I was wrong

[smoking monkey]

I'm sitting here with a new MBA (10/16/512) and a base 14" MBP.
I'm trying to decide which to keep. The MBP is $270 more than the MBA the way I have the MBA spec'd.
It comes down to solely the screen potential of the MBP and the better sound as I will likely never do intensive work that would make the MBP outperform the MBA.

I gotta say... it's a TOUGH call. I don't know what I'm going to do. The screen is definitely better on the MBP and so is the sound, but for $270? Worth it to me? I don't know yet! Ugh. lol. Modern-day-1st-world-problem I know...

The advanatages to the MBA besides the $270 it saves is that the portability of the MBA is noticeably better as well... plus I like Starlight. The MBA just begs to be taken out with me and somewhat cannibalizes my iPad. I could sell my iPad now and that makes this even cheaper!

I have a week or so more to decide.

If you're fine with the smaller, not quite as good screen, then I'd go for the Air in that config you've got. Portability and using it over the iPad is huge. If using it on the couch or taking it somewhere etc is going to be often, then the Air is the machine. Sell the iPad! You'll get used to the inferior sound after a little while (even though the sound on the 14 and 16 is incredible). The 14 is a bus in comparison to the air.

 

[a.phoenicis]

The reduced heat sink and increased thermals with poor throttling give me pause on recommending it in any way to people. Glad it works for you though.

Have you actually used one? Because I’ve been driving mine hard and it has yet to get even warm. And if it’s throttled, I haven’t noticed it. It’s a beast in a tiny little package.

 

[Scott-n-Houston]

If you're fine with the smaller, not quite as good screen, then I'd go for the Air in that config you've got. Portability and using it over the iPad is huge. If using it on the couch or taking it somewhere etc is going to be often, then the Air is the machine. Sell the iPad! You'll get used to the inferior sound after a little while (even though the sound on the 14 and 16 is incredible). The 14 is a bus in comparison to the air.

Yeah. You're right and it's what I decided.
The sound isn't that important because I'm usually wearing my APP or APMs vs. using the native speakers anyway.

I've also noticed that the MBA feels a bit snappier than the MBP for normal tasks like web surfing or emails, etc.
Since I don't do video editing beyond very short things in iMovie or very minor photo editing, I'll never benefit from the power of the MBP. So that just leaves the screen which is definitely better on the MBP, but most noticeable when watching HDR content which just isn't *that* often.

Thanks for the feedback!!

PS. Also Starlight is better than Silver! 🤣

 

[exoticSpice]

The reduced heat sink and increased thermals with poor throttling give me pause on recommending it in any way to people. Glad it works for you though.

M2 Air is still faster than the M1 Air even when throttled. Most people buy the Airs for web browsing and youtube and light work. The M2 Air is plenty capable of that.
Those cinebench tests are not what people do on an Air on a daily basis.

Want heavy sustained loads look at the 14" pro.

 

[Chateaunole-du-Pape]

Have you actually used one? Because I’ve been driving mine hard and it has yet to get even warm. And if it’s throttled, I haven’t noticed it. It’s a beast in a tiny little package.

Same. A full week tonight. It's never once gotten hot. The first night, I downloaded my entire iCloud library (music, videos, full-resolution photos, documents, all totaling around 100 GB) and kicked off my first Time Machine backup. The machine never got even as warm as my lap.

And man, is it ever fast. I remember being really impressed with the speed and responsiveness of my M1 11" iPad Pro when I got it a year ago, and it's still very snappy, but this M2 Air is on a completely different level.

 

[ahurst]

I personally can't get over how ugly the 14 and 16 pro are. The thickness looks like a 10 yr old Powerbook. I am sorry.

lol I hate to break it to you, but it’s been almost 17 years since the last PowerBook was released. I know, seems like yesterday to me too...

