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 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.
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.
There are better keyboards (Thinkpads are great), even comparable screens, fast processors, better dedicated GPUs. But somehow no one can get the touchpad right.
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...
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.
It has also survived multiple water spills, and the speakers don't work anymore. It's definitely time for an upgrade :)
Even the RAM and SSD stats you cite are apples and oranges - both have gotten dramatically faster in the last decade.
Not to be rude, but a poor understanding of computers would be to think that speed is all that matters. Software has only been getting more and more complex and bloated over the last 10 years. What good is 16GB of super fast RAM if the machine is swapping out to disk regularly?
Unless you want to run VMs. Then more RAM is generally more better.
- the processor has several times more transistors and cores,
- plus several special purposes devices for encoding video, AI tasks, and so on
- the video performance is several times faster
- the battery lasts 4 times as much,
- the RAM is several times faster,
- the SSD is 4-5x faster,
- the display has twice the resolution and extremelly improved brightness and color rendition...
and so on
So dissapointing /s
With inflation, £2000 in 2012 is equal to about £2516 today. I configured an M2 MacBook Air with these specs for £1750 today, so it actually costs less in real terms.
Edit: A 13" MacBook Pro with the same specs is also £1750
Though if you ignore the specs, the M2 air (for 1500 so you get the same storage space), is probably equivalent – 8GB unified RAM and fast SSD seems equivalent to 16GB ram from decade ago.
Together with the improved software capabilities, I think the overall "experience" is "better" and you get more bang for buck.
Historically, if you compare pre-M1 Macs to equivalent PCs, they were very price competitive. There are no equivalents to Apple Silicon Macs.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
-802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking
-IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac compatible
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.
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.
So I'm guessing it's the same as the M1 MacBook Air.
Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/I9wcLIy
It's empty space, and the whole row goes completely black in most fullscreen cases too as the screen is 16:10 BELOW the menu bar.
You forget it as easily as you forget that you have a nose right in the middle of your vision.
Btw, is the mandatory touch bar thingy back? That would be a step back in my book.
This pushes menu and status bars up into the bezel area at the top of your laptop's lid, leaving more room in the primary 16x10 display area for apps and things.
It's free real estate, why not have menus go up there?
I guess I’m selling my brand new M1.
Every time I saw it I felt a little pain -- why did I buy the white one? (Which turned half yellow with time.) I guess it made it easier to give away when it got too slow for coding.
I have the M1 Air and my two complaints are: no MagSafe, no SD Card. Otherwise, I love it, even though it crashes every time it goes to sleep on an external monitor and Apple's in-house software makes me root for Asahi every day. But it does look a little bland.
This new black one fixes 1/2 of my hardware complaints: it'll be hard not to upgrade out of cycle.
EDIT: and is now the only laptop without MagSafe? There are more ports on the new MBA!
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.
It's truly bizarre. They must have 10 million of the old laptop bodies in a warehouse or something?
> They must have 10 million of the old laptop bodies in a warehouse or something?
Mind blown.
Same for the new M2 Macbook Pro.
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 $1200 would be great. You feel less bad about losing it or breaking it or upgrading it more often.
Really happy to see this.
As an aside, having 8GB of unified memory even as an option in 2022 is a joke. It should just be 16Gb minimum.
Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.
If you can guarantee you won't need more, sure it's plenty viable. If you can't make that guarantee, you need to remember there is no upgrade path. You will be selling the machine and buying a new one.
(switch rendering API in JRE used by Intellj/Pycharm to Metal for rendering)
So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so as long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.
Oh no, you're breaking my heart. Is there no adapter you can buy that splits that 6k thunderbolt bandwidth into two smaller external displays? Okay I just googled, and it looks like there are third party DisplayLink which sort of maybe work, but are not officially supported? But people SEEM to have dual 4k monitors working?
If I can not have a big desktop system and just use my daily laptop for developing these hard, CPU bound simulation tasks; I'll be a happy camper.
So, horses for courses.
The trick is not to mix your personal stuff, like movies, photos and music with your work stuff. Also make sure you regularly clean up the older versions of the software you use, including Docker layer caches, brew / nix packages, JetBrains IDEs, browser caches, etc. If you are not doing audio/video work, then removing iMovie and GarageBand frees up 4.5GB. Similarly Keynote/Numbers/Pages 2GB.
> Configurable to: 16GB or 24GB
Store is updated too, 16GB upgrade is 200$ and 24GB is 400$.
Edit: as comments pointed out, I’m wrong - thanks for the corrections.
https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/26/apples-studio-displays-poor-w...
What's the point of Macbook Pro 13"?
MagSafe was one of Apple's best hardware ideas, and I'm really surprised they dropped it for a few generations. I'm glad they realized their mistake and brought it back, though.
