9 ms·

So there is an interesting trend here in the comments because HN is very developer focused. Everyone seems to say "well this does not work for my XXX because of

So there is an interesting trend here in the comments because HN is very developer focused. Everyone seems to say "well this does not work for my XXX because of RAM, etc." I would say yes, no surprises there! With this line up Apple is fine with that, because the Air and 13" are not targeted at you. This is the laptop for my wife or kids that use it for school, web, some music and video, nothing at a professional level. That battery life will make both of them very happy. The reality of this is that it is very likely they focused on yield for the chip vs market segment for what they can ship today. For the professional user I would very much to expect to see follow on products with more RAM and cores in 1Q21 (MacBook Pro 16" and iMacs).

Aperocky 6y ago
I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for performance is super low.
- myrandomcomment 6y ago
  I was going to point out something like that but figured I would get shouted down. For me, check in to bitbucket and Jenkins pulls the build and does it on a rack full of servers dedicated for the process...and yes to VIM. :) One of my colleagues placed an order for the Air about 10 seconds after you could.
  - sooheon 6y ago
    Yes, developers with cloud backed infra have the most to gain from this architecture change. All we need is huge battery life (check), better heat management (check), and snappy enough performance for our thin client machine (check). We're not training the next GPT on our laptop anyways.
- cheeze 6y ago
  Hah, this reminds me of college. I remember some of my first CS courses, everyone either had a brand new mbp or an ALIENWARE super beefy laptop. I had a 300 dollar 7" netbook. Turns out that unless you're doing deep learning, etc. (which you might as well just run remote IMO), a bottom of the line intel atom processor can handle the workloads that a CS program throws at it no problem. I mean, in reality you're doing things like solving sudoku puzzles or making some syscalls 95% of the time. Admittedly, I ended up buying a desktop because I wanted the screen real estate when things got more complex, but I thought it was funny how many people had this conception that they would need to run their ray tracer from CS101 on their i7 with 32gb RAM
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    CS courses are the least demanding of all on computers. Usually the other courses when it comes to computer would need either office suite or specific software, both are vastly more demanding than the CS toolchain that has been mature since the 90s. That is, unless the course somehow uses Java, which practically forces you to use an IDE that are full of bloat.
    - epmaybe 6y ago
      gosh, I just remembered my first IDE I used in class, Dr. Java. I honestly thought that the ability to interact with java code without all the boilerplate was a great way to introduce people to coding. That being said, I'm sure languages and interpreters like python's were pretty mature in 2010 too.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Netbeans, Eclipse and VS run just fine on my 2009 Asus laptop with 8 GB, now InteliJ and Android Studio, I can forget about even trying.
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    Some people want an all-in-one computer. They don't want a separate desktop for heavy tasks.
  - 6y ago
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  I ran RubyMine and Rails on the Air for three years back in 2012-15. It was faster than the Pro at the time as measured by our unscientific execution of our entire test suite. The biggest difference came from SSD vs HDD of the Pro. For most use cases a reasonable amount of memory (8GB) and for developers (16GB) should be enough. The fact that Electron apps are gaining popularity and chromium is a memory hog is my only concern about future proofing it. I’m assuming even there the faster SSD performance might make paging seamless and unnoticeable.
rvanmil 6y ago
Welp, I guess all those years of development I’ve been doing on my MacBook Air were nothing professional.
- kristofferc 6y ago
  Of course it is possible to use almost any computer for work. That doesn't change the type of users that the particular model is designed for though.
manquer 6y ago
It is literally called Pro if that is not for professionals then what is ? its $1,000+ price tag is pretty steep if exclusively targeted towards consumer market. Also the wife and kids have plenty of alternative devices including the iPad to do basic school, web and multimedia, the value prop for just that market is not convincing enough for me Why would I buy and iPad and MB Pro if they are basically going to do the same type of work ?
- cwhiz 6y ago
  They have pro versions of their phones. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.
  - manquer 6y ago
    True, it does not seem much in Apple any more. While Apple's phones are not really "pro", I can see a phone being designed for the professional market primarily like the Blackberries and Nokia communicators of old.
- myrandomcomment 6y ago
  Not to be snarky but if $1000+ is steep then your are not Apples target market. :) They have phones that cost over $1000 so $1000 for a laptop seems to fit. For me, we just went all in on the Apple ecosystem because it is simple and the least invasive privacy wise. I do tech for a living so when I get home the last thing I want to do is debug anything. I think in the last 5 years the number of times my family has asked me for help to resolve something is under 5. This was not the case when we had Windows systems, Windows media centers, etc.
  - manquer 6y ago
    For 1000+ price to be scalable, Apple cannot rely on just consumer market of wealthy people earning 6 figure salaries of people in tech buying for personal use. They need the professional market which is my point. [2] I have considerably less problems troubleshooting Chromebooks for the technically challenged than I have ever had with macOS or windows combined [1] [1] TBF Windows has improved, S Mode, seamless upgrades etc have helped its user experience to improve. It is funny that windows is considered the more complex OS, their user friendly practices like strong backward compatibility and focus on GUI based workflows shot them to mainstream in the 90's, times have changed indeed. [2] They are not going to lose professional user base overnight there will be stickyness, anecdotally I bought the first 2017 touch bar MBP, for 10-15 years Apple had delivered good hardware for me, that is the last Apple I will buy in a while. There is some stickiness in the professional market however the brand loyalty is very limited, if a device does not fit your needs you find one which does . You may feel sad you still need to make money though so you move on.

