4 ms·

Ask HN: Is the new MacBook a downgrade?

• mattkrea 12y ago
  I'd say that is a significant downgrade. Even on the Air that I just replaced with a MacBook Pro I was tired of the sluggishness that I sometimes experienced and this new one is far slower.
  • jason_slack 12y ago
    I'm not sure the retina display, longer batter and larger trackpad are worth the loss in speed. I just write c++ code.
• acomjean 12y ago
  I'll agree that it is. The SSD is faster, but the 1.1 core m is a question mark. Apple is one of the few companies that has released slower computers to replace previous ones (Where is the quad core mac mini?). I like my macbook pro, but I sometimes feel Apple's target market isn't me.
  • jason_slack 12y ago
    You would say that the better display, battery and larger trackpad isn't worth it, correct? One thing I like is the long battery. I feel like I could take off for the day and not worry about running out.
  • bt3 12y ago
    The "Core M" is an interesting bit because although it's technically a Broadwell, it was released in September 2014, versus the other Broadwell Core i3/5/7's coming out in January of 2015.
• rkho 12y ago
  I read that the new MacBook's performance is similar to the 2011 Air's Ivy Bridge processor. That's my only concern with this machine, but I realistically only need it for development purposes.
  • jason_slack 12y ago
    ah ha: http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/16/macbook-12-benchmarks/ http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/16/macbook-12-benchmarks/ Although the retina display probably requires a lot of power and they were comparing this to a core i7 MacBook Air?
• bt3 12y ago
  The part you've omitted in the comparison is the year of your machine. I say this largely because measuring a processor by it's gigahertz isn't the most definitive measure of a "better" or "faster" processor. If your MBA is a few years old, I might expect that Core i5 you have to be Haswell microarchitecture based, whereas the new Macbook is most definitely Broadwell. The key differentiators between the two, according to Intel: "[Broadwell is] 30% more efficient than Haswell's ones, using 30% less power while providing slightly better performance at the same clock speed." Having said that, the new Macbook is the most expensive netbook I've ever seen. Gorgeous, but expensive, which makes it tough to justify the price for the specs you're receiving.
  • jason_slack 12y ago
    hmm, my employer bought me this machine in May 2014. System Profiler says: `MacBookAir6,2`
• MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  I regard the Retina display as a significant improvement. I now find it unpleasant to look at conventional screens. You have to ask yourself what you're going to do with it. If you're going to browse the web and do email, the new MacBook is far more than enough. If you're going to be doing really hardcore hacking, you probably want a MacBook Pro. That's wha I've got.
  • jason_slack 12y ago
    I don't have any retina display machine now. My job is a lot of git, c++, markdown, Xcode, etc. Sadly I have 3 machines and they all feel very similar to me. Even my wife's 4-5 year old 13-inch MacBook Pro feels fine. My son's newer Mac Mini is the only machine I can say feels slow to me. 2014 MacBook Air, Core i5, 8gb, 256gb SSD (work provided) 2014 iMac (October 2014), Core i7, 16gb, 1tb (family shared machine) 2012 MacBook Pro 15 inch, Quad Core i7, 16gb, 1th SSD (mine)
    • MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      The Xcode compiler - clang/lldb - would be plenty fast on the MacBook, but the Xcode GUI would feel sluggish. I fault Apple for that, as I was using responsive IDEs on an 8 MHz Mac 512k in 1988, but Apple's developer tools people simply assume you're going to use a high-end machine. It pisses me off, but there it is. If you do go with the MacBook, I expect it would work a lot better to use BBEdit for your source code. I presently use TextWrangler for HTML/CSS, but havent really tried to use it for editing the source that I build with Xcode. Anything that's purely on the command-line would work really well on the MacBook. A real nice thing about today's SSDs is that the computers boot really really fast.
      • jason_slack 12y ago
        Good point about BBEdit. I usually use it on a regular basis. I could always use a Bash script and `xcodebuild`. Only go into Xcode to debug (or learn gdb finally)