MacBook Air 2018

[Howard2k]

I just got a brand new laptop at work and started using Windows 10. I personally think it's still a mess compared to OSX -- all kinds of UI inconsistencies, all kinds of odd edge case behaviors, etc. Took me some time to figure out how to turn off most of the really annoying stuff.

I then go to install Office365 and am surprised to learn the default install is 32 bit apps. I then go to the Microsoft tech info page where they strongly recommend the 32 bit versions, as they are "most compatible". What year is this???

OSX is not perfect but it's a lot easier to use than Windows. And I've used Windows much longer than I've used OSX.

Have to agree. I use both. Windows 10 for work and MacOS at home.

I don't think Apple doesn't a particularly great job of making known the new features in the OS. The focus of Mojave was Dark Mode, at least that's the impression I got, which is of no interest to me. In fact I give Dark Mode a 3/10. They tried. But it's largely just a cosmetic update, it's not a substantial feature.

Continuity Camera on the other hand is really quite impressive. But I barely saw any mention of that at all and only tried it our after hearing about it on the forum here.

Maybe I didn't read their propaganda well enough, but it seems to me that there are other benefits to Mojave besides Dark Mode.

For Windows 10, it seems like a great step up from Windows 7 in many ways, but simple things seem to take more mouse clicks than they did before. Even just simply navigating folders to save documents etc. And this may be a specific issue given my employer's build for our laptops, but I now have to use three browsers because there are so many incompatibilities. I typically have to keep IE, Edge, and Chrome open and depending where I am going I have to select the specific browser.

Also my PDFs look like they were created by a hungover 3 year old with a blunt crayon.

 

[Ma2k5]

Have to agree. I use both. Windows 10 for work and MacOS at home.

I don't think Apple doesn't a particularly great job of making known the new features in the OS. The focus of Mojave was Dark Mode, at least that's the impression I got, which is of no interest to me. In fact I give Dark Mode a 3/10. They tried. But it's largely just a cosmetic update, it's not a substantial feature.

Continuity Camera on the other hand is really quite impressive. But I barely saw any mention of that at all and only tried it our after hearing about it on the forum here.

Maybe I didn't read their propaganda well enough, but it seems to me that there are other benefits to Mojave besides Dark Mode.

For Windows 10, it seems like a great step up from Windows 7 in many ways, but simple things seem to take more mouse clicks than they did before. Even just simply navigating folders to save documents etc. And this may be a specific issue given my employer's build for our laptops, but I now have to use three browsers because there are so many incompatibilities. I typically have to keep IE, Edge, and Chrome open and depending where I am going I have to select the specific browser.

Also my PDFs look like they were created by a hungover 3 year old with a blunt crayon.

Browser issue is thanks to the complexities and nuances of Javascript libraries (and in some cases, compatibility with new HTML5/CSS3 features). It is the biggest bane of any web developer, regardless of what OS one works on . Having a feature work on 3 browsers but not the 4th is a royal PITA, so you end up coding individual scripts depending on browser... People probably overlook it but majority of sites (even popular ones) are buggy as hell.

 

[raqball]

Holy cow does Mojave on the Air take a day and a half to boot for anyone else? Boot, make dinner, eat, walk back to computer and maybe it's booted...

 

[fokmik]

Holy cow does Mojave on the Air take a day and a half to boot for anyone else? Boot, make dinner, eat, walk back to computer and maybe it's booted...

Maybe you boot in safe mode?

 

[raqball]

Maybe you boot in safe mode?

Nope.......

 

[Howard2k]

Browser issue is thanks to the complexities and nuances of Javascript libraries (and in some cases, compatibility with new HTML5/CSS3 features). It is the biggest bane of any web developer, regardless of what OS one works on . Having a feature work on 3 browsers but not the 4th is a royal PITA, so you end up coding individual scripts depending on browser... People probably overlook it but majority of sites (even popular ones) are buggy as hell.

Some of our stuff is internally created too. Fisher Price My First Intranet Application type stuff. I'm sure that compounds the issue.

 

[Viper-FFM]

Picked up the Air. So far I can say that screen brightness isn't an issue. But coming from a 2013 MBP I am not sure wether or not there is any difference in spec.

