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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

#751

Post by jsz0 »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #582
jsz0 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously a planned obsolescence tactic. If the base models were 16GB there's a fine chance Apple wouldn't see another dollar from those customers for another 10+ years at minimum. The average customer doesn't understand their memory requirements and cannot be expected to predict how they may change in the future. It's the only thing they got left they can use to trick customers into buying a machine that will need t…

Look, I'm not happy about the base ram situation either, I really do think they should put in 12/16GB at minimum. But at the same time, I've never seen non-techies complain that they can't open a few tabs, reply to a few emails, watch youtube, listen to music, and study on their base laptops. They're amazing for that. If we need more memory to accomplish the above tasks any time soon, we're in a sad state of software…

I use my M1/8GB Air pretty much exclusively for web browsing and run into 'out of application memory' errors on a regular basis. Relaunching Safari generally solves the problem. It's just such a bad look for Apple to be selling premium priced products that can't do the most basic task people want them for without throwing errors.

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

#752

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

__mharrison__ wrote: post #717
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 have a Thinkpad P1 with 64gb. I love that it has a trackpoint. I hate that it had a fan. I guess not so much that it had the fan but that the fan constantly sounds like it is impersonating a helicopter. Not sure where it wants to take the laptop. Also the battery life is horrible, 1 hour or so. And Windows is sluggish. Otherwise, it is a great machine (I occasionally RDP into it when demoing thing for my Windows cl…

It’s possible to buy an external keyboard with a trackpoint: not as convenient as having it builtin, but it’s great if you’re mostly using the laptop at your desk anyway

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

#753

Post by paulryanrogers »

bluescrn wrote: post #396
datadrivenangel wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm torn as I consider getting my next laptop: * Framework is philosophically best, and they make solid machiness. * Macbook Air has just insane battery life and is so small.

Just remember that those Macbook batteries are glued in and still subject to degradation over cycles/time. A consumable component designed to be excessively hard to replace, to encourage you to upgrade sooner than necessary. (Not everyone lives near an Apple store, and nobody wants to mail the laptop off for what should be such a basic service, being without it for who-knows-how-long)

I'd agree that we've passed peak MacBook, certainly from a repairability perspective.

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

#754

Post by threeseed »

deskamess wrote: post #731
CadmiumYellow wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been out of the house all day (6+ hours) with my M1 Pro and it's only just starting to get close to needing to be plugged in. What have I been doing all day? Just running the 23 different docker containers required for my local dev environment. This thing is an absolute beast.

Do you think the new M3 Air w/16 GB could be comparable CPU wise to the M1 Pro? I am guessing GPU wise (for inference like apps) it probably falls behind.

CPU was never the problem with the Air it's the thermal system. Depending on what you're doing the device simply can't soak up enough heat and so it ends up throttling the CPU.

It takes a long operation e.g. compilation for 10-20 mins before it really starts to fall behind the Pro models.

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

#755

Post by Repulsion9513 »

deergomoo wrote: post #316
jm4 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even worse than that is that they still only put 8 GB RAM in the base and middle options.

I believe we are now in the 9th year of 8GB being the baseline Mac laptop RAM config. It’s incredibly stingy. For a while you could make the argument that a lot of Air purchasers wouldn’t need it, but I don’t think that’s the case any more. My wife has an M1 Air with 8GB and between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance hitches.

> between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance hitches

Considering how bad all of that is about "weird performance hitches" (read: running an entire browser for every single app) are you sure that has anything to do with the memory?

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

#756

Post by hollandheese »

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…

>Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the same as a Macbook anyway.

Until you want more memory or a larger SSD then the Macbook is all of a sudden double the price of the equivalent PC laptop.

>Increasingly feels like most manufacturers have given up on the laptop as an innovation center and are happy to just scrape up the consumers who can't or won't buy Apple.

That's basically true, but with Apple becoming more and more expensive that does leave a very large low-end market for them to play in.

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

#757

Post by Repulsion9513 »

richardw wrote: post #732
jandrese wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has been complaining to me about how she regularly gets the "choose which application to terminate" dialog on her Air. I knew in my heart that 8GB wouldn't be future proof, but I underestimated how fast it would be a problem. She pretty much just runs Safari and Libreoffice Calc too, nothing that should really tax the machine.

I get this on an M1 Pro with 16GB. It's astounding. It claims to use swap but the trust is broken. I keep the Activity Monitor around and try to guess when it'll go flaky on me, but I never guess it right. I just restarted my machine now to reset whatever stupidity it has going on. Never had it with Windows. Or iPad, or iPhone. Why does the pro computer do this? My guess is 5k external monitor and a few desktops, but…

So what you're saying is you're running multiple browsers (VS Code is a browser), each of which takes anywhere from 1 to several GB of memory, and you're surprised that you're running out of RAM...

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

#758

Post by djfdat »

dbbk wrote: post #741
NBJack wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bold statement. Videos, music, photos, all of these add up fast. I have encountered plenty of family and friends needing help when their storage is exhausted. Then there is the ever increasong bloat of software, web apps, etc. that chew through RAM. If this isn't a daily driver, sure. It is fine. But for those where this is their only computer, this is a lot of money for an 'entry level' model that can't do…

The year is 2024, most people don't store videos, music or photos as files on their computer.

Except when you log in with your Apple ID, it'll sync your photos by default, taking up as much space as the system determines.

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

#759

Post by Repulsion9513 »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #582
jsz0 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously a planned obsolescence tactic. If the base models were 16GB there's a fine chance Apple wouldn't see another dollar from those customers for another 10+ years at minimum. The average customer doesn't understand their memory requirements and cannot be expected to predict how they may change in the future. It's the only thing they got left they can use to trick customers into buying a machine that will need t…

Look, I'm not happy about the base ram situation either, I really do think they should put in 12/16GB at minimum. But at the same time, I've never seen non-techies complain that they can't open a few tabs, reply to a few emails, watch youtube, listen to music, and study on their base laptops. They're amazing for that. If we need more memory to accomplish the above tasks any time soon, we're in a sad state of software…

We're already in a sad state of software development and bloat, once upon a time you needed around 1/32nd the RAM to do all the same things you can do today (1/128th if you count the 90s state of the web as "the same").

A web browser adds a significant amount of memory usage to any task, even with basic static webpages, and then almost every other app you use is secretly also a web browser but none of the RAM usage from it can be shared with the web browser you're already running.

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

#760

Post by rowanG077 »

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…

The last time I tried the P14 it has insane thermal throttling, as do most windows laptops. Is that no longer the case?
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