I presumably still have mine, though it's probably hidden away in storage somewhere. Why I as a poor grad student in 2007 thought it was worth it to pay extra just for the black finish, I'm not sure. I was new to the Mac back then ... funny to think that I went from anti-Apple as a college student to a dedicated Mac user for fifteen years.
I'm a little sad they didn't have an actual dark color available for the M1 MBP (just light silver and medium silver), I assume it'll be offered on the next MBP.
Aside from the potential stability concerns already mentioned in sibling comments, the aluminum case is essential for dispersing heat, as the MacBook Air relies on passive cooling instead of using a fan.
I was waiting for today to buy a macMini for my wife whose 2012 iMac died. So I'm unhappy as well and just bought a M1 macMini because I can't wait any longer.
I wonder if a M2 mini would have been perceived as competition for the macStudio.
I stopped noticing the notch after using it for, what, maybe half an hour on my MacBook Pro? And the screen estate besides the notch is extra and the idea fits well with the macOS menu bar.
This argument went round and round back when Apple first released the notched MacBook Pro. Some people apparently don't care about the tradeoffs involved and would indeed prefer a smaller screen -- they think it would be that distracting to have a notch. I think they're crazy, personally, but maybe I'd hate the notch too if I had a laptop with one.
The notch itself doesn't bother me but the way they deal with menu bar apps does. Disappearing them into the notch's void when you have enough to push them there is really really bad UX.
The only app that I'm aware of that actually helps address this is Bartender, when they should have figured this shit out before they came out. It's possible that they introduced some fix in MacOS Ventura, but there's no indication that this is the case so far.
I had completely forgotten my 16" MBP has one. When I read your comment I had to remind myself "oh yeah, this laptop has a notch".
I see it there looking right at it... but I'm sure in a few minutes it won't exist in my mind once again. It is simply that out of the way which seems so strange given that it is right in the middle... but that has always been a dead space in macOS.
I think the only excuse for that huge notch has to be they are planning to put Face ID in there at some point in the near future and don't want the design language to change again when that happens. i.e they are pre-reserving that space in the menu bar.
The latest iPads and iPhones have a LIDAR on the back camera. They can be used to scan the environment. And the FaceID setup for the front-facing camera is used to create those animated memojis that match your face.
If you add it to a laptop, it could actually map the background environment and do some really fancy processing for video calls. Or even improve audio based on the room shape it sees.
This was on the same manufacturing process as the M1. There's generally a bigger boost when moving to a smaller process. But yes, there are diminishing returns, especially when you look at single core performance. Power efficiency and transistor counts are still increasing decently.
18% is pretty good for the same process. So all these gains are from microarchitectural smarts only? Or a case of Apple presenting fab gains as their own?
18% is pretty decent, IMHO, for their bottom-most spec, especially given the RAM limit is being extended to 24GB, while the power consumption is still brutally good (18hrs video playback) and the screen is also a bit more spacious at 13.6"...
and it's not like they don't have faster CPUs. it's just the cheapest you can get and even that is getting faster!
tbh, im using an M1 Mac Mini since last December and it's sooo freaking fast and smooth, that I'm not even really motivated to upgrade at all, if it wouldn't be for the extra memory. though the 16GB is surprisingly sufficient too, if i have run browser tab suspender extensions and close my unused electron apps (notion, logseq, slack), while coding (in Clojure, using IntelliJ and Emacs).
Pro is a dockable workstation with a small form factor. Pros have insane amount of internal bandwidth. M1 was able to edit 30 4K streams or 7 8K streams simultaneously IIRC.
Inclusion of that small fan affects the frequency range and how they handle sustained workloads.
A pro won't blink while an Air will throttle to keep itself from melting. For long video and photo jobs, that really matters (or for long (>24h) running simulation/scientific code or plethora of other examples).
No, it absolutely doesn't matter for video or photo jobs, and no one is running multi-day simulations on one of these devices. If you're running such intense simulations, a theoretical 5% to 15% difference in performance makes no difference at all when you can pay a little bit more to get either a 14"/16" MBP or a Mac Studio and easily get a much more substantial 50%+ performance uplift.
The 13" MBP is a relic that should have been discontinued. It makes no sense for Apple to have kept it around.
That small cooling difference affects how these CPUs are clocked and how they behave under sustained workloads.
A long video render is easily 2-3h at 100% CPU load. A scientific simulation is >24h at 100% load, with instruction trains optimized to get every ooze of performance, hence hitting the TDP almost instantly.
A MacBook Air M1's body is not an unlimited heatsink attached to M1 SoC. I've succeeded to heat my M1 air to unusual levels when the platform was new and some programs were prone to entering infinite loops.
Yeah but the people who come up with that marketing garbage are lizardmen wearing human skin. Real people don't talk like that. Presumably parent is human, though this is the internet so they could be a dog, and I'm just wondering why a real person and not a marketing drone would use that artificial, cringe-inducing marketing NewSpeak.
Feels like it exists for some sort of Enterprise customer that wants to use the old chassis for whatever reason, be it some sort of docking solutions, accessories, cases, whatever. It really doesn't make sense for almost any consumers.
This looks like what the Macbook (2015) wanted to be. Keyboard and single port aside, it was a fantastic form factor, albeit crushingly slow. Mine no longer holds a charge, and am eagerly awaiting replacing it with one of these.
Over time I've also noticed I no longer care about having the fastest possible laptop, since my job provides me with an MBP and that's where serious work gets done.
I have a feeling this is going to be backordered for a long, long time though.
I swapped out the battery on mine. It now gets a few hours of life per charge but it's still fairly big and the fan fires up when barely anything is happening. Might just have to jump on this MBA too.
I think we're talking about two different machines, I have a fanless MacBook from ~2015, with the ultra low voltage intel CPU that is way, way too slow these days.
It has also survived multiple water spills, and the speakers don't work anymore. It's definitely time for an upgrade :)
my older macbooks (air and pro) had a swollen battery which ruined the main boards and were no longer replaceable in practical terms. I'd get it replaced sooner than later if you're planning on doing so.
We got a SIKER battery replacement for a 2012 MacBook Pro, but one cell swelled up and the battery wouldn't hold a charge. One Amazon reviewer for one of the replacement MacBook battery packs says that they might be building replacement battery packs out of old worn damaged, or mismatched cells. I don't know if that's the case.
In any case I bought a second battery pack from TECHOWL and it seems to be working for a few weeks so far. Fingers crossed...
I’ve changed half a dozen MacBook batteries with Anker over the years, and all worked flawlessly. One I thought was swollen and they promptly moved to send a replacement, but turned out it was my case that was warped.
I own a 12" Retina MacBook and I am sad that none of the new laptops can really replace it. They're all significantly larger and heavier. The new MacBook Air is a replacement for the old MacBook Air, not the MacBook. It's a shame Apple have given up on the ultra-ultra-lightweight MacBook concept, considering that the M1 would be perfect for it.
I own a MacBook Air 11'', and it's also a pretty unique machine in terms of small form factor and silent operation. I feel current MacBook Airs finally serve as a good replacement. However, the 11'' Late 2012 model was also quite unique in terms of being a perfect PC citizen. So one could run other OSes with zero effort. In fact, it was Linus' daily driver for a few years.
I wish other manufacturers like Lenovo or Dell tried to compete in terms of fanless design so that there were more options. Lenovo in particular seems quite unfocused as they release tons of devices all the time and good ones are much more expensive than Apple's offerings, at least in EU.
Totally agree. It’s just other CPUs don’t come close to the M1/M2. That’s what really makes the new MacBooks unique. It’s going to be like that for quite some time I think.
I think some Intel / AMD options are pretty similar. However, their performance per Watt is inferior which makes it tricky to come up with nice silent machines.