Anyway, I personally think the 14” looks fantastic: maybe that’s me being a fan of the classic titanium/aluminum PowerBook designs and also being a former ThinkPad guy, but in person the screen, keyboard, and general profile are some slick industrial design. Makes me happy every time I use mine

Also, practically speaking the 14” MBP is 0.61” thick, which is almost half the thickness (55%) of the last PowerBooks ever made (1.1”) and a good 65% and 85% of the thickness of the 2012 non-Retina and Retina 15” MBPs (respectively) that were actually on sale 10 years ago.

Edit: Amazingly, also slightly thinner than the pre-retina 2017 MacBook Air at its thickest point (0.68”).

 

[theotherphil]

To be fair the benefits of the MBP aren't just confined to the higher performance. It's also the screen and speakers which you'll benefit from every single day.

Also true but in no way invalidates what I said. I have a 32Gb 14” Max with 32c GPU and whilst the speakers are indeed fabulous, I only ever use it with headphones. The screen, whilst also very nice, is not orders of magnitude better for “everyday viewing”. Sure, using it for pro workflows such as colour grading/ HDR content then yeah, I agree.

But, do the masses really need that vs the benefit of portability, weight, battery life? I’m not so sure.

 

[Dealmans]

what?? this is your exact quote:

"Seeing as the screen is what you look at all the time 14” is the winner"

so i have no idea what you're talking about now...

not just bigger

 

[Yebubbleman]

M2 Air is still faster than the M1 Air even when throttled. Most people buy the Airs for web browsing and youtube and light work. The M2 Air is plenty capable of that.
Those cinebench tests are not what people do on an Air on a daily basis.

Want heavy sustained loads look at the 14" pro.

The "most people buy Airs for..." argument went out the window when Apple announced a MacBook Air with power typically held by the larger sized Intel MacBook Pros. Telling me that it still works for Intel MacBook Air use cases kind of defeats the entire point that we're not dealing with Intel MacBook Airs anymore.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Have you actually used one? Because I’ve been driving mine hard and it has yet to get even warm. And if it’s throttled, I haven’t noticed it. It’s a beast in a tiny little package.

What have you been driving it hard with?

I'm not saying it's not a beast. I'm saying that it is a chip that generates more heat than its predecessor and has even less cooling resources than its predecessor. There's plenty written about how this is a hotter running chip than its predecessor and that Apple has it throttling at much higher temperatures than before. Glad it's not getting warm for you, but I'm not exactly getting the warm fuzzies about a machine that is a downgrade in the thermals department from its immediate (and still-sold) predecessor.

 

[Wokis]

What have you been driving it hard with?

I'm not saying it's not a beast. I'm saying that it is a chip that generates more heat than its predecessor and has even less cooling resources than its predecessor. There's plenty written about how this is a hotter running chip than its predecessor and that Apple has it throttling at much higher temperatures than before. Glad it's not getting warm for you, but I'm not exactly getting the warm fuzzies about a machine that is a downgrade in the thermals department from its immediate (and still-sold) predecessor.

It's Apple's responsibility to know if the chip can handle the thermal levels in the long-term. Else they'll have another lawsuit and extended repair program on their hands.

Been testing with Resolve, a production-level workload and haven't noticed slowdowns in hour-plus renders. Like the ETA on when it will be finished doesn't start to change towards the end or anything.

I'd love to check out actual numbers on what the clock speeds on GPU and CPU starts changing into over time but not sure what tool would be the best. Getting terminal to print out stats every 5 seconds was a cumbersome way to read.

 

[exoticSpice]

The "most people buy Airs for..." argument went out the window when Apple announced a MacBook Air with power typically held by the larger sized Intel MacBook Pros. Telling me that it still works for Intel MacBook Air use cases kind of defeats the entire point that we're not dealing with Intel MacBook Airs anymore.

Yep agree but the M2 is still faster than the M1 Air. M2 Air also offers more RAM. In a 10 minute Cinebench M2 is faster.

