this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
327 points (95.5% liked)

Technology

60235 readers
3528 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

About time. This also applies to their older models such as M2 and M3 laptops.

In the U.S., the MacBook Air lineup continues to start at $999, so there is no price increase associated with the boost in RAM.

The M2 macbook air now starts at $1000 for 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. Limited storage aside, that's surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops.

(page 2) 31 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Completely laughable. Literally had 16 GB of DDR3-1600 for my 2600K from 2011 that I handed down to a kid nephew for their first PC to tinker with. Hell, my local NAS has more than that...

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (4 children)

We use windows PCs at work as software engineers now, but when I was training I used a MacBook Pro M1 with 16GB of RAM and that thing was incredibly performant.

I know it in vogue to shit in Apple, but they build the hardware and the software and they’re incredibly efficient at what they do and I don’t think I ever saw the beachball loading icon thing.

Now the prices they charge to upgrade the RAM is something I can get behind shitting on.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

The chip and OS won't do shit when your ram is saturated by electron apps taking 800MB each. Maybe MacOS behaves better under very high memory pressure than windows does, but it doesn't mean it's okay to rip off consumers. That whole 8GB on mac = 16GB on windows has been bullshit all along, and is mostly based on people looking at the task manager and seeing high ram usage on windows (which is a good thing)

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I used Windows, Mac and Linux in the past year.

It's not Mac that's fast, it's Windows that sucks hard.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (12 children)

Same.

  • Mac - Fast, user friendly, and UNIX based.
  • Windows - Fast (I have a beast), bloated, stupid command prompt (“Add-Migration”, capital letters really.), wants to spy on me.
  • Linux - Fast, a lot of work to get everything working as you would on Windows or Mac and I’m past those days, I just want to turn the thing on and play Factorio or Minecraft, not figure out if my 4080 will run on it etc.

it’s almost like people make choices to suit their needs and there isn’t a single solution for everybody.

I wonder what the industry standard is for developers? Genuinely. I’ve heard it’s Max, but my company is all in on Microsoft, not really heard of companies developing on Linux. Which isn’t to say Linux doesn’t have its place, but I’m aware this place is insanely biased towards Linux.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Every place I've been at had developers using windows machines and then ssh into a linux environment

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

Makes sense for sysadmin or something but little sense for developers and engineers writing code to build enterprise software.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

And here I thought that 8GB on Mac was at least as good as 16GB on plebian PCs.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Perfect, just when I've decided 16GB is the bare minimum these days too. My day to day I max out 16 on my laptops without even trying. 32 is my new minimum.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

“640k is enough for anyone.”

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The localllama people are feeling quite mixed about this, as they're still charging through the nose for more RAM. Like, orders of magnitude more than the bigger ICs actually cost.

It's kinda poetic. Apple wants to go all in on self-hosted AI now, yet their incredible RAM stinginess over the years is derailing that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I do have a 64gb m1 MacBook Pro and man that thing screams at doing LLM AI. I use it to serve models locally throughout my house, while it otherwise still works as a fantastic computer (usually using about half the ram for llm usage). I still prefer a 4080 for image generation though.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

insultingly tiny, unupgradeable storage aside, that's surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's not ideal, but you're getting probably the best hardware in the market in return. The M series still dominates Windows CPUs, and the build quality on most $1000 laptops leaves a lot to be desired.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The best? Debatable. You ever watch Louise on YouTube? He constantly rags on bad hardware design when repairing MacBooks lol.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's hardware performance and then there's hardware repairability. He's talking about the latter.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's what I'm talking about too. Hardware repairability.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

and I'm saying that Simple was talking about hardware performance

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (1 children)

build quality on most $1000 laptops

You're not kidding.

I have a couple of laptops from various vendors, and they're all built like shit.

ASUS is especially eyerolly: the case is literally crumbling into pieces. Like seriously? You couldn't have picked a material that's not literally going to disintegrate in two years on a $1200 laptop?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, a lot of manufacturers are just bad. I knew people who had Dell and MSI laptops and those things feel like toys. Cheap plastic and very wobbly hinges. The only manufacturer I genuinely trust is Lenovo. My Legion is a bit thick but I can at least rest easy that it's built well.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I saw someone’s Samsung laptop last year and the screen was wobbling all over the fucking place. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I commented on it, and the owner just gave me a blank look.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Lenovo is, outside of their really cheap consumer options - like, the $500-and-under options - are pretty solid.

But yeah build quality is one reason when I roll my eyes at the 'haha stupid buying apple! apple tax! lol ripped off!' crowd: I mean maybe, but as soon as you pick up a Macbook whatever it's immediately obvious that you're getting something for what you're paying, and not some bendy flexy piece of plastic crap that will maybe physically survive the warranty period, but not much more.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›