5 ms·

Do you mind sharing what battery life you are seeing for your real life workloads? And also an idea of what those work loads are?

CraigJPerry 6y ago
It arrived with 69% charge, by this morning 11am i had reached 21%. I left the screen brightness on the default setting and usage was a mix of installing software (mostly I/O i suppose), a lot of safari, around 4 hours of Citrix remote desktop, around 90 minutes of zoom, some light gaming last night to see if it works. If you do anything that's heavy on I/O (packaging jar files in my case), this laptop is faster than my big desktop, the I/O is crazy fast actually. Memory pressure has been low so far - my biggest fear opting for the base model but looks like i'll be fine - i spun up bunch of dev processes and was fine.
- jk563 6y ago
  8GB integrated memory spec?
  - CraigJPerry 6y ago
    Yeah. I don't hold out hope of it surviving any vm workloads (vagrant, docker desktop etc.) but i'm ok with just installing the cli tools and connecting to remote clusters.
- simonh 6y ago
  >the I/O is crazy fast I seem to remember watching a real time video transcoding demo, or something like that, on an iPad Pro and the dev demoing it saying it was the I/O that made it possible. Desktop machines with much faster processors would choke due to bandwidth limitations, but Apple can custom tune every aspect of the iPad architecture and aren't limited to standard, generic interfaces between components. The original 5k iMacs were a similar case in some ways. It was only possible in an all-in-one design, because there wasn't a standard video connection at the time that was capable of the throughput.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > If you do anything that's heavy on I/O (packaging jar files in my case), this laptop is faster than my big desktop, the I/O is crazy fast actually. Tt's got a rather fast NVME SSD, 2.7GB/s reads and 2.2GB/s writes (Intel version was 1.3 and 1). Don't know if the IOPS & latency improved, but it wouldn't surprise me much.
- Joeri 6y ago
  I wonder whether we need to reset expectations on memory amounts. From seeing the reviews where they launch every application installed on the 8gb air and it remains smooth I am suspecting that the unified memory and optimized storage interface means that for M1 macs 8 gb behaves like 16 gb on intel cpu’s.
  - EricE 6y ago
    Just remember that if your machine needs to swap because of low RAM you are now writing to your SSD. The permanently soldered in SSD that has a finite amount of writes. Saving $200 on RAM up front could get wiped out if you kill your SSD prematurely with constant, heavy swapping. Here I see the fast SSD speed as a negative - making it painless to do something inherently dangerous towards the lifespan of your SSD.
    - CraigJPerry 6y ago
      Would these first gen ARM chips not be obsolete by a few years before wearing out the SSD? The SSDs from the previous gen are rated for something like 40Gb writes per day for 40 years i think. I’d guess the battery will fail first, then the keyboard or screen hinge, then the logic board. But thats a pure guess. I reckon the biggest risk is that all in one logic board, anything fails and you lose your HDD.
      - Fnoord 6y ago
        > Would these first gen ARM chips not be obsolete by a few years before wearing out the SSD? Obsolete, who defines that? I'm typing this on a MBP 2015. Still works perfectly fine (I did have screen replaced under warranty). Battery is replaceable on this machine, its sitting at ~85% capacity with 500 cycles. Apple hardware tends to have good resale value, too. Performance-wise, hardware tends to last longer and longer. Repairability-wise, yeah, that's a can of worms of a discussion.
        CraigJPerry 6y ago
        I'd say a 2005 PowerPC iBook is obsolete. I'd also say a 2009 intel macbook is obsolete but the truth is, add an SSD into that and it's probably still fine under linux so maybe 2009 isn't obsolete for some users just yet (although i think apple no longer support that hardware). 2015 is modern, intel performance just hasn't changed that much since 2015.
- sg47 6y ago
  Do they still ship these Airs with 720p webcams from the 2000s? I have a 2020 Macbook Air that has a terrible webcam.
  - CraigJPerry 6y ago
    Yeah and the low light performance isn’t great either
    - mthoms 6y ago
      I have a feeling an improved webcam (and FaceID) will be one of the features Apple will use to distinguish their forthcoming higher end MBP's. Surely, they won't keep using the same aging technology. At least I hope not.
    - sg47 6y ago
      Unpardonable in the age of covid. And I'm tired of trying out no name webcams from Amazon and hooking them with dongles and they barely stay on top of the monitor.
  - alwillis 6y ago
    I recently discovered this app that makes your iPhone (or iPad) a webcam for your Mac—the difference between the shitty webcam Apple ships and this is eye-opening: https://reincubate.com/camo/ https://reincubate.com/camo/

