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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

#291

Post by yardie »

bombcar wrote: post #163
ZetaZero wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M1 Pro/Max have multiple GPUs, one in each CPU cluster.

Whatever wizard at Apple came up with "the number of monitors" as a distinguishing difference between price levels should get a pretty big raise. It's perfect segmentation, most people don't care, and those that do will pay.

The Touchbar in the 13" MBP counts as a display. So the Pro already runs 2 displays and can add a third. The same GPU+CPU is in the MBA which only runs 1 + 1 external display. It't not a limitation of GPU or whatever they want you to believe. This is pure market segmentation.

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

#292

Post by criddell »

zekrioca wrote: post #207
criddell wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe multi-monitor is considered a pro feature?

M1 Mac Mini does natively support up to two external monitors – one via the HDMI port and a second via USB-C.

Yeah, they seem to treat their desktop machine differently.

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

#293

Post by colechristensen »

booi wrote: post #245
colechristensen wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I strongly suspect it isn't standards conforming USB-PD

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

#294

Post by hxegon »

grumpyprole wrote: post #279
apozem wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be rude but this is an inaccurate and poor understanding of computers. The entire chip architecture of the Mac changed since 2010. 16 gigs of RAM on an M1-based chip gets you much, much better performance than 16 gigs on an Intel chip from 10 years ago. Even the RAM and SSD stats you cite are apples and oranges - both have gotten dramatically faster in the last decade.

> Not to be rude but this is an inaccurate and poor understanding of computers Not to be rude, but a poor understanding of computers would be to think that speed is all that matters. Software has only been getting more and more complex and bloated over the last 10 years. What good is 16GB of super fast RAM if the machine is swapping out to disk regularly?

Generally won't be swapping that often I would think, but besides the point because swap with SSDs (that are as good as the ones in MBs) isn't a big performance hit like it used to be. Swap also doesn't degrade SSD lifetimes like it used to.

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

#295

Post by cassianoleal »

grumpyprole wrote: post #279
apozem wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be rude but this is an inaccurate and poor understanding of computers. The entire chip architecture of the Mac changed since 2010. 16 gigs of RAM on an M1-based chip gets you much, much better performance than 16 gigs on an Intel chip from 10 years ago. Even the RAM and SSD stats you cite are apples and oranges - both have gotten dramatically faster in the last decade.

> Not to be rude but this is an inaccurate and poor understanding of computers Not to be rude, but a poor understanding of computers would be to think that speed is all that matters. Software has only been getting more and more complex and bloated over the last 10 years. What good is 16GB of super fast RAM if the machine is swapping out to disk regularly?

> a poor understanding of computers would be to think that speed is all that matters.

> What good is 16GB of super fast RAM if the machine is swapping out to disk regularly?

If the swapping is fast enough not to be noticeable, then speed is all that matters. In fact, if SSDs were about as fast as RAM, we wouldn't need RAM at all!

The whole reason why we have all these layers of memory (disk, RAM, L3, L2 and L1 cache, etc) is exactly speed, nothing else. The closer to the CPU, the faster, but also more expensive.

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

#296

Post by FireBeyond »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #199
hugi wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need 8GB just to run "modern" web applications, let alone develop them.

Tell me you haven’t used an M1 device without telling me. People getting their hands on 8GB M1 MacBook Airs in the early days were saying the memory management and performance were making it snappier than the 16GB Intel MacBooks.

And then shortly thereafter they were saying that their SSDs were getting _hammered_ with swap. Very fast swap, but constant R/W on those devices.

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

#297

Post by bredren »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #135
geerlingguy wrote: post #17

The biggest question I have is whether it has WiFi 6E or just WiFi 6 (2x2 80 MHz like the original M1 MacBook Air). That's the one thing that's kind of gimped it for me—if I could get more WiFi bandwidth, especially with the ProRes decoding built into the M2, I might be able to edit 4K video over my network wirelessly for the first time. Would be amazing. To be clear, I still think the M1 Air was the best portable la…

> the best portable laptop Apple made since the 11" Air before it was discontinued I used to have an 11" Air as a daily driver. The portability was nice but I'd never go back to a computer that small. Too cramped, too little screen real estate, too small a battery. It doesn't surprise me that 11" laptops are rare these days.

I used four generations of the MBA, including the 11" 2015. That was definitely the pinnacle of value / performance in Apple's laptop line until the M1.

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

#298

Post by qzw »

GordonS wrote: post #220
theshrike79 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Face ID and some lidar stuff most likely, the notch being the same shape and size as the iPhone one is not a coincidence.

Lidar... in a laptop?!

Right? And not in a Tesla that’s supposed to drive itself.

(They’re not the same kinds of LiDAR, but still…)

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

#299

Post by bredren »

geerlingguy wrote: post #17

The biggest question I have is whether it has WiFi 6E or just WiFi 6 (2x2 80 MHz like the original M1 MacBook Air). That's the one thing that's kind of gimped it for me—if I could get more WiFi bandwidth, especially with the ProRes decoding built into the M2, I might be able to edit 4K video over my network wirelessly for the first time. Would be amazing. To be clear, I still think the M1 Air was the best portable la…

They could add it after the fact. The Mac Mini M1 launched with only a regular Ethernet port. They added 10GB as an option ~5 months later.

https://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-get-a-10gbps-ethernet-port-o...

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

#300

Post by jcytong »

Kognito wrote: post #92
rozenmd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For web dev the base model (8GB RAM) MacBook Air M1 is a viable dev machine - makes the maxed out i7 MacBook Pro I had from work feel sluggish in comparison.

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.

I have a MBA 16GB and everything is fine until I use Docker. It's under constant memory pressure and I was looking into getting a 32/64GB Macbook Pro 14 M1 Pro max. But really dreaded the additional weight/size of the laptop + 96W power brick which is an additional of ~2 lb
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