period of in…

I'd agree with the exception of the utterly awful keyboard & trackpad design that appeared in 2016 that seemed to skip any meaningful QA process inside Apple. The popular dust complaints aside, a brand new machine has immediate problems for someone whose palms tend to touch the newly enlarged Force Touch trackpad during typing, a hand position I got used to with my Macbook Air 2013. Typing on the new design will caus…

So there has been a lot of complaints about the keyboard, but one thing they seemed to get right was protecting it from a coffee spill. A few weeks ago, I spilled coffee with milk over my laptop. Unsure what to do, I tilted it sideways covering every key with liquid; just imagine a pond over the keyboard. I ended up using a paper towel to absorb the liquid and then ran a damp paper towel across all the keys. The keyboard is still functional to this day!

I recall spilling coffee in the past and it would completely destroy the keyboard causing the need to replace the logic board. I'm sure if Apple dissembled my keyboard they would notice a gross stain under the plastic membrane now.

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