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My daily driver is a MacBook Air M1, with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB NVME. It really is the perfect laptop. While I see other working on big old and clunky laptops (

My daily driver is a MacBook Air M1, with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB NVME. It really is the perfect laptop. While I see other working on big old and clunky laptops (usually Dell or Thinkpad) that basically need to be hooked up to a power cord, my laptop will nicely purr away for two days before it needs a recharge. To be honest, I usually work in Word and Excel (I think Pages is a joke for serious writing) and I don't do anything very strenuous, but then again, neither do they. I actually think that, to this day, the M1 MacBook Air is a better choice than the M2. Why? Because the M2 is a lot more expensive to be similarly fast. It needs the 512 GB SSD (actually NVME): Lastly, there’s the kerfuffle over the fact that SSD read and write performance is slower with the 256 GB configuration, because it uses just a single NAND chip, whereas all other storage configurations use multiple NAND chips. It costs $200 to upgrade the base model to 512 GB storage. None of these are dealbreakers to me, just minor details to be aware of if you’re eying the $1,200 base model. It’s best, in my opinion, to consider the $1,500 configuration as the true base model (10 GPUs, full-speed SSD performance, and the new 35-watt charger), and to consider the $1,200 configuration something more like the “discount” configuration.

Synaesthesia 4y ago
You certainly don't need the slightly faster SSD, I bet most people would never notice the difference.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  They shouldn't be offering 256GB on the base model given the price rise (arguably at all, even on the M1 MBA). Let alone making it slower by default.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    They want you to buy more cloud services/storage.
    - votepaunchy 4y ago
      But that’s not how iCloud storage works. Or any other consumer cloud storage. You have a copy in the cloud whether or not a copy is on the computer, and unlike commercial clouds do not pay for data transfer.
      - theplumber 4y ago
        I'm not sure what's your point. Apple makes local storage as expensive as possible/acceptable so that you buy more icloud storage for your files, photos etc and "stream" your content from the cloud instead to keep it stored locally. It's not secret that they see the "services" as being the biggest growth factor.
      - karmakaze 4y ago
        That's not how the 'iPhone full' message describes it.
- jhot 4y ago
  Been using an M2 Pro for a week (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD), absolutely cannot tell. Large dependency installs (node, go, c++, python) are insanely fast, docker builds are fast, everything is just fast.
  - pleb_nz 4y ago
    I've been on Linux until I got an M1Pro. Docker build on mac's, even M1Pro are slow IMO compared to Linux.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Have you enabled VirtioFS in docker?
      - pleb_nz 4y ago
        Yeah I have. Made a big difference. But not Linux fast difference.
- ksec 4y ago
  You definitely will on an 8GB machine under memory pressure. Which happens more often than people imagine if you are using a number of Electron Apps.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  This is the type of response of acceptance I totally disagree with. You're happy that Apple are selling you a throttled base revision but Apple is actually taking the piss. The ability to double the SSD capacity by adding the missing chip would only cost Apple three bucks. It's intentional hobbling of the platform. That they do the same dirty trick with the so called MacBook Pro is shameful. The MBP is not a Professional machine. When you can buy a DELL with 6x the SSD speed you realize that Apple SSD solutions a dumpster fire.
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
how is libreoffice on a mac? i haven't heard anyone give any reviews/benchmarks ?
- linmob 4y ago
  I wrote my Thesis in LibreOffice in 2019 on a 2015 MacBook Air, with Zotero integration. It was pretty nice, and thanks to MacOS even coming back just fine, document open and no line lost after me being too stupid to plug my Mac into power, it was a pretty great experience.
- danaris 4y ago
  It appears to have an Apple Silicon native version available, so it is likely to run quite well; I haven't used it for over a decade, so I can't speak to its usability and whatnot, but unless things have changed significantly, I imagine it's still nearly identical between OSes.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  Does anybody really use it anymore? Most folk use Google Docs or some other online version nowadays.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  I just bought word after a year of trying use Libreoffice. Libre is usable, but has many minor bugs. I'd probably use google docs before Libreoffice.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    when did you last use LO?
encryptluks2 4y ago
Knowing you can get a 2TB PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drive with write speeds at 5000 MB/s for around $200 doesn't bother you when Apple is marking up components that much?
- simonh 4y ago
  Sure, but what laptop are you going to put it in? If what you want is a Macbook Air, you pay or you go home.
- microtonal 4y ago
  Of course, it’s annoying, but the Apple Silicon experience is so good I don’t mind paying the higher markup.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Their walled garden is so bad that I couldn't imagine paying that kind of markup.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      It’s pretty opt-in. My computing life is on a bunch of NixOS machines with Linux 5-series kernels. I connect to the real computers via Apple Silicon appliances because they’re cool, quiet, tender fonts properly, play sound properly, etc. I know a lot of people are into the Desktop Linux thing. “Mine is great ever since I upgraded to PulseAudio blah, everything is awesome as song as you never close the lid…” Have fucking fun with that.
