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

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

#221

Post by onetom »

onetom wrote: post #214
m_ke wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the M1 air with 8GB and it's unusable with pycharm on an external 4K display.

Because you are most likely running the Intel version, not the Apple Silicon one! Check it in the Activity Monitor. There should be a "Kind" column on the CPU or Memory tabs. If not, you can turn on that column via a right click on the headers.

I'm using IntelliJ IDEA 2022.2 EAP (Ultimate Edition) Build #IU-222.2680.4, built on May 25, 2022 Runtime version: 17.0.3+7-b463.3 aarch64 VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o.

and it's freaking buttery smooth. notice the "aarch64" part!

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

#223

Post by jbverschoor »

I'm confused about the display size. It's smaller than the 14".

Also, the small print is outdated:

> The displays on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro have rounded corners at the top. When measured as a standard rectangular shape, the screens are 14.2 inches and 16.2 inches diagonally (actual viewable area is less).

Oh that's for the pro

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

#224

Post by adrian_b »

sydthrowaway wrote: post #57
dougmwne wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was on the same manufacturing process as the M1. There's generally a bigger boost when moving to a smaller process. But yes, there are diminishing returns, especially when you look at single core performance. Power efficiency and transistor counts are still increasing decently.

18% is pretty good for the same process. So all these gains are from microarchitectural smarts only? Or a case of Apple presenting fab gains as their own?

The 18% is for multi-threaded benchmarks.

They did not give any number for single-thread speed, so it can be expected that there the improvement is much less impressive.

They said that the little cores have been improved substantially, so it is likely that a good part of the 18% comes from the faster little cores.

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

#225

Post by coder543 »

bayindirh wrote: post #69
happyopossum wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M2 air and the M2 13" Pro have the same internal bandwidth - it's the same chip, just one has a fan and one doesn't.

Inclusion of that small fan affects the frequency range and how they handle sustained workloads. A pro won't blink while an Air will throttle to keep itself from melting. For long video and photo jobs, that really matters (or for long (>24h) running simulation/scientific code or plethora of other examples).

No, it absolutely doesn't matter for video or photo jobs, and no one is running multi-day simulations on one of these devices. If you're running such intense simulations, a theoretical 5% to 15% difference in performance makes no difference at all when you can pay a little bit more to get either a 14"/16" MBP or a Mac Studio and easily get a much more substantial 50%+ performance uplift.

The 13" MBP is a relic that should have been discontinued. It makes no sense for Apple to have kept it around.

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

#227

Post by mrtranscendence »

jbverschoor wrote: post #185
copperx wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Still the case.. People aren't productive.. haven't you noticed? It's not just notifications of the phone. Having to switch between the huge amount of apps and windows is bad even on more screens, let alone on a single screen.

Meh. I'm more productive when one thing has focus, so I prefer not having multiple applications open at once vying for my attention. One display works great for me ... I'd even shut my laptop screen if I could, but I use touch ID for authentication.

Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I've never been in a position where I thought that having more screen real estate than a large 4k display would be helpful. When I need to have more than one application visible I can do that; when I want to focus on one thing at a time I can do that too.

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

#229

Post by ricardobeat »

nabaraz wrote: post #190
cowtools wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have M1 with 8GB, it can't handle basic node.js/react app. I have to force kill node and start again every few hours. This with just browsers and apple music playing.

You must have some kind of memory leak in that app. Node uses ~200MB at startup, and is limited to 4GB unless you explicitly increase it with a flag.

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

#230

Post by stetrain »

jbverschoor wrote: post #223

I'm confused about the display size. It's smaller than the 14". Also, the small print is outdated: > The displays on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro have rounded corners at the top. When measured as a standard rectangular shape, the screens are 14.2 inches and 16.2 inches diagonally (actual viewable area is less). Oh that's for the pro

It’s most likely the same size as the previous display, but taller by the height of the webcam notch.

The horizontal display resolution is the same, the vertical resolution has increased by 64px.

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