To be honest I don’t think the Mx platform in the 12 inch form factor will be good enough to be in an ultra lightweight class. I also own a 12 inch retina and while I really like that it is slient and very lightweight we probably need another generation to get that far to have good passive cooling and performance given that the form factor will have to put the battery and motherboard on top of each other. A bezel shrink with a notch would still work out though but it would need a high ppi and 500 nits brightness will further tax the battery.
Given that the M1 doesn't throttle in a 10 inch ipad with passive cooling I think Apple absolutely could build a M1/M2 11 inch air or 12 inch macbook. They either haven't gotten to it or are deliberately avoiding going down into ipad size territory with macbooks.
According to their page the Macbook Air is the world's best selling laptop so presumably there's some market. I also went from an 11" air to the M1 and miss the smallness of the 11".
I'd rather buy a similarly light laptop, that has a touchscreen.
You can already get AMD Zen 3+ machines in this size class, that isn't too far behind in perf & efficiency. Doing so gives you much better Linux compatibility, a touchscreen, and (sometimes) better feeling keyboards. Battery life will always come up short though, x86 laptops just can't match these new macbooks.
For casual web browsing, on some sites I find it more efficient to click links directly on the screen instead of using a cursor. A big one for me, pinch to zoom for images/charts/maps is a lot more natural to me on a touchscreen.
Controlling mobile emulators when developing mobile apps can also benefit from a touchscreen.
> I feel like the screen would get dirty.
It does, but I'd just wipe it down occasionally like I do my phone.
I recently used a friend's touchscreen laptop to reinstall Windows on it. The touchscreen was handy to scroll with while we waited for Windows Update to find his touchpad driver, but once that was installed, I don't think I even felt tempted to touch the screen again.
I'm yet to find a single non-Apple laptop that comes even close to Macbook's touchpad.
There are better keyboards (Thinkpads are great), even comparable screens, fast processors, better dedicated GPUs. But somehow no one can get the touchpad right.
I don’t really see a difference in trackpads anymore. It used to be a huge deal. The old windows laptops were garbage. Now it’s more or less the same. People keep talking about the apple ones but side by side it’s the same same for general use.
Mine (2017) is still going strong. My only complaints are the lack of a video-out thunderbolt port and the relatively week camera. I find it plenty snappy and not at all 'crushingly slow', but then again I'm not compiling on it—just happily browsing and chatting.
Like you I'll probably replace it, but not for a couple years once the software catches up and when I can get it cheap refurbed.
Yeah but my guess is soon the M2 Max will be revealed. Its probably already developed, they just need to wait six more months to reveal. Clearly apple is able to jump straight to the M2, but they are releasing M1 to maximize profit.
Didn't the M1 come out in november 2020 and the M1 Pro in October 2021? That would be closer to a year than 6 months. I actually would not be suprised if it took even a little longer and if they went with a more advanced node on TSMC to get both, architecture improvements and miniaturization improvements.
Its not really so clear though, that the next fab rev would come through on time. They often don’t and these product plans are developed years in advance.
Please either support made-up arguments like this, with sources, or even better, don't post them to begin with. Don't waste our time.
Absolutely nobody wants to hear that you have magical oracular powers that enable you to tell us what the secret evil motives are behind Apple's CPU development iteration schedule and product release schedule.
Incremental release of breakthrough products. M1 and M2 were both probably ready at the same time. Release M1, then M2 to try and get the upgrade sells. Its tough to beat, but atleast the products are amazing
That’s precisely why I skipped M1 altogether. The M2 gains are great and we will have more mature software. The second M2 Pro drops, it’s an instant buy.
The biggest question I have is whether it has WiFi 6E or just WiFi 6 (2x2 80 MHz like the original M1 MacBook Air).
That's the one thing that's kind of gimped it for me—if I could get more WiFi bandwidth, especially with the ProRes decoding built into the M2, I might be able to edit 4K video over my network wirelessly for the first time. Would be amazing.
To be clear, I still think the M1 Air was the best portable laptop Apple made since the 11" Air before it was discontinued. I just think it being so 'wireless-first', it should have the best wireless speed possible.
However, for 2020 & 2021 models is nothing out of ordinary: 2x2 ax, max 80 MHz wide channels. Basically what every other vendor at the market offers.
During 2019, they went a step backwards: from 3x3 MIMO to 2x2 MIMO. Granted, many APs do not support more than 2x2, but there are models on the market that do, and those who care about these things had a choice. Now, it is join the averages.
> the best portable laptop Apple made since the 11" Air before it was discontinued
I used to have an 11" Air as a daily driver. The portability was nice but I'd never go back to a computer that small. Too cramped, too little screen real estate, too small a battery. It doesn't surprise me that 11" laptops are rare these days.
I've gone back and forth over the years. Part of me would like a smaller system for travel but 1.) I always end up wondering if the tradeoff is worth it given how relatively small and light 13" laptops can be and 2.) I probably will never again travel to the degree I was doing it at peak. So I probably wouldn't actually buy an 11" MacBook Air even if I could.
A modern 13" laptop with narrow bezels is pretty much the same size as the old 11" laptops with huge bezels. I have a Dell XPS 13 9310 (2021 model), and I absolutely love how small it is.
This; the 11" had massive bezels, comparatively. That was the only real downside IMO. But the compact footprint was amazing for travel. I plugged it into my dock if I was at the desk.
I used four generations of the MBA, including the 11" 2015. That was definitely the pinnacle of value / performance in Apple's laptop line until the M1.
>edit 4K video over my network wirelessly for the first time.
Good lord, to think of not that many years ago still needing to be firmly attached to an array of spinning rust to get performance for that. Now, we want to (nearly can) do it wirelessly. Just another set of gear adding to the pile of boat anchors I've been collecting
I've been looking for replacement home networking gear the last few days - I still don't understand Wifi 6 vs 6E, but mostly what I wanted to say was when the Wifi4,5,.. naming came out a few years back my response was "ugh, stupid marketing" and now that I was actually having to look for hardware the difference in actually comparing functionality with linearly increasing numbers is so wonderful :D
That said, what exactly does E imply? I was really trying to distinguish devices using separate 6ghz backplane, and that was annoyingly opaque to me as a person who writes does code but aggressively avoids anything networking :D
E implies the ability to use additional channels at the 6 GHz frequencies. With 5 GHz there are some problems, almost everyone uses the lower ones, leading to congestion and ignoring the upper ones due to DFS (radar detection; people are not fond of their wifi randomly not working).
And contrary to yours opinion, I consider that both 4 (-n) and 5 (-ac) brought very nice things (like support for new frequencies, wider channels or multiple streams). I happened to own 3x3 MIMO ac router at the time and together with 2015 MBP, I saw what it was not necessary to provide ethernet port anymore.
You miss understand - I thought the naming change from 802.11[a-z]+ was marketing BS, but now I actually had to look for hardware, a sane linearly increasing version number scheme makes life so much better :)
If you do a compare against the original M1 MacBook Air, they don't say anything about the network is different. It just says "802.11ax Wi-Fi 6". Same for the MacBook Pro M2.
So I'm guessing it's the same as the M1 MacBook Air.
What do you use for an ethernet adapter? I can hardly tell the difference with a RT8153 adapter, then the increase in CPU usage renders it largely pointless.
No it doesn't. It's essentially Air with just a few incremental upgrades, the same chip just with a few updates. It's a money grab. They will keep selling Air for $999 and pressure consumers into a higher price, as they typically do/and is their business mantra.
