8 ms·
The 24GB unified memory is a really nice upgrade (the M1 MBA has 8GB upgradeable to 16GB). The CPU/GPU upgrades are predictable and wlecome but the memory is hu
by jmyeet 4y ago
The 24GB unified memory is a really nice upgrade (the M1 MBA has 8GB upgradeable to 16GB). The CPU/GPU upgrades are predictable and wlecome but the memory is huge.
A lot of development isn't CPU bound but is memory bound or at least can really benefit from more memory. This upgrade makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads.
I have a MBP (Intel) but it's expensive. Getting a viable machine for $1200 would be great. You feel less bad about losing it or breaking it or upgrading it more often.
Really happy to see this.
As an aside, having 8GB of unified memory even as an option in 2022 is a joke. It should just be 16Gb minimum.
- leohonexus 4y agoI doubt Apple will allow you to configure up to 24GB on a MBA though - they’d likely want to reserve that to the MBP which has active cooling and can sustain peak performance. Edit: as comments pointed out, I’m wrong - thanks for the corrections.
- ianbutler 4y agoThat is one of the current options for the new MBA announced today.
- armadsen 4y agoYou can indeed configure the MBA with 24 GB. It's a $400 upgrade.
- tmp_anon_22 4y agoYou can but it costs +$400 to go from 8gb to 24gb.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- UmbertoNoEco 4y agothe 24GB are for the MBP
- terramex 4y agoFor Air too: https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m2/specs/ > Configurable to: 16GB or 24GB Store is updated too, 16GB upgrade is 200$ and 24GB is 400$.
- UmbertoNoEco 4y ago400 USD for a 16GB upgrade is daylight street robbery. The power of brands.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoActually, when you consider how many banks of memory it would take to obtain 100GB/s, it's a bargain. Desktop DDR5-4800 tops out at 38.4 GB/s, so you would need three, desktop DDR5 memory sticks to get that - but it would not even matter because a 12th Gen desktop Intel Core i9 can't handle more than 75GB/s at once. Now, DDR5 is falling in price, but low-power laptop grade DDR5 is still quite a specialized part, let alone with such bandwidth potential. In a nutshell, not all RAM is created equal.
- jltsiren 4y agoApple charges $400 for 32 GB when you upgrade the memory in computers with M1 Max. That used to be a decent price, at least before DDR5 prices started falling. The M2 memory upgrade is twice as expensive. Edit: 16 -> 32 GB with M1 Pro is $400. 32 -> 64 GB with M1 Max is also $400. 64 -> 128 GB with M1 Ultra is $800. Memory upgrades for the high-end Macs are surprisingly cost-effective.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoThis is not true. The M1 Max machines start with 16GB of RAM, upgradable to 32GB, so you are adding 16GB more for $400. The new M2 machine starts with 8GB of RAM, upgradable to 24GB for $400. They are both adding 16GB for $400 or 8GB for $200 if you check, so the cost of upgrades is exactly the same.
- rozenmd 4y agoFor web dev the base model (8GB RAM) MacBook Air M1 is a viable dev machine - makes the maxed out i7 MacBook Pro I had from work feel sluggish in comparison.
- Kognito 4y agoIt’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.
- cowtools 4y agowhy does web development require so much memory and computing power?
- monocasa 4y agoRunning a more or less complete stack of the backend can be a lot of containers.
- dylan604 4y agoI want to make fun of javascript here
- BoumTAC 4y agoDocker
- axlee 4y agoNot Docker, webpack. Your run-of-the-mill webpack dev server will happily gulp gigabytes of RAM, and pray that your frontend dev stack only runs one of them. Your IDE will probably use a few more gigabytes on top of that for static analysis and autocompletion, and that's how you need at least 8-10GB to run develop your average mid-size web app without swapping.
- 4y ago
- agloeregrets 4y ago> makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads. So this, like the M1 supports only ONE external display.. so as long as you live the lopsided big-small life, sure.
- zekrioca 4y agoI really do not understand this. The 14" Macbook Pro (M1 Max) does support up to three external displays. What was the problem with these new Macbooks to not support at least two displays..
- ZetaZero 4y agoThe M1 Pro/Max have multiple GPUs, one in each CPU cluster.
- bombcar 4y agoWhatever wizard at Apple came up with "the number of monitors" as a distinguishing difference between price levels should get a pretty big raise. It's perfect segmentation, most people don't care, and those that do will pay.
- yardie 4y agoThe Touchbar in the 13" MBP counts as a display. So the Pro already runs 2 displays and can add a third. The same GPU+CPU is in the MBA which only runs 1 + 1 external display. It't not a limitation of GPU or whatever they want you to believe. This is pure market segmentation.
