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Comment by _zoltan_ | Hacker News Reader

until you try an M1 product, you can't appreciate just how good it is - and how bad the previous i9 is.

also in 2022 six hours of battery life is not something I could life with. while you're right that you don't need to sit 6 hours in a single sitting, it could easily be that you don't have an option to charge.

transatlantic flights, for example. (ok, no grass there :-))

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My wife has an intel macbook circa 2018? It gets uncomfortably hot just watching youtube videos, my M1 macbook air has never even gotten warm. Her battery life seems terrible, maybe it is 4-5 hours or so, but I go days without charging mine with casual use. If you are not diligent about recharging every night, the drastic increase of battery life makes a big difference.

6 hours of battery life would be a dream. With my workflow the Intel MBPs gave me around 2 hours, the M1 Pro doubles that to 4 hours which is perfect because by then I'm getting up, going for lunch, etc.

With the Intel MBP I had to carry around a huge jackery-style portable battery

I have a M1 and am frustrated by how consistently bad it is. All these people heap praise on it, while mine runs so slowly that it needs to be restarted at least once daily.

I took it into the mac store, they replaced the whole board/cpu unit. No change.

So either I have some other fluke, my software stack has something strange I can't debug (activity monitor only shows apple processes using all the CPU), or people just have different opinions of what fast means.

For context, I would say my 2018 Chromebook is generally faster for most things than my M1.

Rant over. I assume I have some dud computer it's just frustrating.

>activity monitor only shows apple processes using all the CPU

would that be 8GB M1 and swap process by any chance?

Maybe it's airline dependent, but I can't remember the last time I went on a long-haul flight that didn't have charging options. Some airlines are even starting to add USB-C to every seat so you don't need to futz around with an AC adapter (although given the proliferation of different charging capabilities, it might still be handy to use AC if you want to charge quickly)

On the last flight I was on, the AC service couldn't handle the power draw of my charger. Kept tripping the circuit immediately.

One nice benefit of laptops adopting USB-C charging is that they become much more tolerant of slower chargers, which in turn shouldn't trip a plane.

Most long flights have AC outlets but half the time they are located under the leg of the person next to you. Virtually all the time they are a universal outlet that barely holds a US plug and definitely doesn’t hold a MacBook charger. It’s not a game changer but it’s nice to leave your adapter in your bag and not worry about charging.

Speaking of chargers, a 45W tiny GaN charger is enough for an M1 MacBook (maybe not for all use cases but I’ve yet to have an issue). I use this one which isn’t much bigger than a usb-a iPhone charger. https://us.anker.com/products/a2664

The extension cable [1] fixes both of these problems.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK122LL/A/power-adapter-e...

Yes, but it takes up the same volume as a macbook. The UK plug in this kit (or most any knock-off or adapter) also solves the problem. Still prefer battery life and carrying nothing extra, however.

https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MD837ZM/A/apple-world-...

What airlines have you been on that have USB-C, and at a high enough wattage to charge a laptop?

Air Canada's chargers are 60w IIRC. But MBPs are pretty accepting of various voltages- if you're desperate, you can even trickle charge one with an old school USB-A port

Air France (A220) within Europe, 60W USB-C port

The whole transatlantic thing is BS, you really want to be writing code all the way? Anyway, most flights going East over the Atlantic are overnight and you want to be sleeping.

I use an i10 laptop with 16GB of RAM and I also use a 2012 macbook pro. Both running Linux. I am productive on both devices, so I would be very surprised if an M1 product would make me feel the need to switch away from an i10 (or i9) device. I do agree the M1 is quite neat though, just not a big deal for users that run tasks lighter than compiling a browser engine.

I didn't even realize there were i10s

There aren't. Maybe they meant 10th gen?

What is an i10?

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