X1 is a Pro level device more comparable to MBP. Air is like a browsing the web laptop. It's in the class of laptops that should be $500. You are all so bedazzled by the hype machine that you don't even perceive how you are being fooled to pay a massive fee for EXTREMELY limited feature set of a laptop that's a class below. And Apple isn't even lying about that, Air is a hobby/not a pro level hardware. It's clear Air had more sales funnel than MBP and they wanted to tap into that money making funnel. Have fun with your 2 ports and single screen, and a phone like bezel with no FaceID LMAO. This is such a massive rip off lol, sorry to pour cold water on the hype, but that's just what it is.
Hell, they rewrote Google Work, hey, I'm Apple pay me $200 for rewriting software that has existed for 12 years already.
> "Air is like a browsing the web laptop. It's in the class of laptops that should be $500."
I do some volume purchasing of tech product (Lenovo / Dell Laptops and desktops + poweredge on server side + some networking on other gear). I like those products, they are fine.
That said, my wife has an air. I think folks are seriously underestimating the air if they are thinking it just something to browse the web.
The "pro class" X1 screen resolution is 1920 x 1200 / the "web laptop" Air is 2,560 x 1,600.
I mean, you just said it, your wife. X1 maybe went with this screen for whatever reason but there are other laptop options (XPS 13, Surface Laptop). XPS is even better than Air 3.5K 3456x2160. I think for newer consumers, they can more "easily" navigate through all these options to decide, well, I'm not a Pro (or not using it for Pro) and I will get Air. But in the end it's not a PRO level device and it's really sad that these GREAT devices are being overlooked due to this. As far as Air most PRO people wouldn't do with only one screen, or they want to us VM, or if they truly edit video Air won't have the AV1 and H264 extensions making it dog slow for that. In the end Air is REALLY marketed and sold to the web browser crowd, which is a laptop you can find easily for $500 and really great one around $700-$900 range, with the only thing you are losing is maybe that extra couple hours on battery life.
My sibling uses an air - built and sold one company, doing the same again with 8 digit funding. He could buy any computer he wants. He chose an air. This is unique a bit to tech world, my piece of this in IT side is not the SAAS tech directly and old IT they don't work so well so I don't buy them.
The upside, he handed off his huge tricked out machine to me. I think especially for folks who are not in one spot (ie, staying with a partner, vacation home etc etc) it works fine.
Yeah, that's the issue here, Apple positions itself as a luxury device. Personally, I think there's a halo effect from iPhone being good, but it doesn't mean that other Apple products are. It's just hype and undeserved hype at that.
Also, I just don't like Apple as an industry player, they rewrite and replace into CLOSED software (Embrace, extend, and extinguish), to use most of it, you need to be 100% Apple devices. This is terrible. As consumers, we've benefited GREATLY from vendors competing, and that's what has driven a lot of innovations on our table top. Apple goes against all of that, and this is why I don't/won't spend more money there. If you see WWDC at least 40% was about replacing already existing functionality of Google Docs.
After I taught myself to keep my wrists unbent/horizontal with the ground while I typed, this sort of thing doesn't bother me at all. Without evidence I attribute to this my lack of RSI or carpal tunnel despite being a heavy emacs user over the decades.
Back when I had my M1 MBP, I never managed to get above 60Hz, and I found some articles suggesting that nobody could. I'm curious why you had more success.
In my case, I had to get a new DisplayPort cable (not all cables will support 120hz). Things were rocky at the start but I believe Apple also released an update to improve compatibility.
Regular 4k@120hz is totally doable on M1 Max MBP, can confirm that myself.
Hard to answer the question regarding 4k+ ultrawides @120hz though, primarily because i dont think there is a display like that in existence yet (googling didn't net much success there for me). The only ultrawide 4k+ display i found that is above 60hz is the LG 5k ultrawide with thunderbolt 4 support, and it maxes out at 70hz (and M1 Max MBP supports it at that refresh rate just fine, that's my current setup).
Literally my only question. If they don't understand that then this is a massive market-research fail. I went Windows before the M1 Pro Macs just because I could not run two displays well on the Air (Displaylink sucks so so much).
On the contrary, I suspect they have market research to the effect that only a small proportion of users have or want multiple screens, and of those who do, they're likely to buy a more expensive model in the first place. Basically everyone I know has gone the route of a single large display, Mac user or not.
> Basically everyone I know has gone the route of a single large display, Mac user or not.
I've noticed that, too, which I don't quite understand. Dual displays were touted as a productivity multiplier back in the day. Is that not the case anymore?
It's not just notifications of the phone. Having to switch between the huge amount of apps and windows is bad even on more screens, let alone on a single screen.
Meh. I'm more productive when one thing has focus, so I prefer not having multiple applications open at once vying for my attention. One display works great for me ... I'd even shut my laptop screen if I could, but I use touch ID for authentication.
Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I've never been in a position where I thought that having more screen real estate than a large 4k display would be helpful. When I need to have more than one application visible I can do that; when I want to focus on one thing at a time I can do that too.
Seeing as there are single large monitors with more pixels than those multiple back in the day monitors, it makes sense. People ran multiple screens to get the real estate. There was always a fight on how to arrange them to minimize the gaps from the bezels. Now, it's one screen, no interrupting bezels and more pixels.
I prefer my dual displays--I think. But there are definitely a ton of "power users" of various kinds these days who prefer a single large (often curved) display. I really thought about it a bit back and decided to stick with dual displays but I see the arguments for not having to deal with moving windows between monitors, etc.
I genuinely don't know what "2013-style lunchbox" means here. Lunchbox to me means a small metal box with a handle that has a picture of an 80s cartoon on it.
My anecdata seems to confirm this as well. We ordered ~30 Macbook Airs at work over the last 18 months or so (startup, so no actual IT department), and I didn't even know they only supported one monitor until a month ago when a new employee asked why their second screen didn't work.
This was the 27th MBA we deployed, so 26 people only used one external monitor (and I went back and asked if anyone needed an upgrade for dual-monitor use in case they just ignored it). All non engineering roles though.
By the time you spec up the memory and base ram to something from this decade for the 13", you are only another couple hundred away from the 14" pro which you might as well get at that point
The whole existence of the 13” MBP is kinda pointless and anachronistic?! It sticks out like a sore thumb with the old-school display and touch bar next to the 14” MBP.
I really don't understand it. I want HN to explain it to me. Is there a whole team and supply chain for the 13" MBP that was too far along in the M2 upgrade design process to stop or something?
You can't do stereo with fewer than 2 speakers but even if you have 64, you're probably still doing stereo. (Or you are a movie theater.)
Generally speaking, you can probably achieve better stereo sound with the 4 speakers than with the 2, but this is not always the case. Coming from Apple, I would normally expect the Pro to have higher-end speakers and thus probably sound better.
But I could be wrong, since Actual Audio Professionals don't use the onboard speakers for anything serious.
Also: I'm really surprised there are enough TouchBar lovers to justify its continued existence.
And for the first time, MacBook Air supports fast charge for charging up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes with an optional 67W USB-C power adapter.
Anybody know if the 67W USB-C power adapter is finally stock? Edit: Nope, still gotta wait a month: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MKU63AM/A/67w-usb-c-power... Other (bigger) chargers are a 2 month wait. Looks like Apple is still suffering from supply chain issues.
Pretty sure my Dell charger puts out nearly 100W, not sure how compatible it is actually though
Edit:
It is a power supply that came with an XPS 15
The text on the brick claims 5V 1A and 20 V 6.5 A, missing 9V and 15V levels and the current on 20V seems not to be standard. It does charge everything I have plugged it into, but they might all be falling back to 5V1A. The back text could also just not be telling the truth.
RavPower sells some dual-port models that will do 90W PD if you use one port or 45/45W or 60/30W using both ports. I ran my i9 MBP on the single port and it regularly drew 90W.
Is this about the new MacBook Air? I'm in favor of them bringing magsafe back, but if and only if it also charges via USB-C cables as well. If this is true, and it charges 60W+, that'd be great.
