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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

#351

Post by cassianoleal »

pxmpxm wrote: post #319
petercooper wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, if SSDs were about as fast as RAM, we wouldn't need RAM at all! Just in case anyone was curious, I looked into this recently, assuming 7-8GB/s was pretty darn fast, but dual channel DDR2 RAM was doing such speeds in 2002. So a high end SSD is about as fast as 20 year old memory, if you ignore latency.

Ah beat me to it! The idea that Mx swapping to NVME is essentially no-op from performance perspective is patently wrong.

I don't know what people are reading into my comment. I said _if_ SSD speeds were comparable to RAM, RAM wouldn't be needed. The reason we need it is precisely because disk is slower and cheaper.

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

#352

Post by cassianoleal »

alsetmusic wrote: post #324
cassianoleal wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

You’re describing your results on an Intel Mac. They aren’t relevant to this particular bit of the discussion. And, owning two different M1 laptops, I concur that the relationship between the RAM and SSD and M1 SoC yields fundamentally different results from prior hardware. The result is stunning.

I assume you are responding to pxmpxm's comment. :)

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

#353

Post by postalrat »

axlee wrote: post #148
BoumTAC wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker

Not Docker, webpack. Your run-of-the-mill webpack dev server will happily gulp gigabytes of RAM, and pray that your frontend dev stack only runs one of them. Your IDE will probably use a few more gigabytes on top of that for static analysis and autocompletion, and that's how you need at least 8-10GB to run develop your average mid-size web app without swapping.

How about the rest of the app? Database servers, other servers, more servers, other services, etc all running in docker.

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

#354

Post by bombcar »

egypturnash wrote: post #341
yardie wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does it? The touch bar is something like 2170x60px. That's a tiny fraction of the processing power and data bandwidth compared to an actual screen. In terms of raw pixel count, it's only about 2x as many pixels as my old Commodore 64 would push every frame. Each of those pixels is a lot deeper but it's still probably pretty much a rounding error compared to how much is being dealt with for the internal screen, never…

If the Touch Bar could refresh at 60 hz or something, maybe it's a display.

But if it (as it actually is I suspect) a USB connected thing that refreshes very slowly, it's not a display at all.

And the MacBook Air can take a USB "monitor" for whatever that's worth.

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

#355

Post by vetinari »

bayindirh wrote: post #41
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…

From the specs: -802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking -IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac compatible Both same on the Pro and Air M2.

For a bit more detailed wifi specs: https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/macbook-pro-wi-fi...

(It is not updated for the new models yet).

However, for 2020 & 2021 models is nothing out of ordinary: 2x2 ax, max 80 MHz wide channels. Basically what every other vendor at the market offers.

During 2019, they went a step backwards: from 3x3 MIMO to 2x2 MIMO. Granted, many APs do not support more than 2x2, but there are models on the market that do, and those who care about these things had a choice. Now, it is join the averages.

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

#356

Post by grishka »

dgellow wrote: post #202

I hoped the notch would be just an experiment and Apple would get rid of it the next iteration. It seems I was wrong. It looks so weird to have your top menu bar split in two, I really don’t get why it is necessary.

The notch doesn't get in the way in daily use as much as it would seem. Look at it this way: without the notch, that area would've been useless black glass. But with the notch, the menu bar doesn't eat into the continuous part of the screen yet remains fully functional, effectively giving you more usable screen area.

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

#357

Post by coldtea »

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?

>Software has only been getting more and more complex and bloated over the last 10 years

That's just some handwaving complain that doesn't mean much.

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

Try

- opening 2 Linux/Windows VMs on that 2012 laptop

- or opening a big Logic project with 100 tracks, convolution reverbs, high end AU/VSTs, and so on

- or opening and editing several 8K, ney, 4K video streams, and slap some VFX nodes on them...

- or running a programming IDE like Idea

- or compiling a large C++ codebase

... and several other tasks, and compare running the same on the 2022 machine.

Since "software has only been getting more and more complex and bloated over the last 10 years" it should be comparable, right?

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

#358

Post by pxmpxm »

alsetmusic wrote: post #324
cassianoleal wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

You’re describing your results on an Intel Mac. They aren’t relevant to this particular bit of the discussion. And, owning two different M1 laptops, I concur that the relationship between the RAM and SSD and M1 SoC yields fundamentally different results from prior hardware. The result is stunning.

What relationship would that be? The DDR4x ram in the M1 can hit 70gb/sec, compared to 7gb/sec and ~3.5gb/sec average for the NVME. There's no amount of magic to get around those facts.

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

#359

Post by cassianoleal »

pxmpxm wrote: post #313
cassianoleal wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Apple must've spent a fortune on marketing bamboozlement ("you don't need as much RAM with apple silicone") that even people on HN now seem to parrot it. NVME is around two orders of magnitude slower than DDR3 RAM, so as soon as your heap is tapped out you'll hit a performance wall. As I sit here and type this, my 10.15.7 Catalina desktop is sitting at 12.25Gb of used memory with 2 Edge tabs and an open Citrix sessio…

> even people on HN now seem to parrot it.

There's no need for personal attacks.

> as soon as your heap is tapped out you'll hit a performance wall.

Yes, probably. Two points though:

1. My comment was that _if_ SSD performance was comparable to RAM, there would be no need for the latter.

2. I have very rarely swapped on my 16Gb M1 Air, and when I did I only noticed later when looking back at graphs. I'm sure there was a performance hit but I never felt it.

> Any actual, professional use will put you way north of even 16gb.

I do plenty of actual, professional use on my 16Gb M1 Air. Right now I have 3 VS Code windows open compiling Go code, running acceptance tests and whatnot. I also have Mail, Safari (with tens of tabs) and Firefox (with >100 tabs) open. A few minutes ago I also had Slack open on it. I regularly start iTerm to do terminal tasks.

You must have an Intel machine. I had a powerful fully specced 32Gb i9 16" MBP. This cheap and humble 16Gb passively cooled M1 blows it right out of the water in every single aspect. It's even better at running Intel Docker images!

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

#360

Post by coldtea »

pxmpxm wrote: post #313
cassianoleal wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Apple must've spent a fortune on marketing bamboozlement ("you don't need as much RAM with apple silicone") that even people on HN now seem to parrot it. NVME is around two orders of magnitude slower than DDR3 RAM, so as soon as your heap is tapped out you'll hit a performance wall. As I sit here and type this, my 10.15.7 Catalina desktop is sitting at 12.25Gb of used memory with 2 Edge tabs and an open Citrix sessio…

>Any actual, professional use will put you way north of even 16gb.

Well, I use my M1 (16 GB) for heavy video editing and music sessions, plus professional programming, with IDEA, VMs, and so on. And I don't seem to ever need even close to 16GB, much less "way north", or even saw it be slow.

>As I sit here and type this, my 10.15.7 Catalina desktop is sitting at 12.25Gb of used memory with 2 Edge tabs and an open Citrix session. Any actual, professional use will put you way north of even 16gb.

Maybe it's time to come over to M1 and 12.4?

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