6 ms·

I actually think the current MacBook Air configuration with Touch ID & Retina - $1100 - is basically exactly what I (and many people) want in a personal laptop.

• Domenic_S 7y ago
  Yep. I just picked one up a couple weeks ago, it's my first non-MBP but seeing as I have a company-provided i7 MBP I didn't feel like I needed another powerhouse machine for side projects and occasional coding for fun. I love that I have no touch bar but I do have Touch ID. Coming from a 2014 MBP 13 I definitely didn't notice the slower SSD speed -- editing raw camera files in Lightroom is really fast and the display is phenomenal.
  • bleomycin 7y ago
    The biggest bummer of these machines is apples lack of vp9 hardware decoding in macos, it makes 4k youtube unwatchable. For high motion content (mountain biking videos) 4k is the only way to watch even on a tiny laptop screen due to youtube’s horrific compression. Its an absurd limitation considering the hardware has full support for it! I know it sounds insane but I returned mine for a quad core 13” mbp just to brute force software decode playback of these videos.
    • oarsinsync 7y ago
      Not the perfect solution, but I think changing your user-agent to iOS makes youtube deliver x264 instead of vp9
      • PascLeRasc 7y ago
        This Chrome extension will do it in a cleaner way: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihd...
        • oarsinsync 7y ago
          Does anyone know of a similar Safari extension? Battery life remains a concern, and switching from vp9 to x264 is great, but then having to deploy Chrome instead feels like a 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards situation.
    • swebs 7y ago
      Do hardware decoders for vp9 even exist?
      • zerocrates 7y ago
        There's accelerated decoding on at least some of the modern mobile platforms, and from all the major graphics providers on laptop/desktop.
      • vetinari 7y ago
        Any Intel GPU since Kaby Lake can decode VP9 in hardware. So can AMD since Raven Ridge[1] and Nvidia since GM206. On Android, it has been mandated by CTS for several years already. [1] Except Radeon VII, which is technically Vega.
    • givinguflac 7y ago
      Using Brave or FF I can watch 4k no issues on my MacBook, though I wouldn't turn down lower power usage when doing so.
    • threeseed 7y ago
      Google could support H.264 or H.265. The only reason they don't is because they want to push their format.
      • untog 7y ago
        I wouldn't say it's the only reason. H264/5 are not royalty-free codecs. YouTube is a powerful tool Google can use to push a royalty-free codec, much like Apple used the iPhone to push people off Flash. It's one of few areas I agree with Google being heavy handed.
        • stephenr 7y ago
          What, over and above the H.264 licensing that covers them for 1080p content? It’s google doing what google always does: pushing a google controlled thing to become a “standard”.
          • untog 7y ago
            It's an open source, royalty free codec. I'd much rather use that than one owned and licensed by a private organisation, no matter whether Google develops it or not.
            • stephenr 7y ago
              It’s still patent encumbered, and if you happen to sue Google, because they do something shitty, you lose your patent grant.
              • untog 7y ago
                How does that make H264 preferable?
                • stephenr 7y ago
                  It's not operated by a company with a penchant for abusing its 800 pound gorilla status?
    • ksec 7y ago
      I am guessing for high motion content you mean 60fps video?
      • umanwizard 7y ago
        No, they mean content where things are moving a lot. (Imagine how fast the picture is changing on a mountain biker’s GoPro...)
        • ksec 7y ago
          I don't see the relation of High Motion Video, ( Sports ) to Video Codec and Resolution. Why cant H.264 not be used? ( Which is the standard used world wide now for All Sporting Events )
          • xnyan 7y ago
            It's a huge topic and I'm not a professional, but tldr Google's implementation of h264 compression is not suitable for high motion video and the changes they would need to make in order to make it suitable are not worth it in view of the trade offs of size and other factors. Why can't a $1K general purpose computer efficiently decode a royalty-free codec (hint - it may have something to do with the fact that apple has a major stake in a competing for-pay closed codec). I really do like apple, but I see apple as microsoft 2.0 in this.
            • ksec 7y ago
              >Why can't a $1K general purpose computer efficiently decode a royalty-free codec Well the Codec is Royalty Free but not Patents Free. You only get to use it as long as you don't engage in patent litigations against Google. And Apple does not have an major stake in H.265 or H.264 or every H.26x codec. It has a very minor stake, in the an Open Codec, not closed. Comparatively Speaking every H.26x Codec is more open than VPx and even the new AV1 Standard [1] . So this is far from WMV or RMVB. I wonder if Google will support EVC / MPEG-5 as it is Royalty Free. [1] https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2018/12/why-i-am-sceptical-about-av1/ https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2018/12/why-i-am-sceptical-abou...