- SaulJLH 4y ago
- AdamN 4y ago
  All of Apple's software is free so you pay via hardware and services. I prefer the Mac ecosystem to the Windows one so there really is no choice. I'd be open to another ecosystem (Linux?) if it worked better than the Apple one or if Apple made consistently started making some decisions that went over the line (like their CSAM stuff which is on the edge). Until then a few hundred dollars a year to be in a better ecosystem is not even worth second guessing.
_ph_ 4y ago
No, unless your work load is purely SSD bound - in which case you probably want a larger SSD anyway - the M2 Air is consistantly faster than the M1, as the CPU is noticeably faster. If you get a good deal on an M1, by all means get one as you can save a lot of money. But in real-life usage, any M2 is faster than the M1.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Or you use more than the 8GB of RAM and have to swap... Although I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple "updated" the current 256GB M1 Air they still sell to use a single flash chip like the M2 models.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Even with reasonable amounts of swapping you are unlikely to notice huge differences. Only if you are thrashing the memory, you surely would. But then just getting more memory would be a very wise investment.
bori5 4y ago
Anyone know the NAND chip config for all these devices ? So if 256 is two 128 on the M1 Air, does that mean 512 is 4x128 or 2x256 ? Etc..
- goosedragons 4y ago
  The 512 is 2x256. I'm pretty sure the Air line only has two spots for NAND flash.
- soneil 4y ago
  That's the issue - two spots, but instead of maintaining a 128GB part for 2x128, they're shipping 256 as 1x256. I can see the logic, they're not maintaining a whole part/inventory just for the lowest config. I'll let everyone else argue over whether it's worth the penalty or not.
MonkeyClub 4y ago
To generalize a bit on this, I've been using MBA's (11" and 13") as my personal laptop since about 2012 alongside my blowfish desktop and the work laptop (which in the same time has varied only little, just further iterations of MBP's), while I've also spent considerable time with a Thinkpad x230. I have to say, the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one. It strikes a perfect balance between screen size, weight, and responsiveness, and the battery is always much, much better than anything else. In all, I feel the least amount of internal resistance when I have to reach for the Air, lift the lid, and start typing, while all other computers have one or more practical or psychological barriers. Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything - far from it. But I'm a huge MBA fan...
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  > the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one. That describes all of them. M1 and earlier are 13.3", M2 is 13.6". At one point there was an 11" Air but the last model in that size is from 2015: 7 years ago.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    GP says they've been using these computers since 2012, so presumably they're speaking from their own experience with the old 11" Air. Shame it's gone IMO, I love the size. My current laptop is a 2014 11" Air.
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      I drove an 11" Air for 3 years until I sold that machine to a friend who kept it running for another 3-5 years. Loved the size of the machine, not so much of the screen - but I made it work. These days I'm not sure I could use something that small for serious work but the current (actually previous gen, I haven't tried the M2 one yet) 13" Air is a pretty good size!
chongli 4y ago
I think Pages is a joke for serious writing What makes Word the best tool for serious writing? I use Pages for writing papers (for humanities courses) and vim+pandoc for math. I have dabbled with Word here and there over the years but I've never seen anything that would indicate to me that it's amazing for writing. Personally, I can't figure out what's going on with the ribbon. It just seems to be a heavily modal interface which is not particularly discoverable.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I mostly use Google Docs but, frankly, for my writing just about anything works. (Being able to work in shared docs is useful but not much else matters.) I'll use Scrivener to do the first pass at assembling a book but, other than that, anything that lets me put sentences down on a page and edit them is fine. I used to use Word and I'll sometimes use it if I need to if that's what a publisher is using but I never really loved the ribbon and there's way too much clutter that I never use.
- isametry 4y ago
  Before the original commenter answers: I'm gonna guess collaboration with others. The reliability of being able to send anyone the original file, them being able to open it with all Word-specific features and content, and e.g. sending it back with inline comments. I've also dabbled with Pages lately, and I don't think I've found any features for now that I desperately miss from Word. Now granted, this is just my workflow, which I believe is fairly basic. But the thing is, most people's workflows are basic. I'm gonna guess that about 80% of people wouldn't miss anything by switching from Word to Pages. It's a typical example of collaboration lock-in that you'll encounter in so many other areas. It's the reason why so many people are forced to use Adobe apps or Visual Studio. The most important feature of Word is that everyone has it.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Ahh okay. So if you’re serious enough about writing that you regularly collaborate with, e.g. an editor, then Word is the default choice for that. But nothing about that applies to the writing process itself. You could be like George RR Martin and write in WordStar for DOS and then convert the files over to Word before you send to your editor. The main issue there is how often you need to correspond (which may be seldom for a novelist like Martin).