 

[GuruZac]

M2 Air is still faster than the M1 Air even when throttled. Most people buy the Airs for web browsing and youtube and light work. The M2 Air is plenty capable of that.
Those cinebench tests are not what people do on an Air on a daily basis.

Want heavy sustained loads look at the 14" pro.

I am not sure that is true anymore. For the first time ever, Apple gave us an ultraportable laptop with high end MacBook Pro level performance with unprecedented efficiency in the M1 MacBook Air. Many heavy usage users got serious mileage out of the M1 MacBook Air, even with the passive cooling design and limited external display support.

 

[MajorFubar]

I am not sure that is true anymore. For the first time ever, Apple gave us an ultraportable laptop with high end MacBook Pro level performance with unprecedented efficiency in the M1 MacBook Air. Many heavy usage users got serious mileage out of the M1 MacBook Air, even with the passive cooling design and limited external display support.

Fully agreed. This forum as an unrepresentative bubble. People who only want a computer for 'web-browsing, watching YouTube videos and light work' buy a £300 Asus from Curry's (or their equivalent national consumer-electronics retailer). Now I'm not saying you shouldn't buy a Mac for light duties: heck if you like you can buy a 16" MBP just to wedge open your door because it neatly fits under the gap, but from my own empirical evidence, which is at least as representative as anyone else's contradictory evidence, those kind of people are not typical buyers of premium-priced computers. Definitely not in my territory. And literally every new Macbook is premium-priced.

 

[a.phoenicis]

What have you been driving it hard with?

When I first got it and set it up, I had it downloading my entire iCloud data (photos, multiple email accounts, etc) while also downloading Xcode, Scrivener, Affinity Designer, Omnigraffle, etc.

I built and ran some of my personal Xcode projects, including one that does multi image slicing/transforms.

I opened a complex affinity designer artboard and worked on it for 20 minutes.

I did some real work, researching a topic I’m writing about, using google scholar to find dozens of articles, downloaded the PDFs, dropped them into my scrivener project and wrote about 3000 words in my research, including some number crunching in excel.

In short, real-world usage, not benchmarks, and certainly nothing to do with video editing.

It’s worth noting that that same amount of work (Xcode builds, affinity designer, 40+ Safari tabs open, some on google apps) would have had my intel 2017 MBP’s fans spinning hard and the chassis uncomfortably hot.

On my M2 Air, the laptop was resting on my bare legs the whole time and barely warmer than my skin.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

This is really good to hear! And something many of us have been trying to tell 14" and 16" users. Many, many pros use the M1 and now M2 MBAs just fine for all their tasks--not just "light web browsing" and office docs.

They work fantastic. (Well all I can speak to is the M1 MBA, but it works fantastic at everything.)

Now if you need 4k renders for hours of your day, then sure go for the 14". If you don't care about money and want the great screen? Then go for the 14"! But if you want portability and have a normal power user workflow? The MBAs will handle it just fine.

 

[bluecoast]

lol I hate to break it to you, but it’s been almost 17 years since the last PowerBook was released. I know, seems like yesterday to me too...

Anyway, I personally think the 14” looks fantastic: maybe that’s me being a fan of the classic titanium/aluminum PowerBook designs and also being a former ThinkPad guy, but in person the screen, keyboard, and general profile are some slick industrial design. Makes me happy every time I use mine

Also, practically speaking the 14” MBP is 0.61” thick, which is almost half the thickness (55%) of the last PowerBooks ever made (1.1”) and a good 65% and 85% of the thickness of the 2012 non-Retina and Retina 15” MBPs (respectively) that were actually on sale 10 years ago.

Edit: Amazingly, also slightly thinner than the pre-retina 2017 MacBook Air at its thickest point (0.68”).

Agreed, I really like apple’s new design aesthetic.

I’d call it ‘industrial/military brutalism’ which - as architects often say about brutalist buildings - is more ‘honest’ and that doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is:

I.e. a shell for a series of mostly rectangular stacked components with messy looking connectors.

 

[imnotthewalrus]

This is a copy and paste (of mine) from a similar thread...

