Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#331

Post by Infernal » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

BonesJustice wrote: post #256

finchisko wrote: post #184

Am I the only one, who is excited and considering buying this thing? I'm still on 2012 Air. It's good device, but showing it's age (slow CPU and only 4GB of Ram, the screen resolution is joke). But new Air seems very compelling to me. I'll miss the magsafe though. Also I would like to know if the SSD can be upgraded later (unofficially of course). 2012 Air SSD can be replaced, using cheap reduction (from proprietary…

Out of curiosity, what is the appeal of the new MacBook Air over a regular MacBook? Is it the 13" screen vs. the 12"? I'd just assumed that when Apple introduced that crazy-thin 12" MacBook a couple years ago, it was meant to replace both product lines. I don't understand why it's necessary to maintain a third discrete product line. Why not add a 13" variant to the standard MacBook line with i5 and i7 processor choic…

A big difference - 12" MB only supports a single 4K external display, whereas MBA supports dual 4K or single 5K.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#332

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

lambda_lover wrote: post #328

maxxxxx wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on business results the Apple execs are right. To detriment of the relatively small number of professional users like software devs or photographers.

One can only hope that those software devs who create applications for both ecosystems don't leave for greener pastures, taking their software with them...

It will be interesting. I always thought that one success factor of iOS was that during that time Macbooks were incredibly popular among devs.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#333

Post by halotrope » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

I just got a surface book 2 after having trouble adjusting to the touch bar mbp. It is not perfect in any way but everything I care about (thermals, battery, performance, keyboard) got so much better. WSL is a good enough shell replacement and windows as a whole feels more productive. The touch and tablet mode is surprisingly handy. It is weird but after 10 years die-hard mac user I don’t feel it no more. No matter how hard I try, iOS keeps being a toy (media consumption/browsing) and mac has the wrong priorities. Maybe that changes with next years Pro lineup. Right now I am a refugee in the Microsoft ecosystem. And I like it.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#334

Post by kristianp » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

Dunedan wrote: post #224

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple could sell you a quad-core CPU as an purchase-time $1000 upsell they would. They don't because it doesn't fit the power budget.

I'm pretty sure there would enough power budget, as the new Macbook Air has a similar volume than the 13" MacBook Pro and the MacBook Pro is already offered with quad-core CPUs. My guess is that they want to have a clear differentiation between MacBook Air (= Dual-Core) and 13" MacBook Pro (= Quad-Core).

Only two cores for the air is bad. I would guess that only Apple will be selling a machine with a 2 core 8th gen i5. I can't see one on ark, they're all 4 core: https://ark.intel.com/products/series/122597/8th-Generation-...

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#335

Post by merb » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #238

cauthon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Love the device but I can't get over how expensive it has gotten. A 20% price bump... I got downvoted for posting this as a top-level comment, but it's insane to me how Apple's hardware specs have stagnated while maintaining the same price. In 2014 I bought an entry-level Macbook Pro with retina display, 2.6 GHz i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB SSD for $1300. In 2018 I can buy the entry-level Macbook Pro with…

I'm sympathetic to the complaint about price, but if your contention is that the devices are basically unchanged, then why buy a 2018 model? Why not buy a 2014 model? And if you don't want to make that sacrifice, then there's probably something different about the device that Apple is assuming is worth ponying up for the upgrade for you. (For starters, despite the similar clock speed and processor names, the processo…

> (For starters, despite the similar clock speed and processor names, the processors are not the same speed.)

of course not, it's at least 4 years older.

I mean that would not be fair to compare them. I have a Late 2013 Mbp 15" it was priced at ~2.200€ it was the "entry" model of the mbp 15" however if you look now the price is going to the roof. 2.799,00 € is the new price, of course the processor is now faster, there are 4 years in between (well clock speed is lower, but more cores). What else has changed? Of couse It lost it's sd slot, and also lost 256gb of ssd storage (if you want the same storage than the 2013 model you need to pay an increase of 240 €!) what did also change? the graphics card, it now is a radeon (and of course more clock speed, it's 4 years older.

