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New MacBook Air with M2

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Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#641

Post by wildrhythms »

hardlianotion wrote: post #170
pavlov wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 16" Macbook pro I bought in 2019 has been a source of constant irritation to me - unexpected fan thrashing, overheating, the usual stuff - and the performance and low cost of the new M1-based MacBooks has done nothing to improve my mood.

I have one of these for work (employer-provided) and it is the worst machine I have ever used. The touchbar is useless. It's heavy and bulky as hell. Just watching a Youtube video or opening a page with some gifs causes the fan to spin up and sound like a jet engine. The dual fan situation was supposed to improve cooling, but it only made it LOUDER.

Incredibly embarrassing to be in a quiet meeting room and accidentally open a slide deck with a gif for 2 minutes and have the machine ramp up its fans to maximum speed. Why?? Meanwhile on my M1 Air I can have the same content open + some Twitch stream + 3D map view open with no fan, no sound at all, and it runs great.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#642

Post by skohan »

divbzero wrote: post #365
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.

In addition to all of that, MagSafe is back as well.

Keep it. I want one port to rule them all.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#643

Post by alsetmusic »

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.

> It’s funny how Apple came back from the worst the Mac has ever been to the best in a span of few years.

The terrible state of the Mac over the last nine years hardly compares to the dismal state that Apple was in during the 90s. The product line was a mess and they had multiple machines that had common failures (PowerBook 5300c[0] comes to mind as my first laptop). It was so bad that PowerComputing was making better Macs (clones) than Apple.

They've made two incredible comebacks.

[0] > Two early production PowerBook 5300s caught fire, one at an Apple employee's house and another at the factory; it turned out that the Sony-manufactured lithium ion batteries had overheated while recharging. Apple recalled the 5300s sold (around a hundred machines) and replaced the batteries on these and all subsequent 5300s with nickel metal hydride batteries that provided only about 70% the endurance. At the time, the media viewed the problems with the PowerBook 5300 series as yet another example of Apple's decline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_5300#Batteries

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#644

Post by nerdawson »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #323
cplusplusfellow wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the keyboard prevented me from purchasing a MacBook from 2014 until 2020. I still despise the 2020 keyboard but I’ll reluctantly use it to type a password and then plug in a USB keyboard. The 2022 is a dream come true for me.

It was 2016 when things went wrong for the keyboards. I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and the keyboard is fantastic.

Apple released a 12" MacBook in early 2015 which was the first to have the butterfly keyboards.

A guy I worked with bought one and complained about it relentlessly.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#645

Post by mft_ »

epolanski wrote: post #595

I was interested to pick when I saw the price in USD.. Then I realized the starting price in Italy for the 8GB version is 1829 euros, and more than 2100 to get 8 GBs of memory more.

Totally agree. The new Air to my mind is decent value at $1199.

But that then becomes 1499 EUR in Germany, for... some reason. And then you see that the entry level model is specced low, and to get a reasonable 16GB memory and 512GB SSD bumps it up to 1959 EUR, which is a very different level of purchase, and also most of the way to the cost of a comparable 14" M1 MacBook Pro.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#646

Post by ricardobeat »

> A three-mic array captures clean audio using advanced beamforming algorithms

Oddly, out of the entire press release, this is the part I have trouble believing. Every MBP launch announces the best microphones ever. When the first MPB 16" came out, it's gazillion-mic array was supposed to be amazing, some reviewers asking "can it replace a professional condenser microphone", yet in reality it's made completely useless by the fan noise and people can barely hear you in a call.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#648

Post by jamiepenney »

xbar wrote: post #207
hardlianotion wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 16" Macbook pro I bought in 2019 has been a source of constant irritation to me - unexpected fan thrashing, overheating, the usual stuff - and the performance and low cost of the new M1-based MacBooks has done nothing to improve my mood.

I don't blame you. That "pinnacle" of hardware design is an Apple poop-bomb. I have one with 32GB that was provided by my employer. It is bad. I hate using it. The keyboard on it is bad, the performance is bad, and the glitchiness is deeply frustrating. I loved my 2015 Macbook Pro 15" that it replaced and wondered why I thought it would be any better. My M1 Macbook Pro 16 is a joy to me.

I put an order in for a 14" one last night to replace my 2019 MBP, this makes me feel better about the price.

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#649

Post by skohan »

deergomoo wrote: post #613
H12 wrote: post #609

I want a 15" version of this hardware so badly. It would be my perfect personal webdev machine, assuming no significant M2 thermal issues. My workflows are all lightly threaded and CPU bound, so I don't benefit much from the Pro/Max/Ultra SKUs. So considering the base M1/M2 meets my performance needs, nothing else really comes close when it comes to portability/battery life. All I really crave is a bit more screen re…

There's been rumours for a while now of a 15" Air in the next few years. It would make a lot of sense—not many people looking at the MacBook Air would be willing to pay double the price to jump to a 16" MBP just for a bigger screen.

Also there are probably a lot of people who want a bigger screen but not a thick and heavy laptop

Re: New MacBook Air with M2

#650

Post by appletrotter »

waynesonfire wrote: post #369
whynaut wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll definitely want to enable warmer colors

I use that. Been toying with night mode, color filters, and even flux. It's still too extreme, though it helps with the whites the other colors look atrocious. I have just about identical settings on both models and comparing the two laptops side-by-side, the 2015 looks much better. I still have "vivid" colors but the whites are more grey. Must be a screen thing, some new IPS technology. I don't know. It's terrible.

I feel like you might be noticing HDR. HDR supersedes your brightness settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlAsAuBtmps

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