- egypturnash 4y agoDoes it? The touch bar is something like 2170x60px. That's a tiny fraction of the processing power and data bandwidth compared to an actual screen. In terms of raw pixel count, it's only about 2x as many pixels as my old Commodore 64 would push every frame. Each of those pixels is a lot deeper but it's still probably pretty much a rounding error compared to how much is being dealt with for the internal screen, never mind an external one. (Hell, is the central GPU even running the touchbar, or is there a specialized display circuit just for it?) That said, my reaction to this whole thread is pretty much "I guess multiple external monitors is a reason to upsell you to a Pro machine" so we agree on that point :)
- m_ke 4y agoI have the M1 air with 8GB and it's unusable with pycharm on an external 4K display.
- alibert 4y agoShould be better when this land (next version) https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-745 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-745 (switch rendering API in JRE used by Intellj/Pycharm to Metal for rendering)
- PpEY4fu85hkQpn 4y agoI've been following that ticket for yeeears. Is it actually shipping in the next release?
- alibert 4y agoShould be! https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/05/intellij-idea-2022-2-eap-1/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/05/intellij-idea-2022-2...
- onetom 4y agoBecause you are most likely running the Intel version, not the Apple Silicon one! Check it in the Activity Monitor. There should be a "Kind" column on the CPU or Memory tabs. If not, you can turn on that column via a right click on the headers.
- onetom 4y agoI'm using IntelliJ IDEA 2022.2 EAP (Ultimate Edition) Build #IU-222.2680.4, built on May 25, 2022 Runtime version: 17.0.3+7-b463.3 aarch64 VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o. and it's freaking buttery smooth. notice the "aarch64" part!
- l5870uoo9y 4y agoRunning Macbook Air M1 with 16 GB of RAM and never had performance issues running multiple Electron instances, simulators, compilers, browsers and what not. Changed to Macbook Air after my 3 times as expensive Macbook Pro 16" (8 core Intel) was stolen and never missed it for a second. Doesn't seem like there is a compelling reason to upgrade to Macbook Air M2.
- bayindirh 4y agoOn the contrary, I was planning to get an almost maxed out M1 Pro, and now I'll buy an almost maxed out M2 Pro (when 16" comes out), because the things I do need extensive processing power and every bit of performance counts. If I can not have a big desktop system and just use my daily laptop for developing these hard, CPU bound simulation tasks; I'll be a happy camper. So, horses for courses.
- colinmhayes 4y agoThe macbook air with 24gb memory and 512gb ssd is $1800, not $1200. Another $100 if you want the extra GPU cores.
- onetom 4y agoI'm using 256GB machines for Clojure development in IntelliJ since 2017 and I never run out of disk space. I have 36GB of photos and 10GB of iPhone backups on iCloud Drive though. The trick is not to mix your personal stuff, like movies, photos and music with your work stuff. Also make sure you regularly clean up the older versions of the software you use, including Docker layer caches, brew / nix packages, JetBrains IDEs, browser caches, etc. If you are not doing audio/video work, then removing iMovie and GarageBand frees up 4.5GB. Similarly Keynote/Numbers/Pages 2GB.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ianai 4y agoThe RAM being on-die, the 8 gig option is probably a result of binning and marketing what makes sense with yield rates.
- stetrain 4y agoIt’s on-package not on-die. The RAM capacity isn’t related to the binning of the M2 die.
- notatoad 4y agofor the person who's looking for a machine to handle emails, facebook, netflix, and maybe a bit of document editing, 8GB is totally fine. and even if that extra ram was free, it still has a cost in battery life. 8GB of ram is the right choice for a lot of people buying a macbook air.
- znpy 4y ago> a machine to handle emails, facebook, netflix, and maybe a bit of document editing, 8GB is totally fine for that kind of usage a $750 acer/asus laptop would probably be good too, however.
- antifa 4y agoIf you're OK with 30 minute battery life and your CPU fan running at max decibels when trying to open a single email...
- znpy 4y agoFor 1/3 of the price? Sure!
- antifa 4y ago$750/$999 is closer to 3/4, not 1/3. A little bit of diligence and patience could get you one on sale for $900 or $800.
- llampx 4y agoStrawman. Most mid-range ($700-1200) PC laptops are just fine nowadays.
- antifa 4y agoAh yes, every laptop I've owned over the last 20 years is a "strawman".
- 4y ago
- eweise 4y agoI have a mini with 8gb and its great. I run logic, intellij, node and it doesn't flinch. For work I would want more but for personal stuff, 8gb has been fine.