The 13-Inch MacBook Air | Hacker News Reader

The 13-Inch MacBook Air

daringfireball.net

145 pointsFabHK269 comments

My daily driver is a MacBook Air M1, with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB NVME. It really is the perfect laptop.

While I see other working on big old and clunky laptops (usually Dell or Thinkpad) that basically need to be hooked up to a power cord, my laptop will nicely purr away for two days before it needs a recharge. To be honest, I usually work in Word and Excel (I think Pages is a joke for serious writing) and I don't do anything very strenuous, but then again, neither do they.

I actually think that, to this day, the M1 MacBook Air is a better choice than the M2. Why? Because the M2 is a lot more expensive to be similarly fast. It needs the 512 GB SSD (actually NVME):

  Lastly, there’s the kerfuffle over the fact that SSD read and write performance is slower with the 256 GB configuration, because it uses just a single NAND chip, whereas all other storage configurations use multiple NAND chips. It costs $200 to upgrade the base model to 512 GB storage. None of these are dealbreakers to me, just minor details to be aware of if you’re eying the $1,200 base model. It’s best, in my opinion, to consider the $1,500 configuration as the true base model (10 GPUs, full-speed SSD performance, and the new 35-watt charger), and to consider the $1,200 configuration something more like the “discount” configuration.

I think Pages is a joke for serious writing

What makes Word the best tool for serious writing? I use Pages for writing papers (for humanities courses) and vim+pandoc for math. I have dabbled with Word here and there over the years but I've never seen anything that would indicate to me that it's amazing for writing. Personally, I can't figure out what's going on with the ribbon. It just seems to be a heavily modal interface which is not particularly discoverable.

Before the original commenter answers: I'm gonna guess collaboration with others. The reliability of being able to send anyone the original file, them being able to open it with all Word-specific features and content, and e.g. sending it back with inline comments.

I've also dabbled with Pages lately, and I don't think I've found any features for now that I desperately miss from Word. Now granted, this is just my workflow, which I believe is fairly basic. But the thing is, most people's workflows are basic. I'm gonna guess that about 80% of people wouldn't miss anything by switching from Word to Pages.

It's a typical example of collaboration lock-in that you'll encounter in so many other areas. It's the reason why so many people are forced to use Adobe apps or Visual Studio.

The most important feature of Word is that everyone has it.

Ahh okay. So if you’re serious enough about writing that you regularly collaborate with, e.g. an editor, then Word is the default choice for that.

But nothing about that applies to the writing process itself. You could be like George RR Martin and write in WordStar for DOS and then convert the files over to Word before you send to your editor. The main issue there is how often you need to correspond (which may be seldom for a novelist like Martin).

Well yeah, I assume they referred to "writing" as in the entire workflow, including drafting, reference, revisions etc.

Because otherwise, I have zero idea what that sentence was supposed to imply. If "serious writing" actually means "typing words in a serious manner" in the original comment, then I don't really have much to say, except that OC is probably spewing utter nonsense.

As a university student it really is quite unfortunate. So many students use MacBooks that come pre installed with a word editor capable of collaborative editing, but choose word regardless! Luckily I seldom had professors who required submission in .docx, but even for that, Pages has an option to export as .docx.

> Before the original commenter answers: I'm gonna guess collaboration with others.

Since a free iCloud account gives you access to the online version of Pages, collaboration with others seems to be covered, including simultaneous editing.

You can export to Docx within Google Docs, this is bad take. I use Google Docs and Libre Office since I can't run Office.

I’ve never really “got” the appeal of Word (outside of it being the prevailing standard) either, but my writing needs would be met well enough by TextEdit/WordPad in most cases or maybe AppleWorks 6.x or Word 2000 if we’re getting fancy, so…

I mostly use Google Docs but, frankly, for my writing just about anything works. (Being able to work in shared docs is useful but not much else matters.) I'll use Scrivener to do the first pass at assembling a book but, other than that, anything that lets me put sentences down on a page and edit them is fine.

I used to use Word and I'll sometimes use it if I need to if that's what a publisher is using but I never really loved the ribbon and there's way too much clutter that I never use.

To generalize a bit on this, I've been using MBA's (11" and 13") as my personal laptop since about 2012 alongside my blowfish desktop and the work laptop (which in the same time has varied only little, just further iterations of MBP's), while I've also spent considerable time with a Thinkpad x230.

I have to say, the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one. It strikes a perfect balance between screen size, weight, and responsiveness, and the battery is always much, much better than anything else. In all, I feel the least amount of internal resistance when I have to reach for the Air, lift the lid, and start typing, while all other computers have one or more practical or psychological barriers.

Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything - far from it. But I'm a huge MBA fan...

> the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one.

That describes all of them. M1 and earlier are 13.3", M2 is 13.6".

At one point there was an 11" Air but the last model in that size is from 2015: 7 years ago.

GP says they've been using these computers since 2012, so presumably they're speaking from their own experience with the old 11" Air.

Shame it's gone IMO, I love the size. My current laptop is a 2014 11" Air.

I drove an 11" Air for 3 years until I sold that machine to a friend who kept it running for another 3-5 years. Loved the size of the machine, not so much of the screen - but I made it work. These days I'm not sure I could use something that small for serious work but the current (actually previous gen, I haven't tried the M2 one yet) 13" Air is a pretty good size!

No, unless your work load is purely SSD bound - in which case you probably want a larger SSD anyway - the M2 Air is consistantly faster than the M1, as the CPU is noticeably faster.

If you get a good deal on an M1, by all means get one as you can save a lot of money. But in real-life usage, any M2 is faster than the M1.

Or you use more than the 8GB of RAM and have to swap...

Although I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple "updated" the current 256GB M1 Air they still sell to use a single flash chip like the M2 models.

Even with reasonable amounts of swapping you are unlikely to notice huge differences. Only if you are thrashing the memory, you surely would. But then just getting more memory would be a very wise investment.

> While I see other working on big old and clunky laptops (usually Dell or Thinkpad) that basically need to be hooked up to a power cord, my

I stopped reading, when my Envy had better battery life and Better keyboard than my MacBookAir M1.

You forgot the OS.

You’re saying your HP envy got better battery life than your M1 MacBook Air? I highly, highly doubt that.

Yeah, out of all complaints one could have made about M1, this one seems like the strangest one.

Not M1 Air, but I once used my M1 Max MBP for virtual onsite interviews. It was about 4 hours of videocalls on Google Meet + code editing using coderpad or something similar + i had a bunch of personal/unrelated tabs (50+) in chrome on another virtual desktop + 1hr break where i was reviewing my notes and such. Did it all fully on battery, no plugging in. After all was said and done, my laptop charge dropped from around 95% to 71%. No overheating, fans never kicked in either.

1 point by MonaroVXR 3 hours ago | parent | next [–]

I didn't give the details... so here I go. I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy.

Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people)

Edit: I forgot to say, I don't hate Apple or the Macbook at all. it's the notebook that's first on my list, when I suggest a good model.

I didn't give the details... so here I go.

I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy.

You certainly don't need the slightly faster SSD, I bet most people would never notice the difference.

They shouldn't be offering 256GB on the base model given the price rise (arguably at all, even on the M1 MBA). Let alone making it slower by default.

They want you to buy more cloud services/storage.

But that’s not how iCloud storage works. Or any other consumer cloud storage. You have a copy in the cloud whether or not a copy is on the computer, and unlike commercial clouds do not pay for data transfer.

