Soldato
- Joined
- 22 Nov 2007
- Posts
- 4,209
Looks nice, but only got m1 air last September. It does have 16gb though so i think i'm good for a few years yet.
Poll: *** The official 2022 MacBook Air/13" MacBook Pro thread (it has the M2 chip, MagSafe and everything!) ***
- Thread starter Feek
- Start date
Caporegime
Oooh, that would be fab!
(The 2018 machine gets silly hot, I am only keeping it as I've installed windows on it now for some stuff that require windows now and again).
You can run Windows ARM on it. It's my final week in work so I'll drop you a message at some point.
LMFAO...that cannot be real?, its 2022 for god sakes.
Definitely pricey but the performance is there, and if you use it on battery a lot, that's where it's unbeatable. That being said, for heavy use, you're likely speccing more memory and storage, which really inflates the price.
I like my 14" Pro, but it helps that I didn't have to pay for it. I'll never complain about Windows or Linux desktop ever again though; macOS is pretty disappointing.
You're holding it wrong.
I tried alt+f4 but it still didn't give me basic window management
I do feel the spec is a bit miserly for the price in 2022 especially given the increased starting price.
I suspect many on here would want to upgraded it with 16Gb/512GB which bumps the price up to £1600-1700 which is getting close to 14” MacBook Pro money. I still think I’d potentially take the air over the MacBook Pro though especially as it’s lighter and has the new m2 chip .
As others have said it’s expensive but Apple silicon is so far ahead of the x86 competition as a laptop platform I think many will be willing to pay for it.
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Caporegime
I tried alt+f4 but it still didn't give me basic window management
Because it's not windows...you need to retrain your brain to think and use it like a mac instead of windows.
Wow, £1149 with edu discount for the base 8/8/8/256 M2 Air. I paid £898 for my M1 8/7/8/256 a couple of months ago. So the new one would be 28% more and I'm not sure I'd realistically see the performance gains in day-to-day usage. The M1 is a great machine and will last me a few years yet 
I was joking, I know it's not Windows, but very few of the differences in macOS are useful; they're just different for the sake of being different. It's not like the OS is free, you're paying for that with the hardware.
When it comes to features, it's a pretty basic OS. No real window management, no control software for webcams, passthrough audio management, decent 3rd party display management, basic mouse options, icons look like they're from 1960, no default package manager, their Linux support is worse than Windows (WSL2), etc. You need to click a window to tell the window that you're going to click it. I don't doubt that I may have a missed a setting or 2, but it could definitely better out the box.
You can easily spend £50 on bits of software that should be included by default. I know why they don't provide some of these features because they expect you to use their products, but that's not realistic. A 2 trillion dollar company could do better. It probably works fine for people doing basic office work, or creative stuff where you might spend a lot of time in 1 or 2 apps, but it's a pain for development.
Caporegime
I don't think MacOS is being different for the sake of being different. It's not like MacOS came about recently, it's been around for decades, the interface is older than windows, when Microsoft was still using DOS as their OS. I mean Linux also works differently to windows too? I am sure there are people who uses Linux mainly complaining about windows for being different? Perhaps a lot of these things are more than design, perhaps they are patented and cannot be copied too.
But overall your post illustrates what I mean, you are putting your windows expectations on MacOS, you are attempting to use your mac like you use windows. You need to stop doing that as that will just cause disappointment. Like when I use windows, I know there are mac features not found in windows...so I don't try and use it and then find myself frustrated when it's not there. I don't have those expectations, and don't think I am missing out. When I want something that needs windows...I use windows.
I can't speak for a lot of what you experienced, I am using a Magic Mouse and I don't use any audio stuff and use the default display settings...which is what the majority of mac users do. I plug things in and use things...
Full list price on the M2 Air with 16gb ram is just to high atm. With work discounts can get the base spec 14" for £1635, it's just a much better machine for the extra £185. It'll be a while for the M2 air deals to start coming through.
Still need to be able to run full fat windows though for older .net framework development on older codebases which is still an issue
Still need to be able to run full fat windows though for older .net framework development on older codebases which is still an issue
Agreed, each OS is different, but there are a lot of basic things that macOS doesn't do. I actively use all 3 OSs and fully expect each one to work differently, but when I can't easily move Windows around on my £1,800 machine, or turn off mouse acceleration, it's disappointing - it's very Apple though.
I've swapped shortcuts and key bindings around as there's no getting around muscle memory; it's much easier swapping between Windows and Linux. Like you said, it works well for you for plug and play and using other Apple products - it's good as a simple OS for single-threaded workflows. The hardware is great; I'd love to install Linux on it, but I'll have to wait until someone else develops a generally available and decent ARM chip.
I have an iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, so I'm far from against their products, just their desktop OS.
Just use a free Windows manager such as Rectangle.
I use macOS for work and personal. I code, do CLI, SSH, web, photos, email, python etc etc and I don't think I've ever encountered something where I wish I was using Windows instead. In fact the only reason I use Windows is because I have to in order to play games.
I use macOS for work and personal. I code, do CLI, SSH, web, photos, email, python etc etc and I don't think I've ever encountered something where I wish I was using Windows instead. In fact the only reason I use Windows is because I have to in order to play games.
I'm really keen to get the Air but my main requirements are long battery life and the fastest possible charging. I think from the presentation that should be good on the M2 Air.
I'm only going to be doing web browsing and some office work.
I'm only going to be doing web browsing and some office work.
I shouldn't need to search through the web and try 3 different window managers to have basic functionality though. Luckily Rectangle is both good and free.
Sure, it's usable for development, but every step is more tedious than using Linux or Windows. I just expected more from a £1,800 machine, but I guess their target audience isn't developers.
Keeping to the thread, the base model feels under-specced for the power you're getting. For office work, get an XPS for half the price. If you're doing processing and rendering on battery, then it's a good buy, but you'll probably need to spec it up a bit. Nothing else on the market can do sustained load processing on battery and also not kill the battery.
What type of development do you do? I find using the JetBrains IDEs perfectly fine to use with Node.js, Python and PostgreSQL on the Mac.
Soldato
I'm the exact opposite, everything takes thrice as long developing on Windows compared to MacOS - full terminal capability out of the box, great package management and can use everything from tmux to vim to VS Code etc without barely a sweat.
The same can be said for package managers on Windows (like you alluded to in an earlier post), or any app that's not included in the base OS. On Linux you have to edit repos or download deb files if using that flavour, it's not as straight forward as you're making out. No OS works for a dev/admin type user out of the box and nearly always some requires 3rd party software to do something.
I get the Window management thing, but most of the other stuff I don't get. Just install brew like everyone else along with whatever other software you want and away you go.
I'd rather the inconvenience of having to install an app to make Window management better, than deal with all the nonsense that comes with Windows these days (privacy concerns, tracking, ads, they change the look & feel when they want, forced updates etc etc). And Linux, well, it's great if you have all the right drivers and common hadware, if not, it can be a complete minefield at times.