I have the 16" M1 Pro MacBook Pro and regularly run it from a small 30W USB-C PD charger. That keeps up with the demand even running Photoshop, Minecraft, Xcode, etc.
I had one of the last intel mbas and whatever charger they shipped with that computer was downright anemic. 29W maybe then if that's what yours was? I put the computer under load with a game and the charge actually was trickling down with the thing plugged in and the cpu throttling.
Anker sells a lovely 65W USB-C power adapter ("USB C Charger, Anker 65W PIQ 3.0") for 34$ on Amazon, which I regularly use to charge my 16" M1 pro macbook without issue. Would recommend over buying the Apple option for 2x the price.
The 24GB unified memory is a really nice upgrade (the M1 MBA has 8GB upgradeable to 16GB). The CPU/GPU upgrades are predictable and wlecome but the memory is huge.
A lot of development isn't CPU bound but is memory bound or at least can really benefit from more memory. This upgrade makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads.
I have a MBP (Intel) but it's expensive. Getting a viable machine for $1200 would be great. You feel less bad about losing it or breaking it or upgrading it more often.
Really happy to see this.
As an aside, having 8GB of unified memory even as an option in 2022 is a joke. It should just be 16Gb minimum.
Actually, when you consider how many banks of memory it would take to obtain 100GB/s, it's a bargain. Desktop DDR5-4800 tops out at 38.4 GB/s, so you would need three, desktop DDR5 memory sticks to get that - but it would not even matter because a 12th Gen desktop Intel Core i9 can't handle more than 75GB/s at once. Now, DDR5 is falling in price, but low-power laptop grade DDR5 is still quite a specialized part, let alone with such bandwidth potential.
Apple charges $400 for 32 GB when you upgrade the memory in computers with M1 Max. That used to be a decent price, at least before DDR5 prices started falling. The M2 memory upgrade is twice as expensive.
Edit: 16 -> 32 GB with M1 Pro is $400. 32 -> 64 GB with M1 Max is also $400. 64 -> 128 GB with M1 Ultra is $800. Memory upgrades for the high-end Macs are surprisingly cost-effective.
This is not true. The M1 Max machines start with 16GB of RAM, upgradable to 32GB, so you are adding 16GB more for $400. The new M2 machine starts with 8GB of RAM, upgradable to 24GB for $400. They are both adding 16GB for $400 or 8GB for $200 if you check, so the cost of upgrades is exactly the same.
Kind of ridiculous when you can get 64GB of laptop RAM for less than $400 easily. I still don't get why the M-series chips have such ridiculously low memory ceilings.
I doubt Apple will allow you to configure up to 24GB on a MBA though - they’d likely want to reserve that to the MBP which has active cooling and can sustain peak performance.
Edit: as comments pointed out, I’m wrong - thanks for the corrections.
For web dev the base model (8GB RAM) MacBook Air M1 is a viable dev machine - makes the maxed out i7 MacBook Pro I had from work feel sluggish in comparison.
Not Docker, webpack. Your run-of-the-mill webpack dev server will happily gulp gigabytes of RAM, and pray that your frontend dev stack only runs one of them. Your IDE will probably use a few more gigabytes on top of that for static analysis and autocompletion, and that's how you need at least 8-10GB to run develop your average mid-size web app without swapping.
My webpack config for a fairly large app run under a single GB, and performance on my m1 pro machine is so good that I have it permanently running the background. Maybe you need to optimise your config?
not docker, but the linux virtual machine that docker on mac has to use because mac os has no other way to run containers (which would mean running linux binaries anyway).
on linux you would have pretty much no overhead from running software in containers.
Tell me you haven’t used an M1 device without telling me.
People getting their hands on 8GB M1 MacBook Airs in the early days were saying the memory management and performance were making it snappier than the 16GB Intel MacBooks.
I made a mistake of purchasing a 8GB M1 MacBook Pro. It was painful to work with. For casual stuff it worked just fine, but as soon as I ran a Docker image (with 2GB memory limit), had Slack and few other light apps open, some tabs in Safari it started to become slow. Painfully slow. The spinning beach ball was a very frequent sight to me. My RAM usage was often in the red zone and I had to kill applications constantly. When I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a M1 Pro with 32 GB of RAM all of these issues went away.
Docker on Mac (and Windows) is a full-blown VM. The containers assume Linux, so they are getting it -- inside that VM.
That also brings issue with networking. Sure, if you are using the bridged (in Docker's parlance) networks, you won't notice. If you need to use host/ipvlan/macvlan, you will.
VMs are much more memory intensive than other workloads because they wire a lot of memory and/or just access it constantly, which defeats pretty much every optimization you could conceivably do to hide it.
I have M1 with 8GB, it can't handle basic node.js/react app. I have to force kill node and start again every few hours. This with just browsers and apple music playing.
Because ppl use Docker, even when it's not really that necessary...
I'm using Nix for the past few years and it has obviated the need for Docker.
I have simple shell.nix files, which are activated via direnv and that's it; 0 runtime overhead, no need to install various java/node/python/ruby version managers.
What actually feasts on memory is the various chat apps and project management and knowledge-base management software, in-browser email clients, github pages, JetBrains IDEs.
You should keep these closed, whenever u can and then 8GB is enough comfortably.
You will still receive Slack notifications on your phone, then u can fire up Slack to reply or have a discussion. Same with Notion or Logseq. You don't need to have a gmail tab open all the time either. The built-in Mail.app might just be enough for you too, which might eat slightly less memory. You can use Sublime Text or Emacs for editing, instead of VS Code or WebStorm. Install a browser-tab suspender extension. Download technical docs and read them via Dash (or whatever open-source equivalent it has). Have you looked into how much memory does a github.com page eats?
It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO.
It's more complicated than that; if you look at the reviews and tests 8GB M1 machines, you'll see there were no issues like the ones you're mentioning.
The pipeline between the unified RAM and the SSD is so fast, it's essentially a L3 cache as apposed to swap as in the way we traditionally think about it.
In my experience this is just not true. Unless you are doing multiple vms and some wierd stuff. Base Macbook Air is wonderful. It is faster than my 32gig desktop xeon workstation desktop from 5 years ago.
I also think there is big argument for devs to be developing webaps on consumer gear. How else you can spot the issues with your apps. And tbh if your macbook air has problems running your webapp... well. Good luck.
Made a point not to install Docker on this machine. Honestly loved it when I first tried it.
Usually have like 20-25 tabs open in safari, a VS Code instance (sometimes two), a Nextjs app + express backend running against a local Postgres. This is always in the yellow memory pressure range for me.
If I close the browser or just stick with a few tabs it’s all good, but when each tab can suck 100s of MB it quickly adds up. It’s a workflow my 2014 MBP with 16GB still handles though so I don’t feel like my expectations are too high.
I have a MBA 16GB and everything is fine until I use Docker. It's under constant memory pressure and I was looking into getting a 32/64GB Macbook Pro 14 M1 Pro max. But really dreaded the additional weight/size of the laptop + 96W power brick which is an additional of ~2 lb
I needed more RAM to run SQL in a VM that I didn't expect I would need.
If you can guarantee you won't need more, sure it's plenty viable. If you can't make that guarantee, you need to remember there is no upgrade path. You will be selling the machine and buying a new one.
It absolutely isn't. I initially bought an M1 with 8GB, and it would constantly crawl to a halt. Unfortunately I was past my return window so had to sell it at a loss to buy another 16GB.
I really do not understand this. The 14" Macbook Pro (M1 Max) does support up to three external displays. What was the problem with these new Macbooks to not support at least two displays..
