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

701–710 of 1001 posts

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

#701

Post by astrange »

yumraj wrote: post #500
lynguist wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but Apple tends to have faster RAM (way more bandwidth), faster SSDs, and macOS tends to have a better memory compression algorithm.

> macOS tends to have a better memory compression algorithm Compared to what? Linux? Windows? Are there any published benchmarks anywhere, otherwise this just proves my point above. > Apple tends to have faster RAM (way more bandwidth), faster SSDs Yes, sure, due to its integrated nature, but that does not reduce the RAM requirement. My 8GB M1 MBA, which is used as a home browsing-only laptop, is almost always in yel…

The memory compressor is not higher compressing than Windows, but it is hardware accelerated, so it's much faster.

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

#702

Post by vjerancrnjak »

kstrauser wrote: post #695
vjerancrnjak wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also the case with Pro M1 Max. Font is very blurry. It's funny how they turn off "scaling/sharpening filter" when video is watched. I've tried a bunch of things to fix it and none of them worked. A 4K monitor I use works perfectly fine on Linux, but with Macbook Pro, even though resolution perfectly matches, it still has blurred font (the filter they apply completely changes the look of the font, even though…

What are you comparing the font rendering to? Linux/Windows? That's one of the things that pushed me to Mac from Linux: fonts finally looked nice. (This was around 2010.) I tried everything I could to get Linux to render decently but eventually gave up. I recognize that this is so much down to personal taste. If you prefer Windows-style ClearType to Mac's rendering, Mac (especially on a non-Retina screen) will look a…

Linux. When I put my face to the screen, Pro M1 Max is blurry, text is visibly smudged, both on my 4K monitor and the laptop display.

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

#703

Post by maelito »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #647
jjice wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some heavy programming requires lots of RAM and servers with lots of RAM cost a lot per month.

E.g. transit routing software.

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

#704

Post by mthoms »

organsnyder wrote: post #557
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…

Only the M2 & M3 Max chips support more than two external monitors[1]. Those start at $3200, and are overkill for the vast majority of use-cases. There's no excuse for a $2000+ machine to not support more than two external monitors. DisplayLink on MacOS is far from ideal, either: it works alright, but it has to use the screen recording functionality in the OS, which causes anything with protected content to freak out…

M1 Max also supports two external monitors (plus built-in monitor).

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

#706

Post by ecwilson »

_ugfj wrote: post #656
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…

The problem is the storage is not removable in the Apple Macbooks. It is disturbing it didn't sink the Macbooks. It speaks volumes of how little people care about their own data. About their own privacy. There should've been zero sold. It truly is dismal and a very large systemic problem a laptop like this is sold. Because when it breaks, are you going to wipe it and restore from backup? No. You will just hand it ove…

Non-removable storage isn't the problem. You have identified one actual problem: privacy. But even this isn't a real problem if you turn on system-level drive encryption:

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/volume-encryption-w...

Soldered-in components make for higher quality, lower cost production. Anecdotally, every Windows machine I've had has failed. Every MacBook machine I have replaced after 4-5 years when I wanted to upgrade to the latest technology.

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

#707

Post by maelito »

eastbound wrote: post #306
jjice wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. HN used to say that System76 were the best laptops ever, so I bought two of them. They’re an incredible pile of shit, in addition to the battery life or the clunky build, the fans turn on and off like my gamer boyfriend’s PC back i…

Please... Just try an XPS with Linux. In my workspace, heavy fans are all macbooks.

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

#708

Post by vultour »

ActorNightly wrote: post #596
vultour wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they have Linux integrated into the system. I'm amazed how many developers get a Macbook just to install Docker Desktop right after.

"Linux integrated " is a very optimistic way to put it lol. Its Unix-like under the hood, with mostly same syntax for the terminal, but linux and MacOS are very fundamentally different.

That's why I was talking about Windows.

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

#709

Post by CharlesW »

gok wrote: post #688
CharlesW wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh, interesting! TIL the MP3 Pro is limited to 36GB unless you upgrade to the 30-core GPU.

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

#710

Post by whatisyour »

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.

Reasons for buying other laptop (at least for developers):

1. Better choice of desktop environment (KDE/GNOME vs OS X)

2. Wider/better selection of applications

3. Better development environment

4. Ease of deployment of your own apps

5. Better fit for your budget (why spend 3000 Euros on a limited set of features, when you can spend the same amount and get huge number of features/better features)

6. Capability to connect upto 3 external displays (which Macbook has got only recently)

Post reply on HN