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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

#451

Post by prvc »

elxr wrote: post #361
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #14

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'd rather buy a similarly light laptop, that has a touchscreen. You can already get AMD Zen 3+ machines in this size class, that isn't too far behind in perf & efficiency. Doing so gives you much better Linux compatibility, a touchscreen, and (sometimes) better feeling keyboards. Battery life will always come up short though, x86 laptops just can't match these new macbooks.

Examples?

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

#453

Post by joe5150 »

elxr wrote: post #400
seunosewa wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need a touchscreen? What are some of the applications? I feel like the screen would get dirty.

For casual web browsing, on some sites I find it more efficient to click links directly on the screen instead of using a cursor. A big one for me, pinch to zoom for images/charts/maps is a lot more natural to me on a touchscreen. Controlling mobile emulators when developing mobile apps can also benefit from a touchscreen. > I feel like the screen would get dirty. It does, but I'd just wipe it down occasionally like I…

Mobile emulators seems like a good use case.

Pinching and scrolling are areas where to me it seems touchscreens have just tried to make up for shortcomings with touchpads.

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

#454

Post by nyanpasu64 »

coldtea wrote: post #332
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #14

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...

We got a SIKER battery replacement for a 2012 MacBook Pro, but one cell swelled up and the battery wouldn't hold a charge. One Amazon reviewer for one of the replacement MacBook battery packs says that they might be building replacement battery packs out of old worn damaged, or mismatched cells. I don't know if that's the case.

In any case I bought a second battery pack from TECHOWL and it seems to be working for a few weeks so far. Fingers crossed...

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

#455

Post by eweise »

jmyeet wrote: post #31

The 24GB unified memory is a really nice upgrade (the M1 MBA has 8GB upgradeable to 16GB). The CPU/GPU upgrades are predictable and wlecome but the memory is huge. A lot of development isn't CPU bound but is memory bound or at least can really benefit from more memory. This upgrade makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads. I have a MBP (Intel) but it's expensive. Getting a viable machine for $1…

I have a mini with 8gb and its great. I run logic, intellij, node and it doesn't flinch. For work I would want more but for personal stuff, 8gb has been fine.

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

#456

Post by WillPostForFood »

Bud wrote: post #419
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The new Air is significantly smaller in volume, though.

The new Air is thinner, but still slightly larger in volume, and ~35% heavier than the last gen of 12" Macbooks.

--

2012 12" Macbook:

Height: 0.52 inch

Width: 11.04 inches

Depth: 7.74 inches

Weight: 2.03 pounds

Volume 44.43 cubic inches

--

2022 13" Air:

Height: 0.44 inch

Width: 11.97 inches

Depth: 8.46 inches

Weight: 2.7 pounds

Volume 44.56 cubic inches

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

#457

Post by Kognito »

omnimus wrote: post #268
Kognito wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.

In my experience this is just not true. Unless you are doing multiple vms and some wierd stuff. Base Macbook Air is wonderful. It is faster than my 32gig desktop xeon workstation desktop from 5 years ago. I also think there is big argument for devs to be developing webaps on consumer gear. How else you can spot the issues with your apps. And tbh if your macbook air has problems running your webapp... well. Good luck.

Made a point not to install Docker on this machine. Honestly loved it when I first tried it.

Usually have like 20-25 tabs open in safari, a VS Code instance (sometimes two), a Nextjs app + express backend running against a local Postgres. This is always in the yellow memory pressure range for me.

If I close the browser or just stick with a few tabs it’s all good, but when each tab can suck 100s of MB it quickly adds up. It’s a workflow my 2014 MBP with 16GB still handles though so I don’t feel like my expectations are too high.

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

#458

Post by astrange »

pxmpxm wrote: post #370
coldtea wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any actual, professional use will put you way north of even 16gb. Well, I use my M1 (16 GB) for heavy video editing and music sessions, plus professional programming, with IDEA, VMs, and so on. And I don't seem to ever need even close to 16GB, much less "way north", or even saw it be slow. > As I sit here and type this, my 10.15.7 Catalina desktop is sitting at 12.25Gb of used memory with 2 Edge tabs and an open Ci…

> Maybe it's time to come over to M1 and 12.4? This is the very type of bamboozlement I was alluding to - instruction set and/or silicon architecture doesn't actually change the amount of data you use. Citrix will still need to buffer the same (compressed?) 4K worth of pixels and Edge will still to load up the full DOM, cache all the sources, stand up a sandbox with javascript virtual machine etc. There's nothing mag…

> This is the very type of bamboozlement I was alluding to - instruction set and/or silicon architecture doesn't actually change the amount of data you use.

Oh, but it does when it has a hardware memory compression engine. The very different GPU design also means it can use less (or more) memory in different situations.

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

#460

Post by gshubert17 »

girvo wrote: post #387
trenchgun wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, software bloat means that the old macbook can't do shit with today's software.

My spinning-rust 24” iMac from 2011 mostly manages to trundle along with Linux Mint on it for my partner to use. LibreOffice and Firefox for web browsing, mostly. Anything more than that and it chokes. Too many tabs, it chokes. Too many software updates, woo boy does she choke. That poor machine!

I replaced the HD on my 2009 24" iMac with an SSD some years ago and upped it from 4GB to 8GB. A great performance boost. Old OS but it still works well for me.
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