Just ended up in the Apple Store this afternoon and saw a midnight black 15" Macbook Air.
Oh, the shiny!
I lost my saving throw, so of course I had to buy one ... for @feorag . (I'm not ready to replace my M1Pro MBP, dammit, but F needs a new laptop and end-of-accounting-year is looming.)
@cstross@feorag apple give student discounts of about 10-15%, so unless you got the MBP in a “VAT-efficient manner” you should have gone into any Rose St pub mid-afternoon , found a student who would would have placed the order for the cost of a couple of bevvies
@sleepy@feorag It may be a heat dissipation thing. I understand that back in the Before Times, Steve Jobs DEMANDED a Black Titanium Powerbook G4, and refused to believe it would overheat until they made one specially for him and demonstrated it melting a hole in his desk.
(The Airs are passively cooled and throttle aggressively to avoid running hot: the MBP has beefy fans and cooling channels ...)
@cstross@feorag well those original titanium models ran so fucking hot I'm not surprised it was an issue with them. (frankly all the intels run hot, even my older work laptop which is the final intel they shipped i think)
@sleepy Yep. I still have a (gathering dust) 1st gen Intel Retina MBP from 2011. Lovely screen but battery drained in 3h30m when it was new, and if you did anything intensive on it the fans sounded like a 1970s airliner taking off.
@sleepy@feorag I don't like the extra weight of the Pro, an the vents under the sides have sharp edges (minor, I know, but irritating). But the hard cap of 24Gb of RAM on the Air is a deterrent to me ... for now.
@cstross@feorag Yeah i'm not a huge fan of the underside vents, but I'm an engineer and couldn't abide an air.. I wanted the max and the 32gb of memory.
@josephholsten@sleepy I don't use emacs. (I've tried, several times over 30 years: I get shooting pains in my wrists within days, each time. It's an ergonomic nightmare on standard keyboards—it's no wonder FSF programmers reputedly all need wrist splints.)
@sleepy@josephholsten Ah. I hate split so-called "ergonomic" keyboards and in any case I'm not going to tote one around to use with a laptop or ipad. Especially given how much those things cost.
@cstross even if an apple laptop were THE best hardware in the world, why would one want to support with their money a company that disrespects and limits its customers and despises the law? wouldn't settling for the second best be a more ethical choice? we all participate in our own himiliation, a dollar here, another there :-(
On the other hand, my iMac is an intel model that'll be hitting end-of-life in a year or two, and I have been contemplating replacing it on my desk with a 27" display and a Thunderbolt dock for my MBP.
Hmm.
(Shame the Pro Display XDR costs its weight in pure platinum. Is the 27" Studio Display an improvement over the 27" iMac?)
@cstross Studio Display isn’t a big improvement IMO. I haven’t compared the specs but I went the same path - it looks nice, decently bright, nice set of ports, but nothing to write home about
@adrianhon My thought is to upgrade the display now and maybe later switch to a Mac Studio M4 or M5 or whatever, and a 13" Air for travel. The MBP is plenty powerful enough to replace the iMac for now, it just needs a bigger screen and peripherals connected via dock.
studio display does contain a usb hub with c prots and fancy styling and very nice speakers, but i can't swallow an extra grand per display for that. (or 1.5k for 'nano-texture glass’)
@sleepy I can't use a dual monitor set-up, because eyeballs. (I'm partly blind in one eye, have different and exciting retinal problems in the other: two screens = half my windows are in one blind spot or another.)
@cstross well that's even cheaper then ;) you wouldn't actually NEED the dock, though it is nice. I don't think I 'need' the dock either as the 14" pro has 3 tb/usbc ports.. not sure what the airs are shipping with (2?, 3?)
The speakers and the usb hub will be missing from the monitor though (unless the new version of the LG has the usb hub).
@sleepy I do need a dock because I currently have (counts) 11Tb of external drives plugged into the 2Tb iMac, and a NAS on the top shelf. (Speakers don't matter, it's all routed over a Bluetooth DAC to a NAD amp and Mission 700 speakers, circa 1988.)
@cstross Well I can recommend that caldigit dock, it's been great for the twoish years I've had it. It's got 60w power delivery as well, so it should keep the air going fine, it looks like since they ship it with a 35W adapter. It maintians my intel powerbook fine and i think it wants 80w for fast charge… They've got a more expensive beefier one now as well if you need other features https://www.amazon.com/CalDigit-TS4-Thunderbolt-Dock-USB/dp/B09GK8LBWS
@sleepy Ooh, that's a lot cheaper than TBolt docks were last time I looked! (My current dock is USB-C only, although it has HDMI out and power delivery.)
@cstross I wanted one of the fancy XDR displays, but have been using an Acer UHD4k2k monitor hooked up first to an intel MacBook Pro and now to an M3 MacBook Pro. The display is old at this point, as it was my work monitor in the Before Times (and came home with me when we temporarily went WFH with COVID and, well...), and it's frankly been excellent. 9/10, despite the goofy name I have no complaints to speak of.
So, y'know, third party displays can be quite nice and a tiny bit cheaper.
@cstross The Pro Display XDR is an edge case device that Apple claims is suitable for doing pro video editing or photography color grading. When they rolled it out four years ago, they pitched it as a much more affordable alternative to a Sony pro model priced at $43K. Yes, $43 THOUSAND.
For mere mortals like us, tho? Super niche. You can spend a hell of a lot less and get really great displays from other companies that work just fine with the Mac.
@flargh@cstross Peter is correct, and the XDR is amazing value for a small group of video pros, and unnecessary for most other people. The studio display is good, and almost unique, if you need 5k (the Samsung is ok but not that much of a saving), though the SD is frustratingly “only ok” in many regards.
If you’re ok with 4k many other great cheap options open up. I have a Vesa monitor arm from ergotron on the way for my 4k LG.
@grievousangel@flargh I'm used to 5K (because iMac). I'm looking to replace my 27" iMac with a display I can plug different Macs into that isn't a step backwards (like the cheap 4K displays people keep suggesting). Can't use a VESA mount/monitor arm with my desk.
@jmax@feorag Different model and year from mine, but essentially, yes. You can track when the Laundry novels are set by Bob's smartphone (he iterates through PalmOS, PocketPC, and finally iOS, although I think there may be an Android at some point).
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