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
It's interesting that suddenly long battery life is the deal breaking spec now that Apple laptops have long battery life.
- benreesman 4y ago
  Now that anyone has long battery life.
- 29083011397778 4y ago
  Just like how capacitive vs resistive touch screens are a dealbreaker now on a cellphone: sometimes you don't know it's a dealbreaker until you have to do without.
benreesman 4y ago
Don’t get me wrong I badly want to get my hands on an M2 Air, but I strongly agree that the M1 Air still kicks ass and might be the better value for money. The thing is you want different stuff from the CPU arch up through the kernel for responsive interactive use than for compiling a big Rust program. Apple have fucking killed it on the former, and Intel’s Gracemont stuff has made a kickass machine for the latter cost 1000 bucks at Best Buy.
- qzw 4y ago
  The new AMD 6000 mobile chips are also getting very good reviews and seem to be the equal of Intel 12th gen. I'm actually really excited to see what Intel, AMD, and all the other non-Apple ARM chip vendors bring to the table in the next 2-3 years. After the M1, these other companies must all have been burning the midnight oil to try to catch up.
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    The AMD 6000 is better I'd say. For example the 6800u trades blows with the 1260P. But the 1260p runs MUCH hotter. And that is not even disregarding the iGPU where the 6800u totally smashes the 1260p.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    My newest AMD box is a Zen3 (I think) Threadripper, and it’s a heavy little computer no doubt. But I find myself using the i9-12000K way more often. It clocks to 5-ish GHz on 8 Gracemont cores without making much if any noise, and DDR5 makes a shockingly big difference. And it’s “build a box with Best Buy parts for 1-2 thousand bucks” cheap. Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?
    - erik 4y ago
      > Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff? The Ryzen 7 5800x3d trades blows with Intel's top chip, with many games benefiting enormously from its monster 96mb L3 cache. It will be superseded by the upcoming Zen4 chips, but the nice thing about the 5800x3d is that it's a drop in upgrade for most AM4 motherboards.
pleb_nz 4y ago
I have a 14 inch m1 pro. When using it for work, I get approx 6 hours. I'm confused when people report 20 hours usage. I'm guessing this is during very light work and it looks if sleep time? FYI. My previous Lenovo p15v also got approx 6 hours. That was a great laptop as well - as good as the new MacBook, just without the looks.
- Sirened 4y ago
  Depends on the work. I'm always amazed at how long my battery lasts when I'm just doing writing related tasks--I definitely see the two day battery life others mentioned--but anytime I'm touching code or compiling anything I get about 6-8 hours
- 1123581321 4y ago
  What do you typically run? I can get down to 6-7 hours on the M1 Max if running something like a game engine in debug mode.
  - pleb_nz 4y ago
    Docker, rider, Firefox and a some of compiling. Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me. Maybe I was just already spoilt and lucky and expect8nh too much. 6 to 8 is still much better than 5 years ago.
    - microtonal 4y ago
      Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me. The discussion about the MacBook Air and you are comparing to a MacBook Pro 14". I have both laptops and the battery life of the Air under heavier use is definitely better than a Pro. This is not surprising, the M1 Pro/Max have double the number of performance cores, the efficiency cores run at a higher clock, plus the Pro has active cooling and a brighter display. At the same time, the battery of the 14" is larger, but not twice as large (49.9 vs. 70 Wh). I think for regular users, getting two day battery life on an Air is pretty normal. For instance my wife regularly used her Air for two work days before charging.
MonaroVXR 4y ago
> While I see other working on big old and clunky laptops (usually Dell or Thinkpad) that basically need to be hooked up to a power cord, my I stopped reading, when my Envy had better battery life and Better keyboard than my MacBookAir M1. You forgot the OS.
- 9935c101ab17a66 4y ago
  You’re saying your HP envy got better battery life than your M1 MacBook Air? I highly, highly doubt that.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    Yeah, out of all complaints one could have made about M1, this one seems like the strangest one. Not M1 Air, but I once used my M1 Max MBP for virtual onsite interviews. It was about 4 hours of videocalls on Google Meet + code editing using coderpad or something similar + i had a bunch of personal/unrelated tabs (50+) in chrome on another virtual desktop + 1hr break where i was reviewing my notes and such. Did it all fully on battery, no plugging in. After all was said and done, my laptop charge dropped from around 95% to 71%. No overheating, fans never kicked in either.
    - MonaroVXR 4y ago
      1 point by MonaroVXR 3 hours ago | parent | next [–] I didn't give the details... so here I go. I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy. Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people) Edit: I forgot to say, I don't hate Apple or the Macbook at all. it's the notebook that's first on my list, when I suggest a good model.
  - MonaroVXR 4y ago
    I didn't give the details... so here I go. I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy. Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people)
bergenty 4y ago
I’m just bummed I can’t dial boot windows on Apple silicon. It was so convenient having both operating systems on the same laptop.

