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

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

#291

Post by skygazer »

sempron64 wrote: post #69
ketzo wrote: post #49

The degree to which Apple has kinda just “won” laptops is nuts to me. $999 for an 13-inch M2 Air is just bonkers. You can easily pay $1500, even $2000 for Windows laptops that are hotter, heavier, AND slower.

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…

I buy myself supposedly overpriced Macs and never have hardware issues, but buy family, that prefer Windows, more affordable $400-800 HP/Toshiba laptops. Over the last decade and a half, the HPs/Toshibas invariably have keyboard failures within a year or two, with ignored keypresses and key labels rubbing off, and internal fans seized, overheating problems. And those cheap plastic cases are never the same once opened. I hate them so much. Although, I suspect if I spent as much on a PC that I do on a Mac, we wouldn't have those issues, but I can't bring myself to spend that much on a Windows laptop.

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

#293

Post by Solvency »

xutopia wrote: post #151
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…

I disagree with your assessment. Things that matter to me and that all Windows laptops in the same price range or lower as the MBA have shittier speakers, camera, monitor (both brightness and color accuracy). The trackpad feels entirely wrong on those plastic devices and often you have loud fans turning on at random times. Furthermore they're usually heavier despite being made out of plastic rather than metal.

Why has it been so utterly impossible for a single Windows laptop manufacturer to match the build quality? Just matching the body itself would at last be SOMETHING.

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

#294

Post by JohnBooty »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #105
JohnBooty wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's definitely "interesting" because it was a weird and user-unfriendly restriction on previous M1/M2 Airs and now it's gone. So that is interesting for sure. Perhaps more to the point, you're right -- Apple doesn't deserve to be lauded for removing something that was a dumb restriction in the first place. But it is interesting considering this is the most popular laptop in the world.

I don't think there is anything interesting. Someone on the hardware side thought it would be great to hardwire one of two the display controllers to the internal display. That would explain why M1 and M2 can't be fixed in a software update and why the Mac Mini supports two external displays. Restriction implies they made the deliberate decision to withhold or break functionally. Limitation is probably more accurate,…

    Limitation is probably more accurate
Yeah.

    I don't think there is anything interesting
From an engineering standpoint? Heck no.

From a consumer standpoint? Apple sells about six million Macs per year and the Air is their best-selling computer and anecdotally it is popular with the HN crowd. So it is objectively impactful. I would call that therefore "interesting" but at that point we're splitting semantic hairs so whatever.

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

#295

Post by dataworm »

tyingq wrote: post #283
ajross wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The MBA still can't handle more than 2 displays, though. It only supports 2 displays when it's closed.

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

#296

Post by Solvency »

theultdev wrote: post #145
justin66 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives I would pay more for an acceptable alternative - no fan, Windows 11, good battery life, top quality screen, no gimmick features (touchscreen! detachable screen! whatever). No such thing exists, as far as I can tell.

Don't forget the touch pad / gesture recognition. You can tell Windows laptops are general computers, the hardware fires off the gesture recognition and gives the command to the OS, so you swipe, it's recognized, then you get the action. On Mac, the gesture is registered as it's happening, you can pull the screen, cancel, flick it, etc. Not to mention the convenience of taking it to any Apple store and the battery li…

Can you explain technically the hardware difference here? Or is there none and Apple's track firmware/software is just better.

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

#298

Post by The5thElephant »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #267
The5thElephant wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS software "meh" in comparison? Having used Linux since forever ago, MacOs was "meh" to me because while it is a unix, it was just different enough for me to find it "meh". IOW, I found it to be "meh" for the fact that it just wasn't Linux. You sound offended, don't be.

I am not offended at all, just curious and your reply confirmed my assumption?

Genuinely, how did you get offended out of that?

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

#299

Post by opan »

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…

I've got a M2 Max MBP I'm not using yet because there's no way to get sshfs/fuse working with free as in freedom software on macOS, and Asahi doesn't support external displays yet, so it can't take over for my ThinkPad T440p with either OS.

Package management and package availability is much worse in the macOS world. Nix is weirdly broken, at least the ARM macOS packages. Homebrew is okay but not very good, similar to Chocolatey on Windows.

When you need extra software for something on macOS, chances are it's proprietary and may even cost money. This is not the norm at all in the GNU/Linux world, and it comes off as quite disturbing to me. It's like a community of everyone scamming and mistreating each other instead of working together to improve things.

I'm not even a dev, for the record. GNU/Linux is just what works best for me.

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

#300

Post by jdc0589 »

> all in its strikingly thin and light

how about we make them thicker, so there's enough room to keep the screen from eventually touching the keys when closed and permanently marring it after a few years. I guess, its only been happening since 2007, probably not enough time to come up with a solution.

/rant

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