The Touchbar in the 13" MBP counts as a display. So the Pro already runs 2 displays and can add a third. The same GPU+CPU is in the MBA which only runs 1 + 1 external display. It't not a limitation of GPU or whatever they want you to believe. This is pure market segmentation.
Does it? The touch bar is something like 2170x60px. That's a tiny fraction of the processing power and data bandwidth compared to an actual screen. In terms of raw pixel count, it's only about 2x as many pixels as my old Commodore 64 would push every frame. Each of those pixels is a lot deeper but it's still probably pretty much a rounding error compared to how much is being dealt with for the internal screen, never mind an external one.
(Hell, is the central GPU even running the touchbar, or is there a specialized display circuit just for it?)
That said, my reaction to this whole thread is pretty much "I guess multiple external monitors is a reason to upsell you to a Pro machine" so we agree on that point :)
Framerate's hard to determine from a youtube video of someone pointing a camera at it, single-stepping has some things seeming to move at the same framerate as the camera but redrawing the whole screen as the player moves around looks more like 1/3 of the camera's framerate to me.
It looks to be at worst 10fps to my eyes. Which is also where animation really starts to shift from “moving drawings” to “fast slideshow” in my experience. So right on the border.
Isn't it just based on amount of pixels needing to be pushed through? So if it can support a 6K external, it should be able to support multiple monitors as long as combined resolution doesn't exceed 6k?
Nope, just as the sibling wrote: with that chip, they have two outputs total to play with, and on laptops one of them is wired to the internal display.
I'm pretty sure Apple has the technical expertise to "turn off" internal display on clamshell mode and allow two external displays (that's my usual setup) but somehow they don't want to do that.
>So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so as long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.
Oh no, you're breaking my heart. Is there no adapter you can buy that splits that 6k thunderbolt bandwidth into two smaller external displays? Okay I just googled, and it looks like there are third party DisplayLink which sort of maybe work, but are not officially supported? But people SEEM to have dual 4k monitors working?
I’m using a Dell D6000 hub with two 4K screens using display link and one iMac 5K with a luna dongle. So 4 screens in total with the MacBook Pro M1 with 8gb and all screens at 60hz.
Everything is fluid with a web stack (node, angular and tools like Vscode, DB, slack etc).
The only thing that puts it on its knees is when I share a screen with some apps. The buffers might not be done the right way. Otherwise it works surprisingly well !
Because you are most likely running the Intel version, not the Apple Silicon one!
Check it in the Activity Monitor. There should be a "Kind" column on the CPU or Memory tabs. If not, you can turn on that column via a right click on the headers.
I'm using IntelliJ IDEA 2022.2 EAP (Ultimate Edition)
Build #IU-222.2680.4, built on May 25, 2022
Runtime version: 17.0.3+7-b463.3 aarch64
VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o.
and it's freaking buttery smooth.
notice the "aarch64" part!
Running Macbook Air M1 with 16 GB of RAM and never had performance issues running multiple Electron instances, simulators, compilers, browsers and what not. Changed to Macbook Air after my 3 times as expensive Macbook Pro 16" (8 core Intel) was stolen and never missed it for a second. Doesn't seem like there is a compelling reason to upgrade to Macbook Air M2.
On the contrary, I was planning to get an almost maxed out M1 Pro, and now I'll buy an almost maxed out M2 Pro (when 16" comes out), because the things I do need extensive processing power and every bit of performance counts.
If I can not have a big desktop system and just use my daily laptop for developing these hard, CPU bound simulation tasks; I'll be a happy camper.
I'm using 256GB machines for Clojure development in IntelliJ since 2017 and I never run out of disk space. I have 36GB of photos and 10GB of iPhone backups on iCloud Drive though.
The trick is not to mix your personal stuff, like movies, photos and music with your work stuff. Also make sure you regularly clean up the older versions of the software you use, including Docker layer caches, brew / nix packages, JetBrains IDEs, browser caches, etc. If you are not doing audio/video work, then removing iMovie and GarageBand frees up 4.5GB. Similarly Keynote/Numbers/Pages 2GB.
for the person who's looking for a machine to handle emails, facebook, netflix, and maybe a bit of document editing, 8GB is totally fine. and even if that extra ram was free, it still has a cost in battery life. 8GB of ram is the right choice for a lot of people buying a macbook air.
I have a mini with 8gb and its great. I run logic, intellij, node and it doesn't flinch. For work I would want more but for personal stuff, 8gb has been fine.
Finally, Apple has seen the light! This is going to be an instabuy for many, including me. This feels like 2012 when Apple introduced Retina displays: Everything that's good about Apple in a single package, and unavailable at any price anywhere else. The nitpicky in me will complain about the lack of a glass touchpad, but I feel Apple is justified in leaving it as a Pro feature.
I just checked and you are right, my M1 Air has a glass trackpad too. However, the trackpad on the 14" MBP is much smoother and more responsive; I thought it the difference was glass vs non-glass. It must be something else.
I don’t mean to insinuate anything here, but have you checked the trackpad behaviour using the same trackpad settings?
I once thought the same thing only to realize my settings on the trackpad weren’t quite the same and somehow my brain just glitched and I glossed over that (important) detail.
Upgrade-ability and repair-ability are important topics, and do impact how environmentally friendly a device can be considered to be, but this is unrelated to the core of the topic at hand.
The contention was that "They should have said it's less bad instead of saying it's better". That is what I was responding to.
You've introduced a different topic, that is tangentially related, but not directly relevant to a discussion about framing things. It'd be relevant in a discussion about the absolute environmental friendliness of the device, but that's another discussion entirely.
I'm still using a 2017 MacBook Pro, though I have an M1 Mac Mini.
I had 2 second-hand 27" iMacs too, from 2011 and 2013.
I gave the 2011 one away, because I couldn't upgrade it anymore, but it is still used for audio/video editing.
The 2013 one has some issues with its hard-drive and I'm planning to upgrade it to an SSD. It's still a pretty capable machine, though I would probably put Linux on it, since the macOS upgrades for that are discontinued too.
The display panels are "just" 2K in them, but still super sharp, though a bit dusty inside... They are better than most cheaper external monitors I saw ppl using for everyday work...
I think a decade of runtime for Macs is not that uncommon. 2 decades would be even better, but I wouldn't call it a "vicious upgrade cycle"...
I mean, I'm still on an iPhone Xs Max and before that I had an iPhone 7 Pro and I have no intention of upgrading, despite the back-glass being cracked on it. and not because I can't afford it, but because I won't really utilize the extra power of the latest versions.
Yeah, same. Tho my PC, I pretty much upgrade everything, and keep using older components. Now I know it's not 100% green, but with an old PC you can literally grind it to the ground by using it as an old storage device, linux box, or ad blocker. My original PC case I've literally been using it for 20 years now, it's crazy it still works/fits all the hardware in there perfectly, and that's probably the biggest component.
Chaning one's perspective on PR vomit would be my suggestion. If it comes from a PR team, then of course it is all shiny, smells great, long lasting, making the world a better place. The true information will never come from those PR departments. Maybe, it'll come from an interested 3rd party, but then you have to know if they are just being informative or if they have an agenda and distorting info as well.
Yes, they should say nothing at all. Instead of saying things like "This means that every Mac Apple creates, from design to manufacturing, will be 100 percent carbon neutral."
Carbon Neutrality is branding and does nothing to reverse CO2 or climate change. It is all green washing.
Better for the environment is never buying another computer.
Yes, I am saying that the MacBook Air M1 I am writing on right now should not exist. That what short term gains I am getting from it now will end up causing all your kids to suffer. I am saying you are all sacrificing your children future for novelty and convince. I ams also saying there is no way out of this because we have built this Tower of Babel and what will happen now is out of our hands.