"'Im admittedly jealous...I bought an M1 MBA refurbished (base model, $849) 2 months ago as my 2015 MBP 15" (loaded to the max, spec-wise) died due to apparent water damage. However, I AM happy with my purchase as I am on a very tight budget. Yesterday I stopped into a Best Buy to check out the M2 MBA, and I must confess - it's a beautiful machine, but (and my "needs" are likely different than yours) I didn't find it to be faster than my M1, but these days the most demanding app I use is Logic Pro and my M1 Air is faster at rendering my music projects than my 2015 MBP! I am certain that in 2 or 3 years I'll get the itch to upgrade...and I DO very much like the new form factor...

 

[smoking monkey]

I've also noticed that the MBA feels a bit snappier than the MBP for normal tasks like web surfing or emails, etc.

It seems you're aren't imagining that. It actually is snappier according to the tests MaxTech did. I know many don't like MaxTech but their test videos are good and cover a whole heap of things.

 

[Scott-n-Houston]

It seems you're aren't imagining that. It actually is snappier according to the tests MaxTech did. I know many don't like MaxTech but their test videos are good and cover a whole heap of things.

I saw that after typing my post above! Thanks.
Yeah, the single core stuff is where the M2 shines even over the MBP 14", so basic tasks are actually faster which is crazy. I'm very happy with the M2 Air.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

I continue to reiterate that the performance of the single core is the progenitor of all power. Regardless of the number of cores in the machine at hand, the vast majority of life's applications are made up of single threads.

Yes, multiple cores are certainly useful for multi-tasking purposes, but by and large, people's primary 'experience' will still be influenced by single-core performance. So if someone says they think the M2 is a faster 'experience' than the M1 14/16 Pro, I have no doubt. After all, the M2 is superior to the M1 in terms of single-core performance.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

lol I hate to break it to you, but it’s been almost 17 years since the last PowerBook was released. I know, seems like yesterday to me too...

Anyway, I personally think the 14” looks fantastic: maybe that’s me being a fan of the classic titanium/aluminum PowerBook designs and also being a former ThinkPad guy, but in person the screen, keyboard, and general profile are some slick industrial design. Makes me happy every time I use mine

Also, practically speaking the 14” MBP is 0.61” thick, which is almost half the thickness (55%) of the last PowerBooks ever made (1.1”) and a good 65% and 85% of the thickness of the 2012 non-Retina and Retina 15” MBPs (respectively) that were actually on sale 10 years ago.

Edit: Amazingly, also slightly thinner than the pre-retina 2017 MacBook Air at its thickest point (0.68”).

Interestingly enough, I was talking to a friend the other day about the styling of the M1 MBP 14/16, as I see, that anyone who has been a fans of the PowerBook G4 will almost always like the M1 MBP 14/16 (I guess).

 

[Belle Pomme]

I like mine too. It is solid and is fast enough for what I need.The midnight blue color is a nice subtle dark blue in the day and appears a dark color in low light so that it almost disappears as you work on it. I do not have a problem with fingerprints. I did buy an Apple cloth in case. The color is worth it for me. Very pleased.

 

[wbeasley]

the initial over-reaction and almost faux outrage that accompanies every new Apple release gets worse each time.

a few specific benchmark results and people were claiming what a miss-step this was. Sky is falling level...

can only imagine they now regather for the next Apple Watch "fiasco", phone "debacle" and OS "stuff up" in September.

from day 1, the base M2 MBA has exceeded expectations for me. Sure, I would have loved the upgraded spec but none to be had. Still long wait times. And would the extra money have bought the percentage gain the price premium should?

 

[wbeasley]

Have you actually used one? Because I’ve been driving mine hard and it has yet to get even warm. And if it’s throttled, I haven’t noticed it. It’s a beast in a tiny little package.

it does get warm when you use all available GPUs. Quite warm. But not HOT.
and it does throttle but is it significant compared to taks being asked of it? no.