Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 1001 posts

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#631

Post by eropple »

zdragnar wrote: post #592
eropple wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a couple of Chromebooks and enjoyed them, but I never found one with a keyboard that didn't feel terrible to type on. Does one exist today?

I'm guessing if you want quality materials, you have to pay for it. I don't know if the pixel line of Chromebooks are still a thing, but even if they are you can just get a higher end laptop with more appropriate levels of local SSD storage and an actual OS for what I remember Google charging for them.

That's why my actual laptops are Thinkpads and Macs, sure--but I can hope, right?

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#632

Post by bombcar »

piva00 wrote: post #565
danpmurray wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much RAM does it have, and have you ever wished you had more?

My MacBook Pro M3 has 36GiB RAM and does all of the comment above + music producing (dozens of VSTs on some 1-2 dozens tracks) + projection mapping and can run some LLM models locally like the Mistral ones. I've only managed to hear the fan when chatting with a LLM, for anything else it's been an absolutely silent beast.

I have an M1 Max with 32GiB and similarly - never had it complain or noticed it unhappy about anything, or felt I needed more RAM or CPU.

It's going to be hard to justify upgrading this thing for awhile.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#633

Post by carlosjobim »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #562
carlosjobim wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Follow the money. If you follow the money, you can see it flowing in to Apple's bank account from consumers.

sure, trillion dollar company invested hundreds of billions over a decade to secure their own supply chain from parts to distribution. But I don't think every other OEM would have the same success even if it ended up being higher quality.

They became a trillion dollar company by doing that. There was nothing stopping other enormous companies to compete on quality and customer service, but they decided against that. Follow the money indeed...

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#634

Post by harkinian »

yodsanklai wrote: post #630
numbers wrote: post #355

I was recently buying a Dell laptop for my sister and it boggles my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework is an except) still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for consumer laptops. I didn't enjoy the process of looking through dozens of various lines that Dell has and then other companies like Lenovo and HP earlier in the process, just to find a "mid-range usable computer with a decent screen". If you didn't…

This will sound slightly provocative but I genuinely wonder: why would anyone buy anything else than an apple laptop? Gaming? ideology? budget constraints? lack of familiarity with MacOS? They are marginally more expensive, but they also very easy to sell second-hand. I'm speculating that the monthly cost is on par with a PC.

If you need Windows programs for your work, or need the ports, or want to play games, that kinda answers the question. The Mac laptops are otherwise just better for most people. And the often-repeated "every user is different" is not really true; most people fit the mold.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#635

Post by eropple »

lupire wrote: post #604
eropple wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure those people are the intended Macbook audience, though. How many of those people wouldn't be roughly as productive using an iPad or something? I've found myself doing almost all my non-development, non-media stuff on an iPad Air as of late and the environmental constraints have been really helpful for focus. (My iPad Air was $599 new, and I use a shockingly pleasant $30 case-and-keyboard combination for…

iPad has a tiny screen and a tiny keyboard. It's not a laptop.

As far as screen size goes, my iPad is about the same size as my 11" Air was, though not widescreen. And the keyboard's small, but Apple has prior art there too and you can get a bigger iPad if you really want to (though, sure, it costs more).

It's not a laptop, no--but that's also not inherently a bad thing. If you need what a laptop can do, sure. I have a 32GB M1 Max for a reason. But more and more it seems obvious to me that the median computer user doesn't need that, and the affordances from overlap with their more accustomed part of the ecosystem (their phone) are strong and pretty valuable.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#636

Post by ponector »

bloopernova wrote: post #502
itsoktocry wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them. They are awesome, but not perfect. Way over-priced storage and RAM upgrades, can't connect multiple monitors unless you pay up, and you're stuck with MacOS. Any one of these could be reason enough for people to look elsewhere.

Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears. I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I have to buy a DisplayLink adapter to do what the Intel macbooks did with zero problem.

Few years back I had a MacBook pro 2019 and an old ultra wide LG screen with resolution 25:9 and HDMI only input. Apparently, official Apple's USB to HDMI connector cannot handle screen resolution 2560*1080 at that time.

Thing that was possible at 300$ windows laptop cannot be done on 2500$ machine with 60$ connector.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#637

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sib wrote: post #550
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The opposite ("macs are overpriced") is something I've never been able to understand. It's simple: People without much money have basic needs and want a ~$600 laptop but Apple doesn't sell one. It doesn't matter if the $1000 Macbook has better battery life than a $1000 Dell because they don't have a $1000 budget.

That's different from being "overpriced." Overpriced would be "costs more than it should for what it is," not "costs what it should but is more product than I can afford."

> Overpriced would be "costs more than it should for what it is," not "costs what it should but is more product than I can afford."

But it's also that, because their bottom configurations are weird/crippled.

It's hard to find a PC laptop with a 4k screen for much less than $1000, but then the $1000 machine has 12 cores and 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Apple's $1000 laptop has 8 cores and 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, i.e. overpriced.

Okay, but DDR5 is ~$3/GB and NVMe SSDs are ~$0.10/GB, so really that's only a value difference of like $100 and you could just upgrade it. Except that Apple charges $25/GB for DDR5 and $1.28/GB for storage and then solders everything, so you'd actually have to pay an extra $800. Except that the Macbook Air isn't available with 32GB of RAM, or more than 8 cores, so then you need the Pro, which is even more.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#638

Post by jcadam »

ActorNightly wrote: post #612
jcadam wrote: post #450

Finding a laptop that runs Linux natively and acceptably is always a challenge. My Dell XPS 9315 touts linux support, but only with an older version of Ubuntu using custom drivers (as I discovered after purchasing it). So I've got manjaro running that took quite a bit of coaxing - though the built-in webcam has never, and probably will never work with any linux other than Ubuntu 20.04, and the APM has always been ext…

>Finding a laptop that runs Linux natively and acceptably is always a challenge. Its pretty easy to do a compatibility check on forums before purchasing. My IdeaPad Gaming works flawlessly with Manjaro, even supports the charging settings and performance modes.

Yea, yea, I know. The one time I just assume it'll be fine, because Dell sold a developer edition of the 9315 with ubuntu pre-installed. Then I receive it and find the linux support is a total kludge with custom drivers and disabling most of the power management features in the BIOS.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#640

Post by theultdev »

vient wrote: post #578
theultdev wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the touch pad / gesture recognition. You can tell Windows laptops are general computers, the hardware fires off the gesture recognition and gives the command to the OS, so you swipe, it's recognized, then you get the action. On Mac, the gesture is registered as it's happening, you can pull the screen, cancel, flick it, etc. Not to mention the convenience of taking it to any Apple store and the battery li…

I don't notice anything unusual in that sense on MSI laptop with Linux. I start pinching, browser immediately performs gradual zoom. Swiping with 3 fingers immediately starts a "desktop switch" which is controlled by my movement - so I can pause, revert the gesture, and you will see on the screen exactly what you expect, second desktop partially showing, pausing, and then going back. Can't test on Windows right now b…

It's possible things have improved, I haven't used a non Apple laptop in some time.

Last time I checked on Windows, swiping will result in basically an alt-tab after the swipe.

It was not a fluid motion that could be cancelled.

Post reply on HN