Don't Understand?

[drdudj]

MacBook Air M1...the ongoing discussion/debate, the pros/cons of the excessive ssd writes, high memory usage, not enough ports, and it's inability to let you have five different programs open, not counting the 2 or 3 browsers you have open with 60 tabs.

now I'm not a computer expert, a novice apple user having switched over from 26 years of windows, but I think I'm smart enough to realize that when I was looking for a new computer, specifically a laptop, that I could have gone with the MacBook Pro at over $4K, if that was what my needs required. but as a casual user; emails, messages, numbers, pages, web browsing, photos and a few games, my needs were met with the M1.

seems like most of the users who complain about the MacBook Air M1 are power users, those with 60 tabs open while they are doing video editing, while at the same time playing an online game while balancing their check book. why would this person even consider buying the M1?

compare it to car shopping. if you wanted a luxury car that had all the bells & whistles, why would you settle for a chevy spark when you should have bought the Cadillac Escalade ESV Premium.

then when the M1 doesn't do what you wanted it to do, you complain, rag on it, when you knew from reading all the reviews about it prior to it hitting the market that it was basically only a killer unit for the casual user.

I don't really understand why someone would need 30 tabs open in their browser? Seriously, can someone explain that to me?

 

[Mousse]

I don't really understand why someone would need 30 tabs open in their browser? Seriously, can someone explain that to me?

Probably an IT guy.🤓

 

[eltoslightfoot]

See, the weird part is that I think they are wrong anyway...literally have 30 tabs open right now on my MBA M1 with 8 GB...

 

[bunnspecial]

Serious question for the OP-

You aren't by chance a member of the forum Bob Is the Oil Guy, are you? This is eerily reminiscent of a conversation there where a person was rather...bothered...by my assessment and critique of my M1 MBP with 8gb RAM...

 

[drdudj]

See, the weird part is that I think they are wrong anyway...literally have 30 tabs open right now on my MBA M1 with 8 GB...

I didn't say it couldn't be done, I'm just curious, why would you need 30 tabs open at the same time? I could see where a person might have 4 or 5 tabs open when he first goes online, to check stocks, baseball scores, macrumors, a news page, and a game page. but why would they need to stay open after you are done updating yourself with the information? and besides, it's not just having 30 tabs open like I previously stated. it's having 2 or 3 different browsers open, and 30 to 60 tabs open between them, and the person is doing video/photo editing, working on a spread sheet, doing documents, in the middle of writing an email, answering text, listening to music and so on and so on.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I didn't say it couldn't be done, I'm just curious, why would you need 30 tabs open at the same time? I could see where a person might have 4 or 5 tabs open when he first goes online, to check stocks, baseball scores, macrumors, a news page, and a game page. but why would they need to stay open after you are done updating yourself with the information? and besides, it's not just having 30 tabs open like I previously stated. it's having 2 or 3 different browsers open, and 30 to 60 tabs open between them, and the person is doing video/photo editing, working on a spread sheet, doing documents, in the middle of writing an email, answering text, listening to music and so on and so on.

I don't usually, but if I am researching a topic or bug, it can happen.

 

[bunnspecial]

Sometimes I'll think "that looks interesting to read but I don't have time to now. I'll leave the tab for when I do have time.

Sometimes I'm working on something and periodically referencing a tab. It stays open.

Some stuff I check periodically throughout the day.

My baseline is about 15 tabs, and that easily grows to 30+. I sometimes get a real shock when I shut down the browser and get the warning of "You are closing 63 tabs across 3 windows".

I do try to do tab clean-up about once a week, but there are a bunch that never get closed.

 

[LordVic]

Probably an IT guy.🤓

Don't give away my secrets. I like my salary

 

[rpmurray]

Don't give away my secrets. I like my salary

Me too. If they knew they could have a monkey do my job by googling a few minutes a day I'd be toast.

 

[eljanitor]

Well, most laptops have 2 or 3 USB ports nowadays one of then is USB-C or most of them are. I'm not so sure how much I really care about PC, or Mac or Android or whatever because after years of working with computers I've seen the latest technology cost an arm and a leg for "The good stuff." Then about 3 or 5 years later the processor that was a $500 CPU is now worth like $12 and the current stuff will follow it's predecessors.

However major companies know how to advertise and pull you in with gimmicks so you "OOOHHH AHHHH, I NEED IT, INEED IT!" but like my beautiful G3 iMac was so KEWL when it came out that didn't last long. SO nowadays when I walk thorough the coveted Apple store I see nothing special, same thing when I walk through best buy and look at PC's. Just an appliance like a toaster. just material stuff that will disappoint you.

 

[rpmurray]

Then about 3 or 5 years later the processor that was a $500 CPU is now worth like $12 and the current stuff will follow it's predecessors.

