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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

#241

Post by onetom »

colinmhayes wrote: post #156
jmyeet wrote: post #31

The 24GB unified memory is a really nice upgrade (the M1 MBA has 8GB upgradeable to 16GB). The CPU/GPU upgrades are predictable and wlecome but the memory is huge. A lot of development isn't CPU bound but is memory bound or at least can really benefit from more memory. This upgrade makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads. I have a MBP (Intel) but it's expensive. Getting a viable machine for $1…

The macbook air with 24gb memory and 512gb ssd is $1800, not $1200. Another $100 if you want the extra GPU cores.

I'm using 256GB machines for Clojure development in IntelliJ since 2017 and I never run out of disk space. I have 36GB of photos and 10GB of iPhone backups on iCloud Drive though.

The trick is not to mix your personal stuff, like movies, photos and music with your work stuff. Also make sure you regularly clean up the older versions of the software you use, including Docker layer caches, brew / nix packages, JetBrains IDEs, browser caches, etc. If you are not doing audio/video work, then removing iMovie and GarageBand frees up 4.5GB. Similarly Keynote/Numbers/Pages 2GB.

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

#242

Post by dylan604 »

copperx wrote: post #121
mrtranscendence wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I suspect they have market research to the effect that only a small proportion of users have or want multiple screens, and of those who do, they're likely to buy a more expensive model in the first place. Basically everyone I know has gone the route of a single large display, Mac user or not.

> 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?

Seeing as there are single large monitors with more pixels than those multiple back in the day monitors, it makes sense. People ran multiple screens to get the real estate. There was always a fight on how to arrange them to minimize the gaps from the bezels. Now, it's one screen, no interrupting bezels and more pixels.

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

#243

Post by tarentel »

gnicholas wrote: post #228

Looks like these will be "available next month". Usually they say when you can order, but I've not seen that detail. Anyone have more info on how to get my grubby little hands on one?

They're having supply issues like everyone else. A bunch of their computers are on back order right now. Probably your best bet is to order one now and hope a ton of other people aren't doing the same.

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

#244

Post by npongratz »

For every new device Apple markets, I'm curious if they still have that famed "#courage" they so loudly advertised a while back. Let's take a look at the tech specs:

https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/

> 3.5 mm headphone jack

Nice.

I am unhappy it's on the righthand side, but I won't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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

#245

Post by booi »

colechristensen wrote: post #139
copperx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a third-party charger that can deliver that wattage?

Pretty sure my Dell charger puts out nearly 100W, not sure how compatible it is actually though Edit: It is a power supply that came with an XPS 15 The text on the brick claims 5V 1A and 20 V 6.5 A, missing 9V and 15V levels and the current on 20V seems not to be standard. It does charge everything I have plugged it into, but they might all be falling back to 5V1A. The back text could also just not be telling the tru…

I've used them to good success. USB-PD is well defined I think and I've not run into issues if it's supported.

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

#246

Post by jcranberry »

alwillis wrote: post #136
Kognito wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. It's more complicated than that; if you look at the reviews and tests 8GB M1 machines, you'll see there were no issues like the ones you're mentioning. The pipeline between the unified RAM and the SSD is so fast, it's essentially a L3 cache as apposed to swap as in the way we traditionally think about it.

That certainly hasn't been my experience on my M1 Max MBP. When it swaps, I can immediately tell.

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

#247

Post by trenchgun »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #180
ppeetteerr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot faster and of higher quality now. Those numbers do not reflect the speed of the ram, the speed of the memory, the quality of the screen, or the performance of the CPU

In addition to that, today's 2000 GBP are more comparable to 1600 GBP in 2012 due to inflation.

Also, software bloat means that the old macbook can't do shit with today's software.

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

#248

Post by null_shift »

na85 wrote: post #153
achow wrote: post #13

Macbook Pro 13" is smaller than Macbook Air at 13.6". What's the point of Macbook Pro 13"?

Why do you drop the "the"?

A pretentious naming convention that Apple uses to make their devices seem more important than they really are.

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

#249

Post by [deleted] »

luluthefirst wrote: post #213
dgellow wrote: post #202

I hoped the notch would be just an experiment and Apple would get rid of it the next iteration. It seems I was wrong. It looks so weird to have your top menu bar split in two, I really don’t get why it is necessary.

For people undecided because of the notch, it might not look as clean on photographs but in practice, macOS knows that it's there and they did a good job in order to avoid displaying anything behind it. It's empty space, and the whole row goes completely black in most fullscreen cases too as the screen is 16:10 BELOW the menu bar. You forget it as easily as you forget that you have a nose right in the middle of your…

[deleted]

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

#250

Post by gorbypark »

bitwize wrote: post #160
UmbertoNoEco wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400 USD for a 16GB upgrade is daylight street robbery. The power of brands.

For slow-ass DIMM memory, sure. But we're talking on-die integrated memory that's leagues ahead of any PC memory in performance.

It's actually in-package, not on-die. It's still insanely fast, though.
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