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

221–230 of 531 posts

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#221

Post by prmph »

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…

Where does it stop? Of course having a bit more room does not hurt, but my view is that if 256GB was not enough for you, 512GB wouldn't be either.

To me it's mostly about learning to mange RAM and storage space on your machine. A lot of stuff does not need to be hoarded on the machine. Move infrequently accessed data to an external drive. Be ruthless about purging stuff you no longer really need. Refuse to run apps that consume tens of GBs of RAM on a whim (looking at you Firefox, I've been impressed with how efficient and stable the Helium browser has been for me). If you are a developer, engineer for efficient use of RAM and storage.

Like I said, 16gb RAM and 512GB storage minimum is nice, but if the fundamental issues that contribute to massive and wasteful use of resources on our machines are not addressed, nothing will be enough.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#222

Post by HanClinto »

browningstreet wrote: post #208
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…

Apple hasn't suddenly stopped being Apple. They strongly differentiate the boundaries of their product lines and have never let use case leakage spread across their product lines.

Yes, but the M3 was used in the Mac Studio as well as the Macbook Air, wasn't it?

The 128gb limitation feels like it's portrayed as a limitation of the M5 chip itself -- not just of the Macbook Air product line.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#223

Post by std_move »

orthoxerox wrote: post #220
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.

Yeah, I am not a huge fan either. I would much prefer Linux or a very customized Windows.

For instance, the inability to write to NTFS filesystems without addons is annoying.

But I believe that for most users, the default MacOS experience is now much better than what Windows is with default settings.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#224

Post by Forgeties79 »

dijit wrote: post #202
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…

Lets be real, the fact that the Air is good for developers is.. honestly, great. But these devices are meant for home users. Not a tremendous amount of home users having huge gradle/go/cargo/node packages in my experience. The backup problem is real, I'm surprised Apple doesn't come out with a new time capsule (edit: for phones/tablets)- but I guess they want that sweet iCloud services dollar.

maybe I’m forgetting all the benefits of time capsule but you can plug any old storage device into a Mac now and turn it into a “Time Machine.“ It’s pretty turnkey at this point. What would a modern time capsule offer besides maybe remote back ups?

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#225

Post by 2III7 »

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…

- thermal throttling under sustained heavy load, though apparently there is the possibility to add thermal pads to get rid of throttling, probably at the expense of comfort

- no Linux support

Otherwise I agree, it is a wonderful machine. I'd replace my crappy thinkpad if I could.

My 2014 Air is still going strong for light web browsing and terminal use.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#226

Post by eknkc »

criddell wrote: post #214
lotsofpulp wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is more like a “wish” in windows.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#227

Post by PaulHoule »

orthoxerox wrote: post #220
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.

I’ll add that MacOS is crammed with spammy ads for Apple Music and other services I don’t want. To be fair somebody wants Apple Music whereas the Microsoft versions of those things are completely unwanted.

Ads and nags in the Windows World are drawn using the same HTML-based technology that has replaced Windows native apps since Windows 8, the ads and nags in MacOS are the 2025 anti-antialiased retreads of the 1999 MacOS X imitations of the modal dialogs from 1984 MacOS classic. It’s sad. When I set up a new Mac for my wife she was furious at how ad infested it was, especially to browse the web with Safari and if you want to add an ad blocked you need an Apple Account which is something she’s done without using macs for 20+ years.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#228

Post by bilegeek »

orthoxerox wrote: post #220
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.

Eventually Asahi will catch up... if Apple doesn't turn around and purposely make it harder, hopefully we didn't just get lucky they were feeling "benevolent" with earlier M-series.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#229

Post by PaulHoule »

std_move wrote: post #223
orthoxerox wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it didn't have to run OSX.

Yeah, I am not a huge fan either. I would much prefer Linux or a very customized Windows. For instance, the inability to write to NTFS filesystems without addons is annoying. But I believe that for most users, the default MacOS experience is now much better than what Windows is with default settings.

On my Mac is is beachball… beachball… beachball… reboot… beachball… beachball… beachball.. you’d have thought somebody gets paid to make me watch the beachball for how much it happens. And this is a top of the line M4 mini with maxed out RAM and everything.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#230

Post by odiroot »

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 this one is anything like the previous ones, ThinkPad is still beating it in the keyboard department.

Plus you get x86_64 and vendor support for Linux.

X13 is probably the best equivalent in Lenovo's line.

Post reply on HN