I'm not sure what's your point. Apple makes local storage as expensive as possible/acceptable so that you buy more icloud storage for your files, photos etc and "stream" your content from the cloud instead to keep it stored locally. It's not secret that they see the "services" as being the biggest growth factor.

That's not how the 'iPhone full' message describes it.

This is the type of response of acceptance I totally disagree with. You're happy that Apple are selling you a throttled base revision but Apple is actually taking the piss. The ability to double the SSD capacity by adding the missing chip would only cost Apple three bucks. It's intentional hobbling of the platform. That they do the same dirty trick with the so called MacBook Pro is shameful. The MBP is not a Professional machine.

When you can buy a DELL with 6x the SSD speed you realize that Apple SSD solutions a dumpster fire.

You definitely will on an 8GB machine under memory pressure. Which happens more often than people imagine if you are using a number of Electron Apps.

Been using an M2 Pro for a week (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD), absolutely cannot tell. Large dependency installs (node, go, c++, python) are insanely fast, docker builds are fast, everything is just fast.

I've been on Linux until I got an M1Pro. Docker build on mac's, even M1Pro are slow IMO compared to Linux.

Have you enabled VirtioFS in docker?

Yeah I have. Made a big difference. But not Linux fast difference.

Don’t get me wrong I badly want to get my hands on an M2 Air, but I strongly agree that the M1 Air still kicks ass and might be the better value for money.

The thing is you want different stuff from the CPU arch up through the kernel for responsive interactive use than for compiling a big Rust program. Apple have fucking killed it on the former, and Intel’s Gracemont stuff has made a kickass machine for the latter cost 1000 bucks at Best Buy.

The new AMD 6000 mobile chips are also getting very good reviews and seem to be the equal of Intel 12th gen. I'm actually really excited to see what Intel, AMD, and all the other non-Apple ARM chip vendors bring to the table in the next 2-3 years. After the M1, these other companies must all have been burning the midnight oil to try to catch up.

My newest AMD box is a Zen3 (I think) Threadripper, and it’s a heavy little computer no doubt.

But I find myself using the i9-12000K way more often. It clocks to 5-ish GHz on 8 Gracemont cores without making much if any noise, and DDR5 makes a shockingly big difference. And it’s “build a box with Best Buy parts for 1-2 thousand bucks” cheap.

Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?

> Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?

The Ryzen 7 5800x3d trades blows with Intel's top chip, with many games benefiting enormously from its monster 96mb L3 cache. It will be superseded by the upcoming Zen4 chips, but the nice thing about the 5800x3d is that it's a drop in upgrade for most AM4 motherboards.

The ARM chip manufacturers have been competing with Apple since 2010. In the 18 months since Apple unveiled its first ARM computers, nothing has been released that is a serious response. Which tells you everything you need to know; the fact Apple puts its chips in a different chassis has changed nothing for those companies.

Apple has to your point differentiated in micro architecture.

Having the whole slab of TSMC’s best new process locked-in until the heat death of the universe doesn’t hurt.

Have you seen how far Qualcomm/Samsung are behind?

Samsung S22 Ultra (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 934, multi-core: 2925

iPhone 13 (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 1706, multi-core: 4661

That's not just TSMC's best process node. Oh, and the CPU of the S22 Ultra is made on Samsung's 4nm process.

Hey I know the PA Semi people are ballers. 5-wide dispatch on the M1? Ambitious and they pulled it off. Hot shit.

Having the best transistors always doesnt hurt.

The AMD 6000 is better I'd say. For example the 6800u trades blows with the 1260P. But the 1260p runs MUCH hotter. And that is not even disregarding the iGPU where the 6800u totally smashes the 1260p.

I have a 14 inch m1 pro.

When using it for work, I get approx 6 hours.

I'm confused when people report 20 hours usage. I'm guessing this is during very light work and it looks if sleep time?

FYI. My previous Lenovo p15v also got approx 6 hours. That was a great laptop as well - as good as the new MacBook, just without the looks.

Depends on the work. I'm always amazed at how long my battery lasts when I'm just doing writing related tasks--I definitely see the two day battery life others mentioned--but anytime I'm touching code or compiling anything I get about 6-8 hours

What do you typically run? I can get down to 6-7 hours on the M1 Max if running something like a game engine in debug mode.

Docker, rider, Firefox and a some of compiling.

Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me.

Maybe I was just already spoilt and lucky and expect8nh too much. 6 to 8 is still much better than 5 years ago.

Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me.

The discussion about the MacBook Air and you are comparing to a MacBook Pro 14". I have both laptops and the battery life of the Air under heavier use is definitely better than a Pro. This is not surprising, the M1 Pro/Max have double the number of performance cores, the efficiency cores run at a higher clock, plus the Pro has active cooling and a brighter display. At the same time, the battery of the 14" is larger, but not twice as large (49.9 vs. 70 Wh).

I think for regular users, getting two day battery life on an Air is pretty normal. For instance my wife regularly used her Air for two work days before charging.

Docker on mac is a serious battery drain. You might get longer battery life by running docker remotely on other linux machine (e.g. using vscode remote development).

Knowing you can get a 2TB PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drive with write speeds at 5000 MB/s for around $200 doesn't bother you when Apple is marking up components that much?

Sure, but what laptop are you going to put it in? If what you want is a Macbook Air, you pay or you go home.

Of course, it’s annoying, but the Apple Silicon experience is so good I don’t mind paying the higher markup.

Their walled garden is so bad that I couldn't imagine paying that kind of markup.

It’s pretty opt-in. My computing life is on a bunch of NixOS machines with Linux 5-series kernels.

I connect to the real computers via Apple Silicon appliances because they’re cool, quiet, tender fonts properly, play sound properly, etc.

I know a lot of people are into the Desktop Linux thing. “Mine is great ever since I upgraded to PulseAudio blah, everything is awesome as song as you never close the lid…”

Have fucking fun with that.

All of Apple's software is free so you pay via hardware and services. I prefer the Mac ecosystem to the Windows one so there really is no choice. I'd be open to another ecosystem (Linux?) if it worked better than the Apple one or if Apple made consistently started making some decisions that went over the line (like their CSAM stuff which is on the edge).

Until then a few hundred dollars a year to be in a better ecosystem is not even worth second guessing.

Not all. You have to pay extra for things like Logic.

Apple doesn't make any serious profit from Logic Pro, it is straight up sold at a cost or less. Look at the major competitors.

Ableton releases new major versions of their DAW once every couple years. Standard edition is $450. Full edition is $750. Upgrading to the next major version is $240 or so (provided you already own a previous one).

Logic Pro? You pay $199, and you are done. Logic Pro had a massive major update a year or so ago, fully free. Not only it is cheaper, there are no different editions or costs for upgrades. For a one-time cost (that is already cheaper than major competitors), you get perpetual massive updates with no bs or extra costs. In terms of major commercial DAWs that are actually used in the industry, Logic Pro hands down is a great bang for the buck.

I’m just bummed I can’t dial boot windows on Apple silicon. It was so convenient having both operating systems on the same laptop.

Anyone know the NAND chip config for all these devices ? So if 256 is two 128 on the M1 Air, does that mean 512 is 4x128 or 2x256 ? Etc..

That's the issue - two spots, but instead of maintaining a 128GB part for 2x128, they're shipping 256 as 1x256.

I can see the logic, they're not maintaining a whole part/inventory just for the lowest config. I'll let everyone else argue over whether it's worth the penalty or not.