While I appreciate where you're coming from, your conclusion seems to imply there is no world in which technology and a sustainable future can coexist. I realize we are closer to the end now than ever before, but what you are suggesting is that the ending is inevitable. If this is true - we've triggered our downfall and nothing can stop it - then should we not be praising companies that make efforts towards sustainability?
Since we can't just put things back into a box, isn't complaining about marketing like this just barking up entirely the wrong tree? If the premise is that technology ideally shouldn't exist in its current form, then that requires an entirely different discussion built on an entirely different foundation, and Apple's marketing claims are just a small distraction at best.
That was the point of my original comment. We will get no where towards anything sustainable if we keep allowing these lies/PR without calling it out. Unless Apple admits how much of a problem their devices are for the environment then sustainability it is just greenwashing. Unless we realize that capitalism is antithetical to human existence then humanity is over as we know it and all your kids will suffer immeasurably.
Apple and all these companies show no be allowed to use this BS carbon trading. They should be taxed directly for the cost of externalities on the price of the product. It would be so prohibitively expensive very few people could afford it. The profit these companies make is because they are not charging anyone the true cost.
We can put things back into the box. We just do not want to.
You know what my PR would say?
--
This creation and use of our products causes harm to the environment and puts the planet, and your children's future, at risk.
> Better for the environment is never buying another computer.
Really? An older core2 computer uses like 10 times more electricity at idle than a halfway modern one. Also, since it is much less powerful, you might need multiple old computers to manage the sane workload.
I am completely unconvinced that wasting huge amounts of electricity is "better for the environment".
...but you could upgrade components. Yeah, and by now the only component in that computer that is still the same as when bought would be the case. So you threw out and bought 95% of a computer instead of 100%....
No matter how I squint, those 2 statements are logically equivalent, while "both harm the environment" is also true, but you "harm" the environment too, in that sense, no?
I am torn... One one hand I think I want this as an upgrade to my 2016 MBP, on the other hand the 14" Pro has a 120hz display. And although I mostly code on it on the go I got so used to 144hz on my desktop monitor that I kinda feel like an upgrade should include that too. I get that this would totally canibalize their more expensive models but one can dream.
Asahi doesn't have native sound support so you'd need an external DAC or audio interface to get audio from it... as well as no GPU acceleration. I'd say that the only people that could daily drive it are using it from a desk right now for programming. Very promising indeed, but I don't think anyone would be wise to run it on their primary device.
Oh it's no contest. You may as well be comparing chihuahua to a mastiff. Still, it's better than nothing and useful to have around for development and small-scale experimentation.
True... unless you factor in all those blackscreens nvidia has given you on linux(well me at least). Ive wasted days and weeks on stupid nvidia drivers.
Probably still way slower than advertised. The M1's were otherwise awesome but the GPU performance was much over-stated (claims like faster than 3090 when barely on-par with 3050 which is 1/4th as fast).
You have to remember that these are just scaled mobile GPUs. They can't hold a candle to proper dedicated GPU hardware and never will until Apple gets around to designing desktop specific GPU SoCs.
I don't think you read the full details. The Asus Flow convertible is a tablet/laptop that supports a full desktop external GPU, in addition the discrete mobile GPU that is built into the device.
They can totally fit Nvidia GPUs, just not particularly high performance ones. It's not that hard to find a thin-and-light laptop with a low powered discrete Nvidia GPU.
Heck, even the Switch technically has an Nvidia GPU.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 356 ms ] threadOther than that, happy to see magsafe return.
The Mini is a true workhorse machine.
I wonder if a M2 mini would have been perceived as competition for the macStudio.
I don't think so. The smallest Studio has twice as many Firestorm cores and the M2 tops out at 24GB.
The only app that I'm aware of that actually helps address this is Bartender, when they should have figured this shit out before they came out. It's possible that they introduced some fix in MacOS Ventura, but there's no indication that this is the case so far.
I see it there looking right at it... but I'm sure in a few minutes it won't exist in my mind once again. It is simply that out of the way which seems so strange given that it is right in the middle... but that has always been a dead space in macOS.
(They’re not the same kinds of LiDAR, but still…)
If you add it to a laptop, it could actually map the background environment and do some really fancy processing for video calls. Or even improve audio based on the room shape it sees.
https://www.apple.com/in/newsroom/2020/03/apple-unveils-new-...
https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/26/apples-studio-displays-poor-w...
They did not give any number for single-thread speed, so it can be expected that there the improvement is much less impressive.
They said that the little cores have been improved substantially, so it is likely that a good part of the 18% comes from the faster little cores.
18% is pretty decent, IMHO, for their bottom-most spec, especially given the RAM limit is being extended to 24GB, while the power consumption is still brutally good (18hrs video playback) and the screen is also a bit more spacious at 13.6"...
and it's not like they don't have faster CPUs. it's just the cheapest you can get and even that is getting faster!
tbh, im using an M1 Mac Mini since last December and it's sooo freaking fast and smooth, that I'm not even really motivated to upgrade at all, if it wouldn't be for the extra memory. though the 16GB is surprisingly sufficient too, if i have run browser tab suspender extensions and close my unused electron apps (notion, logseq, slack), while coding (in Clojure, using IntelliJ and Emacs).
1. 2017 3.1GHz Quad i7 clj -M -e 1 1.73s user 0.12s system 232% cpu 0.795 total
2. 2020 M1 Mac Mini clj -M -e 1 0.65s user 0.05s system 157% cpu 0.445 total
and I'm getting a very similar time-ratio, when I'm running our test suite for example. I find these speeds extremely satisfying already!
What's the point of Macbook Pro 13"?
A pro won't blink while an Air will throttle to keep itself from melting. For long video and photo jobs, that really matters (or for long (>24h) running simulation/scientific code or plethora of other examples).
The 13" MBP is a relic that should have been discontinued. It makes no sense for Apple to have kept it around.
A long video render is easily 2-3h at 100% CPU load. A scientific simulation is >24h at 100% load, with instruction trains optimized to get every ooze of performance, hence hitting the TDP almost instantly.
A MacBook Air M1's body is not an unlimited heatsink attached to M1 SoC. I've succeeded to heat my M1 air to unusual levels when the platform was new and some programs were prone to entering infinite loops.
Over time I've also noticed I no longer care about having the fastest possible laptop, since my job provides me with an MBP and that's where serious work gets done.
I have a feeling this is going to be backordered for a long, long time though.
It has also survived multiple water spills, and the speakers don't work anymore. It's definitely time for an upgrade :)
That should be trivial to fix with a battery update. 5-6-7 years is a good run...
In any case I bought a second battery pack from TECHOWL and it seems to be working for a few weeks so far. Fingers crossed...
I wish other manufacturers like Lenovo or Dell tried to compete in terms of fanless design so that there were more options. Lenovo in particular seems quite unfocused as they release tons of devices all the time and good ones are much more expensive than Apple's offerings, at least in EU.
--
2012 12" Macbook:
Height: 0.52 inch
Width: 11.04 inches
Depth: 7.74 inches
Weight: 2.03 pounds
Volume 44.43 cubic inches
--
2022 13" Air:
Height: 0.44 inch
Width: 11.97 inches
Depth: 8.46 inches
Weight: 2.7 pounds
Volume 44.56 cubic inches
You can already get AMD Zen 3+ machines in this size class, that isn't too far behind in perf & efficiency. Doing so gives you much better Linux compatibility, a touchscreen, and (sometimes) better feeling keyboards. Battery life will always come up short though, x86 laptops just can't match these new macbooks.
Controlling mobile emulators when developing mobile apps can also benefit from a touchscreen.
> I feel like the screen would get dirty.
It does, but I'd just wipe it down occasionally like I do my phone.
Pinching and scrolling are areas where to me it seems touchscreens have just tried to make up for shortcomings with touchpads.