Synaesthesia 4y ago

You certainly don't need the slightly faster SSD, I bet most people would never notice the difference.

bigDinosaur 4y ago
They shouldn't be offering 256GB on the base model given the price rise (arguably at all, even on the M1 MBA). Let alone making it slower by default.
- theplumber 4y ago
  They want you to buy more cloud services/storage.
  - votepaunchy 4y ago
    But that’s not how iCloud storage works. Or any other consumer cloud storage. You have a copy in the cloud whether or not a copy is on the computer, and unlike commercial clouds do not pay for data transfer.
    - theplumber 4y ago
      I'm not sure what's your point. Apple makes local storage as expensive as possible/acceptable so that you buy more icloud storage for your files, photos etc and "stream" your content from the cloud instead to keep it stored locally. It's not secret that they see the "services" as being the biggest growth factor.
    - karmakaze 4y ago
      That's not how the 'iPhone full' message describes it.
jhot 4y ago
Been using an M2 Pro for a week (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD), absolutely cannot tell. Large dependency installs (node, go, c++, python) are insanely fast, docker builds are fast, everything is just fast.
- pleb_nz 4y ago
  I've been on Linux until I got an M1Pro. Docker build on mac's, even M1Pro are slow IMO compared to Linux.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Have you enabled VirtioFS in docker?
    - pleb_nz 4y ago
      Yeah I have. Made a big difference. But not Linux fast difference.
ksec 4y ago
You definitely will on an 8GB machine under memory pressure. Which happens more often than people imagine if you are using a number of Electron Apps.
sys_64738 4y ago
This is the type of response of acceptance I totally disagree with. You're happy that Apple are selling you a throttled base revision but Apple is actually taking the piss. The ability to double the SSD capacity by adding the missing chip would only cost Apple three bucks. It's intentional hobbling of the platform. That they do the same dirty trick with the so called MacBook Pro is shameful. The MBP is not a Professional machine. When you can buy a DELL with 6x the SSD speed you realize that Apple SSD solutions a dumpster fire.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

