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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

#921

Post by wlesieutre »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #812
wlesieutre wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disregarding that there are 10 different laptop product lines to choose from, if I've already somehow decided that what I want is an XPS and I want a 13 inch screen size, my first two search results are - XPS 13 Laptop or - XPS 13 Laptop https://i.imgur.com/2SHL91Y.png I gather that one of these is a newer revision than the other, but it's a lot more confusing than "M2" and "M3". I need to know whether I want (up to)…

Isn't it the same with Apple? You choose between Air or Pro 14" or Pro 16". But then there are all the variations with different amounts of RAM, SSD, processors (M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max) And every little upgrade costs you 10X compared to a PC laptop.

No not really, I already narrowed down the product lines to only XPS. And 13" is actually one of their less messy sizes, there are the 4 XPS models and 7 Latitudes.

Then within each of these the configurable parts vary, but you're potentially picking processor, RAM, GPU, SSD, and even display resolution. It's not any simpler than the options within one of Apple's laptops, except Apple has a total of four laptops in all sizes.

If you wanted a 15" laptop from Dell, you have 1 XPS, 2 Latitudes, 4 Inspirons, 2 Vostros, and 2 G Series. All of which are an ambiguous mix of actually different models or new/old revisions of the "same" models.

Looking at pricing on the XPS 15, 64 GB RAM adds $450, the RTX 4070 is $1200, upgrade from i7-13700H to i9-13900H is $450, you can option Windows 11 Pro for $50, there's a higher resolution screen for $300 (or $800 if you didn't option the fancy GPU), it's not cheap over here either.

The one place where it really feels like Apple is screwing you compared to Dell is SSD pricing.

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

#922

Post by exe34 »

mhb wrote: post #602
exe34 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are thinkpads considered "ultra mobile" (or whatever the buzzword is nowadays)? I thought they were more hefty? The thin/lightweight laptops from back then had crappy clickety keyboards.

Of course they were heftier, but "nicest keyboard" and "nicest keyboard given ridiculous thickness constraints" are a world apart. No idea what you mean about crappy Thinkpad keyboards. The old Thinkpad keyboards are widely acknowledged to have been great.

> Back in 2013 when I bought my current laptop, the mac book air was the thinnest, lightest, longest battery life, nicest keyboard, and a bunch of superlatives I don't remember, and it was somewhat over £1000. The closest non-mac "ultrabooks" I could find in shops at the time cost the same, and felt like cheap rubbish.

It seems like you've changed my requirements and then decided the thinkpads were a great fit.

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

#923

Post by Detrytus »

baggy_trough wrote: post #865
lifeinthevoid wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, the base model costs €1299 in Belgium, that’s $1400 with the current exchange rate, quite a bit more than $1099 + sales tax.

Isn’t that because of VAT?

VAT us a big part of it, another is currency exchange rate. Apple tends to use "1$ = 1EUR" for price conversion (to eliminate financial risk for themselves from fluctuating exchange rates), and then adds VAT on top of it.

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

#924

Post by jwells89 »

baxuz wrote: post #898
skydhash wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This continues for many years, so it's likely a design principle. I read that Apple follows a document model, where the application is kinda a background thing a window is supposed to be for a specific task. Not like Windows where the main windows is the hub of interaction. So you use CMD + to switch between these tasks and CMD + TAB for switching between applications. The menu bar is part of the application, but w…

Yes, and this is the reason why there is a shared menu bar and why many early macos apps had a number of floating windows, like Photoshop. The desktop represents the active app, and a window is the active document in that app. This doesn't make all that much sense with today's screen sizes and multiplatform apps.

It depends entirely on what you’re used to.

My earliest exposure to computers was a Mac (though Windows, Linux, and BeOS also came into the picture fairly early on) and I don’t find the Mac model the least bit problematic. On the contrary, I find the Win9X model overly simplistic and unmanageable past a small handful of windows.

