16 GB RAM included in base model. For $200 more i can bump it to 24 GB RAM, So that i can open Chrome and firefox at the same time.
MacBook Air M4
71–80 of 972 posts
Re: MacBook Air M4
#72Anyone 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…
> UPDATE: what I am getting at - if you are developer and don’t care about screen or battery differences - should you go for same spec macbook pro instead of same spec macbook air.
Depends on how much you care about the last bit of performance and how often you expect running into throttling. In my experience, it takes the M2 Pro multiple minutes of full load before the fan starts. I do a lot of Rust programming on smaller projects and I think the air would have been fine for me. Compilation takes at most a few minutes on the first run. For doing larger projects like LLVM, the pro is a better option. MLIR took 10 minutes to compile each time I pulled in new commits on main. Then throttling becomes an issue.
Re: MacBook Air M4
#73Where 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 care more about total mass than thinness. But those things tend to be correlated.
Re: MacBook Air M4
#74Anyone 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…
When I tested a 15” MBP with an i7 and touch bar vs my M1 Air the Intel Mac throttled down 30% immediately and the M1 barely throttled towards the end. The test was a 4K transcode in handbrake and the M1 air was only 10-15 minutes behind.
I’ll try to replicate the test with an M3 13” vs the 15” touchbar intel. Don’t have my MBPs at work.
Re: MacBook Air M4
#75I just bought the m4 mac mini at Costco about a month ago. I have been slightly irked I didn't wait for this so I can walk it away from my desk sometimes. I really hate the idea of a return since I'm still in the window but....
Re: MacBook Air M4
#76Was hoping for the rumored 24 hours of battery life, but it looks like the M4 couldn't squeeze that. Still 18 hours stated, like the M3 Air: https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-M3,... Looks like the only arguments for the M4 Air are: - 32GB RAM option - 2 more CPU cores - 100GB/s vs 120GB/s memory bandwidth
The CPU stays the same, it's the GPU cores that are upgradable on the baseline 13".
There's a BTO 24GB RAM option.
Re: MacBook Air M4
#77They don't always hit the mark but I sort of miss the times when Apple would innovate more boldly with their devices. Apple Intelligence isn't it - it's just playing catch-up with a market that tries to slap AI onto everything it can think of. The hardware upgrades are always nice but there's nothing 'out there' like a touch bar or even a 'dynamic island'. Just more safe iterations.
It's been a while since they made a bold choice. When I bought an iPhone a couple years ago, even the apple store employee kinda shrugged his shoulders when I asked if the new 14 phone was better, besides the camera, than the cheaper 13.
Re: MacBook Air M4
#78The best thing about "Apple intelligence" so far is that it made Apple eat their shoe and upgrade their base model's memory to something usable
Re: MacBook Air M4
#79I love that the base model starts with 16GB of RAM here. The value of these computers is incredible - I purchased a Macbook Pro in 2021 and it's still powering through every task I throw at it. Before Apple started making their own chips, I felt like I had to upgrade every 2-3 years to prevent my laptop from becoming a hurdle in completing every day tasks (remember when tab management was a thing?). Really happy with these machines.
Re: MacBook Air M4
#80Where 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.
That's what the MBP product line is for. More ports and performance for more expense and weight/size.
I know it seems like a champagne problem but the Pro really can get annoyingly heavy when traveling and the Air is dreamy how light it is.