Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip (opens in new tab)

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.

That should be trivial to fix with a battery update. 5-6-7 years is a good run...

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.

Even the RAM and SSD stats you cite are apples and oranges - both have gotten dramatically faster in the last decade.

- 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.

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

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

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?

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.

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?

Mind blown.

So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so as long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.

Edit: as comments pointed out, I’m wrong - thanks for the corrections.

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.

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

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.

I wonder if a M2 mini would have been perceived as competition for the macStudio.

> One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz

https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/

> "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.

Wanted to upgrade to 32gb ram but max is 24 on the new airs.

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.

The current model will probably not even notice what you throw at it.

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"