The 512 is 2x256. I'm pretty sure the Air line only has two spots for NAND flash.

how is libreoffice on a mac? i haven't heard anyone give any reviews/benchmarks ?

It appears to have an Apple Silicon native version available, so it is likely to run quite well; I haven't used it for over a decade, so I can't speak to its usability and whatnot, but unless things have changed significantly, I imagine it's still nearly identical between OSes.

I wrote my Thesis in LibreOffice in 2019 on a 2015 MacBook Air, with Zotero integration. It was pretty nice, and thanks to MacOS even coming back just fine, document open and no line lost after me being too stupid to plug my Mac into power, it was a pretty great experience.

I just bought word after a year of trying use Libreoffice. Libre is usable, but has many minor bugs. I'd probably use google docs before Libreoffice.

when did you last use LO?

Does anybody really use it anymore? Most folk use Google Docs or some other online version nowadays.

It's interesting that suddenly long battery life is the deal breaking spec now that Apple laptops have long battery life.

Just like how capacitive vs resistive touch screens are a dealbreaker now on a cellphone: sometimes you don't know it's a dealbreaker until you have to do without.

Now that anyone has long battery life.

Having swapped from my beloved 15” 2013 MBP to a slightly tarted up M1 14”, I have to say how impressed I’ve been with just about everything. Most of my work can be done from native Apple silicon apps which feel refreshingly snappy and result in just incredible battery life, and even when I’m running x86 apps in rosetta, it feels faster than my old i7 machine.

The thing is still build like a tank, the screen is amazing, the speakers sound great when I use it for music in various hotel rooms, I really do love it as a tool.

I was similarly impressed with the M2 air I’ve bought my partner. Its fast, weighs nothing, and feels really solid. The minor imperfections with the notch and such fade into the background when using it, same as they do on my pro.

If I had any issues, its that running a Windows VM feels like a dodgy trick when I need to, as they still don’t license it legitimately. For Apple’s part, they seem to have made a very solid machine for people who just want a good computer to do work on.

Of course, if you depend on Windows software, it’s not going to be for you, and I feel like the world lost its best windows laptop when bootcamp died, but thats only my opinion. I hope one day the Dells and HPs of the world can make machines that feel as solid as the Macs, but over the years I’ve always regretted buying XPSs and Omens because they just didn’t quite make the bar.

Yep, loved having both OSs on the same laptop and a solid MacBook at that.

> The new M2 MacBook Air is clearly better in every regard.

The price has gone up dramatically, well above inflation, at least where I live, so I would argue it is not better in every regard. For most people the M1 MacBook Air is a much better investment while Apple has them in stock.

> The price has gone up dramatically, well above inflation, at least where I live

I grew up in the US and have now lived in Canada for more than 15 years.

Unless your country has VAT or other import taxes, you can easily just take the USD value of the Apple product you are trying to buy and convert it to your currency. The price of the product will match up exactly with the value of your dollar in the last 2-4 months.

2011-2013 was a great time for Apple product buyers in Canada, the dollar was nearly at parity for a short time. And then 2 years later, every Apple product increased in price by 20%. My salary didn't go up. Inflation didn't hit Canada particularly hard.

Apple has a strict profit margin they are targeting, and if your dollar goes down in value, and they will simply ask you to pay up.

> The price has gone up dramatically, well above inflation, at least where I live […]

Where do you live? Currency value changes perhaps?

It's €1599 here for the M2 air, compared to €1229 for the M1 air.

This is compared to US prices of $999 and $1199. The euro has weakened relative to the dollar for sure, but that's as much driven by the dollar being relatively strong and let's be real, most of apple's costs are in yuan anyway. And also the difference between $1 = €0.90 and $1 = €1 is not sufficient to account for a 25% increase in costs. If Macs were already low-margin items you could say it's just adding in padding for future currency movement that had been diminished over a longer time period (say 5 years ago when $1 = €0.80), but it's not like they are low-margin.

The 20% increase or so is the VAT. The US shop shows prices without sales tax. In the EU the prices are VAT included.

VAT is in the old price too...

The US price increased 20% (999->1199). The change in exchange rate between USD and EUR adds another 10 percentage points. So the new price in EUR should* be about 30% more. The old price was €1229. Add 30% to €1229 and you end up at €1598.

So yes, Apple stiffed us for one Euro on the M2.

*Assuming the old EUR price was "correct" in some sense.

I hate to disagree with a highly knowledgeable and basically sound comment.

To perhaps add some context: I pay for my own health insurance under ACA/Obamacare, and the most expensive one is also the minimum one where I can keep my doctor. It’s around 1200 USD a month counting dental.

I’m not rich off stock options or anything, I fucking notice it missing every month, but in a world where healthcare/internet/phone/etc. is more than the rent I split with one other guy 10 years ago?

It’s not 200-500 USD every few years for the big SSD from Apple that’s breaking my back.

I can get the best personal computer ever for less than my healthcare and phone bill? It’ll still be pretty great 3-5 years from now?

This is one of the few places where I don’t feel economically over a barrel.

I think you forgot to add your original point, there is an EU import fee for Apple to sell products in Europe, compared to the US, which is why tech is generally more expensive in the EU compared to the US.

Is VAT included in that markup or is that an additional cost? In the US, we don't have VAT, though most states do have Sales Tax which is not included in the price of the device.

VAT is indeed included in Apple's list prices.

The US price doesn't include tax. Take the tax off and you'll see that the pricing is much closer.

In Croatia it's 1700€!:

https://istyle.hr/13-inch-macbook-air-apple-m2-chip-with-8-c...

This is insane.

Don't think of it as a 25% difference. Think of it as a 15% difference, since in many places, Americans will also have to pay up to 10.5% sales tax.

If you are judging based on price and inflation continues to go up, the value will stabilize or improve.

I don't really need a laptop at the moment. If I did I'd buy an M2 MBA in a heartbeat.

I'm really pleased to see the return of the MBA. From 2011 it was really the perfect laptop with a good compromise of size, performance and cost. But it languished for years just needing a Retina display upgrade and then it got killed by the awful 12" Macbook in Johnny Ive's crusade for thinness at all cost (which also brought us the terrible butterfly keyboard to save 0.5mm). But Johnny Ive is gone (yay!).

The only issue I've seen people talk about is thermal throttling under high loads. Given that the RAM is shared with the GPU then 8GB in the base model seems low. I think I also read there's a difference in the SSD between the base model and the upgraded model?

Yeah the base model's SSD are slower

The article states "There is no catch"... but if I'm not mistaken I'll need to run Apple's operating system, is that right?

As much as I like the salacious hardware, that would be a reasonably sized "catch" in my book :-(

Or am I wrong; is there an official way to run GNU/Linux as the main operating system?

At the risk of stereotyping a bit: in general people who spell it “GNU/Linux” probably have priorities incompatible with an Apple laptop purchase decision.

Don’t get me wrong, I care deeply about software freedom, and I don’t think that’s incompatible with an Apple laptop purchase decision, but the “it’s called GNU/Linux, GNU is the operating system, Linux being merely the kernel…” school of software freedom finds basically everything about Apple deeply offensive.

There is. Apple does not restrict you from booting into other operations, they actually have even slightly improved the ability to do so over time on the ARM Macs. The catch is to get another OS which supports your hardware. With Linux, it actually looks good, the Asahi Linux project (https://asahilinux.org/) is making great strides, you can install it on ARM Macs, the biggest drawback currently is, that while there is GUI support, it isn't accellerated yet. But it seems, that even the CPU rendered UIs are faster than the GPU on a Raspberry Pi. GPU support for Asahi Linux is making good progress too, so I expect something not too far into the future.

