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MacBook Air with M5

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Re: MacBook Air with M5

#251
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Air lineup was thinner in the front and seemed a little lighter. The thicker front on newer airs gives more battery life, but I'm not a fan of it.

The thinness at the front was a bit of a hack though wasn’t it? So Steve Jobs could make it look good in photographs. I’d take the extra battery life any day.

I have the M1 MBA and M5 MBP. The wedge MBA feels noticeably thinner and the MBP feels kind of chonky in comparison. It's a bigger difference moving them one-handed than the specs would indicate.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#252

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.

How’s ACPI and real suspend (not that “fake” soft suspend) these days? I’m still burned after running Linux on a laptop since 2002 and not having proper power management for suspend :(

… if it’s not the power layer, it’s the network, video, Bluetooth that won’t power up anymore after a nap

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#253

  The difference is in the number of GPU cores. One chip has an 8-core GPU, while the other has a 10-core GPU.
I'm wondering why they would have a 2 GPU core option. Maybe the 6 GPU one is binned since it is only available with 16G RAM? But no, the 10 GPU core is also needed for any storage increase....

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#254
post #141

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".

$350 windows box probably isn't silent like the MBA

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#255

I refuse to buy macbooks/apple products and advise my people to do the same. I make it clear it's not about specs, it's not about UI, its about the fact that apple makes the world actively worse so they can sell you a better alternative. You cant have iMessage anywhere else because they don't want you to, you are locked into apple stores because they refuse competition, you cant repair your own device because they ge…

what are you poor? If you need to repair something its probably junked anyway, I used to work at geeksquad. Most common "repairs" people were bringing laptops in for were liquid spills. Take a quick hike back to the computer section.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also bought a ThinkPad X1 back in 2015. Used it for 9 years with no issues at all. I installed Linux on it last year and still use it.

why did you create a throwaway account for this

Maybe they work for Apple

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#257

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…

I prefer the Dell Rugged line or Thinkpads, since a single water droplet on the keyboard is enough to kill this laptop.

The new Apple keyboard seems to fix itself. Once my command key had fallen down. It actually fixed itself somehow. I think it’s got whatever miracle metal snaps back into shape in there. And my kid has been using my old laptop and leaving crumbs; when a crumb gets under the key you feel it, but just press it in and destroy the crumb and the key is fine.

I remember the old keyboard because I got so sick of it I snapped the laptop in half in a rare fit of disgust (I was under a lot of stress at the time).

Overall, Apple blew it out of the park, and I happily forgive the earlier problems. Now I hope that Tahoe is just some kind of planned demolition phase before they introduce a totally new unsurpassable stable OS.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#258

Not exciting at all, but a nice incremental upgrade. I always enjoy incremental upgrades from Apple as they're usually significant, and 4 years worth of increments add up to big leaps, to the point my 8 year upgrade cycle is usually quite exciting. Though a bit disappointing that it came with a $100 (almost 10%, above inflation) price bump. There's not much point to a spec bump when it's paired with a price bump, and…

M5 is not an incremental upgrade, it has MTE.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#259

I refuse to buy macbooks/apple products and advise my people to do the same. I make it clear it's not about specs, it's not about UI, its about the fact that apple makes the world actively worse so they can sell you a better alternative. You cant have iMessage anywhere else because they don't want you to, you are locked into apple stores because they refuse competition, you cant repair your own device because they ge…

I would normally strongly agree, I don't like Apple as a company - for example the Apple store and Patreon 30 % tax https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46801419 Their policies overall.

However there is no comparable laptop hardware in the non-Apple world. Even if I wanted to pay double, there is no usable fanless high-quality quick laptop. Very sadly. The Air is just too good for the money and the competition too bloody incompetent and bad.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My 128GB RAM M3 Max had logic board replaced 3x and I am still getting beachball alongside screen falling apart in blocks... There is something wrong with their firmware, especially when you are switching between multiple users often.
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