  • natrik 7y ago
    I have a 2014 MBP 13 as well, any other differences (positive and negative) you noticed in switching to the new MBA?
    • KSS42 7y ago
      Keyboard is a big difference.
    • Domenic_S 7y ago
      The keyboard... I miss the chiclets. But it's lighter & smaller, TouchID is amazing, despite being a "downgrade" in model it's substantially faster for the things I do (raw photo editing, photoshop, web coding). Truetone is great, I don't feel a need for flux anymore. Also fewer bugs with iCloud - I could never get my airpods to show up in the sound menu on my mbp 13 but they work perfectly on the mba.
      • darkteflon 7y ago
        Truetone doesn’t work with external displays, unfortunately.
• cmroanirgo 7y ago
  Just looked at the new specs. The obvious differences to my maxed out mba 2013 is double the ram (16gb) and double the ssd (1tb). Losing those few ports I have is a bit of a blow though (but that's long standing gripe with newer mba), and is the one thing holding me back from an upgrade, but the above upgrades are a definite sweetener in the deal.
  • ElCapitanMarkla 7y ago
    That terrible keyboard is my only sticking point at the mo. Rumor has it that is getting addressed in the next revision but we will see. Hopefully my trusty 2013 MBA keeps chugging away until then :D
• tlobes 7y ago
  I'd agree with the exception of the utterly awful keyboard & trackpad design that appeared in 2016 that seemed to skip any meaningful QA process inside Apple. The popular dust complaints aside, a brand new machine has immediate problems for someone whose palms tend to touch the newly enlarged Force Touch trackpad during typing, a hand position I got used to with my Macbook Air 2013. Typing on the new design will cause repeated keystrokes, delayed or missing keystrokes, and instant cursor shifts during typing that make it so I need to approach the keyboard in the same way one would properly play a piano in order to get any meaningful work done. Great if you're a trained pianist, terrible if you want to get actual work done from a coffee shop where you don't have a stand or external keyboard on hand. Apple knows they messed up with the butterfly mechanism and seem to be fixing that in the next design. In the meantime, there are a few things they could do now through software to alleviate these issues: 1. The ability to remap the Force Touch trackpad tracking area in Settings. Being able to remove 10mm from each side would fix my cursor shift issue. People currently use tape to solve this... on a $4000+ machine. 2. Ability to set a numeric value for Force Touch sensitivity as opposed to 3 constant values with a much higher threshold than is currently being used as "high". I know Apple is all about limiting options for a customer's own good, however, these software changes would go a long way in helping people debrick an expensive laptop who don't happen to fit whatever hand size their QA team of classically trained pianists have.
  • ebg13 7y ago
    > The popular dust complaints aside, a brand new machine has immediate problems for someone whose palms tend to touch the newly enlarged Force Touch trackpad during typing This has not been my experience. The errant contact dismissal in my 2017 MBP is so good that I never notice that my hands casually drape across swathes of touchpad geography.
  • schappim 7y ago
    >> I'd agree with the exception of the utterly awful keyboard & trackpad design Perhaps the purpose of which was to drive Touch ID adoption for those who "tend to use long passwords that you don't want to type in all the time". :-P
  • rickyc091 7y ago
• viraptor 7y ago
  You can get the same from other companies at similar price. Just with a traditional fingerprint scanner rather than touch id (Same thing really), or a face unlock (which at least works when you have wet hands)
  • swiftcoder 7y ago
    It may be the same thing from an end-user experience PoV, but it doesn't seem like any of the PC laptop manufacturers can offer equivalent security guarantees.
  • lloeki 7y ago
    I may be a weirdo but I usually like to refrain touching my computer with wet hands.
    • viraptor 7y ago
      Depends on the definition of wet. I can't use touchid for a bit after washing my hands. It doesn't matter how much I dry then. This makes using fingerprint unlock on any device really hard while cooking.
  • jandrese 7y ago
    My experience with traditional fingerprint scanners on laptops is that they're extremely picky and won't work if you are a bit sweaty or the air is dry or the day of the week starts with a T or something. Having it fail to read your finger several times on a login pushes me back to regular passwords. The enrollment process takes forever for each finger too. Also, it doesn't work in Linux.
    • viraptor 7y ago
      That is in many ways not true. I'm a happy user of a fingerprint scanner on Linux (for login and sudo). It actually took about the same time to enroll as touch id. How the scanner deals with moisture depends on the model so it's not all the same. Lenovo x1 for example it's in my experience just as bad as touchid on that scale.