how is libreoffice on a mac? i haven't heard anyone give any reviews/benchmarks ?

linmob 4y ago
I wrote my Thesis in LibreOffice in 2019 on a 2015 MacBook Air, with Zotero integration. It was pretty nice, and thanks to MacOS even coming back just fine, document open and no line lost after me being too stupid to plug my Mac into power, it was a pretty great experience.
danaris 4y ago
It appears to have an Apple Silicon native version available, so it is likely to run quite well; I haven't used it for over a decade, so I can't speak to its usability and whatnot, but unless things have changed significantly, I imagine it's still nearly identical between OSes.
sys_64738 4y ago
Does anybody really use it anymore? Most folk use Google Docs or some other online version nowadays.
_tom_ 4y ago
I just bought word after a year of trying use Libreoffice. Libre is usable, but has many minor bugs. I'd probably use google docs before Libreoffice.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  when did you last use LO?

encryptluks2 4y ago

Knowing you can get a 2TB PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drive with write speeds at 5000 MB/s for around $200 doesn't bother you when Apple is marking up components that much?

simonh 4y ago
Sure, but what laptop are you going to put it in? If what you want is a Macbook Air, you pay or you go home.
microtonal 4y ago
Of course, it’s annoying, but the Apple Silicon experience is so good I don’t mind paying the higher markup.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Their walled garden is so bad that I couldn't imagine paying that kind of markup.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    It’s pretty opt-in. My computing life is on a bunch of NixOS machines with Linux 5-series kernels. I connect to the real computers via Apple Silicon appliances because they’re cool, quiet, tender fonts properly, play sound properly, etc. I know a lot of people are into the Desktop Linux thing. “Mine is great ever since I upgraded to PulseAudio blah, everything is awesome as song as you never close the lid…” Have fucking fun with that.
SaulJLH 4y ago
AdamN 4y ago
All of Apple's software is free so you pay via hardware and services. I prefer the Mac ecosystem to the Windows one so there really is no choice. I'd be open to another ecosystem (Linux?) if it worked better than the Apple one or if Apple made consistently started making some decisions that went over the line (like their CSAM stuff which is on the edge). Until then a few hundred dollars a year to be in a better ecosystem is not even worth second guessing.

_ph_ 4y ago

No, unless your work load is purely SSD bound - in which case you probably want a larger SSD anyway - the M2 Air is consistantly faster than the M1, as the CPU is noticeably faster. If you get a good deal on an M1, by all means get one as you can save a lot of money. But in real-life usage, any M2 is faster than the M1.

goosedragons 4y ago
Or you use more than the 8GB of RAM and have to swap... Although I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple "updated" the current 256GB M1 Air they still sell to use a single flash chip like the M2 models.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Even with reasonable amounts of swapping you are unlikely to notice huge differences. Only if you are thrashing the memory, you surely would. But then just getting more memory would be a very wise investment.

bori5 4y ago

Anyone know the NAND chip config for all these devices ? So if 256 is two 128 on the M1 Air, does that mean 512 is 4x128 or 2x256 ? Etc..

goosedragons 4y ago
The 512 is 2x256. I'm pretty sure the Air line only has two spots for NAND flash.
soneil 4y ago
That's the issue - two spots, but instead of maintaining a 128GB part for 2x128, they're shipping 256 as 1x256. I can see the logic, they're not maintaining a whole part/inventory just for the lowest config. I'll let everyone else argue over whether it's worth the penalty or not.