There are better keyboards (Thinkpads are great), even comparable screens, fast processors, better dedicated GPUs. But somehow no one can get the touchpad right.
Side note, massive praise to anyone who has contributed to the windows drivers for the apple trackpads. They are amazing.
https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad
https://youtu.be/6fPj6mj-M_k
Like you I'll probably replace it, but not for a couple years once the software catches up and when I can get it cheap refurbed.
Absolutely nobody wants to hear that you have magical oracular powers that enable you to tell us what the secret evil motives are behind Apple's CPU development iteration schedule and product release schedule.
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique
Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great
If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight
That's the one thing that's kind of gimped it for me—if I could get more WiFi bandwidth, especially with the ProRes decoding built into the M2, I might be able to edit 4K video over my network wirelessly for the first time. Would be amazing.
To be clear, I still think the M1 Air was the best portable laptop Apple made since the 11" Air before it was discontinued. I just think it being so 'wireless-first', it should have the best wireless speed possible.
I mean, those specs seem to say that it doesn't support Wi-Fi 6E.
(It is not updated for the new models yet).
However, for 2020 & 2021 models is nothing out of ordinary: 2x2 ax, max 80 MHz wide channels. Basically what every other vendor at the market offers.
During 2019, they went a step backwards: from 3x3 MIMO to 2x2 MIMO. Granted, many APs do not support more than 2x2, but there are models on the market that do, and those who care about these things had a choice. Now, it is join the averages.
I used to have an 11" Air as a daily driver. The portability was nice but I'd never go back to a computer that small. Too cramped, too little screen real estate, too small a battery. It doesn't surprise me that 11" laptops are rare these days.
Good lord, to think of not that many years ago still needing to be firmly attached to an array of spinning rust to get performance for that. Now, we want to (nearly can) do it wirelessly. Just another set of gear adding to the pile of boat anchors I've been collecting
https://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-get-a-10gbps-ethernet-port-o...
That said, what exactly does E imply? I was really trying to distinguish devices using separate 6ghz backplane, and that was annoyingly opaque to me as a person who writes does code but aggressively avoids anything networking :D
And contrary to yours opinion, I consider that both 4 (-n) and 5 (-ac) brought very nice things (like support for new frequencies, wider channels or multiple streams). I happened to own 3x3 MIMO ac router at the time and together with 2015 MBP, I saw what it was not necessary to provide ethernet port anymore.
Yes, the new naming scheme is way more understandable for normal users.
So I'm guessing it's the same as the M1 MacBook Air.
Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/I9wcLIy
w/ a CAT 8 Ethernet cable
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
Hell, they rewrote Google Work, hey, I'm Apple pay me $200 for rewriting software that has existed for 12 years already.
I do some volume purchasing of tech product (Lenovo / Dell Laptops and desktops + poweredge on server side + some networking on other gear). I like those products, they are fine.
That said, my wife has an air. I think folks are seriously underestimating the air if they are thinking it just something to browse the web.
The "pro class" X1 screen resolution is 1920 x 1200 / the "web laptop" Air is 2,560 x 1,600.
The upside, he handed off his huge tricked out machine to me. I think especially for folks who are not in one spot (ie, staying with a partner, vacation home etc etc) it works fine.
Possibly they’re moving to the iPhone model of keeping the last gen around as a lower price entry level device.
The previous one was really comfortable to type on since you didn't feel the 90 degree metal edge digging into your wrist like on the pro models.
Was one of the main reasons I got it.
> One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
For my next work laptop, I've been waiting to see if (sometime soon) there would be a MBP that supported external refresh rates > 60 Hz.
Given that the M2 MBA still has that limitation, I suspect not.
I suspect it would probably have issues running 4K @120hz however.
Back when I had my M1 MBP, I never managed to get above 60Hz, and I found some articles suggesting that nobody could. I'm curious why you had more success.
Hard to answer the question regarding 4k+ ultrawides @120hz though, primarily because i dont think there is a display like that in existence yet (googling didn't net much success there for me). The only ultrawide 4k+ display i found that is above 60hz is the LG 5k ultrawide with thunderbolt 4 support, and it maxes out at 70hz (and M1 Max MBP supports it at that refresh rate just fine, that's my current setup).
I've noticed that, too, which I don't quite understand. Dual displays were touted as a productivity multiplier back in the day. Is that not the case anymore?
People aren't productive.. haven't you noticed?
It's not just notifications of the phone. Having to switch between the huge amount of apps and windows is bad even on more screens, let alone on a single screen.
Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I've never been in a position where I thought that having more screen real estate than a large 4k display would be helpful. When I need to have more than one application visible I can do that; when I want to focus on one thing at a time I can do that too.
This was the 27th MBA we deployed, so 26 people only used one external monitor (and I went back and asked if anyone needed an upgrade for dual-monitor use in case they just ignored it). All non engineering roles though.
> "You can also connect up to a 6K display."
EDIT: and is now the only laptop without MagSafe? There are more ports on the new MBA!
The M2 Air looks great, and the 14" and 16" MBP continue to be great as well (but pricey).
The 13" MBP offers you nothing but an outdated chassis, screen, and keyboard.
Ignore the word "Pro". There was nothing more Pro about the 13" MBP when M1 came out... and it's even less Pro than the M2 MBA this time around.
Mind blown.
It's truly bizarre. They must have 10 million of the old laptop bodies in a warehouse or something?
It is identical to the M2 MacBook Air, except:
- Worse camera: 720p camera where the Air has a 1080p camera
- Worse speakers: stereo speakers where the Air has four-speakers (I'm assuming stereo is 2-speakers?)
- Bigger battery: 58.2 WHr vs 52.6 WHr (about a 2hr battery life difference)
- Slightly heavier: +0.3 lbs over the Air
- Slightly smaller screen: 13.3" vs the Air's 13.6", although this is probably due to the notch
- Has the touchbar
They are priced the same from what I can tell.
You can't do stereo with fewer than 2 speakers but even if you have 64, you're probably still doing stereo. (Or you are a movie theater.)
Generally speaking, you can probably achieve better stereo sound with the 4 speakers than with the 2, but this is not always the case. Coming from Apple, I would normally expect the Pro to have higher-end speakers and thus probably sound better.
But I could be wrong, since Actual Audio Professionals don't use the onboard speakers for anything serious.
Also: I'm really surprised there are enough TouchBar lovers to justify its continued existence.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182
Anybody know if the 67W USB-C power adapter is finally stock? Edit: Nope, still gotta wait a month: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MKU63AM/A/67w-usb-c-power... Other (bigger) chargers are a 2 month wait. Looks like Apple is still suffering from supply chain issues.
Edit:
It is a power supply that came with an XPS 15
The text on the brick claims 5V 1A and 20 V 6.5 A, missing 9V and 15V levels and the current on 20V seems not to be standard. It does charge everything I have plugged it into, but they might all be falling back to 5V1A. The back text could also just not be telling the truth.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08YY5XG4N?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...
RavPower sells some dual-port models that will do 90W PD if you use one port or 45/45W or 60/30W using both ports. I ran my i9 MBP on the single port and it regularly drew 90W.
It's cheaper than the 96w charger that came with my Macbook.
> MagSafe 3 charging port
> ...
> Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:
> Charging
> ...
There is absolutely zero doubt, and as others mentioned, it is the same on the 14" and 16".
I have the 16" M1 Pro MacBook Pro and regularly run it from a small 30W USB-C PD charger. That keeps up with the demand even running Photoshop, Minecraft, Xcode, etc.
A lot of development isn't CPU bound but is memory bound or at least can really benefit from more memory. This upgrade makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads.
I have a MBP (Intel) but it's expensive. Getting a viable machine for $1200 would be great. You feel less bad about losing it or breaking it or upgrading it more often.