Another catch is that you cannot install Linux (at least Asahi Linux) without first booting macOS, opening up a GUI terminal there and installing Asahi via a shellscript downloaded from their website.

Also, saying that "lacking GPU support" is the only drawback, is minimizing the issue a bit. Here is the following components that don't currently work with Asahi Linux:

- DisplayPort

- Thunderbolt

- HDMI on the MacBooks

- Bluetooth

- GPU acceleration

- Video codec acceleration

- Neural Engine

- CPU deep idle

- Sleep mode

- Camera

- Touch Bar

This is incorrect as Asahi Linux can also be installed from macOS Recovery, which is the Apple UEFI equivalent.

Can I install macOS Recovery without installing full macOS? If my memory serves my well, macOS Recovery is a part of full macOS, so to get it, you need a full install. If that's true, you still need a full macOS install in order to install Asahi Linux, in comparison to normal laptop/desktop computers which can have nothing on them, but still allow you to install Windows/Linux/macOS.

Apple computers come with macOS pre-installed, so technically you don’t have to install anything. It’s not possible, as far as I know, to purchase a Mac without macOS already installed.

I’m planning on buying an M2 Air. That leaves my mid 2012 Air running Catalina (poorly).

I don’t want to continue running the old Catalina system.

Is there a way to install Linux on that bare metal? What’s the best approach - direct install, or use something like QEMU underneath?

Typing this from a MacBook Air 2013 running ArchLinux :)

You just flash the installer of your favorite distro (don't use ventoy) to a USB and install as usual.

Do you reformat / partition the drive?

If you want! I installed latest Ubuntu mate on an old imac for a kid and completely wiped out the partitions with snow leopard stuff.

I would say read the limitations first and don’t buy it as a Linux machine yet if that’s what you need right now. Wait another year or two for Linux to be ready and comfortable.

If you need to install Asahi, you should install it as per the instructions in a dual-boot setup, then delete the macOS partition and resize afterwards.

I need the M2 for business communications and software, e.g. my accounting system. I also want to stay compatible with the other family iOS systems. I might dual boot Asahi at some point.

What I’m most interested in is converting my 2012 Air to Linux for development purposes. The hardware is good! With 4GB, it’s really too small to run recent MacOS, and it will be unsupported soon, but it should be fine for i3/Linux.

From what I've understood, Apple Silicon Macs can't function at all with "nothing on them", the same flash memory is shared between the pre-boot environment and the OS and data. There's no separate firmware flash memory.

I am not sure how the method of installation plays a role and I have not said, that lacking GPU support is the only drawback, just the biggest. The rest is work im progress or already working. But to a few of your points:

- HDMI: the MacBook Air doesn't have HDMI, seems to work on the Mini or how are they getting a monitor attached. Or they use DisplayPort, what you listed as not working.

- GPU accelleration, I mentioned that. Of course you cannot expect Video accelleration without GPU support

- Neural engine: well, most other devices don't even have one.

- CPU idle certainly will come, run times are already excellent under Linux.

- Touch Bar: except for the M2 Pro, there are no devices with a touch bar left, and I expect the touch bar to go away entirely soon.

> I am not sure how the method of installation plays a role

It does, because it means I cannot just install Linux on the machine. I have to have macOS installed and running first, then and only then can I install Linux. It makes the hardware dependent on macOS, even if I just wanna run Linux.

Other computers you can have literally nothing on it, and then get Windows or Linux running on it (or macOS even).

I didn't make that list myself, it's from the official Asahi website. And I'm not gonna argue against you if each item on the list has a big impact or not. I'm generally a fan of Asahi (and I donate to their efforts each month), I was just putting it out there to show that there are actually a bunch of "drawbacks" (more like missing features) than people in this comment thread is letting on.

Other computers you can have literally nothing on it, and then get Windows or Linux running on it

This is absolutely not the case, of course - it’s just the pre-installed environment you use to install Windows or Linux is called “BIOS” or “UEFI” instead of “macOS”.

Exactly. The incapacity to understand what it means to have one company responsible for every component of a computer is incredible.

Bluetooth works now. and GPU acceleration is "close"

> Apple does not restrict you from booting into other operations

While that is important, it's quite superficial given that Apple does not provide documentation for the device.

Nor do most PC vendors. Which is why Linux on many laptops is still some kind of a challenge. The only reason it most of the times works nevertheless is, that the PC vendors often use known components and the user base is so large, that a lot of reengineering already had happened. But if Linux on Apple Silicon gains any traction, the situation could be quite good.

>"There is no catch"... but if I'm not mistaken I'll need to run Apple's operating system

Product works as advertised, news at 11.

Not if you expected to buy a general purpose computer.

What does that even mean? "General Purpose" != Linux. All software needs to be developed to run on specific hardware. Even virtualised platforms or interpreted code still depend on software that's developed to run specifically on supported platforms.

As it happens, Apple has released development tools and documentation to write and load alternate operating systems on this hardware. The Asahi Linux team have even said Apple is providing even more support than is available in the x86 world nowadays, it's just that this is in many ways a very new architecture.

Could they do more? Sure. Are they obliged to? No. Ultimately it's a product advertised with certain capabilities, no compromises means it can do that as expected, otherwise the phrase is basically meaningless.

Apple advertises the macs with macOS. So I suppose if you buy it expecting something else, that's on you, and the product still "works as advertised". They don't go out of their way to prevent you from running <not macOS>.

I'll also note that few companies advertise their PCs as "general purpose computers", if by that you mean "guaranteed to run Linux flawlessly". Even System76 / Dell developer / whatever, which ship with Linux out of the box, don't guarantee the pc will run, say, FreeBSD perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, as the GGP post puts it, I'd also like to be able to run Linux on a MacBook Pro. But since I don't want to have a wonky experience, since I understand it'll not work perfectly, I chose to put up with the wonky hardware of my HP, which works well enough.

If by "general purpose computer", you mean "runs any OS I could throw at it", then broadly speaking any Mac is more general-purpose than any non-Mac, since they can run macOS plus whatever other OSes will run on the architecture they're built for.

If, however, you actually mean "a computer that runs Windows or Linux"...why not just say so? Rather than passive-aggressively pretending that all you're looking for is "general purpose", with the obvious snide implication that macOS can't provide that...

This comment shouldn't be downvoted. People have just forgotten what a general purpose computer is. We used to take much more pride and spend a lot more effort making hardware cross compatible with each other. It was never perfect, but more and more these days we seem to be given vendor locked, non-general devices.

By all accounts, a brand new m1/m2 mac is a general purpose computer. It allows arbitrary execution of code, it can be used generally for multiple purposes. This is contrast to special purpose computers, who were designed specifically for a computational task and cannot perform tasks of "general purpose." A Raspberry Pi, a Vic-20, an Apple II, the framework laptop, and yes, the current generation of Macs all qualify.

You're trying to narrow the definition of "general purpose" to mean something else entirely.

I agree. But if one doesn't define a "general purpose computer" as being a piece of hardware, then all kinds of different conclusions can be drawn.

If what Amelius pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116822 is true, i.e. the documentation is junk. Then, IMHO, Apple is no longer trying to sell "a good piece of hardware"; because they're not documenting its operation.

And, in reality, I find this to be true... what Apple really sells is "an experience".

Whether it's a good or bad experience is likely in the eye of the beholder.