Aperocky 6y ago

I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for performance is super low.

myrandomcomment 6y ago
I was going to point out something like that but figured I would get shouted down. For me, check in to bitbucket and Jenkins pulls the build and does it on a rack full of servers dedicated for the process...and yes to VIM. :) One of my colleagues placed an order for the Air about 10 seconds after you could.
- sooheon 6y ago
  Yes, developers with cloud backed infra have the most to gain from this architecture change. All we need is huge battery life (check), better heat management (check), and snappy enough performance for our thin client machine (check). We're not training the next GPT on our laptop anyways.
cheeze 6y ago
Hah, this reminds me of college. I remember some of my first CS courses, everyone either had a brand new mbp or an ALIENWARE super beefy laptop. I had a 300 dollar 7" netbook. Turns out that unless you're doing deep learning, etc. (which you might as well just run remote IMO), a bottom of the line intel atom processor can handle the workloads that a CS program throws at it no problem. I mean, in reality you're doing things like solving sudoku puzzles or making some syscalls 95% of the time. Admittedly, I ended up buying a desktop because I wanted the screen real estate when things got more complex, but I thought it was funny how many people had this conception that they would need to run their ray tracer from CS101 on their i7 with 32gb RAM
- Aperocky 6y ago
  CS courses are the least demanding of all on computers. Usually the other courses when it comes to computer would need either office suite or specific software, both are vastly more demanding than the CS toolchain that has been mature since the 90s. That is, unless the course somehow uses Java, which practically forces you to use an IDE that are full of bloat.
  - epmaybe 6y ago
    gosh, I just remembered my first IDE I used in class, Dr. Java. I honestly thought that the ability to interact with java code without all the boilerplate was a great way to introduce people to coding. That being said, I'm sure languages and interpreters like python's were pretty mature in 2010 too.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Netbeans, Eclipse and VS run just fine on my 2009 Asus laptop with 8 GB, now InteliJ and Android Studio, I can forget about even trying.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  Some people want an all-in-one computer. They don't want a separate desktop for heavy tasks.
- 6y ago
8ytecoder 6y ago
I ran RubyMine and Rails on the Air for three years back in 2012-15. It was faster than the Pro at the time as measured by our unscientific execution of our entire test suite. The biggest difference came from SSD vs HDD of the Pro. For most use cases a reasonable amount of memory (8GB) and for developers (16GB) should be enough. The fact that Electron apps are gaining popularity and chromium is a memory hog is my only concern about future proofing it. I’m assuming even there the faster SSD performance might make paging seamless and unnoticeable.

rvanmil 6y ago

Welp, I guess all those years of development I’ve been doing on my MacBook Air were nothing professional.

kristofferc 6y ago
Of course it is possible to use almost any computer for work. That doesn't change the type of users that the particular model is designed for though.

manquer 6y ago

It is literally called Pro if that is not for professionals then what is ? its $1,000+ price tag is pretty steep if exclusively targeted towards consumer market. Also the wife and kids have plenty of alternative devices including the iPad to do basic school, web and multimedia, the value prop for just that market is not convincing enough for me Why would I buy and iPad and MB Pro if they are basically going to do the same type of work ?

cwhiz 6y ago
They have pro versions of their phones. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.
- manquer 6y ago
  True, it does not seem much in Apple any more. While Apple's phones are not really "pro", I can see a phone being designed for the professional market primarily like the Blackberries and Nokia communicators of old.
myrandomcomment 6y ago
Not to be snarky but if $1000+ is steep then your are not Apples target market. :) They have phones that cost over $1000 so $1000 for a laptop seems to fit. For me, we just went all in on the Apple ecosystem because it is simple and the least invasive privacy wise. I do tech for a living so when I get home the last thing I want to do is debug anything. I think in the last 5 years the number of times my family has asked me for help to resolve something is under 5. This was not the case when we had Windows systems, Windows media centers, etc.
- manquer 6y ago
  For 1000+ price to be scalable, Apple cannot rely on just consumer market of wealthy people earning 6 figure salaries of people in tech buying for personal use. They need the professional market which is my point. [2] I have considerably less problems troubleshooting Chromebooks for the technically challenged than I have ever had with macOS or windows combined [1] [1] TBF Windows has improved, S Mode, seamless upgrades etc have helped its user experience to improve. It is funny that windows is considered the more complex OS, their user friendly practices like strong backward compatibility and focus on GUI based workflows shot them to mainstream in the 90's, times have changed indeed. [2] They are not going to lose professional user base overnight there will be stickyness, anecdotally I bought the first 2017 touch bar MBP, for 10-15 years Apple had delivered good hardware for me, that is the last Apple I will buy in a while. There is some stickiness in the professional market however the brand loyalty is very limited, if a device does not fit your needs you find one which does . You may feel sad you still need to make money though so you move on.