MonkeyClub 4y ago

To generalize a bit on this, I've been using MBA's (11" and 13") as my personal laptop since about 2012 alongside my blowfish desktop and the work laptop (which in the same time has varied only little, just further iterations of MBP's), while I've also spent considerable time with a Thinkpad x230. I have to say, the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one. It strikes a perfect balance between screen size, weight, and responsiveness, and the battery is always much, much better than anything else. In all, I feel the least amount of internal resistance when I have to reach for the Air, lift the lid, and start typing, while all other computers have one or more practical or psychological barriers. Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything - far from it. But I'm a huge MBA fan...

cassianoleal 4y ago
> the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one. That describes all of them. M1 and earlier are 13.3", M2 is 13.6". At one point there was an 11" Air but the last model in that size is from 2015: 7 years ago.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  GP says they've been using these computers since 2012, so presumably they're speaking from their own experience with the old 11" Air. Shame it's gone IMO, I love the size. My current laptop is a 2014 11" Air.
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    I drove an 11" Air for 3 years until I sold that machine to a friend who kept it running for another 3-5 years. Loved the size of the machine, not so much of the screen - but I made it work. These days I'm not sure I could use something that small for serious work but the current (actually previous gen, I haven't tried the M2 one yet) 13" Air is a pretty good size!

chongli 4y ago

I think Pages is a joke for serious writing What makes Word the best tool for serious writing? I use Pages for writing papers (for humanities courses) and vim+pandoc for math. I have dabbled with Word here and there over the years but I've never seen anything that would indicate to me that it's amazing for writing. Personally, I can't figure out what's going on with the ribbon. It just seems to be a heavily modal interface which is not particularly discoverable.

ghaff 4y ago
I mostly use Google Docs but, frankly, for my writing just about anything works. (Being able to work in shared docs is useful but not much else matters.) I'll use Scrivener to do the first pass at assembling a book but, other than that, anything that lets me put sentences down on a page and edit them is fine. I used to use Word and I'll sometimes use it if I need to if that's what a publisher is using but I never really loved the ribbon and there's way too much clutter that I never use.
isametry 4y ago
Before the original commenter answers: I'm gonna guess collaboration with others. The reliability of being able to send anyone the original file, them being able to open it with all Word-specific features and content, and e.g. sending it back with inline comments. I've also dabbled with Pages lately, and I don't think I've found any features for now that I desperately miss from Word. Now granted, this is just my workflow, which I believe is fairly basic. But the thing is, most people's workflows are basic. I'm gonna guess that about 80% of people wouldn't miss anything by switching from Word to Pages. It's a typical example of collaboration lock-in that you'll encounter in so many other areas. It's the reason why so many people are forced to use Adobe apps or Visual Studio. The most important feature of Word is that everyone has it.
- chongli 4y ago
  Ahh okay. So if you’re serious enough about writing that you regularly collaborate with, e.g. an editor, then Word is the default choice for that. But nothing about that applies to the writing process itself. You could be like George RR Martin and write in WordStar for DOS and then convert the files over to Word before you send to your editor. The main issue there is how often you need to correspond (which may be seldom for a novelist like Martin).

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

It's interesting that suddenly long battery life is the deal breaking spec now that Apple laptops have long battery life.

benreesman 4y ago
Now that anyone has long battery life.
29083011397778 4y ago
Just like how capacitive vs resistive touch screens are a dealbreaker now on a cellphone: sometimes you don't know it's a dealbreaker until you have to do without.

benreesman 4y ago

Don’t get me wrong I badly want to get my hands on an M2 Air, but I strongly agree that the M1 Air still kicks ass and might be the better value for money. The thing is you want different stuff from the CPU arch up through the kernel for responsive interactive use than for compiling a big Rust program. Apple have fucking killed it on the former, and Intel’s Gracemont stuff has made a kickass machine for the latter cost 1000 bucks at Best Buy.

