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New MacBook Air with M2

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Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#391

Post by rbanffy »

eertami wrote: post #133
senttoschool wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're downvoted because of fanboys. I think you're downvoted because: 1. Linux is coming to Apple Silicon sooner or later. You can buy now, enjoy macOS, and then install Linux later. 2. It's not reasonable to expect to use it for 10 years. Even if Apple stops supporting it, you can still use it. In addition, Macs have insane resale value. So you can sell it in 5 years, and then buy a new one. This is a…

>enjoy macOS If you're wanting to use your laptop for development work, you're going to pick the best job for the task. Moving to OSX would not only slow things down due to how slow non-native Docker is (no it is not negligible, yes I have an M1 Mac and I have tested it in a side-by-side comparison), but you have much less control over your environment compared to Linux. The vast majority of the people I've worked wi…

> due to how slow non-native Docker is

Are you running arm64 containers? Is x86 a requirement for you?

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#392

Post by conductr »

carlycue wrote: post #39

This thing is going to sell like hotcakes. The combination of single core CPU and graphics performance, device thinness, battery life in this laptop is unmatched. It’s funny how Apple came back from the worst the Mac has ever been to the best in a span of few years. Johnny I’ve doesn’t dictate things around Apple anymore but the silicone chips team now does.

Wonder how long these M chips were in R&D and meanwhile they were just watching everyone on the internet complain how crappy mac laptops were but they knew this was coming

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#393

Post by hedgehog »

ch4s3 wrote: post #352
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've brought this up before, and someone responded that they'll move iOS app building and compilation into a web service, and they will no longer need to sell general-purpose computers, and the idea haunts me.

That feels like it cuts against the core of the f what Apple is, but it’s possible if Cook is succeeded by someone with no connection to old leadership.

They've built pieces of that already: https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/

I'm not personally very excited about living inside that sealed of a bubble.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#394

Post by smoldesu »

1123581321 wrote: post #383
jmyeet wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember it's not 8gb of dedicated RAM. It's 8gb shared with the video subsystem. Let's see how far that goes when you plug it into a 4K monitor and/or do anything that requires GPU acceleration (which can include simply decoding video). I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the circumstances. At least this thing has the option for 24gb though. I just wish that was a stocked model so you could just walk into a…

The SoC contains hardware decoders and external monitors don't require a lot of video memory per se.

> and external monitors don't require a lot of video memory per se.

That depends. Your average 1080p display doesn't really use a ton of video memory, but a 5k display connected to an internal 1440p display? That's a pretty huge framebuffer. AFAIK, Quartz also has a separate video buffer for each individual window, ranging from 50-150mb for the average application. Add it all up, and I agree that 8gb is pretty low, even with swap. Macs are memory-hungry devices, limiting your physical memory to 8gb is going to be really difficult to work with on anything that isn't text editing or light web browsing.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#395

Post by MilaM »

Thaxll wrote: post #280

The pricing outside the US is outrageous though. Those are very expensive laptops. €1520 for the base version with only 8GB lol

Considering the shared GPU memory, 8 GB is going to be very limiting going forward. Also, this Mac is very likely going to have the same slower SSD like the recently released 13 inch M2 MBP. This means you have to upgrade the SSD as well, if you care about performance. I would not recommend buying an MBA with base specs.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#396

Post by haliskerbas »

marricks wrote: post #312
Thaxll wrote: post #280

The pricing outside the US is outrageous though. Those are very expensive laptops. €1520 for the base version with only 8GB lol

Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? People complaining about low ram sound like the bros asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Just complain about price, yeah, it is expensive! --- This is coming from someone who does light gaming on an 8gb m1 MacBook Air and has plenty of tabs open. I don't see lag. Then again, I…

Yes. In college I had many tabs and many word documents open, a few IDEs, horribly inefficient LMS or video sharing sites, and massive lecture videos. Maybe a few chat apps to keep in touch with classmates.

If you’ve used google chrome with messenger dot com, that’s already eating into the ram budget a good amount.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#397

Post by ghostly_s »

staticfloat wrote: post #366
CharlesW wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MY only gripe with the M1 and M2 Air the lack of support for more than a single external screen. Officially Apple specs out a single external screen, but using DisplayPort you can do more. The video below shows how to connect an unreasonable number of external monitors to an Apple Silicon laptop, but a two-external-monitor configuration doesn't seem too crazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jLAwSvs7vE

Small correction; it’s DisplayLink, not DisplayPort. You have to use DisplayLink because they do some part in software as a part of their driver (which you must download and install) whereas the native Apple stuff has some internal hardware limitation. I run three 1080p monitors off of my M1Pro, and I don’t notice any heavy CPU load from whatever software load the driver may be adding.

Displaylink is lossy software compression of your video stream, and when I last explored using it with Macs in a professional setting ~3 years ago the software was borderline unsupported by the vendor on the Mac platform and absolutely unreliable.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#398

Post by wtallis »

z9znz wrote: post #264
bluedino wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200 to go from 8GB to 16GB is an atrocity.

These are not ram sticks, these are difference in the M2 chip itself. I'm not a chip designer, but I imagine there are more manufacturing quality challenges with the ones that have more RAM.

> These are not ram sticks, these are difference in the M2 chip itself.

TSMC fabs don't make DRAM. Apple buys DRAM chips from the same handful of manufacturers that everyone else sources DRAM from.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#399

Post by itsoktocry »

marricks wrote: post #312
Thaxll wrote: post #280

The pricing outside the US is outrageous though. Those are very expensive laptops. €1520 for the base version with only 8GB lol

Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? People complaining about low ram sound like the bros asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Just complain about price, yeah, it is expensive! --- This is coming from someone who does light gaming on an 8gb m1 MacBook Air and has plenty of tabs open. I don't see lag. Then again, I…

>Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background?

If we're going to play that game, which college student requires a new MacBook Air at all?

I'm an industry professional and do my development on used ThinkPads. Sure there are are some people out there who need more processing power than I do, but not many, and certainly not in college.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#400

Post by ghostly_s »

woodylondon wrote: post #359
zuhsetaqi wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dealbreaker for the MBA is single external monitor support

I maybe being dumb here - but why can you not plugin a USB-C dock that has dual HDMI output ? I get you cannot dual monitor direct from laptop > screens. I would always use a dock with single cable. e.g https://www.belkin.com/uk/docks-hubs/connect-pro-thunderbolt...

Because that requires DisplayPort MultiStream Transport, which Apple's chipsets for unknown reasons do not support.
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