Really happy to see this.
As an aside, having 8GB of unified memory even as an option in 2022 is a joke. It should just be 16Gb minimum.
> Configurable to: 16GB or 24GB
Store is updated too, 16GB upgrade is 200$ and 24GB is 400$.
In a nutshell, not all RAM is created equal.
Edit: 16 -> 32 GB with M1 Pro is $400. 32 -> 64 GB with M1 Max is also $400. 64 -> 128 GB with M1 Ultra is $800. Memory upgrades for the high-end Macs are surprisingly cost-effective.
Edit: as comments pointed out, I’m wrong - thanks for the corrections.
Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.
on linux you would have pretty much no overhead from running software in containers.
People getting their hands on 8GB M1 MacBook Airs in the early days were saying the memory management and performance were making it snappier than the 16GB Intel MacBooks.
That also brings issue with networking. Sure, if you are using the bridged (in Docker's parlance) networks, you won't notice. If you need to use host/ipvlan/macvlan, you will.
What actually feasts on memory is the various chat apps and project management and knowledge-base management software, in-browser email clients, github pages, JetBrains IDEs.
You should keep these closed, whenever u can and then 8GB is enough comfortably. You will still receive Slack notifications on your phone, then u can fire up Slack to reply or have a discussion. Same with Notion or Logseq. You don't need to have a gmail tab open all the time either. The built-in Mail.app might just be enough for you too, which might eat slightly less memory. You can use Sublime Text or Emacs for editing, instead of VS Code or WebStorm. Install a browser-tab suspender extension. Download technical docs and read them via Dash (or whatever open-source equivalent it has). Have you looked into how much memory does a github.com page eats?
It's more complicated than that; if you look at the reviews and tests 8GB M1 machines, you'll see there were no issues like the ones you're mentioning.
The pipeline between the unified RAM and the SSD is so fast, it's essentially a L3 cache as apposed to swap as in the way we traditionally think about it.
I also think there is big argument for devs to be developing webaps on consumer gear. How else you can spot the issues with your apps. And tbh if your macbook air has problems running your webapp... well. Good luck.
Usually have like 20-25 tabs open in safari, a VS Code instance (sometimes two), a Nextjs app + express backend running against a local Postgres. This is always in the yellow memory pressure range for me.
If I close the browser or just stick with a few tabs it’s all good, but when each tab can suck 100s of MB it quickly adds up. It’s a workflow my 2014 MBP with 16GB still handles though so I don’t feel like my expectations are too high.
If you can guarantee you won't need more, sure it's plenty viable. If you can't make that guarantee, you need to remember there is no upgrade path. You will be selling the machine and buying a new one.
So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so as long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.
It's perfect segmentation, most people don't care, and those that do will pay.
(Hell, is the central GPU even running the touchbar, or is there a specialized display circuit just for it?)
That said, my reaction to this whole thread is pretty much "I guess multiple external monitors is a reason to upsell you to a Pro machine" so we agree on that point :)
But if it (as it actually is I suspect) a USB connected thing that refreshes very slowly, it's not a display at all.
And the MacBook Air can take a USB "monitor" for whatever that's worth.
Framerate's hard to determine from a youtube video of someone pointing a camera at it, single-stepping has some things seeming to move at the same framerate as the camera but redrawing the whole screen as the player moves around looks more like 1/3 of the camera's framerate to me.
Oh no, you're breaking my heart. Is there no adapter you can buy that splits that 6k thunderbolt bandwidth into two smaller external displays? Okay I just googled, and it looks like there are third party DisplayLink which sort of maybe work, but are not officially supported? But people SEEM to have dual 4k monitors working?
(switch rendering API in JRE used by Intellj/Pycharm to Metal for rendering)
and it's freaking buttery smooth. notice the "aarch64" part!
If I can not have a big desktop system and just use my daily laptop for developing these hard, CPU bound simulation tasks; I'll be a happy camper.
So, horses for courses.
The trick is not to mix your personal stuff, like movies, photos and music with your work stuff. Also make sure you regularly clean up the older versions of the software you use, including Docker layer caches, brew / nix packages, JetBrains IDEs, browser caches, etc. If you are not doing audio/video work, then removing iMovie and GarageBand frees up 4.5GB. Similarly Keynote/Numbers/Pages 2GB.
for that kind of usage a $750 acer/asus laptop would probably be good too, however.
I once thought the same thing only to realize my settings on the trackpad weren’t quite the same and somehow my brain just glitched and I glossed over that (important) detail.
Yes, it's noticeable.
"Better for the Environment"
No, it is not better for the environment, it is not as bad for the environment.
Can you point to a product that highlights its strengths by framing them in a negative light instead of painting them positively?
The contention was that "They should have said it's less bad instead of saying it's better". That is what I was responding to.
You've introduced a different topic, that is tangentially related, but not directly relevant to a discussion about framing things. It'd be relevant in a discussion about the absolute environmental friendliness of the device, but that's another discussion entirely.
I gave the 2011 one away, because I couldn't upgrade it anymore, but it is still used for audio/video editing.
The 2013 one has some issues with its hard-drive and I'm planning to upgrade it to an SSD. It's still a pretty capable machine, though I would probably put Linux on it, since the macOS upgrades for that are discontinued too.
The display panels are "just" 2K in them, but still super sharp, though a bit dusty inside... They are better than most cheaper external monitors I saw ppl using for everyday work...
I think a decade of runtime for Macs is not that uncommon. 2 decades would be even better, but I wouldn't call it a "vicious upgrade cycle"...
I mean, I'm still on an iPhone Xs Max and before that I had an iPhone 7 Pro and I have no intention of upgrading, despite the back-glass being cracked on it. and not because I can't afford it, but because I won't really utilize the extra power of the latest versions.
I just don't see that line being effective.
Carbon Neutrality is branding and does nothing to reverse CO2 or climate change. It is all green washing.
https://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article256-the-carbon-ne...
Better for the environment is never buying another computer.
Yes, I am saying that the MacBook Air M1 I am writing on right now should not exist. That what short term gains I am getting from it now will end up causing all your kids to suffer. I am saying you are all sacrificing your children future for novelty and convince. I ams also saying there is no way out of this because we have built this Tower of Babel and what will happen now is out of our hands.
Since we can't just put things back into a box, isn't complaining about marketing like this just barking up entirely the wrong tree? If the premise is that technology ideally shouldn't exist in its current form, then that requires an entirely different discussion built on an entirely different foundation, and Apple's marketing claims are just a small distraction at best.
Apple and all these companies show no be allowed to use this BS carbon trading. They should be taxed directly for the cost of externalities on the price of the product. It would be so prohibitively expensive very few people could afford it. The profit these companies make is because they are not charging anyone the true cost.
We can put things back into the box. We just do not want to.
You know what my PR would say?
--
This creation and use of our products causes harm to the environment and puts the planet, and your children's future, at risk.
Really? An older core2 computer uses like 10 times more electricity at idle than a halfway modern one. Also, since it is much less powerful, you might need multiple old computers to manage the sane workload.
I am completely unconvinced that wasting huge amounts of electricity is "better for the environment".
...but you could upgrade components. Yeah, and by now the only component in that computer that is still the same as when bought would be the case. So you threw out and bought 95% of a computer instead of 100%....
There was a time when the earth could handle the CO2 humans created. There was a balance.
You have to remember that these are just scaled mobile GPUs. They can't hold a candle to proper dedicated GPU hardware and never will until Apple gets around to designing desktop specific GPU SoCs.
https://www.asus.com/us/site/gaming/rog/gaming-laptops/flow-...
It's a very small laptop with the option to utilize a current generation Nvidia GPU.
Heck, even the Switch technically has an Nvidia GPU.