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

#926

Post by switch007 »

vundercind wrote: post #207
switch007 wrote: post #45

£1,699 for 13" Air with M3 (8/10/16), 24GB RAM, 512GB vs £2,299 (from Costco) for 14" MBP M3 Pro (11/14/16), 36GB RAM, 512GB I'm unsure if £600 extra is worth it for average dev use? The main points I know are: better screen, speakers, fans, 12GB extra ram. But not sure about valuing those at £600. Hm (I'm making this specific comparison because I've just ordered the MBP, but could return it, and get the MBA :D)

Define "average dev use". My personal machine is a 16GB M1 Air. I never wish I had more horsepower. It's simply never an issue. My work machine is a 16GB M1 Pro. Ditto. Really, I'd probably be fine on an M1 Air for that, too. [EDIT] Yes I run local docker containers, though not with huge production datasets or for load testing or whatever—all that works fine. And, hell, they run faster than the shitty oversubscribed…

> Define "average dev use".

Something between "editing an .html file" and "recompiling huge C++ projects every hour"

A few docker containers, IntelliJ, etc

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

#927

Post by YetAnotherNick »

maelito wrote: post #703
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is all the memory getting used at the same time? Mac has very good swapping of memory and extremely fast SSD. Also I work in ML modelling and I figured out at any rate I need to run(not develop) my code in cloud.

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

#928

Post by King1st »

moolcool wrote: post #307
HumblyTossed wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14" 14ACN6. Got one at Costco over a year ago for around $700US. Runs Pop_OS! really well. Weight is very much light enough for me. Edit: There is one downside I found. I replaced the 512GB SSD with 1TB and nearly needed stitches because the bottom plate was so sharp. Oh and I just looked it up, it's listed at 3.04lbs

A big factor is how these machines age too, though. 4 years ago the 2020 M1 Macbook Air dropped, and it's still a fantastic computer today. On the other hand, I don't think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo Ideapad today

I have a Thinkpad T480 from 2018, bought it last year for $100. Peoples needs in a laptop are far lower than marketers would have you believe. Where as many M1 macs users are finding their laptops a struggle to do basic tasks. I use it for programming, 7 hours battery life with hot swappable battery. My fan spins up less often than the Apple silicon pros in the office which is nice because I hate fan noise.

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

#929

Post by switch007 »

switch007 wrote: post #45

£1,699 for 13" Air with M3 (8/10/16), 24GB RAM, 512GB vs £2,299 (from Costco) for 14" MBP M3 Pro (11/14/16), 36GB RAM, 512GB I'm unsure if £600 extra is worth it for average dev use? The main points I know are: better screen, speakers, fans, 12GB extra ram. But not sure about valuing those at £600. Hm (I'm making this specific comparison because I've just ordered the MBP, but could return it, and get the MBA :D)

(replying to myself again)

The MBP arrived. What a machine!

I'm biased that my current laptop is a 2015 MBP (never owned an Air). But I'm still tempted to return it and get a 15" M3 MBA and save £600.

I think I underestimate battery life and over-emphasised performance. I've been running some npm & maven tasks every 1 minute, run a docker container, playing music on the speakers, set battery to power saver, set brightness to 50%. And after 4.5 hours I'm down to 72%, so I think I'm happy with that.

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

#930

Post by faeriechangling »

smoldesu wrote: post #918
eBombzor wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can technically get "more technical specs" for the money but the actual experience of using a TP will never be even close to a MBA. This is coming from someone who's used a T14, T14, a few yogas, and currently use a P14 for work. The last point of TPs using loud and hot Intel CPUs cannot be understated. The P14 throttles so hard when I'm trying to do any work because it's using some sh*t Comet Lake U-series, that…

The Ryzen Thinkpads are the thing to beat for the 2020s. I don't want a $1,800 glass art installation that requires a warranty to reliably fix. I want a good laptop, and you can "fix" the majority of a Thinkpad's problems by simply selecting good internals from the start. In a reductive sense, it's no different than ensuring that you avoid the 12" or 16" Intel Macbook. And I mean... maybe I'm crazy, but I'd skip on a…

Macs are rather hardy computers and I used to see Thinkpad vs MacBook showdowns back in the day where people would run over both and other various things. The Mac’s would actually win a fair amount of the time because they’re less brittle.

Unlike iPhones, Macs are actually fairly hardy against physical damage. It’s a huge part of why I’ve been keen to buy them. Surviving a waist high drop is what I’d expect. The problem is the repair prices are FAR higher if something goes wrong.

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