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MacBook Air M4

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Re: MacBook Air M4

#821

Post by bluescrn »

buildfocus wrote: post #437
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.

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.

The power efficiency gap equates to a fan noise gap, and the fan noise/heat of powerful Windows laptops is much more annoying than merely having poor battery life.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#823

Post by windowsrookie »

maurits wrote: post #819
windowsrookie wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good tip! Thanks.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#824

Post by commandersaki »

cgio wrote: post #418
ruuda wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been browsing the Lenovo (and others’) website for weeks, and the only two laptops it shows with 2TB storage and 4k display are the ThinkPad P1 and P16s. The ThinkPad X1 and Framework 13 have a much lower resolution display. Also, I appreciate Framework’s mission, but it’s not the build quality that I’m looking for.

There should be no questioning on matters of personal taste, but I will offer my experience with the 13 FW, which is that build quality is pretty great already, but also you get the option to maintain it longer term, such as changing hinges etc. which gives confidence on longevity. I also have a Macbook M1, and I have found myself reaching for the framework almost exclusively now. It feels great to work on a machine…

I have the opposite experience. First my FW 13 came with the dodgy hinges where picking up the FW the screen flops 180 degrees. The cost to upgrade the hinge is like $30 AUD but costs like $40 AUD in shipping which is bloody ridiculous. Battery life is awful, about 4 hours if I'm lucky in Linux. The speakers are trash. The display quality is bad, I have a grey line of pixels when the screen is dark (thankfully they're not an issue when the screen is lit). The trackpad is trash. Sometimes a modular usb port doesn't work after powering the laptop, you need to eject and reseat it. The fan is really noisy. I just can't stand using the FW over my M-series Macbooks, the difference is night and day.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#825

Post by sgarland »

drodgers wrote: post #511
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.

Yes. You need to go to server class chips (eg. threadripper) before beating the raw multi-core performance of a top-spec M4 Max in a Macbook pro, and the battery life is still crazy good!

What gave me pause was when my base-spec M1 Air handily beat my admittedly old server (Xeon E5-2650v2) on a single-core compute-bound task [0] (generating a ton of UUIDs). I know Ivy Bridge is 12 years old at this point, but I didn’t expect it to be 2x slower.

EDIT: Also, I know the code in the link is awful; the point is doing a 1:1 comparison between the architectures.

[0]: https://gist.github.com/stephanGarland/f6b7a13585c0caf9eb64b...

Re: MacBook Air M4

#826

Post by homefree »

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?

I think it’s another example of vertical integration making it better. Apple making the hardware plus OS gives them an advantage, making the trackpad experience great is hard if you don’t control both.

Apple has also learned a ton about how to do this well from the iPhone.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#827

Post by usefulcat »

culopatin wrote: post #639
usefulcat wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, from the time I bought it last year I never changed the resolution until I noticed the notch was gone and was trying to get it back, but to no avail. I also don't have anything unusual installed, definitely nothing display-related. It's pretty much as I received it from Apple, modulo whatever updates have been released since then. Currently it's set to 1710 x 1107, which is labeled "Default", and no notch. When I…

That’s not normal. Are you sure you don’t have an app that’s doing that or toggled a setting in so,etching like Onyx and forgot?

Quite sure. SyncThing and mosh are the two most unusual apps that are installed. And I've spent a fair amount of time researching to find out what setting could cause this. The only thing I've found that could supposedly affect the notch is the display resolution, and changing that makes no difference for the notch.

One thing that did occur to me though is that it was a 'refurbished' MacBook. Bought it from Apple, and it looked brand new, but it does seem possible that someone could have done who-knows-what to it before I got it. Or perhaps there is some defect in the display near the top and Apple did this intentionally to conceal it.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#828

Post by dagw »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #795
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How on earth are there still no non Apple laptops that instantly and reliably go to sleep when you close the lid?

I suspect the answer to these questions are the same. When different companies are developing the OS, the drivers and the hardware it is much harder to get everything to play together nicely.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#829

Post by alpaca128 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #626
alpaca128 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixel density is important for crisp small text, so cli on a 14 inch screen and maybe web browsing would be good reasons for a 4k display - it would be the only reasons for me at least.

why do you need crisp text for cli? cli works just fine in 180p still

For the same reason your PC screen likely has more than 480p resolution even though you technically don’t need more than that, why you have stereo instead of mono sound, and more than one CPU core.

Re: MacBook Air M4

#830

Post by pilsetnieks »

drunkonvinyl wrote: post #799
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I’ve always wondered if the Apple trackpad was just the capacitive part of an iPhone screen. It feels like glass. It responds similarly. And they have a huge user base sample size for improvements.

It is glass
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