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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#811

Post by hajile »

porphyra wrote: post #741
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.

An M4 air will run circles around Lunar Lake being over 30% faster at geekbench (both single and multe-core) and over 40% faster at Cinebench 24. The GPU is 25-35% faster too. Air is also 60-80% faster at Geekbench AI.

People spent a decade upgrading laptops for a mere 5-10% increase in performance (sometimes less). I can't see someone giving up that much of a performance jump unless Windows is absolutely the only option.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#812

Post by Endurancee »

tristor wrote: post #521
enragedcacti wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is the gap so large? I think it appears large for a couple of reasons. First is that Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. Second is that many companies try to limit SKUs for their off-the-shelf products and 2TB or 4TB apparently aren…

> First is that Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. You are discounting the quality of a Macbook screen without understanding how it differs from competitors. A Macbook is the only laptop on the market that accurately reproduces colors ou…

I have a Macbook Pro 14 M3, I do hobby photography and you can get great laptop with excellent color accuracy with better screen than Macbook Pro out of the box, from Asus or Lenovo. There are Yoga Pro 9i, yoga aura Edition and even newer Ideapad pro has OLED options ranging from 2.3k to 4k resolution 1000 nits peak bright, depending on config, factory calibrated which is quite close.

I got one from Lenovo with OLED, came pre-calibrated, running X-Rite calibration gave minimal gains.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#813

Post by windowsrookie »

lifefeed wrote: post #77
ljm wrote: post #41

They 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.

I bought a 13 Pro Max on launch day and I am still using it today. I have never kept a phone this long in my life. The cameras and performance are still fantastic. The only thing that would be nice is USB-C and USB 3.0 transfer speeds. But that is not enough for me to upgrade.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#814

Post by silon42 »

ghaering wrote: post #753
kombine wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have T14s Gen 3 AMD running Linux and I don't even come close to 12 hours, maybe half of that. That's my biggest complaint.

I never understand why people are so fixated on battery runtime. If you actually use the device indoors, don't you have a possibility to charge anytime. For me, I alternate between my home office room and the living room. Sometimes I work when on the train. And even less often in national flights and on airports. Except when flying or on very outdated trains, there never is an issue charging.

I have a problem when the laptop doesn't survive 2 days on suspend... My previous T480 never had a problem, even on a 50% battery... but the newer T14 sometimes does.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#815

Post by asah »

ghaering wrote: post #753
kombine wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have T14s Gen 3 AMD running Linux and I don't even come close to 12 hours, maybe half of that. That's my biggest complaint.

I never understand why people are so fixated on battery runtime. If you actually use the device indoors, don't you have a possibility to charge anytime. For me, I alternate between my home office room and the living room. Sometimes I work when on the train. And even less often in national flights and on airports. Except when flying or on very outdated trains, there never is an issue charging.

Airplanes

Re: MacBook Air M4

#816

Post by checkyoursudo »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #793
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.

My pet peeve is the trackpad How on earth are there literally ZERO non Apple laptops with a trackpad as smooth as Apple’s? This is an old technology. Surely someone must have reverse engineered this by now?

This is seriously the thing I like the most about my 2017 and 2023 macbooks. The trackpad feels so good. Every other manufacturer that I have tried, and no it is not all of them but a lot, they all make my fingers feel bad after using them. I don't know if they are rougher or textured somehow? The only one that does make my finger pads feel sore is the macbook.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#817

Post by ako »

znpy wrote: post #758
ako wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has 32gb of memory max. My current 5 year old thinkpad P1 has 64GB, not going back to 32.

False. I just checked https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... and it says the laptop has two ddr5 slots, i guess you could load up to 128gb in there using the newest 64gb sticks.

False, you’re linking to the X1 gen5, newest is gen12, which has a maximum of 32gb soldered, no slots: https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...

Re: MacBook Air M4

#818

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #796
lillecarl wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah everyone that went from "old shitty Intel" to M1 or above somehow gaslit themselves into believing nobody could catch up. AMD did catch up quickly, it's too bad they had to solder RAM to match but it is what it is...

The problem is that those AMDs still have to run something as awful as Windows 11

The problem with Apple is there is this awful MacOS along with the walled garden company called apple. The Problem with windows is.. none I can install my own.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#819

Post by maurits »

windowsrookie wrote: post #810
CountHackulus wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time they "innovated" on macbooks we got a touch bar (ignoring M chips). I'm good with incremental improvements if we can avoid those gigantic blunders.

I actually enjoy the Touch Bar on my 2018 MacBook Pro. The screen brightness slider offers more granular control. On my M1 air there is often a brightness gap where the screen is either too bright or too dark when using the keyboard to adjust brightness. Then I have to go to the menu bar to get the brightness level I actually want. It's even better on the 2019+ models when they brought back the escape key. I would ag…

uhm, hold down option-shift for smaller steps. Same for audio.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#820

Post by brandall10 »

saagarjha wrote: post #711
brandall10 wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you have an Intel Pro? There's been no changes to the pro chassis for Apple silicon, M1 Pro 14/16 are the exact same as the M4 Pros.

I assume they had a M1 MacBook Pro rather than a M1 Pro MacBook Pro

Ah right, I forgot they had an M1 variant in the older Pro chassis.
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