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MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

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Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#361

Post by kowbell »

quietthrow wrote: post #183

Apple makes unbelievably good hardware and software that just lasts and just works. Until it’s 7 years old. After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser. I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple. Still Great computer…

My 2019 MacBook Pro (the last year of Intel) is now 7 years old and runs "frustratingly" well ("frustrating" in the sense that I can't justify replacing it yet, despite how badly I want to get a new one!)

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#362

Post by Scubabear68 »

beloch wrote: post #254

>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)." Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications. This model might trigger planned obsolescence legis…

I have been using an 8GB Macbook Air M1 for non-development work, and it has been fantastic.

Macos really excels at managing memory very well.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#363

Post by giancarlostoro »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #362
beloch wrote: post #254

>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)." Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications. This model might trigger planned obsolescence legis…

I have been using an 8GB Macbook Air M1 for non-development work, and it has been fantastic. Macos really excels at managing memory very well.

Heck, on Windows it would be 4GB if you're lucky.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#364

Post by turtlebits »

darkteflon wrote: post #38

I bought an 8gb M1 Air in 2020 (for what now feels like an absurdly small sum of money) as an experiment in how-cheap-is-too-cheap / chuckable travel laptop. I ended up using it as my main laptop for 2 years without regret, then handed it to my son for school. It remains in perfect condition and as delightful to use as the day I bought it (Apple software snafus notwithstanding). I fully expect to get at least 10 year…

I used mine for 5 years as my personal laptop and it was fine, even for development work. I even ran docker on it. I'm sure it had to swap at times, but SSDs are so fast now that I didn't even notice.

I don't get the hate on the base model / 8GB. If it's not enough for you, don't buy it.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#365

Post by pants2 »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #362
beloch wrote: post #254

>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)." Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications. This model might trigger planned obsolescence legis…

I have been using an 8GB Macbook Air M1 for non-development work, and it has been fantastic. Macos really excels at managing memory very well.

I used an M1 Air for developing iPhone Apps for years and it worked great. Not "wow" fast but I never had a complaint about it.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#367

Post by turtlebits »

Havoc wrote: post #108
ralfd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cmd-W closes windows and cmd-Q quits the App. That Apps can stay open without having a Window is actually useful (at least it makes sense to me). @screenshot Mac has always been kind of amazing for the granular options you get to take screenshots out of the box. • Command - Shift - 3 | Takes a fullscreen pic of the entire display. Loads a preview in the bottom right corner. Click to expand, and from there edit, share…

>cmd-W closes windows and cmd-Q quits the App. Open Finder. cmd+Q. Does it quit anything? Nope nothing happens. Open apple TV. cmd+w -> minimizes window. Open Safari. same keys - cmd+w. Closes current window? Nope. Closes tab. Open Apps. Cmd+w. Does it close window? Close Tab? Nope...third option...does fucking nothing. That's 3 different apps made by apple and preinstalled by apple...three different behaviours

[dead]

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#368

Post by leoedin »

IshKebab wrote: post #320
Aerolfos wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI or not, it's such a bad article that constantly repeats itself and spends more time (and words) promising the upcoming sections and "deep insights" than it does on actually writing any of those facts.

That is a hallmark of AI writing. It constantly thinks it has some deep insight.

This kind of breathless hyperbole is spreading everywhere. "The thing nobody's talking about" is basically never an appropriate phrase for a deeply technical article. But it's everywhere now.

I'm in two minds about this - on one hand, the AI assisted writing is probably surfacing ideas and articles that never would have been published otherwise. Either because the author isn't a great writer, or because the editing never got finished. In cases like that, maybe a bit of AI induced cliche is a price worth paying.

But on the other hand, I increasingly read half way into an article to realise that there's nothing there. It's ALL hyperbolic nothingness. It used to be that a well written article was a sign of a well thought out argument. No longer! It's made reading anything on the internet become tedious. I feel we're heading towards the death of the interesting internet at a rapid pace.

The cats out the bag though. What can we do?

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#369

Post by mey »

thenthenthen wrote: post #355
hirako2000 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M4 24gb screen broke after just 6 months. Back to m1, just 8gb*. It sometimes hang for a second or two, but you know what. I'm happy with it. That's when I have 38 tabs, two IDEs and try to grep some text on VS code.

M1 air, 16gb, second hand, 200 bucks, 200+ tabs in brave, photoshop, illustrator and premiere and kicad and sublime and chrome with one tab watching a youtube live stream. Plus text edit, notes and prolly some more apps. Works fine, zero hitch.. maybe too good for my own good.

When I spec'd a M1 air for my partner back in the day, even though she didn't really need it, I made sure to get the 16gb model for the longevity. Devices shouldn't be disposable toys. Apparently I had better foresight than expected...

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#370

Post by Rohansi »

philistine wrote: post #351
vlovich123 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that’s not based on stale information? The M series of laptops by all accounts from the ASAHI developers were written specifically to make it easier to install alternative OSes and ASAHI is no more difficult to install than Linux on a Windows machine.

Asahi Linux is only able to be installed on an M2. They basically take 2 years per new chip, when Apple releases one yearly. At this point, they'll never catch up.

M3 is taking longer than 2 years now. That came out late 2023.
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