qzw 4y ago
The new AMD 6000 mobile chips are also getting very good reviews and seem to be the equal of Intel 12th gen. I'm actually really excited to see what Intel, AMD, and all the other non-Apple ARM chip vendors bring to the table in the next 2-3 years. After the M1, these other companies must all have been burning the midnight oil to try to catch up.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  The AMD 6000 is better I'd say. For example the 6800u trades blows with the 1260P. But the 1260p runs MUCH hotter. And that is not even disregarding the iGPU where the 6800u totally smashes the 1260p.
- benreesman 4y ago
  My newest AMD box is a Zen3 (I think) Threadripper, and it’s a heavy little computer no doubt. But I find myself using the i9-12000K way more often. It clocks to 5-ish GHz on 8 Gracemont cores without making much if any noise, and DDR5 makes a shockingly big difference. And it’s “build a box with Best Buy parts for 1-2 thousand bucks” cheap. Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?
  - erik 4y ago
    > Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff? The Ryzen 7 5800x3d trades blows with Intel's top chip, with many games benefiting enormously from its monster 96mb L3 cache. It will be superseded by the upcoming Zen4 chips, but the nice thing about the 5800x3d is that it's a drop in upgrade for most AM4 motherboards.

pleb_nz 4y ago

I have a 14 inch m1 pro. When using it for work, I get approx 6 hours. I'm confused when people report 20 hours usage. I'm guessing this is during very light work and it looks if sleep time? FYI. My previous Lenovo p15v also got approx 6 hours. That was a great laptop as well - as good as the new MacBook, just without the looks.

Sirened 4y ago
Depends on the work. I'm always amazed at how long my battery lasts when I'm just doing writing related tasks--I definitely see the two day battery life others mentioned--but anytime I'm touching code or compiling anything I get about 6-8 hours
1123581321 4y ago
What do you typically run? I can get down to 6-7 hours on the M1 Max if running something like a game engine in debug mode.
- pleb_nz 4y ago
  Docker, rider, Firefox and a some of compiling. Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me. Maybe I was just already spoilt and lucky and expect8nh too much. 6 to 8 is still much better than 5 years ago.
  - microtonal 4y ago
    Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me. The discussion about the MacBook Air and you are comparing to a MacBook Pro 14". I have both laptops and the battery life of the Air under heavier use is definitely better than a Pro. This is not surprising, the M1 Pro/Max have double the number of performance cores, the efficiency cores run at a higher clock, plus the Pro has active cooling and a brighter display. At the same time, the battery of the 14" is larger, but not twice as large (49.9 vs. 70 Wh). I think for regular users, getting two day battery life on an Air is pretty normal. For instance my wife regularly used her Air for two work days before charging.

MonaroVXR 4y ago

> While I see other working on big old and clunky laptops (usually Dell or Thinkpad) that basically need to be hooked up to a power cord, my I stopped reading, when my Envy had better battery life and Better keyboard than my MacBookAir M1. You forgot the OS.

9935c101ab17a66 4y ago
You’re saying your HP envy got better battery life than your M1 MacBook Air? I highly, highly doubt that.
- filoleg 4y ago
  Yeah, out of all complaints one could have made about M1, this one seems like the strangest one. Not M1 Air, but I once used my M1 Max MBP for virtual onsite interviews. It was about 4 hours of videocalls on Google Meet + code editing using coderpad or something similar + i had a bunch of personal/unrelated tabs (50+) in chrome on another virtual desktop + 1hr break where i was reviewing my notes and such. Did it all fully on battery, no plugging in. After all was said and done, my laptop charge dropped from around 95% to 71%. No overheating, fans never kicked in either.
  - MonaroVXR 4y ago
    1 point by MonaroVXR 3 hours ago | parent | next [–] I didn't give the details... so here I go. I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy. Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people) Edit: I forgot to say, I don't hate Apple or the Macbook at all. it's the notebook that's first on my list, when I suggest a good model.
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  I didn't give the details... so here I go. I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy. Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people)

bergenty 4y ago

I’m just bummed I can’t dial boot windows on Apple silicon. It was so convenient having both operating systems on the same laptop.