New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip • Hacker News Board

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

#681

Post by freeAgent » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 10:58 PM UTC

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…

If a normal person just wants a “simple laptop,” they can go to Best Buy or whatever brick and mortar and pull one off the shelf. They don’t need to dig into hundreds of SKUs unless they want to do so.

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

#682

Post by Dah00n » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 10:58 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #498

eurekin wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so extremely backwards in relation to everything else it's mind boggling. 16 gb being considered and priced at premium, where I had a single chrome tab eating 3gb easily few time's recently.

So stop using Chrome. There are other browsers that are far more memory efficient.

BrowserS? I can only think of one (and it isn't Safari).

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

#683

Post by dekhn » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 10:59 PM UTC

My kids both needed computers and when the MacBook Air M1 came out I bought a couple for $1200 each (I normally spend $2000 on a new laptop). I wanted decent performance, compatibility, and battery life, and ideally something that would survive a typical teenager's treatment. I'm not a mac person- I would be happier with a Windows or Linux PC or laptop.

It looks like they have had the laptops for 3.5 years now, and I've never heard a single complaint about performance or compatibility. One reports the battery life has dropped tremendously. But frankly, these things are basically reliable appliances. I was expecting both to be completely broken by now and have been very pleased.

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

#684

Post by dave78 » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 10:59 PM UTC

babypuncher wrote: post #643

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…

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.

Maybe I'm odd, but I much prefer the Thinkpad's body to the Macbook (I have both). I don't like the coldness of the metal chassis, either on my palms or on my legs if using it away from a desk. Thinkpad plastic does not feel cheap or weak to me, so that's not an issue.

I also can't stand the Mac keyboard, especially compared to the Thinkpad.

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

#685

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 10:59 PM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #409

dividedbyzero wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do. Do they? At least for the slimmer models, I was under the impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable mess.

>I was under the impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable mess ultrabooks, yes. everything is so crammed and specs are relatively low, so you're mostly stuck with what comes in the machine. Most other laptops (the "pro" competitors) tend to not do that. There's no good reason for an OEM to do that if they aren't optimizing for some sub 4lb laptop.

It's part of the reason Apple has so few SKUs compared to others, because everything is conjoined; Dell will have five SKUs that are identical except two removable pieces (RAM and SSD) are varying sizes.

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

#686

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 11:02 PM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #139

gnicholas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it makes sense to compare new laptops with used laptops, especially since the latter generally don't come with any sort of warranty. And when you're buying off ebay (and can't inspect beforehand, like with craigslist/nextdoor), you don't even know for sure if it will work on day 1.

Yeah, I'm kind of 50/50 about comparing them for the purposes of this conversation too. In practical terms though, when I'm looking for a new laptop I do check both pricing of new and what's on Ebay. Sometimes I'll go with the new thing, and other times I'll get the Ebay thing, depending on the situation.

I always keep an eye on those, but certified refurbished from manufacturers (whether Apple or Dell or HP, etc) are really good deals, quite often, and a known quantity.

I've no problem buying certified refurbished for work, whereas for home eBay off-lease is more acceptable because I know it's me dealing with issues if they crop up.

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

#687

Post by rmbyrro » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 11:02 PM UTC

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…

The only non-user friendly defaults in the Mac purchasing flow are the 8G RAM and 256G SSD. I think in 2024, 16G & 512G should be the default, with an option to downgrade.

With such bloated webapps now a days, those 8G of RAM are going to cook too fast...

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

#688

Post by gok » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 11:02 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #466

lynguist wrote: post #455

It’s good but they should’ve upped the memory from 24G to 32G. In my opinion a new Macbook Air only makes sense when you can get more memory. And I still think it’s the best laptop.

Even the Pro M3 tops out at 24GB of RAM. On the bright side, you can get a Pro M3 MAX with 36GB of RAM for not much more than a loaded Air.

M3 Pro gets to 36GB, the M3 Max can do 128GB

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

#689

Post by paulmd » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 11:03 PM UTC

ben-schaaf wrote: post #675

dangus wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use. To me it’s not really relevant what the old computer models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips had different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a different design entirely. I’m split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation trick or a leg…

Celerons from 10+ years ago support 3 monitors and 32GB of RAM. There is no excuse.

there are AMD chips being sold right now that don't even support HDMI Org VRR let alone AV1 decode.

and those skylake laptops are stuck on HDMI 1.4b, so they top out at effectively 1080p60, but sure, you get three of them. And the DP/thunderbolt tops out at 4K60 non-HDR with crappy decode support, and you get at most like 2 ports per laptop.

the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc?

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

#690

Post by eurekin » Mon, Mar 04, 2024, 11:03 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #498

eurekin wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so extremely backwards in relation to everything else it's mind boggling. 16 gb being considered and priced at premium, where I had a single chrome tab eating 3gb easily few time's recently.

So stop using Chrome. There are other browsers that are far more memory efficient.

That solves the browser.

What about colima vm for docker? Intellij, gradle daemon, android studio, xcode, electron apps, android virtual device, slack, spring boot apps, iMovie, Davinci Resolve, python notebooks?

Phones now have more than 8gb of RAM