So how did the price changed:

* Late 2013 15" MBP: ~2.200,00 € (cheapest)

* Curr 2018 15" MBP: 2.799,00 € (cheapest)

* 2018 15" MBP: 3.039,00 € (same storage space)

that is totally unreasonable. The processor does not cost 600 € more (btw the i7-4850HQ costed roughly ~400€ hard to say since prices of that processor aren't well known, however the current mbp uses the i7-8750H which is actually priced officaly at 400 $, so should be less euro, but keep it 1:1 it would mean no increase) of course memory prices gone through the roof, but since that's the cheapest component that would justify a maximum of 100 €.

SO tl;dr

Late 2013 to Current with newer hardware for the same price means a increase of 839 € or 599 € (you can even remove 100€ and it wouldn't be ok) if you can take the storage hit. and all you get is a touchbar, which you probably might need or not.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#336

Post by readit3 » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #152

I wonder if a lot of people are leaving the Mac ecosystem. Apple has been selling roughly ~19M Mac per year since 2012, and its new user to Mac has also been steady at ~50%. Apple has had 60M Mac user in 2012 announced in WWDC, and they has been nearing 100M since early 2017. I assume that actual number is larger than 90M at the time, so after nearly 20 Months, ~20M New Mac Users on board, it manage to add a total ~1…

Using Apple products since 2004. Design, programming, audio-video production. My last investment is Mac Book Pro 2013, custom order, maxed out. Apple of today is disgusting. Gimmicky combinations made by soulless and predictable executives who are pushing the limits of the core user base by creating false narrative made for non professional audience obsessed with hedonism. The only valuable product is the iPad Pro but only because you can’t draw with apple pencil on older devices:) Actually if Procreate makes a desktop version of their painting software for Windows this case is off. So to recap: many of my friends can’t wait for mythical Mac Pro, they are using Windows now, my decision was to go Ubuntu Mate full stack, on everything. So yes for me Apple is done, more restrictive, more expensive, more deceptive. No Steve Jobs, no consistency, no product vision, no balance. Just Theatre for the masses.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#337

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 10:02 PM UTC

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #210

rbanffy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that. At some point I disconnected mine from the room charger and the second one almost drained my battery. My laptop charged my colleague's

Would they at one point reach equilibrium though?

I confess I was a bit upset mine got bled dry. It should defend itself better.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#338

Post by aaaaaaaaaab » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #326

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do.

I recently bought wireless headphones. I have a small collection is wired headphones. Given that Apple, Google and reportedly Samsung have done away with it, and everyone still buys their phones, you have to ask yourself, how long will you hold out?

Forever. I prefer lossless music.

Not that I won’t buy an iPhone without one, as long as there’s lightning-to-jack, but I do find its removal misguided.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#339

Post by andromeduck » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #265

jjcm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HD front facing camera It amazes me that notebook makers still advertise a 720p camera as being a feature. Are we never going to get anything more than 720p for webcams? Am I the only one who wants 4k video conferencing?

Or not even 4k, I'd be good having something that matches my phone's selfie camera.

Your phone's selfie camera is significantly thicker than the display assembly here.

Re: Apple Finally Updates MacBook Air with Retina Display, Touch ID

#340

Post by merb » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

suprfnk wrote: post #293

sreque wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how anyone could reasonably conclude Apple's software is vastly superior. Apple has always been and continues to be a hardware-first company; their software always lags behind. In the past two days I've had to reboot my mac twice because the headhone jack stopped working. At my previous job, the terminal program segfaulted at least once a week. Bluetooth is notoriously flaky and requires frequent reboots…

I'm currently working in a Microsoft shop, and Windows is driving me up the wall. - Visual Studio (2017) crashes at least once a week without any kind of error reporting. It just closes. Gone. - PowerShell is absolutely terrible and all terminal emulators are terrible. They are slow, clunky, and never feel 'native' to the OS. - About a month ago I was in the middle of a problem, walked over to a colleague to discuss,…

> I could go on. There's so many annoyances, big to small. This is on a ~2 month old machine with equally fresh install of Windows 10 Pro and Visual Studio Professional. I really like C# and .NET, but Windows is driving me away.

what about introducing .net core to your team? so you can actually write more code in mac/linux