The Asahi Linux team lead don't seem to agree that this is a fair assessment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744#28764136

>People have just forgotten what a general purpose computer is.

OK, tell me what it is.

I had the same question because I’m interested in osdev and would ideally like to be able to boot something from machine language that I created from scratch. Currently targeting Raspberry Pi which is also ARM, but the laptop form factor would be nice.

Then check out the Asahi Linux project. From my understanding, it consists of two parts. First, kind of a boot loader, which makes it easy to boot any code on your Mac. This they use to run a Linux kernel, customized for the hardware of the Apple Silicon machines. Most of the kernel customizations are already part of the main Linux kernel or in process of being added.

How many "general purpose computers" are out there? There are a few vendors, which explicitly support Windows and Linux, but many computers are just designed for Windows, Linux might or might not run on them. Asahi Linux is making nice progress and I actually hope, that Microsoft decides to support Windows 11 on the Mac too.

All of those are "general purpose". That phrase doesn't mean "perfect official support for whatever alternative OS you like", it usually means something closer to "you are not forbidden from running your own code, even at a high privilege (kernel) level".

MacOs doesn't forbid to run your own code. Not sure what you are talking about.

Apple still allows it. But there is no documentation, so that alternative OS will be entirely based on assumptions ...

This applies to most computers sold. A lot of PC hardware has components, which might not be supported by Linux nor drivers provided. Fortunately, there are more and more manufacturers, who officially support Linux on their machines and of course a huge user base, which tries to make it work nevertheless.

Someone mentioned it'd be possible to run Asahi Linux, and this may have been in the back of my mind somewhere. But a lack of official docs would make life difficult and most likely explains my cognitive dissonance.

Thanks for the info.

I don’t pretend that this is the answer you want, but Docker for macOS these days is incredible and it gives you a native Linux experience like nothing else, at least in terms of doing command line hacking. It is extremely fast.

If you want a full GNU system then it’s a less attractive route.

My co-workers on M1 Macs constantly face issues with Docker, whether it's filesystem performanc, regressions after every other upgrade or requiring a restart because something just reaches an unrecoverable condition.

I would say docker for macOS has always fallen significantly short of "incredible" and it's even worse on M1.

It might not be the M1. I face the same issues with Docker on my MBP.

> Basically, there are millions of people whose computing needs would be more than met by the MacBook Air but who feel like they probably need a slightly thicker laptop with a fan on the inside and the word “Pro” stamped on the outside

Something interesting, is that in both my current and previous employers I specifically asked for the Macbook Air instead of the Pro, and in both cases I received a big overpowered machine that is a drag to take around. In the world of remote working, and for the front-end I do I have way more than enough with the Macbook Air m1/m2.

I find it somewhat amusing when people talk about a sub-3 pound machine (which a 13/14" MacBook Pro is) as big :-) They're very portable laptops by any historical measure.

Agreed! But by any historical measure traveling and remote working with a single backpack was a no-go, people would carry luggage around if they also brought their computer/laptop or go to a local workplace.

If you carry a single backpack, don't overload in tech and go all usb-c those extra cubic cm and weight of the air vs the pro do add up!

Edit: I also got versions of the pro larger than 13 inch!

It looks like the M2 MBA is sub-3 pounds, at 2.7. The 13" and 14" MBPs are not sub-3 pounds. The former is 3 pounds exactly, and the latter is 3.5. [1] I would not have posted this comment if you'd only mentioned the 13", but a 3.5 pound computer feels much heavier than a 2.7 pound computer.

1: https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-M2,...

Is the whole company getting the same? The reason could be that they can easily get it back if you quit and give it to someone else, or have a common replacement ready when your laptop dies.

This is likely the reason - companies that are large enough to have someone "handling" the computers will order batches of standard configurations. Maybe one or two at the most - even if they don't order them all at once they'll want to get the same across the board.

Smaller companies that basically expense the laptop and "give" it to the employee to keep even if they leave will often be less rigorous.

Do you people think Linux on Apple Silicon will become a thing? I'm following Asahi - I guess what I'm trying to say is: do you believe this pipe dream will become true?

If there's Linux support on M1/M2 that's on par with Lenovo's laptops, this will be my dream setup.

There’s a lot of ground being covered and I feel like as soon as we have a semi reliable setup that Apple devs are going to switch to, they’ll see a flood of open source and hardcore nerds switch to Macs just because it’s common hardware that will make Linux on the laptop just fucking work.

They are not keen on becoming a hardware only vendor and I expect pushback when alternative OS's gain traction on Apple Silicon.

Following Asahi too, I am reasonably optimistic. Also it is interesting to watch what Apple is doing. While not providing any official support to Asahi, they did some changes to macOS to make the life of the developers easier. Also, Apple just announced Rosetta for Linux, shipping with Ventura. Apple is obviously watching the Linux space.

Linux support for Lenovo's laptop is based on Intel/AMD's official contribution. I don't think community support become on par for everything, but it could become very good.

Linux x86 has a hard time consistently supporting drivers of popular hardware (WIFI, for example). I doubt ARM will ever be a thing for consumer systems, let alone Apple silicon.

I wouldn't say so. The nice thing about the Apple Silicon seems to be, that the hardware is pretty constant. So once WIFI works, it should continue to work, maybe with minor tweaks on each generation. Lenovo just announced an ARM laptop too, and I got the impression that they are officially planning for Linux support.

I don't think it's likely any time soon but forcing Apple etc to provide drivers would be a pretty natural extension of the 'right to repair' and other tech regulation demanding interoperability, to guarantee M1/M2/etc devices remain useful beyond their years of macOS support.

Silicon M1 or M2 processors cannot natively connect more than one external monitor.

Apple?

Yeah that's a biggie that isn't mentioned a lot. I have an external monitor at my desk and I frequently mirror to the living room TV for friends and family video calls with a camera on the TV and a dedicated mic, just way nicer as it doesn't have that work call feel for the other party. No way I can see to make that work without pulling cables on a M1/M2.

Would AirPlay to an AppleTV not work?

We have an Apple TV 4K and I tried that, but it introduces a small audio lag that totally wrecks Zooms echo removal since the USB mic doesn't have that lag. I probably could run an audio cable over there and use a separate speaker, but audio over HDMI works great. Both devices are on gbit ethernet, so it's not a wifi issue.

Sadly the Apple TV can't do any video conferencing at all, it's way powerful enough (judging by the games it can run) but the software can't do it.

Have you actually tried AirPlay?

Yes, but not for video conferencing or long-term work.

It works well-enough for screen mirroring or displaying a video. When displaying a video, I believe the stream is actually redirected to the AppleTV rather than being relayed through the Mac.

Have you tried AirPlay?

All this means is that if you need this, you need to get one of their computers with a Pro or Max chip.

Most people I know who are not developers or visual artists have no need for more than one external display. (Hell, most have no need for even one external display!) Back when the M1 was first out, and the Pro and Max hadn't yet been announced, it was somewhat legitimate to be concerned with this drawback, because it wasn't yet guaranteed that there would be an alternative.

Now, it's very clear that Apple has no problem supporting this; it's just not in their entry-level chip. This seems, to me, like a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

Everybody at my IT company other than the front desk has two monitors, even the suits and sales guys. This is not a reasonable tradeoff, as it invalidates the MBA for us.

It's really annoying as the M1 Mini can drive two external monitors (it has no internal) so the M1 Air in clamshell mode should be able to drive two externals, but it can't.