As a parent with 2 kids - giving each a Mac laptop that won't cause eyestrain/reduced productivity is a non starter at $1999 each.
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.
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.
Looks like it adds active cooling but keeps an old design? Is it for generalists who don't want the 14"? Who is it for?
I’ve got a 16 MacBook Pro and it’s great and all - but soooo thick. Like as thick as my old, old, MacBook Pro from 2012. I was expecting it to be more like a 2015 MacBook Pro when I bought it.
I’d much prefer some of that sweet apple silicon power, in a nice thin 15 inch size please.
Logically, I would like to see the Air be renamed to just “MacBook”, with a 15” variant for those that want a larger screen but don’t need the extra horsepower. The Air name would better fit a spiritual successor to the 2015 MacBook IMO (though with a usable keyboard and a non-gimped CPU).
As for the 13” MacBook Pro—I don’t understand why that thing is still on sale and being refreshed. It makes the lineup incredibly confusing, with 3 different computers in a $200 price range (M1 Air, M2 Air, 13” Pro).
yes
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 can be a big if, though. And otherwise you are stuck running everything under qemu, which is going to be very slow.
--- edit
Apparently you'll be able to use Rosetta to execute x86 in a Linux VM: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...
It took me 4 months to iron out everything with M1+Docker where I work. There's still a question weekly about some oddity in our Docker channel.
Remember that container concepts (i.e. jails for a BSD) aren't natively supported by MacOS. The entire ecosystem is built on the backs of a very awesome community. In some cases, there are other things missing from MacOS that prevent them from creating the type of experience you get with WSL (especially networking).
Rosetta virtualization would resolve one of the biggest headaches I have had: x86 container emulation speed. No idea if it would do anything about the second: most of the x86 containers I have tried immediately segfault (nodejs containers seem to be an exception to that rule).
If you're working with other people, who remain on x86, you will come to experience the hell that is multi-arch builds.
Wait a few months and then decide based on what people are seeing.
Apparently, it retails for $60 alone! https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNWM3AM/A/35w-dual-usb-c-...
Retailers like Anker sell a similar charger with double the power at that price range.
I’ve been burned by Apple hardware faults before. Dodgy keyboard, faulty display, bad battery. It would be cool to see the design velocity slow down a bit for some models so that they can iron out the bugs properly. I’ve no interest in being a Guinea pig for whatever A9999’s problem shakes out to be.
To be fair, Apple will often conclude that the faults are endemic and engage in a replacement program.
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.
Woah. Speaking of batteries I've been impressed with the battery life in the new MBPs. They last forever with these new M chips. One of the best features.
Other than that, happy to see magsafe return.
Feels like a cash grab to get people to buy more obsolete MagSafe chargers instead of moving towards a world where chargers are ubiquitous and universal.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they just didn't have the data capacity to add another USB-C port and wanted to free up one of the USB-C ports, however other manufacturers seem to be coping with this.
Physical footprint doesn't matter for me; my Osprey backpack can easily take a 16" laptop. It's the weight that's the factor for me.
> One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
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.
> "You can also connect up to a 6K display."
Possibly they’re moving to the iPhone model of keeping the last gen around as a lower price entry level device.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
Would love to hear from folks with Apple Silicon experience!
Wanted to upgrade to 32gb ram but max is 24 on the new airs.
Also, the small print is outdated:
> The displays on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro have rounded corners at the top. When measured as a standard rectangular shape, the screens are 14.2 inches and 16.2 inches diagonally (actual viewable area is less).
Oh that's for the pro
The horizontal display resolution is the same, the vertical resolution has increased by 64px.
Honestly I don't get the limitation. I'm assuming there were trade-offs involved, but it seems like an odd feature to sacrifice.
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.
Heck, even the Switch technically has an Nvidia GPU.
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.
I’m thinking of switching from PC land but not sure.
The current model will probably not even notice what you throw at it.
I am working on a beat up old Inspiron… I gotta think an Air can handle the work.
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.
Otherwise still looks like an amazing machine so I'm probably still getting one anyway.
supercharged /ˈsuːpətʃɑːdʒd/ Learn to pronounce adjective 1. (of an internal combustion engine) fitted with a supercharger. "a supercharged 3.8-litre V6"
2. extremely powerful or fast. "it's essentially a cutting-edge smartphone with a supercharged camera"
https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/
> 3.5 mm headphone jack
Nice.
I am unhappy it's on the righthand side, but I won't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
* memory is capped at 8GB
* you have to pay ridiculous $300 for a 256GB SSD upgrade
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!
"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?
I just don't see that line being effective.
There was a time when the earth could handle the CO2 humans created. There was a balance.