The reason I haven't bought a "new" Mac in over a decade. I just pick up the gently used stuff a couple of years later for much less than new.

 

[splifingate]

I didn't say it couldn't be done, I'm just curious, why would you need 30 tabs open at the same time? I could see where a person might have 4 or 5 tabs open when he first goes online, to check stocks, baseball scores, macrumors, a news page, and a game page. but why would they need to stay open after you are done updating yourself with the information? and besides, it's not just having 30 tabs open like I previously stated. it's having 2 or 3 different browsers open, and 30 to 60 tabs open between them, and the person is doing video/photo editing, working on a spread sheet, doing documents, in the middle of writing an email, answering text, listening to music and so on and so on.

SO utilises Tabs for memory/context . . . she uses a Surface, and every time I see her Edge open with (something-like) 20-30 Tabs open, I cringe . . . .

Every time we work-through an update/mod, the de-construction of the Process takes, like, two days . . .

. . . she views my efforting as destructive to her 'System', and I have to consciously step-back, and carefully "knead-the-bread"

Interestingly-enough, I sometimes find myself with 15+ Tabs open; but that's usually while I am hammering-home the Science of Exploration (e.g., "re-tiling the bathroom? let me explore as many examples/DIY's as possible") . . . all of which I whittle-back to 3-4 in the Process.

Regards, splifingate

 

[09872738]

and it's inability to let you have five different programs open

You are aware that this is utter nonsense? Who comes up with that kinda thing? Who would believe it?

 

[Kung gu]

it's inability to let you have five different programs open,

I have 10 apps open lol and I can open more too.

 

[smirking]

I test drove an M1 MBP for 2 weeks. I decided against it because I am one of those demanding users like the griping pros that you described except that it left me quite impressed. I intentionally only went with an 8GB RAM machine and threw everything but the kitchen sink at it and it held its own for the most part. I ran some of my most demanding programs simultaneously while also having a Windows ARM volume via Parallels performing Windows Update and the only noticeable issue was that I had extremely high SSD writes.

I have no idea what those people are complaining about.

 

[Kung gu]

The SSD write issue has been largely fixed in 11.4 too.

 

[smirking]

The SSD write issue has been largely fixed in 11.4 too.

Yes, it was largely fixed, but my case was an outlier and wasn't related to the bug fixed in 11.4. I don't think there are a lot of people who'd be running an M1 the way I was running it so my experience won't apply to the average person. For one, I deliberately went with 8GB as an experiment because I was expecting that I'd end up returning the unit. I wanted to get the base model and see if it could handle the workload... it did and I was very surprised. It made the decision to return it a lot harder than I expected.

 

[portland-dude]

I didn't say it couldn't be done, I'm just curious, why would you need 30 tabs open at the same time? I could see where a person might have 4 or 5 tabs open when he first goes online, to check stocks, baseball scores, macrumors, a news page, and a game page. but why would they need to stay open after you are done updating yourself with the information? and besides, it's not just having 30 tabs open like I previously stated. it's having 2 or 3 different browsers open, and 30 to 60 tabs open between them, and the person is doing video/photo editing, working on a spread sheet, doing documents, in the middle of writing an email, answering text, listening to music and so on and so on.

It makes people feel important.

 

[drdudj]

It makes people feel important.

Now that makes more sense than anything else I've read so far.

 

[rpmurray]

It makes people feel important.

I have so many open that I feel like a god.

 

[11235813]

I don't really understand why someone would need 30 tabs open in their browser? Seriously, can someone explain that to me?

I've wondered about this a lot myself. So I observed some people who use lots of tabs to understand what is going on. To cut it short, I found out that these people don't understand the concept of bookmarks/favorites. They use tabs as bookmarks. That's why they freaked out about the refresh button disappearing from the toolbar in the new Safari. These people, instead of just bookmarking a site and clicking on the bookmark when they want to visit the site later, just leave the tab open. Then later they switch to the tab and refresh. As a result of this, no amount of RAM is enough and no modern interface is usable.

 

[rpmurray]

These people

Not all these people. I bookmark what I want to be able to come back to later or open often, but I leave temporary stuff open in tabs until I get around to it. It's just with the stuff I'm multitasking that comes to an awful lot of tabs.

 

[Euroamerican]

3 to 10 to 30 tabs open frequently: and that's sometimes just within Safari.

I might have another group of tabs open in another browser, such as Chrome.

 

[RUGERMAN]

It makes people feel important.

Reading these complaints here makes me feel really inadequate and almost impotent. I have a late 09 iMac with 8 g ram a mechanical hd running high Sierra and right now I have 7 programs open wi6 tabs open in Safari and 3 or 4 in Brave and I have no problem at all. No beachball switch instantly etc. What in the world do some of you Run??

 

[ghanwani]

My only complaints were eyestrain/headaches and quality control (wobbly/bent). Otherwise an awesome machine.