I can't give up my four externals (+ the laptop screen itself) so my Intel MBP will soldier on until I get a Pro.

But both the M1 mini and M1/2 Air can drive two displays total? I think it’s clear they just took what’s usually the internal display output and routed it to HDMI in the Mini.

I wonder if there is some power or heat related limitation that prevents them from supporting multiple external monitors. It doesn't seem like it'd be trivial to support the same requirements for such a small/thin device.

DisplayLink?

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/m1-mac-dual-displayport-a...

https://www.kensington.com/news/docking-connectivity-blog/ho...

I heard that these adaptors/docks never work nearly as well as native support for dual monitors

You'll hear from ~100% of people that are unhappy with them and ~0% of people that are happy with them. I don't have any personal experience, I'm just offering them as an option in case hendersoon was unaware.

Thanks-- yes I was aware, but they do have a poor reputation. After years of dongles, we're going for the MBP 16" with the M1 Pro. Which of course is what Apple wants anyway.

Two monitors? Or three (the internal and two externals)? Because two monitors works just fine.

Anyway, if you're standardizing on a specific model for an entire company, I would never recommend the Air—nor, indeed, any entry-level model from any company—because it's not likely to meet enough people's needs that way.

Two external monitors. Even in clamshell mode with the internal screen off you can't do that.

And the M2 MacBook Air at $1200 USD is hardly entry level. It's not even the cheapest MBA Apple sells because the M1 is still available. Loads of corporations and businesses will give employees base model ThinkPad Twhatever or Dell Latitudes (that cost less than the M2 MBA and drive more than two external displays too).

That's what's annoying; other than the single external monitor limitation the M2 Air is more than fast enough for everybody here who doesn't stress the CPU or GPU for long periods running compiles or whatever-- and that's just because it's passively cooled, otherwise it's quite snappy.

How about using a single ultra wide screen.

Everybody has it b/c it turned into a status symbol at your company - doesn't mean everybody actually needs it.

Do you use multiple monitors? Do you really need them, or could you do without? I could do without too, but I'm not going to!

They're productivity tools, not status symbols. Monitors are extremely inexpensive, assuming you don't buy Apple's.

Comparing Apple Silicon and x86 as the difference between having modern plumbing or not...not exactly where I expected the review to go! Gruber's hyperboles can be entertaining for sure.

But damn, I can't wait for the time for me to upgrade my Intel Macs.

But the difference really is stark. Hard to describe, you have to try it yourself. I was lifelong win/lin user but switched over to macos just because of m1 was better in the price range than anything else. I hated my work issued 2019 intel macbook with passion but I love my m1. I suspect it's going to be a long wait until I can switch back.

Classic. Switch from Intel to M1 felt more like an upgrade from NetBurst laptop to Core series for me, a great step forward but not really groundbreaking imho.

> Gruber's hyperboles can be entertaining for sure.

Perhaps Apple have finally released a device which is truly worthy of Gruber-level hyperbole!

Oh I think they are! Gruber is by no means alone in his praise. And the technical details are impressive. (Plus the 14" and 16" are fantastic improvements.)

Apple should make a MacBook Air 15", and a smaller laptop like the MacBook 12". With the Apple Silicon, it would be perfect.

Yeah, I really hope they do release a laptop smaller than the 13-inch Air. My 12 inch Macbook was my favorite laptop ever.

For comparison, the 11-inch iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard is significantly heavier and bulkier than the 12-inch Macbook. Hell, it's the same weight as this 13-inch M2 Macbook Air, but more bulky and more annoying and more restrictive (iOS vs. macOS).

> My 12 inch Macbook was my favorite laptop ever

If Apple could make a case back in the day to build that underpowered/overheating Intel-based 12-inch MacBook, you'd think the case would be pretty strong now to bring it back as an M-powered device.

That awesome small form-factor based on M-generation chips would likely be a superb machine. The 12-inch was ahead of its time - it really needed an M1/M2 chip in it!

Yeah I'm not really sure why they haven't made it, should be a no-brainer with the M1, which they put into an iPad ... Maybe they don't want to canabalize iPad sales or something.

This[0] is probably the most honest review I've seen for this new computer

[0] https://www.wired.com/review/apple-macbook-air-13-inch-2022/

I took delivery of mine yesterday morning and I absolutely adore it. I have to fully agree with what Gruber wrote. If you are looking for a compact, very mobile solution, the Air is exactly designed for that and leaves little to be desired. Apple should add another display unit to the M3 processor, but it isn't a problem for me - I could have had a 14" MB Pro for little more, as it was on sale on Amazon, but I went for the Air to have the more portable solution. I also quite liked the idea of not haven any fan in my computer. I still remember the times when computers for private usage didn't have fans yet.

> I still remember the times when computers for private usage didn't have fans yet.

What time was that? I remember fans going waaaay back, at least to the 386 days. Maybe the 286 days.

Well, that was the time, when home computers ruled the world :) Like the C64, the Amiga 500, the Atari ST. The very first ARM computer, the archimedes. Indeed, PCs always had fans, were big and noisy. But home computers, you just switched on.

During the days of the Commodore 64, Atari, and some others (early to mid 80’s) those devices did not have fans.

Some did into the early 90ies. Mind you, PCs at that time had a fan in the power supply but not on the CPU. My mother had a 486/33, that didn't even had a heat sink on the CPU.

Can we get a bigger screen Air? I'm well over six foot and these Apple devices are way too small, they look built for middle school kids or petite people. Working on these tiny screens and keyboards seems like cruel punishment.

Honest question. Does screen size matter for larger people? I would understand keyboard, trackpad, etc. But is your FOV markedly different or is it the center of the screen is too low on your working surface?

Further away on a standard size desk

Bulk is less of a concern because other things (like rucksacks) can be scaled up.

The Air is probably too thin to not become too fragile in bigger sizes. Just get a MacBook Pro in 14 or 16.

> it was underpowered because a thin, fan-less, high-performance laptop was and remains an impossible dream for the x86 computing architecture

Eh, Surface Pro (i3/i5 before 8th gen), anyone? From what I heard the machine is very usable -- in fact a daily driver for many people. Is it fair to blame the failure of one Apple product on an entire CPU architecture?

> From what I heard the machine is very usable ...

Ah, so you didn't own it as your own daily driver.

Our bank, and other banks, outfitted branch VPs with Surface Pros (least worst option among a dozen trialed).

Across banks (so not unique to a given IT department's config) they mostly ended up in bottom drawers or stuck tethered to the desks by charging cables, proving essentially useless unplugged and woefully underpowered regardless of power state.

Turns out even an x86 MBA running bootcamp was a better option. And then turned out that by using corporate apps in Microsoft Edge, a MBA running MacOS, managed by JAMF or inTune, ran anything branch employees needed better, longer, and with a fraction of the support tickets.

Can't speak for the other commenter, but I personally used it as a daily driver for over 5 years, and casual use for another 3. Used it for programming, art, writing, light gaming, and even some blender. The surface pros are a great line of products, and even after 8 years the battery is still surprisingly good compared to other laptops I've seen.

I owned a couple as well. They were the least worst.

It's not even the architecture. It's the fact that Intel was stuck on 14nm for a decade. Apple also paid for the pick of the litter from TSMC, so they're always a step ahead of everyone else.

Current AMD mobile processors are very power efficient. Intel's foundries will catch up eventually, too.

No mention of the value-for-money of the M2. In my opinion this should be a factor when you decide if this is the "best laptop" out there.

