Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MacBook Air with M5

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 531 posts

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#211

Post by bhouston »

ajross wrote: post #141
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).

> absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box. The news here isn't "The M5 Air is a disappointment", it's "Laptops are commoditized and boring".

As a Windows-based developer from 1996 to 2015 and then Linux from 2015 to 2020, I can say that my dev experience is immeasurably better using a Mac.

The ranking is MacOS >> Linux >> Windows. The Apple ecosystem is expensive but worth it if you can afford it (iPhone + Watch + iPad + AirPods + Mac.)

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#212

Post by criddell »

actionfromafar wrote: post #46
gozzoo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has always been like this. Apple's signature for their laptops is their aluminium body and people seem to like it.

I like the touchpad. Is there any competitor which is as good and exact? I noticed in Linux, it's not as exact.

Thinkpad touchpads are mediocre at best. Dell’s are a little worse than that IMHO.

I don’t understand why other laptop manufacturers don’t copy the Apple trackpad.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#213

Post by cco »

HanClinto wrote: post #201

Is it weird to anyone else that the M5 keeps the same limitations of the M4, and tops out at 128 GB of RAM? If one wants to serve large-ish LLMs locally, an M3 Mac Studio w/ 512 GB/RAM is still a super compelling option, and I was hoping that the M5's would bump us up to 1TB of unified memory. Don't get me wrong -- seeing them use LMStudio as the benchmark for measuring local LLM inference is super awesome for the lo…

I tremble to think at the cost of 1TB of ram in an apple laptop.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#214

Post by criddell »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #187
elxr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news, intel panther lake (and the laptops they come in) are on par with M5 macbooks in almost every way. This year is a lot more competitive than any of the past ~4 years for premium laptops. The asus expertbook ultra even has a much better screen, a much better keyboard, and a very similar haptic trackpad. Weighs less than a 13 inch macbook air too. There's cheaper options too that are close to as good (minus t…

Are there any non-Apple laptops yet where you can just close the lid and put the laptop in your bag and not worry about it being on?

You can go into Windows settings and change what happens when you close the lid to hibernate or power down.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#215

Post by giwook »

studmuffin650 wrote: post #196
giwook wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what are some good use cases for a MBP now with the MBAs being so powerful? I can think of things like 4K video editing or 3D rendering but as a software engineer is there anything we really need to spend the extra money on an MBP for? I'm currently on a M1 Max but am seriously considering switching to an MBA in the next year or two.

I’ve hit limitations of M1 Max pros all the time (generally memory and cpu speeds while compiling large c++ projects) Airs are good for the general use case but some development (rust, C++) really eat cores and memory like nothing else.

What are your specs?

That does seem to fit the bill though of being more of a niche use case for which MBPs will be best suited for going forward.

Seems like most devs who are not on rust/c++ projects will be just fine with an Air equipped with enough memory.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#216

Post by std_move »

This is the best laptop for the general consumer around $1k.

  - it has no annoying fans, it is completely silent
  - a high res display with no PWM flickering and reasonable response times, no burn-in issues, enough brightness for outdoor use
  - best-in-class hardware, very very efficient, amazing single thread performance, good multi thread, very good GPU
  - no Microsoft Windows annoyances, ads, bloatware, broken stuff all the time
  - much better real world performance on battery than x64 processors (!). you can get reasonable perf by setting Intel/AMD CPUs to high perf, but then goodbye battery life and get ready for very loud fans. this is simply a point not emphasized enough, the real world battery perf of Intel/AMD laptops is very sluggish on default power modes and despite that, they consume more battery than the M5
  - amazing battery life
  - good workmanship, no creaking, good hardware overall (mics, webcam, keyboard, touchpad!)
  - very good speakers
There is simply nothing comparable in the Windows laptop world. You can maybe get a cheaper Windows laptop but it will be terrible in almost everything - the new Apple budget MacBooks will probably be a much better choice. And around $1000, there is no comparison. I wish it was different.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#218

Post by dubeye »

Xeoncross wrote: post #74

I'm glad the air now comes standard with 16GB of RAM and 512GB disk space. It's not that the M1 with 8/256GB was slow at all, but even browsing the web gets into 12GB of usage and exhausting the 256GB is fairly easy if you backup your 256GB phone, try to edit a few videos, download enough Gradle/Go/Cargo/Node packages, or install enough 20GB office apps. Any apple silicon with 16GB / 512GB of stage (even the M1 serie…

I have an M3 8gb air and it' mostly fine, unless I have a node server running or similar. Otherwise it's not very different to my M4 16gb iMac

I've no idea what the storage is on either of them, I've never looked. The days of needing storage are behind me, personally

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#219

Post by 0xffff2 »

allthetime wrote: post #178
TingPing wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it? I have my old M1 Air and I am very curious but don't want to go through the trouble of fiddling about with linux for a few days just to leave it rotting after. I would be inclined to maintain a dual boot situation as well and SSD space is at a premium.

As far as I can tell, Asahi actually requires dual boot. There doesn't seem to be an option to install it standalone. (But I have an M4 Air, so I'm not able to install it yet)

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#220

Post by orthoxerox »

std_move wrote: post #216

This is the best laptop for the general consumer around $1k. - it has no annoying fans, it is completely silent - a high res display with no PWM flickering and reasonable response times, no burn-in issues, enough brightness for outdoor use - best-in-class hardware, very very efficient, amazing single thread performance, good multi thread, very good GPU - no Microsoft Windows annoyances, ads, bloatware, broken stuff a…

If only it didn't have to run OSX.
Post reply on HN