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Comment by jb1991 | Hacker News Reader

jb1991

I'm still using an original M1 Air and the thing is used nearly all day for light casual web usage, and I only plug it in about two times per week -- the energy efficiency is no joke. This kind of battery life really spoils you and when you see other laptops that nearly require the plug charging all the time, tethered, you realize what a big deal these M chips are for true portability.

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I end up forgetting my charger when I go on trips because 99% of the time when I unplug my laptop at home (to use in a different room), I never need the charge cable. It used to be 50% of the time I'd take the cable with me, so I could be somewhere else for 2+ hours. Now I so rarely bring the charger that it just doesn't even occur to me when I'm unplugging the thing to pack.

It's night-and-day compared to the Intel MBPs.

Now that laptops (including but not limited to macbooks) can charge via USB C I just have one charger that I take for both my phone and laptop. Sometimes I take two cables so I can charge both at once. Sometimes I don't bother.

My problem was that I brought a USB-C to lightning cable to charge my phone off my computer, but I forgot a USB-C brick (and magsafe or USB-C cable) so that my computer had power. Fortunately there were Apple employees at the conference and they let me borrow a charger while we were hanging out at the bar!

Ah yes, my phone is also USB-C which leaves less room for this kind of issue to occur.

I've been out of the house all day (6+ hours) with my M1 Pro and it's only just starting to get close to needing to be plugged in. What have I been doing all day? Just running the 23 different docker containers required for my local dev environment. This thing is an absolute beast.

Do you think the new M3 Air w/16 GB could be comparable CPU wise to the M1 Pro? I am guessing GPU wise (for inference like apps) it probably falls behind.

CPU was never the problem with the Air it's the thermal system. Depending on what you're doing the device simply can't soak up enough heat and so it ends up throttling the CPU.

It takes a long operation e.g. compilation for 10-20 mins before it really starts to fall behind the Pro models.

Thanks.

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