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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#381

Post by Kerrick »

vvillena wrote: post #363
Keyframe wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in another, bizarre camp. I'd pay double whatever they're charging for if I could run linux on it utilizing all of the hardware. Also, if notch went away, but that's another story. Unless someone knows of laptop hardware that comes close to both performance, comfort, and battery which can run linux.

You can make the notch go away with third-party apps. On the Pro laptops the screen has miniLED backlighting, so the dark area stays purely black. Removing the notch this way leaves you with a 16:10 screen, so you still have more screen real state than in most other laptops.

Yep, it's not a notch cut into your available space. It's "wings" of extra pixels taking up what would otherwise be unused space.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#382

Post by carlosjobim »

mcgrath_sh wrote: post #365
carlosjobim wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are buying professional work equipment, a difference of a few hundred dollars does not matter. Professionals in any field usually have equipment worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. And if you're buying a computer as a consumer because it is a premium machine, well then you eat the price if you really want the machine, or you have to go for non-premium competitors. You're comparing McDonalds to a n…

Odd, every steakhouse I have been to gives me as much water as I'd like, free of charge. I'm not comparing a hamburger from my local go-to to a steak from a steakhouse. I'm comparing the cost of the mash potatoes that comes with my hamburger ($5) and what they cost at a non-Apple steakhouse ($15). I don't go to the Apple steakhouse not because I find their steak unreasonably priced (it is a great value, actually), bu…

What I'm saying is that you're comparing apples to oranges.

A steak in a nice restaurant and its accessories will always be more expensive than a burger meal at McDonalds.

Apple has invested enormous effort into making high quality software. They offer the only operating system on the market which is any good at all. But their business model is selling hardware, so that's where they have to bake in all their costs. And their hardware is top notch as well. They could change their offerings to charge a high basic price on all their devices and then offer RAM and SSD upgrades for the low prices you are mentioning. But they choose instead to have a lower base price, knowing that the only people who need more RAM or storage (need, not want), are professionals who can pay for it.

It's the same in a nice restaurant. You're not paying for the ingredients, but everything around it including staff, the environment and so on. That's why a beer is so god damned expensive when you go out.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#383

Post by jpalomaki »

electrograv wrote: post #131

I really wish Apple would make a MacBook Air variant with display quality on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro (ProMotion/120hz and XDR/HDR, at least). The screen quality is the only reason I currently use the Pro despite its chunkier weight, since the local compute/memory of the Air is already plenty for me (and most users). The iPad Pro proves that weight and battery life is no excuse here for the lack of state-…

It's actually quite crazy that we need to get those bulky pro models just to get the basics like better screens and more memory. The performance between the Air and Pro is anyways pretty much the same, except for long running tasks where pro benefits from active cooling.

Wonder if we are going to see some changes here with the upcoming M5 models.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#384

Post by ruuda »

tredre3 wrote: post #272
ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

Seems like you haven't actually looked into it if that's the impression you got, because both Thinkpad (X1) and Framework (13) make a laptop that fit your requirements. The X1 carbon even offers a 4k OLED option if you want it.

I’ve been browsing the Lenovo (and others’) website for weeks, and the only two laptops it shows with 2TB storage and 4k display are the ThinkPad P1 and P16s.

The ThinkPad X1 and Framework 13 have a much lower resolution display. Also, I appreciate Framework’s mission, but it’s not the build quality that I’m looking for.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#385

Post by paulgerhardt »

sandGorgon wrote: post #292
ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

you have the choice to go with the AMD Ryzen AI Max processor which rivals the M4. And gives similar battery life and performance. Or the Intel Lunar Lake processor. Both have extremely good laptop options - the Lenovo Yoga Aura edition is pretty much macbook quality. And runs LLMs ( https://github.com/intel/ipex-llm/blob/main/docs/mddocs/Over... )

The Asus ROG Flow Z13 with 128gb unified memory and the AMD Ryzen AI Max amu would be my first non-M4 laptop pick. Surprised how under-reported this device is.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#386

Post by jghn »

gavinray wrote: post #273
ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

Gen question: why do people care how bulky a laptop is? I buy gaming laptops because they're the only powerful laptops and their size has never bothered me when traveling

I have (at least) 2 laptops at any given time. They fit into 2 categories:

1) Is 99% of the time actually on my lap when I'm using it. It's (usually) the one I take with me when I leave the house. I care very, very much about its size and weight. It's an M1 Air and I wouldn't mind if it was a bit smaller/lighter.

2) Is 99% of the time sitting on my desk, plugged into my KVM. It almost never leaves my house. I don't care how bulky it is. However, I prefer medium-ish form factors in case I do need to travel with it.

Any laptops I have over 2 will usually be in the 2nd bin, but sometimes the 1st.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#387

Post by paxys »

jamespo wrote: post #351
paxys wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any hub actually worth using (Thunderbolt ports, high enough charging wattage, dual displays, 2.5Gb Ethernet) will run you like $300-$400, which is almost half the price of the Macbook. I'd rather have a couple more ports on the device.

But if the extra usb-c port is taken up by a charger what's the benefit? Also the air physically can't accomodate USB-A, ethernet, hdmi etc.

You're not charging your laptop 100% of the time. The Air runs like 12 hours or more on a single charge. A Magsafe port is useless all that time.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#388

Post by jpalomaki »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #105

For all the talk of the "Apple Tax", point me to a comparable laptop from another company at this price point. I don't think there has been one since Apple started the M series.

I don't think you can find anything in this form factor that would match the single core performance of M4.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#389

Post by johnklos »

isoprophlex wrote: post #14
permanent wrote: post #3

This is amazing, yet silly to state "Up to 23x faster performance [4]" [4] against, 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air

Ten million times faster! (Compared to the Apollo 11 guidance computer)

Considering that a modern Ryzen is 1375 times faster than a VAXstation 4000/60, and a VAXstation 4000/60 is around 1280 times faster, at least in clock, than an AGC, that would mean the M4 would need to be about 5.6 times faster than that modern Ryzen.

Hmmm... The M4 might be ten million times faster than the AGC, depending on the instructions per clock of the AGC and the VAXstation 4000/60 with which we're comparing it.

https://zia.io/notice/ApcPNCgTyrYXpUQU2S

Re: MacBook Air M4

#390

Post by ruuda »

elif wrote: post #249
ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

I'm not sure why you want 4k resolution with a 14 inch screen to use commandline tools and a browser. My hunch is that relaxing this seemingly arbitrary requirement will result in many suitable notebooks

Especially for the command line and a browser which are primarily rendering text, pixel density matters so much! Why look at pixelated text when you can have print-quality crisp text? I never want to go back to low pixel density displays!

I had an XPS 15 with 4k display in 2016, yet in 2025 it’s somehow difficult to find a laptop with that pixel density?

I wonder the same with phones actually, my Nexus 6P from 2015 (10 years ago!) had an amazing 518 ppi display. When the modem died I got a Pixel 2 which had only 441 ppi, and the display was a really noticeable downgrade, text looked significantly uglier, I could see the pixels and hinting artifacts again. I expected high pixel densities to become mainstream to the point where every screen has a density at the limit of what the human eye can perceive, yet here we are 10 years later, and Google’s flagship phones have only 495/486 ppi, worse than the Nexus 6P!

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