I've read elsewhere (can't find it now) that the M1 Pro is a better deal, in terms of value-for-money.

There _is_ catch: cost. It's pretty expensive if you want the 512GB/16GB version.

The Air is just about the perfect laptop for most people. The only thing for me is the lack of support for two external displays. I never thought I would be a person that would opt for the lower power option, but the Air never feels slow.

My reaction to this was:

$1200 machine:

- slow, low capacity SSD

- non-native scaled resolution

- only one external display support

- cheap plastic in keyboard keys

- old charger

"The best laptop, this is what Apple thinks the best laptop is"

It's still, without a doubt, a great machine. But the amount of corner-cutting in an otherwise premium laptop is inexcusable.

> - slow, low capacity SSD

Low capacity, sure. It's hardly slow though — it is still likely going to be orders of magnitude faster than what the vast majority of people buying this machine will really need out of the entry level Mac.

As always, HN seem to look at things through a very specific lens. The Air has never been marketed as the purely performance machine for purely performance needs. That's what the Pro line is for.

> it is still likely going to be orders of magnitude faster than what the vast majority of people buying this machine will really need out of the entry level Mac.

It's going to be 100x faster than what those people need?

Minimum 100x, yeah. I'd wager the majority of users will use their MBA as a web browser and the occasional PDF reader.

> As always, HN seem to look at things through a very specific lens. The Air has never been marketed as the purely performance machine for purely performance needs

It's not a "specific lens". It's a laptop that costs over a thousand dollars. Somehow it doesn't deserve a native resolution display, not-cheap keyboard keys, support for more than one external display etc.

You can certainly run it in native resolution, but it doesn’t default to that setting.

It’s not a premium laptop, it is an entry-level Mac, which amounts to a mid-level PC, except PCs don’t have AppleSilicon, so this can best high-level PCs in some regards.

An entry level laptop at that price point definitely is a premium product. It happens to be plenty powerful, but what most people will probably do on it would work just as well on a machine less than half the price. I'd put it in the luxury segment of laptop computers, which is why Apple can get away with the markup. You're not just buying the hardware metrics, you're also buying a design, aesthetics, finish and status. Yes, a Macbook signals status in lots of places, most people aren't SV software engineers (and even there, not getting the option may be perceived as a loss of status).

You are also buying a machine that will last substantially longer than most PCs costing less. If you can afford them, Macs are usually more cost-effective in the long run. I guess that makes it premium, but it’s not a high-end machine.

Without stats this is just a myth now.

A few years ago IBM reported lower TCO [1].

I also have plenty of anecdotes from family & friends keeping entry-level Macs for 5+ years, while those who cheap out and buy PCs barely get 2 years out of them.

[1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/debate-over-ibm-confirms-that-macs...

The link you posted is a PR piece. It does not have actual research details. For all we know they might have made it up.

Come on, there is no way you can keep your face straight and say a $1,200 laptop is not a "premium" laptop. Who are you kidding? An average college student from a common middle class family is definitely NOT going to purchase this laptop, unless they make an intentional choice.

> It’s not a premium laptop, it is an entry-level Mac

As if those two things are mutually exclusive.

What do you mean by "old charger"? It supports USB-C to USB-C charging directly. The magsafe is also version 3, and the other end of the magsafe plugs into any USB-C charging brick. This is the best of both worlds: USB-C charging if you want it, and magsafe, which I think is much better anyway.

And, I assume I could buy a replacement cable if it frays, unlike with my old MagSafe Air, where I just had to replace the whole charger.

Yup: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MLYV3AM/A/usb-c-to-magsaf...

It's actually quite a fast SSD. The screen brightness and resolution is better than most PC laptops. Being 16:10 is a really nice addition and the Mac OS scaling works really well.

My only criticism is it is expensive, and upgrading it is expensive too. Seems like a nice laptop.

It seems like a fantastic laptop, but for people who are just buying one for themselves (vs 100+ for a corporate fleet) I don't think it's a great value proposition right now.

A base model M1 MacBook Air can be bought refurb from Apple for $850, a much more palatable price than the $1200 for the base M2 model.

On the other hand, if you add 16GB RAM to the high end M2 Air, it's only $300 less than the 14" MacBook Pro, which is a much nicer computer in pretty much every aspect except weight.

> On the other hand, if you add 16GB RAM to the high end M2 Air, it's only $300 less than the 14" MacBook Pro, which is a much nicer computer in pretty much every aspect except weight.

…and it’s not fanless.

My experience with a 16" M1 MacBook Pro is that the fans don't come on unless I'm running games anyway.

You could likely achieve an essentially "fanless" experience on the 14" M1 Macbook Pro as on the Air.

> The ideal everyperson computer is a laptop. That laptop has a full-sized keyboard and a beautiful 13-inch display. Maybe a 14-inch display with really small bezels. A smaller display is too small for most people’s taste (and possibly necessitates a slightly cramped keyboard); a larger display makes for too big and heavy a device for everyperson needs.

This may be true but I really wish it weren’t. 15”-16” is the sweet spot for me.

I recently bought a 14" Pro - fantastic machine, but I would be wrong to say that I wasn't very very tempted by the m2 Air. My one need that the Air didn't fill is to drive two external monitors. For me - everything else - is absolutely catered for in the Air. It'll be a perfect machine for my partner who has no desire or need for that.

I would consider an air over pro but screen size is too small for me. I dislike the thickness on the new macbook pros

I wish apple would put a damn 5G chip on their laptops!

It makes no sense that you can get a 12.9" iPad Pro Wi-Fi + Cellular but not a 13" MBA Wi-Fi + Cellular. Sure, battery life might take a bit of a hit but I like that compromise more than needing to fret about my phone's battery levels because of the extra drain from tethering.

Apple is currently developing their own cellular modem chips. The expectation is that once they have their own chips, they will use them in most of their products, including the laptops. They supposedly had a setback this year and the program is delayed by another year or so.

I think this will come when they have in house 5G chip, which they’re working on since they bought Intels department. They’re currently relying on Qulacom on the iPhone/iPad

It's clearly on their mind, there was a prototype macbook from 2012 or so that had a 3G modem built into it.

Apple: I would love to see an improved key material.

Synthetic ivory is a thing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235294072...

( But glass or ceramic might be nice, too! )

Heck, why not go with lab grown sapphire like they oringinally planned to with the Apple Watch.

actually the notch on my pro is a pain in the arse because MacOS hides icons in the menu bar behind it.

Those icons often get out of control if you have a lot of apps. Even without the notch. I have been using Bartender for years for this reason. It lets you hide most app icons that only appear when you mouseover the menubar. It is a great tool. There are alternatives, like Dozer, if you don’t like to pay for software like Bartender.

I am really wondering if/when this is getting fixed, really strange that it is still happening.

Would you go for the 16GB or 24GB setup? I'm currently on Linux doing web dev stuff (Go and Node).

The memory usage won't change massively, so check your current usage for a good idea. Just remember to ignore the buffers / cache usage.

I find it amusing that Intel MacBooks were slammed for being overpriced compared to Windows and Linux boxes, but now Mn Macs are being smashed for not running Windows or Linux.

No one is forcing you to buy a Mac. Just buy the machine that best suits you and enjoy all the money you’ll save.

I bought one of these on launch day. The only thing I wish it had was an SD card slot. People with oodles of cash can scratch this itch by upgrading to the 2TB SSD, but for the rest of us it's a pricey tradeoff.

