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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#741

Post by porphyra »

ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition is in fact lighter than the Macbook Air, has Lunar Lake, up to 2 TB storage, great battery life, and a 2880 x 1800 OLED display. It's pricy, though.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#742

Post by fleshmonad »

ruuda wrote: post #247

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…

Well, my ThinkPad P14 Gen5 is pretty much this. Small, lightweight, 64gig RAM, 2TB SSD, and a pretty darn good screen. But yeah it's black and has a coating and you won't feel like a genius machinist when you touch it, plus no apple logo, so I guess Apple wins again. How do they keep doing it?

Re: MacBook Air M4

#743

Post by metta2uall »

metayrnc wrote: post #6

After getting the initial M1 Air, I am still struggling to find a reason to replace it. Still going strong with no hiccups!

I'm still happily using an 8GB M1 running Firefox in OSX + Firefox/VSCode/NodeJS in a Debian VM. Lots of tabs open. Both OSX and Debian can use compressed RAM.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#744

Post by porphyra »

Aeolun wrote: post #470
buildfocus wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the performance gap so huge? Power efficiency yes, absolutely, but for peak performance last I saw the last AMD vs M3 benchmarks were a slightly slower single core, and a little faster in multicore. Doesn't seem as world changing as described.

My $2000 linux desktop is still faster and snappier than the $4000 macbook, but it’s the only thing laptop sized that feels even close.

I feel like somehow my big Linux desktop with a Ryzen 7950X and 64 GB of ram feels less "snappy" than my M2 Macbook Air running Asahi when doing lightweight tasks, despite the big Ryzen being obviously much better at compilation and stuff. I'm not sure why and my guess was the RAM latency. But maybe I misconfigured something in my Arch Linux...

Re: MacBook Air M4

#745

Post by metta2uall »

thawab wrote: post #71

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.

There's something seriously wrong is you can't open Chrome + Firefox even with 8GB of RAM...

Re: MacBook Air M4

#746

Post by freehorse »

gargan wrote: post #662
homefree wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per watt on their chip designs). Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.

In my experience the Snapdragon X Elite is about the same as an M2. It's got slightly worse battery life but still a battery that blows the competition out the water. Plus you get the benefits of loading out your laptop with 64GB RAM etc without paying Apples ridiculous prices Snapdragon are just getting started. The Snapdragon X2 is coming out later this year with 18 cores Apple does have some serious competition no…

> you get the benefits of loading out your laptop with 64GB RAM etc

If RAM is all you need on a M_ air type of machine sure, but the selling/buying point of apple silicon's unified memory is mainly around GPU/memory bandwidth at a low energy consumption level, which is yet to be rivaled (maybe AMD recently took steps towards there). If one's workload optimises for CPU-only and very high RAM, apple silicon was and probably will be the worst choice cost-wise.

Also, for me, the no-no reason for snapdragon x elites until now is having to use windows, plus, as it turned out, the early unreliability of the actual products sold by laptop manufacturers.

But the market has opened up, so prob we will see more competition towards there, which is great. Apple's good but not doing anything magic that others cannot eventually do to some extent. Though I am far more optimistic for AMD than Qualcomm tbh.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#747

Post by brulard »

motorest wrote: post #664
frontfor wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly lazy comment. I think you and most people would agree on the immense utility of Apple products. There’s also no evidence that demand increases with price in MacBooks.

> This is an incredibly lazy comment. It isn't, and it's amusing how people get riled with a simple request to justify why dismissed someone else's opinion without presenting a single argument. > I think you and most people would agree on the immense utility of Apple products. They are consumer electronics, and laptop manufacturers are a dime a dozen. Why do you believe they are special in that regard? I mean, until…

> That's the definition of a Veblen good, something that is not known for being useful beyond serving as a status symbol.

I don't think you understood the Veblen good definition. And MacBooks do not fit the definition. The parent comment explained it well.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#748

Post by petesergeant »

motorest wrote: post #567
homefree wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a Veblen good.

> It's not a Veblen good. What do you think it is then?

I don’t think it’s possible to understand what a Veblen good is and also think that Apple makes them. Apple get a brand premium for sure, but a “Veblen good” is something specific, and Apple don’t make those.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#749

Post by yieldcrv »

krisgenre wrote: post #634
indemnity wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$899 (edu) or $999 is extremely competitive for what you get. Most people buying an entry level computer these days should at least consider stretching to get a MBA than the $300-400 shovelware, they’ll get so much use out of it. My wife is still using her 2020 M1 Air and it’s still as snappy as the day we got it, still works for all her use cases. Incredible value.

My wife is still using her 2020 M1 Air and it’s still as snappy as the day we got it, still works for all her use cases. Ah! my early 2015 13" Macbook pro died only few weeks back. I don't think any other laptop will last nearly 10 years (TBF I did replace the battery and speakers for $280 in 2020 though)

My M1 Max with 8TB is going strong 4 years in

and a pleasure to work with

I am sad that the resale value didn't hold as much as people claim Apple products do, but that’s because of the overpriced storage mostly

Looks like I can get $2500 vs the $7600 I paid for it

So rolling over into a newer maxed out model isnt so easily rationalized

Re: MacBook Air M4

#750

Post by sharken »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #416
homefree wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per watt on their chip designs). Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.

No vertical integration is what did intel in because they both do fab and design. TSMC won because they aren't vertically integrated into anything. Apple is better because of actual superior technology. The chips are custom made and no one can match the technology yet.

Apple is very dependent on using the latest process node from TSMC though. For that reason and the fact that the US cannot match what TSMC does, it all points to Taiwan dictating what kind of aid the US must provide.

I don't see the current US leadership wanting to put that in jeopardy.

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