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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

#371

This looks like what the Macbook (2015) wanted to be. Keyboard and single port aside, it was a fantastic form factor, albeit crushingly slow. Mine no longer holds a charge, and am eagerly awaiting replacing it with one of these. Over time I've also noticed I no longer care about having the fastest possible laptop, since my job provides me with an MBP and that's where serious work gets done. I have a feeling this is g…

New one is heavy, much more so than 12" one

agree, still hold out hope for a new 12 inch at some point, apple silicon makes me optimistic ^^

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose, then? Should they just not say anything at all? Or is your contention that the product should not even exist?

Yes, they should say nothing at all. Instead of saying things like "This means that every Mac Apple creates, from design to manufacturing, will be 100 percent carbon neutral." Carbon Neutrality is branding and does nothing to reverse CO2 or climate change. It is all green washing. https://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article256-the-carbon-ne... Better for the environment is never buying another computer. Yes, I am say…

While I appreciate where you're coming from, your conclusion seems to imply there is no world in which technology and a sustainable future can coexist. I realize we are closer to the end now than ever before, but what you are suggesting is that the ending is inevitable. If this is true - we've triggered our downfall and nothing can stop it - then should we not be praising companies that make efforts towards sustainability?

Since we can't just put things back into a box, isn't complaining about marketing like this just barking up entirely the wrong tree? If the premise is that technology ideally shouldn't exist in its current form, then that requires an entirely different discussion built on an entirely different foundation, and Apple's marketing claims are just a small distraction at best.

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

#373

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.

Honestly haven’t noticed the notch on my MacBook Pro in months until reading this comment. It really does disappear after a little while

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

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to refresh fast enough to run Doom on it. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/21/13697058/...

Framerate's hard to determine from a youtube video of someone pointing a camera at it, single-stepping has some things seeming to move at the same framerate as the camera but redrawing the whole screen as the player moves around looks more like 1/3 of the camera's framerate to me.

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

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sev…

I don't understand the point you are trying to make here. I wish you luck getting a 2022 Apple machine with 8GB of RAM to handle 2 VMs, IntelliJ, a logic project with 100 tracks or 4K video editing. These tasks are all limited by available RAM and the available RAM has not significantly increased since 2012 (my point).

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New one is heavy, much more so than 12" one

"Heavy"

As far as I’m concerned, basically all of these computers are light compared to the multi kg 14” Toshiba I lugged around in the 2000s

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

#377

This looks like what the Macbook (2015) wanted to be. Keyboard and single port aside, it was a fantastic form factor, albeit crushingly slow. Mine no longer holds a charge, and am eagerly awaiting replacing it with one of these. Over time I've also noticed I no longer care about having the fastest possible laptop, since my job provides me with an MBP and that's where serious work gets done. I have a feeling this is g…

> Mine no longer holds a charge That should be trivial to fix with a battery update. 5-6-7 years is a good run...

my older macbooks (air and pro) had a swollen battery which ruined the main boards and were no longer replaceable in practical terms. I'd get it replaced sooner than later if you're planning on doing so.

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

#378
post #277

Cannot believe the updated base MBP has the old Touch Bar. Why can’t they give us back our function keys? EDIT: and is now the only laptop without MagSafe? There are more ports on the new MBA!

>Cannot believe the updated base MBP has the old Touch Bar. Why can’t they give us back our function keys? It's truly bizarre. They must have 10 million of the old laptop bodies in a warehouse or something?

  > They must have 10 million of the old laptop bodies in a warehouse or something?
the supply-chain is a leaky abstraction...

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

#379

I am deciding on a new Laptop. I am still worried that my workflow (heavy on docker) will suffer under Apple Silicon. Has someone some (very) recent experience on Docker + M1/2?

I used to use Windows+WSL+Docker for personal stuff. I now use Linux+Podman for personal stuff, and MacOS+Colima+Docker for work (not by choice).

It took me 4 months to iron out everything with M1+Docker where I work. There's still a question weekly about some oddity in our Docker channel.

Remember that container concepts (i.e. jails for a BSD) aren't natively supported by MacOS. The entire ecosystem is built on the backs of a very awesome community. In some cases, there are other things missing from MacOS that prevent them from creating the type of experience you get with WSL (especially networking).

Rosetta virtualization would resolve one of the biggest headaches I have had: x86 container emulation speed. No idea if it would do anything about the second: most of the x86 containers I have tried immediately segfault (nodejs containers seem to be an exception to that rule).

If you're working with other people, who remain on x86, you will come to experience the hell that is multi-arch builds.

Wait a few months and then decide based on what people are seeing.

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

#380

This looks like what the Macbook (2015) wanted to be. Keyboard and single port aside, it was a fantastic form factor, albeit crushingly slow. Mine no longer holds a charge, and am eagerly awaiting replacing it with one of these. Over time I've also noticed I no longer care about having the fastest possible laptop, since my job provides me with an MBP and that's where serious work gets done. I have a feeling this is g…

I own a 12" Retina MacBook and I am sad that none of the new laptops can really replace it. They're all significantly larger and heavier. The new MacBook Air is a replacement for the old MacBook Air, not the MacBook. It's a shame Apple have given up on the ultra-ultra-lightweight MacBook concept, considering that the M1 would be perfect for it.

I own a MacBook Air 11'', and it's also a pretty unique machine in terms of small form factor and silent operation. I feel current MacBook Airs finally serve as a good replacement. However, the 11'' Late 2012 model was also quite unique in terms of being a perfect PC citizen. So one could run other OSes with zero effort. In fact, it was Linus' daily driver for a few years.

I wish other manufacturers like Lenovo or Dell tried to compete in terms of fanless design so that there were more options. Lenovo in particular seems quite unfocused as they release tons of devices all the time and good ones are much more expensive than Apple's offerings, at least in EU.

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