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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#61

Post by luxuryballs »

Been using Airs since 2011, 2012 model lasted me to 2018 upgrade (Retina finally) but now I snagged the m4 pro Mini and it’s so small I brought it to the birthing inn with me and (with the help of a universal remote) just used the room TVs as a monitor. It’s so small that I can just throw it in a bag with a mouse/keyboard/HDMI and even a PS5 controller which I do appreciate my wife tolerating Jedi Cal joining us in the postpartum wing over PS5 streaming from the console at home, quite doable and the Mini’s built in speaker is quite a charmer all things considered! I ran it from inside a drawer under the baby “kiosk” and it definitely outgunned the in-room speakers that were clearly gimped (similar to putting your phone into the right enclosure amplifies the sound).

At home when not at my desk I’ve been using screen share to remote in from the 2018 Air, this is the first time since 2018 I bought a new computer and it’s oddly nice having it not be a laptop, don’t have to worry about the precious built-in screen or keyboard.

Caveat may be if I wasn’t working remote perhaps it would be different but not sure, using the 2018 Air as a client for the M4 Pro has been pretty solid for my current purposes and it’s nice still having an Intel Mac for the edge case backwards compatibility development needs.

Whoops didn’t mean to make a blog post in here…

Re: MacBook Air M4

#62

Post by cyanmagenta »

dartharva wrote: post #18

Where does this obsession of making it as thin as possible even come from? I am pretty sure almost everyone will gladly trade the "thinness" for a few standard USB and HDMI ports.

> I am pretty sure almost everyone will gladly trade the "thinness" for a few standard USB and HDMI ports.

I think there’s a lot of people that want something as light and thin as possible to slip into your purse and take to the cafe.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#63

Post by throw0101d »

dijit wrote: post #45
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

To be clear: 1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make huge strides every year so I can upgrade! 2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps! 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! (yes, not Windows though). 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?! Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old. "Hey, you noticed th…

> 2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!

> 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice!

> 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!

2 and 4 kind of contradict each other.

I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#65

Post by s_dev »

trymas wrote: post #5

Anyone can comment on how Apple Silicon (M) MacBook Airs deal with heat? It’s fan-less design, so how does it compare with MacBook Pros with same M chips? Does it throttle often? Can you have it comfortably on your lap in summer? Or unless you’re running 1-hour long 4K rendering or machine learning training sessions - you’d never notice? UPDATE: what I am getting at - if you are developer and don’t care about screen…

I have a M4 128GB RAM MacBook Pro -- it gets very hot after playing Civ VI or Civ VII for a couple of hours. If I limit the fps to 30 it's stone cold.

Nothing else seems to make it sweat. Just games and presumably mining Bitcoin or other very intensive tasks.

Devs/Gamers should always go for a Pro machine.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#66

Post by _mlbt »

kotaKat wrote: post #19
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

As someone that migrated to the M1 Macbook Air from a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro... the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly. If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.

I see a lot of people requesting cellular modems in MacBooks, but the integration with iPhone hotspot connectivity is so good that I don’t really see the point of it for most people.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#67

Post by kotaKat »

wil421 wrote: post #48
kotaKat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that migrated to the M1 Macbook Air from a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro... the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly. If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.

Why would you need onboard mobile? It’s 2 clicks to trigger a mobile hotspot from your iPhone and there are very cheap LTE dongles on eBay. Not sure how much service would cost, most of us have reasonable download caps on our mobile plans. The dongles have better data plans than phones.

Convenience, security, and power-savings. I currently also use a Thinkpad X13s with onboard 5G and it's nice to not have to screw with it when you want connectivity.

On my Verizon plan (Unlimited Ultimate), I qualify for two 'connected devices' to be discounted. My Thinkpad is $10/mo extra on my account for unlimited LTE. I'm not a heavy data user by any means and this works out well for me.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#68

Post by hwc »

whynotminot wrote: post #34
hwc wrote: post #7

Other than battery mass and screen size, is there a significant difference between the new Macbook Air and the low-end Macbook Pro?

The better screen and better keyboard are probably the most day to day practical reasons to upgrade. But that’s countered by the extra weight and thickness of the Pro, too. So it’s really a choice of mobility versus usage ergonomics. The Pro is also fan cooled, but with Apple Silicon I’m not sure that matters all that much at this performance band. If you need fan cooled performance you probably want to start thinkin…

Is the Pro fan cooled? I have never heard a fan on my M2 Pro.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#69

Post by addicted »

wil421 wrote: post #48
kotaKat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that migrated to the M1 Macbook Air from a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro... the Intel customers are still the ones they're trying to target, amusingly. If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.

Why would you need onboard mobile? It’s 2 clicks to trigger a mobile hotspot from your iPhone and there are very cheap LTE dongles on eBay. Not sure how much service would cost, most of us have reasonable download caps on our mobile plans. The dongles have better data plans than phones.

Why wouldn’t I want onboard cellular connection instead of having to be dependent on the more finicky and less reliable Hotspot connection, hurting my ability to use my phone freely, and burning both my laptop and my phone’s batteries at the same time.

Besides, having a cellular modem also allows you to tap into both WiFi and Cellular seamlessly like your phone does to make your overall connection much more reliable.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#70

Post by rs_rs_rs_rs_rs »

jghn wrote: post #33
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #12

If you have an Air and use Intellij IDEA or any other Jetbrains IDE can you let me know how the performance is? This really looks like an amazing computer if it can handle long IDEA hours on medium projects.

I have an M1 for reference, with only 8GB RAM which is the real limiter here. I *can* use Jetbrains IDEs and I *can* build/develop software on it. It's a bit sluggish but doable. I try to not code on that machine, but sometimes it's the only machine I have available when I need to look at something.

Yeah, having just 8GB ram was the reason I never bought the older versions. This one starts at 16 so it picks my interest.
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