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New MacBook Air with M2

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Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#471

Post by joshspankit »

donny2018 wrote: post #457
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.

My M1 Air is a nearly perfect machine, but I continuously find myself looking at the yellow “memory pressure” graph and swap disk writes. I wish Apple never offered 8gb version, as I was surprised to find that MacOS wants to use more RAM than a Windows machine with the same amount of RAM.

If they gave us a way to actually disable the macOS features, 8GB would be very usable. But everything from regular wifi/bt scanning to photo tagging to adding all interactions to a giant Siri database so that the OS can suggest what it thinks you’re most likely to open at any given moment. These all need RAM and other resources even if you don’t have any open applications.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#472

Post by Joeri »

MilaM wrote: post #395
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.

And once you spec it up to the 16 / 512 that it minimally needs to be for any serious work, you are close to the (now discounted) price for the base 14 inch macbook pro at third party resellers. This air is currently way overpriced. At the price it was released it should have had 512 gb storage, which also would have avoided the performance issues. It is still going to sell really well though, so maybe the previous model was just underpriced.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#473

Post by rootusrootus »

Karsteski wrote: post #256
rootusrootus wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think this is changing up English, you may not be speaking English as a first language? Referring to products as a proper noun is very common. E.g. Ford will tell you "Mustang offers a powerful engine... blah blah blah" not "The Mustang offers..."

English is my first language, and yes to me that sentence would sound odd. Perhaps that's something common in American advertisement and not elsewhere

Maybe it's just that I'm a car guy, and I watch a lot of presentations about cars. They constantly refer to their models like this. Like it's a person, not an object.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#474

Post by chrisseaton »

howinteresting wrote: post #459
chrisseaton wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I'm told to learn to use it "the Apple way" what I understand is, "shut up and get used to it, you have no saying in how your machine or you should work". Well yeah that is kind of the philosophy - a single simple way to do things. Cutting down on customisation makes the system more stable and I think allows them to innovate more quickly. Don't confuse it with lack of power - it's a fully certified UNIX unlike…

What does being a "certified UNIX" have to do with power?

People talk about macOS as being a toy and say it's not a real UNIX like Linux - but it's actually one of very few real UNIX implementations, which only includes a couple of Linux distributions.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#475

Post by joshspankit »

solarkraft wrote: post #295
louissm_it wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who upgraded from an Intel Mac to an M1 mac, the memory is a non-issue. Three years ago I would have laughed if you said I would be happy with "only" 8GB, but now I am.

I thought I'd be happy with 8GB based on benchmarks and sensationalistic videos (thanks, Max Tech), but I absolutely wasn't. Apple silicon Macs or maybe Macs in general handle high memory pressure (graph in the red) terribly. The system will get extremely slow and laggy, develop audio issues and eventually lock up. I ran into that all the time on the 8GB model (admittedly with multiple RAM-intensive apps and lots of…

Is that high memory pressure slowness issue the same when there is lots of HD space left? Apple devices have had issues with “low” amounts of HD space for a long time, and I’m curious if the M* continue the trend.

Also: this makes a red flag of the recent shift to half-speed drive performance

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#476

Post by throwaway894345 »

loeg wrote: post #467
pc86 wrote: post #401

I spent an embarrassing amount on a lackluster early 2019 MBP. It's fine as a general purpose laptop but is just a little too slow for serious dev work, a little too heavy as the main travel laptop, battery life a little too short for my liking. I got an M1 for my work laptop maybe 4 months ago and it might honestly be the best laptop I've ever used.

I'm still stuck on a 2019 MBP from work. What garbage hardware. Up for a refresh in December.

Just to put things into perspective, the 2019 MBP might be worse than M1 Macs, but it's still way better than anything I've seen in the PC world (which is why Macs have been able to coast through bad decisions regarding keyboard, ports, and touchbar for so many years). That said, I'm very excited for these new ARM devices.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#477

Post by sgtnoodle »

pavlov wrote: post #148
bluedino wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the worst the Mac has ever been Which one was that?

The 2016 MacBook Pro was a turd. The butterfly keyboard would inevitably break. I went through several of these laptops. To add insult to the injury, this model's unique innovations were "Touch Bar" and "no ports"... I've been buying Macs since 2000, and the 2016 MBP is definitely the worst Mac I ever had. It was enough to drive me to purchase a Surface Book as an alternative.

I am not generally an Apple user, but I had a 2012 MacBook pro for work for a few years, and it seemed pretty nice. I can't remember any complaints. That's while I was working at Google, though, so all I used it for was a web browser and SSH terminal.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#478

Post by joshspankit »

evo_9 wrote: post #414
pc86 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been really considering an ultra-wide and have heard extremely polarized opinions on it. Is there anything specific that you prefer over two widescreen monitors?

The lack of a center bar was a bigger deal than I expected. Being able to extend my SQL window to the full screen seeing all columns for example, beyond 'just nice'. Same with code, not always but sometimes I need a wider view. There are a lot of subtle gains that I'm probably forgetting about and really only one negative that I've run into - games don't play super nice on the ultra-wide, but that's not really what I…

If you had 3 wide monitors instead, would that make the ultrawide less appealing?

It would solve the “center bar” issue, for example

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#479

Post by tomduncalf »

Pulcinella wrote: post #450
pc86 wrote: post #401

I spent an embarrassing amount on a lackluster early 2019 MBP. It's fine as a general purpose laptop but is just a little too slow for serious dev work, a little too heavy as the main travel laptop, battery life a little too short for my liking. I got an M1 for my work laptop maybe 4 months ago and it might honestly be the best laptop I've ever used.

In a somewhat similar situation with the 2019 16 inch Intel MBP. I wouldn't say it's too slow, but it does get embarrassingly hot during regular use. Enabling low power mode disables turbo boost and keeps it much, much cooler, but plugging into an external monitor enables the discrete graphics card and the laptop gets hot again. Going to try to get a few more years out of it hopefully until Imagination Tech's hardwar…

Yeah I ditched my 2019 16" for an M1 Max. Was an expensive move but honestly, I couldn't bear to use that thing as a laptop, especially once I knew there was an alternative which doesn't get hot enough to fry eggs on.

For me it was worth it, because I now enjoy using my laptop as a laptop on the sofa or whatever, and do a lot more creative stuff on it than I did with the old one. But definitely not a cheap move!

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#480

Post by drcongo »

Pulcinella wrote: post #450
pc86 wrote: post #401

I spent an embarrassing amount on a lackluster early 2019 MBP. It's fine as a general purpose laptop but is just a little too slow for serious dev work, a little too heavy as the main travel laptop, battery life a little too short for my liking. I got an M1 for my work laptop maybe 4 months ago and it might honestly be the best laptop I've ever used.

In a somewhat similar situation with the 2019 16 inch Intel MBP. I wouldn't say it's too slow, but it does get embarrassingly hot during regular use. Enabling low power mode disables turbo boost and keeps it much, much cooler, but plugging into an external monitor enables the discrete graphics card and the laptop gets hot again. Going to try to get a few more years out of it hopefully until Imagination Tech's hardwar…

Mine's gone in the cupboard and never been used since the M1 Pro arrived.
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