CraigJPerry 6y ago

It arrived with 69% charge, by this morning 11am i had reached 21%. I left the screen brightness on the default setting and usage was a mix of installing software (mostly I/O i suppose), a lot of safari, around 4 hours of Citrix remote desktop, around 90 minutes of zoom, some light gaming last night to see if it works. If you do anything that's heavy on I/O (packaging jar files in my case), this laptop is faster than my big desktop, the I/O is crazy fast actually. Memory pressure has been low so far - my biggest fear opting for the base model but looks like i'll be fine - i spun up bunch of dev processes and was fine.

jk563 6y ago
8GB integrated memory spec?
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  Yeah. I don't hold out hope of it surviving any vm workloads (vagrant, docker desktop etc.) but i'm ok with just installing the cli tools and connecting to remote clusters.
simonh 6y ago
>the I/O is crazy fast I seem to remember watching a real time video transcoding demo, or something like that, on an iPad Pro and the dev demoing it saying it was the I/O that made it possible. Desktop machines with much faster processors would choke due to bandwidth limitations, but Apple can custom tune every aspect of the iPad architecture and aren't limited to standard, generic interfaces between components. The original 5k iMacs were a similar case in some ways. It was only possible in an all-in-one design, because there wasn't a standard video connection at the time that was capable of the throughput.
masklinn 6y ago
> If you do anything that's heavy on I/O (packaging jar files in my case), this laptop is faster than my big desktop, the I/O is crazy fast actually. Tt's got a rather fast NVME SSD, 2.7GB/s reads and 2.2GB/s writes (Intel version was 1.3 and 1). Don't know if the IOPS & latency improved, but it wouldn't surprise me much.
Joeri 6y ago
I wonder whether we need to reset expectations on memory amounts. From seeing the reviews where they launch every application installed on the 8gb air and it remains smooth I am suspecting that the unified memory and optimized storage interface means that for M1 macs 8 gb behaves like 16 gb on intel cpu’s.
- EricE 6y ago
  Just remember that if your machine needs to swap because of low RAM you are now writing to your SSD. The permanently soldered in SSD that has a finite amount of writes. Saving $200 on RAM up front could get wiped out if you kill your SSD prematurely with constant, heavy swapping. Here I see the fast SSD speed as a negative - making it painless to do something inherently dangerous towards the lifespan of your SSD.
  - CraigJPerry 6y ago
    Would these first gen ARM chips not be obsolete by a few years before wearing out the SSD? The SSDs from the previous gen are rated for something like 40Gb writes per day for 40 years i think. I’d guess the battery will fail first, then the keyboard or screen hinge, then the logic board. But thats a pure guess. I reckon the biggest risk is that all in one logic board, anything fails and you lose your HDD.
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      > Would these first gen ARM chips not be obsolete by a few years before wearing out the SSD? Obsolete, who defines that? I'm typing this on a MBP 2015. Still works perfectly fine (I did have screen replaced under warranty). Battery is replaceable on this machine, its sitting at ~85% capacity with 500 cycles. Apple hardware tends to have good resale value, too. Performance-wise, hardware tends to last longer and longer. Repairability-wise, yeah, that's a can of worms of a discussion.
      - CraigJPerry 6y ago
        I'd say a 2005 PowerPC iBook is obsolete. I'd also say a 2009 intel macbook is obsolete but the truth is, add an SSD into that and it's probably still fine under linux so maybe 2009 isn't obsolete for some users just yet (although i think apple no longer support that hardware). 2015 is modern, intel performance just hasn't changed that much since 2015.
sg47 6y ago
Do they still ship these Airs with 720p webcams from the 2000s? I have a 2020 Macbook Air that has a terrible webcam.
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  Yeah and the low light performance isn’t great either
  - mthoms 6y ago
    I have a feeling an improved webcam (and FaceID) will be one of the features Apple will use to distinguish their forthcoming higher end MBP's. Surely, they won't keep using the same aging technology. At least I hope not.
  - sg47 6y ago
    Unpardonable in the age of covid. And I'm tired of trying out no name webcams from Amazon and hooking them with dongles and they barely stay on top of the monitor.
- alwillis 6y ago
  I recently discovered this app that makes your iPhone (or iPad) a webcam for your Mac—the difference between the shitty webcam Apple ships and this is eye-opening: https://reincubate.com/camo/ https://reincubate.com/camo/