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MacBook Air with M5

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Re: MacBook Air with M5

#421

Post by culopatin »

std_move wrote: post #261
mholm wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thermal throttling under sustained heavy load This gets mentioned a lot, but I do quite a bit of dev work on my M4 MBA and have never even felt it get warm. Sustained heavy loads are extremely rare with how quick this thing is.

And the fact that there is no annoying fan noise ever is just priceless. With the way most consumer laptops have their fan curves set, you open a new web page and get an annoying ramp up. It is not just a hardware thing, but mostly a self inflicted wound of having a fan curve that is way too aggressive.

Even if it had fans. If they are like the Pro, you won’t hear them. I did extraction with LLMs for a long time to the point where they came on and I had to get my ear close to them to confirm they were on

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#422

Post by davnicwil »

giobox wrote: post #352
giwook wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what are some good use cases for a MBP now with the MBAs being so powerful? I can think of things like 4K video editing or 3D rendering but as a software engineer is there anything we really need to spend the extra money on an MBP for? I'm currently on a M1 Max but am seriously considering switching to an MBA in the next year or two.

The Apple Silicon fanless MBAs are great until you end up in a workload that causes the machine to thermal throttle. I tried to use an M4 MBA as primary development machine for a few months. A lot of software dev workflows often require running some number of VMs and containers, if this is you the chances of hitting that thermal throttle are not insignificant. When throttling under load occurs it’s like the machine s…

While I agree that the slowdown is very noticeable once the MBA gets hot to the touch, I joke that it's a feature, encouraging you to take a cooldown break every once in a while :-)

More seriously though I agree it depends on workload. If you've got a dev flow that hits the resources in spikes (like initial builds that then flatten off to incremental) it works pretty well with said occasional breaks but if your setup is just continuously hammering resources it would be less than ideal.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#423

Post by geerlingguy »

davio wrote: post #251
gizajob wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thinness at the front was a bit of a hack though wasn’t it? So Steve Jobs could make it look good in photographs. I’d take the extra battery life any day.

I have the M1 MBA and M5 MBP. The wedge MBA feels noticeably thinner and the MBP feels kind of chonky in comparison. It's a bigger difference moving them one-handed than the specs would indicate.

Exactly this. And it makes sliding it in and out of bags and laptop sleeves so much easier.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#424

Post by maest »

jhawk28 wrote: post #129
longbucks wrote: post #126

Does the chip actually improves? I’m still on a specced out M1 Max (64GB RAM / 2TB SSD) and it still feels like a beast for my daily work. It’s wild that we’re at the M5 now, but it’s hard to justify an upgrade when this machine still handles everything I throw at it so well. Seeing 512GB finally become the baseline is great, but I think I’ll be holding onto this M1 for a while longer.

M5 is almost 2x the single core performance of the M1 Max. You would notice that things are faster.

But everything is fast enough, so moving to the M5 seems like a downgrade, as it is heavier

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#426

Post by acchow »

nosioptar wrote: post #94
bearjaws wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Air is going to run laps around the X1, in literally every benchmark you can come up with besides "its not open source". I have that same processor in a much bulkier thinkpad and it thermal throttles instantly doing basic office multi-tasking, with the fan running constantly. Also its made out of metal.

Thinkpads have track points, macs don't. That benchmark is really important to me due to RSI. Track points save me a buttload of hand pain.

I had the opposite issue. Trackpoints stated hurting my hand because it requires significantly more force than the Mac's touchpad.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#427

Post by cassepipe »

SXX wrote: post #383
jruz wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on the latest but I’m happily running Asahi NixOS

On M1 there are still issues with wifi not recovering after sleep and for me its just disappear sometimes. Something like Framework is more expensive thanks to RAM abd SSD shortage, but Linux support is so much better.

Funny you should say that since my framework intel 12th gen just started dropping wifi/bluetooth randomly and one cpu starts looking for it frantically in a loop almost bringing the laptop to a crawl (it's very likely a hardware issue and not a linux issue)

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#428

Post by cassepipe »

ktallett wrote: post #375
sonofhans wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The riveting sounds, as you say, horrifying. Congrats on making it your own again. It’s still remarkable to me that it’s even possible to do it at all. The amount of tech and miniaturization crammed into that thing — it would be easier for them to rivet, weld, and glue every part, and cheaper. And if the build quality weren’t so high to begin with, it wouldn’t have withstood the repair at all. A good friend has a Fra…

Primitive in what sense though? As I have had one for longer than my Macbook lasted in the same situation, plus it is upgradeable as and when I choose. I loved apple of old, and the classic apple that was the framework of it's time regarding upgradeability, has long gone.

Framework owner here: The fw just does not feel as sturdy as a Macbook, it does the job and it's ok but not macbook grade. The framework feels like it's been built with just enough whereas the macbook feels strong and self-contained.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#429

Post by LoganDark »

dangus wrote: post #389
MoonWalk wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Mac OS does not nag you about subscription services. What are you talking about? Windows is offensive, insufferable trash. From its CONTINUAL hounding about "your Microsoft account" to its bug-riddled, regressive, and shambolic UI. Things Windows users took for granted 40 years ago are simply gone. Example: Select three PNGs in Explorer and right-click on them, and look for "Open with..."

Literally the moment you buy a Mac. Apple hardware comes with 3 month trials of various subscriptions, and you get a notification about it. They try to get you to sign up in hopes you’ll forget to cancel. When I bought my iPhone 17 the sales associate even tried to pitch signing up for the trial in person as he guided me through the purchase process. When you cancel the trial it ends it immediately instead of ending…

- When you buy a new device you get a few notes in System Settings encouraging you to try the free trials as well as buy AppleCare. You can dismiss these permanently with a couple clicks on each.

- When you open the respective apps they ask if you want to try the free trial.

- Apple once abused the Wallet app to send notifications about a theatrical release.

Other than that I'm not sure what the fuss is about.

Re: MacBook Air with M5

#430

Post by zdragnar »

3abiton wrote: post #397
mikae1 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can maybe get a cheaper Windows laptop but it will be terrible in almost everything It will be worse at almost everything, except running my preferred OS (Linux). Being able to upgrade/repair RAM, storage and battery at home is quite a perk too.

I totally get it. I have the M4 Air, grabbed it for 700$ on sale. I also have a MSI Creator with Linux (wayland). Performance wise the base Air crunches through everything up until lots of things are open and gpu is roaring (encoding or streaming), and with colima, I have few incus linux containers up and running. Battery life is formidable. Nothing comes close. My linux laptop (32GB ram / beefy gpu) barely withstand…

That beefy GPU is the killer for battery life. There's quite a few PC laptops floating about that get in the 10-16 hour range battery life on lighter workloads (text editors, fast compilers, streaming video, browsing internet). I'm typing this on one right now. I wish it was running linux, but I need windows for work up until we get the last of our antiquated .net platform on core.

Sure, it's got integrated graphics so it won't win any gaming awards, but that's what the laptop with the beefy GPU sitting in the corner is for :) That thing pumps out enough heat to not be too pleasant sitting on a lap anyway.

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