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

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

#641

Post by precompute »

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…

Ah. Apple fanboys and their partly-usable, overpriced laptops with notches. You have to buy ONCE, it's not like you have to worry about what other laptop you could've bought every single time you use one. Do the research, buy a $600 laptop. It's usually adequate for everything except gaming.

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

#642

Post by harkinian »

nerdjon wrote: post #290
sciencesama wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fixed this by using this dock Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Workstation Dock - DK2131

I fixed my issue as well with a dock from UGreen and the DisplayLink software. Just unfortunate I had to do it.

Relying on DisplayLink too. It's neat, but it's a hack. Uses a fair bit of CPU constantly and makes my Mac say "your screen is being observed." Was disappointing coming from my 2009 Mac Pro which could run 5 displays no questions asked.

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

#643

Post by babypuncher »

bluecalm wrote: post #599
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally made the switch to Apple after being thoroughly frustrated with Windows laptops. It's not even close to a competition. Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them. Most Windows laptops have abysmal batteries, to the point that you can barely call them laptops. The trackpads are downright unusable. The keyboards are a hit or a miss. And for some reason, so many companies…

I think ThinkPads are better than MacBooks. You can get P14 with 32gb of RAM, 1TB SSD, very fast and quiet CPU (AMD U series), decent battery, 2.8k OLED screen and it weights 1.34kg (weight between 13 inch and 15inch new Airs). It also has imo better ports and a track point. The problem is that Windows sucks more and more with every iteration and there is nothing Lenovo or other manufacturers can do about it. Lenovo…

I'll take a good trackpad over the trackpoint any day.

I also find something weirdly repulsive about the plastics they use on ThinkPads. A true Macbook alternative shouldn't be using much plastic at all, though.

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

#644

Post by Dalewyn »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #457
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…

I finally made the switch to Apple after being thoroughly frustrated with Windows laptops. It's not even close to a competition. Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them. Most Windows laptops have abysmal batteries, to the point that you can barely call them laptops. The trackpads are downright unusable. The keyboards are a hit or a miss. And for some reason, so many companies…

>Most Windows laptops have abysmal batteries, to the point that you can barely call them laptops.

I've been positively delighted by my two Intel Alder Lake laptops I use during travel for play (ASUS Vivobook S 14X OLED, 12700H CPU) and work (Lenovo V14 G3, 1255U CPU) respectively. I can get 4 to 8 hours off of them depending on use with the charge limited to 80% for longer overall life, and as I just mentioned the hardware are quite powerful in their own right.

>The trackpads are downright unusable.

Both of my laptops I just mentioned have wonderful touchpads. Frankly though, this absolutely will vary by several country miles depending on manufacturer and even model. I suppose I got lucky here.

>And for some reason, so many companies are still shipping laptops with 1080p screens in 2024.

I'm gonna be honest: I fucking hate screens bigger than 1920x1080 (or x1200 for 16:10 screen ratios). My laptop for play has a 2880x1800 screen, but I've got it rendering at 1920x1200 because so many programs just assume pixel densities around that area and either can't or won't handle scaling.

I also have to still do some scaling up even at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 at laptop screen sizes anyway because everything is so small, but it's still less compatibility headaches compared to physically denser pixels.

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

#645

Post by dotancohen »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #606
bluecalm wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ThinkPads are better than MacBooks. You can get P14 with 32gb of RAM, 1TB SSD, very fast and quiet CPU (AMD U series), decent battery, 2.8k OLED screen and it weights 1.34kg (weight between 13 inch and 15inch new Airs). It also has imo better ports and a track point. The problem is that Windows sucks more and more with every iteration and there is nothing Lenovo or other manufacturers can do about it. Lenovo…

Offer and support desktop Linux? Windows keeps dropping the ball and Linux just stands there looking at it on the ground.

I think that Canonical is doing an excellent job. It's been at least a decade that you could easily install Kubuntu on most computers and things would just work with no configuration. It's easy to use for the vast majority of use cases and reasonably secure.

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

#646

Post by bombcar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #481
exe34 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the same as a Macbook anyway. The opposite ("macs are overpriced") is something I've never been able to understand. Back in 2013 when I bought my current laptop, the mac book air was the thinnest, lightest, longest battery life, nicest keyboard, and a bunch of superlatives I don't remember, and it was somewhat over £1000. The closest non-mac "ultrabooks" I could…

> 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.

Apple does partially cover that market, but only via refurbished.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FGN63LL/A/refurbished-133...

The thing that's really sad is that the build quality on sub $1k laptops is just such shite

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

#647

Post by YetAnotherNick »

jjice wrote: post #165
ketzo wrote: post #49

The degree to which Apple has kinda just “won” laptops is nuts to me. $999 for an 13-inch M2 Air is just bonkers. You can easily pay $1500, even $2000 for Windows laptops that are hotter, heavier, AND slower.

You're absolutely right that they make a damn fine laptop (the build quality stands out to me) and they do a great job in that market. Anecdotally, my Framework 13 AMD ran me 1500 and I ended up with 64 GB of ram, 2 TB of storage, and an AMD 7840U. I bought my RAM and storage separately to get that end cost, to be fair. I wouldn't be surprised if the M3 actually outperforms my processor by a bit, but having way more…

> but having way more RAM matters a lot to me.

Just out of curiosity, why? I have ~200 tabs open in chrome, and have ~10 different apps open. Mac could handle it perfectly well due to reliance on swap and compressed memory. My swap used is 20 gb but really can't say that even when switching apps fast.

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

#648

Post by babypuncher »

Dah00n wrote: post #626
DinaCoder99 wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're stuck with MacOS Interesting way of thinking about probably the biggest draw of the hardware.

Depends. To me, software is the thing that will keep me from Apple products. IMO Linux and Android are light-years ahead and are becoming even further ahead every year.

I have a hard time considering Linux "light years ahead" when they still can't even figure how to do HDR.

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

#649

Post by threeseed »

vilunov wrote: post #544
threeseed wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video transcoding is done on the GPU and has nothing to do with memory/storage. And there isn't a trend towards more Electron apps. Increasingly developers are using Tauri which is Rust based and extremely lightweight.

Tauri is not that much different from Electron honestly.

That is simply not true. My Tauri app is 38MB: https://github.com/harana/search/releases

Electron Framework alone on macOS is 356MB.

And this is reflected in memory usage as well.

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