I'd love an SD card slot so I can offload footage/pictures from cameras... at least they added that back on the Pro models. The 13" Air had it, for a few years :(

Yes, the glory days of nice keyboards and SD slots! At least the keyboard issue has been fixed...

If I want one of these things badly enough to pay extra to have it now (i.e. I could expense it) what’s the move? Everybody from Apple to Amazon is showing this as like a month waiting list.

Where’s the secondary market?

You could try to go to an Apple store and see if they have any of them in stock. You might get lucky. They typically stock the 8/256 and maybe 8/512 in the store. Not sure if any of them will stock a 16GB model.

Look Ma! No ports! You'd junk so much money for no ports, and then junk a lot of money to buy "accessories"? It's self defeating argument.

I still hold that the M1 is still a better choice. The M2 is slick, but it’s not a meaningful upgrade, all things considered. The M1 Air just got everything right.

I want 12" M1 or M2 so bad, I have M1 Air and it's an awesome laptop, but I'd change it for 12" in a heartbeat.

Apple really needs to step up and help with Linux port on these ARM machines. That could get a lot more developers to buy-in.

What would be the gain for Apple? Currently a lot of Linux devs are already using macs and some are motivated enough to do the porting without any cost to Apple.

The gain would be selling A LOT more products. There are lots of folks like me that love the hardware but hate the crappy OS. Most Mac users I know are either a) iOS app developers, b) remoting in to some other system, c) running a Windows VM. Give me a solid Linux machine and I'd buy a Mac in a heartbeat.

I'd say the idea that there are enough devs who haven't got a mac and would want to buy it with Linux to offset the development cost and actually get profit... needs some data. I'm one of them, but it feels like "there's dozens of us... dozens!"

i am in the market for a laptop for kid going to college this fall to study CS. I am hoping m2 air to be the one but i am not sure if the screen size will be too small or if its going to be under powered for CS work.

Definitely not underpowered for CS work. The screen is typical for a 13” laptop but the detail is good and your kid’s eyes will probably be fine with higher resolution settings. They may want an external monitor at their home/apt. A 24” 4K monitor is not expensive. I would recommend the 16GB RAM upgrade, though.

This would be a very good monitor for a student of nearly any type. It is small and lightweight. The processor is more powerful than most other laptops with an Intel processor. The battery will last for many hours. The only real downside is that there are not a lot of video games available for Macs. If they don’t care about that, this it a really good choice.

> A 24” 4K monitor is not expensive.

Do they even make such thing? There are no 4K monitors under 27" available in my country.

This is an LG 24” 4K for $280. I don’t know if it is any good but it is available. I only mentioned the 24” as they might not want the larger monitor in a dorm or small apt.

https://www.amazon.com/LG-24UD58-B-24-Inch-Monitor-FreeSync/...

Love the hardware, wish I can run other another OS on it

> There is no catch.

The catch is that the competition is falling behind. One way or another this will give Apple power they will use against you, the customer (and perhaps developer).

Premium computers at a tripple-premium price.

I still cannot fathom how one can take anything seriously when it comes to the author talking about Apple, given his biased opinion regardless. Maybe it's just this irrational and unconditional excitement. In any case my mind just has problems with this setting, every time an article from Gruber comes up here, even though I own lots of Apple products myself and quite like them. Yeah, I think it really is the lack of objectivity that just makes me feel uncomfortable reading his stuff. Your mileage may vary though.

What exactly do you mean by bias. What makes an opinion biased, in this case, as against an opinion you simply disagree with?

I suppose uncritical support would be an indicator, maybe that's what you mean by "regardless", but Gruber has never been shy about stating very clearly and forcefully when he disagrees with or doesn't like something Apple is doing. Just recently with the Safari UI redesign for example, or the problems with some of the desktop cameras.

My point exactly was that I don't even necessarily disagree with his opinion. However, I would not trust anything he's writing either because of his bias. And with bias I mean the same bias a mother may has to her child if it's the brightest and most beautiful human being there is. Of course any good mother would think that. The same with him and the next new Apple product: Of course it's the best, most thinnest, most magical device there is. I cannot take it seriously. That's the point I was trying to make.

If he uncritically praised every Apple product without question, sure, fine, but as I and others here have pointed out that's simply, obviously, provably not the case. There are many, many examples of where he has seriously disagreed with design, commercial and technical decisions Apple has made and said so very clearly. That's a lot of why I read his stuff.

He loves Apple for sure, but he's definitely honest and calls out the problems as he sees them. E.g., he trashed the camera of the Studio Display.

And Gruber's attention to the little details is unrivaled. What other reviewer is going to notice and call out Apple's keyboard for getting shiny over time because of the particular kind of plastic they use?

I think there are no unbiased opinions. With every reviewer, you have to know that person and take that persons perspective in mind. Just depending what your typical usage szenario is, can make a huge impact on a review.

With Gruber, I do think he is honest. His strength is, that he can give a good view, what might have been the reasons for the design decisions Apple took - as any device is the consequence of design decisions. Of course, he also has a ton of experience in the Mac world, so he can very well compare to all the other Mac models.

I feel like Apple was in a different position at the point at which Gruber came about. He played this 'independent' reviewer who 'understands' Apple and explains them in a world of sleazy sensationalist tech/gadget reviewers. His minimalistic website and personal take felt appropriate and sensitive to the people who work on these devices. It felt like he was defending things that felt worth defending.

Apple has become what it is today as the years have passed though. So the background around this guy has shifted. His writing and quality has remained the same, but you're right - it has become harder and harder to take him seriously. In part that is because he's defending positions which don't need defending anymore.

People read Gruber precisely for his subjective insight, not for objective reviews.

Right, but the entropy is literally zero in my opinion.

Apple ads have always been popular. Their marketing surpasses that of fashion, cars etc.

Yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of benchmarks and discussions that show that in various configurations, the M2 chip is actually slower than the M1.

Gruber, though, gleefully repeats that "Apple says it's faster".

that is a pretty broad statement that is not supported by most benchmarks. The only one I know about is the SSD speed on the base 256GB SSD. Beyond that, the M2 processor has been faster than the M1 in every test that I’ve seen. Even when throttling, the M2 is still faster than the M1 which throttled in similar situations. Perhaps there are some very specific scenarios, but how representative are those of actual scenarios?

Benchmarks are like you say - until you hit thermal throttling, which multiple reviewers have complained about:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/m2-macbook-air-revie...

Really hope x86 virtualization/translation gets better. Love the battery life and snappiness of the 16inch model I have from work but docker and other stuff I need daily to work on x86 projects is worse than on my 2015 Razer laptop.

I really would love to pick up an air for personal use though and just ssh/vnc into my Linux machines remotely

macOS Ventura will include Rosetta for Linux. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/06/macos-ventura-will-e...

I doubt it will get better. Mosy likely the developers will start releasing native M builds

The point of Docker is to run in development what you run in production. As long as you deploy on x86, the fact that the software can be compiled for ARM, is not that useful.

Surely the alternative is to deploy on ARM? Graviton demonstrates the benefit pretty nicely - substantially lower cost per unit of performance, and better achievable density because of less heat.

Graviton is AWS-specific. Arm is not only still uncommon for hosting, non-AWS arm is often not that competitive. Even big names like ovh or heroku won't let you run apps on arm. (ovh only on bare metal)

Soon on Google Cloud too. https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/arm-on-compu...

I’m sure that azure has something in the works too. The benefits are just too great for the world to be held back by x86.

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