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New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

apple.com

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Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#281

Post by sciencesama »

nerdjon wrote: post #235
skadamat wrote: post #160

I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild

It sucks since the M series laptops have been amazing, with this one glaring problem. I have a great M2 pro machine, but officially it can only support 2 external monitors. I should be able to close my screen and power 3. I can do this with a dock so it's not a resources problem. I am curious what is different between the Air and the Pro that the Air can power 2 external monitors (it does say when the lid is closed)…

I fixed this by using this dock Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Workstation Dock - DK2131

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#283

Post by tyingq »

ajross wrote: post #182
skadamat wrote: post #160

I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild

It's on-chip silicon, not a marketing feature. This kind of product design is just really hard. Mask sets get well into the billions of dollars, you can't just assemble a list of features as if they're all free. You need to decide upfront, often years in advance, what feature you think people will want to buy for the market you think you'll find yourself in. There are no easy answers. But just in general, Intel has a…

It does seem odd, though, to brand a laptop as "PRO" and limit it to 2 displays, then release a non-PRO device that can handle more.

Edit: Better wording, I suppose, that the non-PRO supports two external monitors with the lid closed, the PRO supports 1. Still an odd overall offering/branding.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#284

Post by Solvency »

briffle wrote: post #226
sempron64 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. It is probably the best laptop in the $1K price range for laptops that don't have a GPU, but that's basically it. The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that there is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs, processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical quality…

My Asus zenbook 14 is around that price, has a 1TB disk, and 16GB of ram. I'm sure the processor on the M3 is faster, and probably a fair amount more battery out of it, but now I'm comparing a $1000 zenbook to a $1700 13' macbook once I add disk and memory, without the upgraded cpu.

And it feels like a cheap piece of flexible creaky plastic.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#285

Post by Solvency »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #232
Teever wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop Parametric CAD isn't coming to Mac anytime soon. I had no problems with Fusion360 running under Rosetta 2 and Autodesk recently released an Apple Silicon version of Fusion360.

Sorry, I was thinking more along the lines of SolidWorks and Alibre which aren't so web-based.

Switch to Fusion or Rhino/Grasshopper.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#286

Post by [deleted] »

skyyler wrote: post #60
gxs wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is far from a "genuine" question. It's easy to deduce that it's a big deal for macbook air users because it wasn't possible before. It's easy to deduce both from the article and from other comments here, which presumably you read if you're going through the trouble of responding to someone else's comment. I typically despise this type of question, where you're obviously trying to make a point but playing dumb an…

It seems like their question struck a nerve. Did you really feel it necessary to bring up hot political issues to explain why it's interesting that the new apple laptops can drive two external displays? Just for clarity, it's so far from novel in the world of windows laptops that it's genuinely confusing why that would be an advertised feature.

[deleted]

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#287

Post by ephemeral-life »

the-grump wrote: post #14
dangoodmanUT wrote: post #9

it's so clear that they limit it to 24GB to prevent cannibalization of the macbook pro. I personally could go for a M3 base chip with 64GB or 128GB of memory.

And, of course, it starts at 8GB of RAM to nudge you up from $1100 to $1300/$1500. At which point you might as well spring for the Pro. I can't fault the business logic but as someone who'd only use a Mac for occasional iOS development, this nudging upward dissuades me from pursuing that idea altogether.

If you only use it for occasional ios dev, rather get a mac mini. As a bonus, when your done with it, put asahi linux on it and itd be a great home server.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#289

Post by [deleted] »

The5thElephant wrote: post #252
HumblyTossed wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a year and a half ago, I was looking to get a new MBPro to replace my existing one. I loved the hardware, but having used Linux since the alphabet floppies, the software was always meh. So I was in Costco one day and they had cheap Lenovo ideapads (Ideapad 5 Pro 14") on sale for something like $700US. I bought one, put Pop_OS! on it and it's been running great since. Has and AMD processor, 16GB RAM and a 512GB…

I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS software "meh" in comparison? I have a few friends who are Linux devotees yet watching them do stuff seems so tedious and slow in comparison to my workflows. Like I get that you can setup all sorts of keyboard shortcuts and stuff to do whatever you want, but that's also possible in MacOS, so what is it exactly that you can do better/faster in Pop_OS? For most of…

[deleted]

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#290

Post by nerdjon »

sciencesama wrote: post #281
nerdjon wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks since the M series laptops have been amazing, with this one glaring problem. I have a great M2 pro machine, but officially it can only support 2 external monitors. I should be able to close my screen and power 3. I can do this with a dock so it's not a resources problem. I am curious what is different between the Air and the Pro that the Air can power 2 external monitors (it does say when the lid is closed)…

I fixed this by using this dock Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Workstation Dock - DK2131

I fixed my issue as well with a dock from UGreen and the DisplayLink software. Just unfortunate I had to do it.
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