I really like the keyboard, already did with the new 15 inch pro, but when it come to thermals...it doesn't look that good. I have to wait until migration has imported everything so i can test both MacBooks in same conditions without any processes interfering

What I can say tho: Battery Life seems insane. At least compared to my old machine. Installing OS and migrating everything took 1,5 hours and I am still sitting at 73%. Don't know if it was fully charged from delivery but I know for sure that my old MBP would have drained half of its capacity
[doublepost=1541631414][/doublepost]Playing Hearthstone in medium quality makes my cursor turn into the rainbow colored circle... Haven't experienced that with my 5 year old pro. I can also notice lag...

 

[S.B.G]

Received mine a few hours ago and I'm quite impressed. This is my first retina Mac and the first experience with the new keyboard, too. So far, so good. Screen brightness is awesome too, at least to me. I saw comments somewhere else where others were not impressed. But, I'm happy and that's what counts.

I also really love how slim and small it is compared to the 2012 cMBP I was using. The weight difference is amazing and I no longer feel like I am schlepping around a ton of bricks.

 

[EugW]

Holy cow does Mojave on the Air take a day and a half to boot for anyone else? Boot, make dinner, eat, walk back to computer and maybe it's booted...

How long does it really take?

It's pretty fast on my 12" MacBook Core m3 2017.

 

[raqball]

How long does it really take?

It's pretty fast on my 12" MacBook Core m3 2017.

It boots to the log in screen fast then about a minute and a half to two minutes.. It gets to about 50% on the bar then drags then drags again at about about 75%.....

S. L. O. W

 

[lowkey]

28 seconds on a 2015 1.1Ghz Macbook

It boots to the log in screen fast then about a minute and a half to two minutes.. It gets to about 50% on the bar then drags then drags again at about about 75%.....

S. L. O. W

 

[EugW]

28 seconds on a 2015 1.1Ghz Macbook

28 seconds on a 2017 Core m3 MacBook to the login window. This was from a cold boot, initiated by opening the lid.

Then 11 seconds to login, but that includes the several seconds it took me to type in my password. So overall, probably about 35 seconds not including my typing time.

 

[Kimcha]

How’s the daily usage performance? Another user reported seeing beach balls in slack and stutters while loading and scrolling intensive websites.

Slow boot is acceptable, but little slowdowns everywhere are not imho.

 

[EugW]

How’s the daily usage performance? Another user reported seeing beach balls in slack and stutters while loading and scrolling intensive websites.

Slow boot is acceptable, but little slowdowns everywhere are not imho.

That would depend on the scenario, but these things can be related to background processes and RAM and stuff like that. FWIW, I don't see the spinning beachball of death on my 16 GB 12" MacBook (which has a much slower CPU than the Air).

 

[raqball]

How’s the daily usage performance? Another user reported seeing beach balls in slack and stutters while loading and scrolling intensive websites.

Slow boot is acceptable, but little slowdowns everywhere are not imho.

I've yet to see it.... But define intensive websites... I don't go crazy but have visited the verge a few times and I know their site use to cause issues for some. No lag in web, no jerky scrolling and no beach ball so far...

 

[Kimcha]

I've yet to see it.... But define intensive websites... I don't go crazy but have visited the verge a few times and I know their site use to cause issues for some. No lag in web, no jerky scrolling and no beach ball so far...

Good to hear. Yeah I was thinking the verge.

The Mashable review also had me concerned...

Still, Geekbench scores have little to do with what a machine can actually handle. To test that, I put the MacBook Air in point position in a typical workday, running my typical suite of apps: Slack, Trello, TweetDeck, Skype, a handful of Apple apps (Calendar, Reminders, Apple News, Messages, and Maps), and two Chrome profiles running 2-4 windows, each with ~12 tabs on average, with Amazon Music streaming music in the background.

That's almost never too heavy a lift for my quad-core MacBook Pro, but it was a definite workout for the dual-core Air. About an hour into the day, as my Chrome tabs started multiplying, I heard the cooling fan kick in. Soon after, when I authored a tweet in TweetDeck, things got really laggy: The time between my keypress and a character appearing onscreen extended to a second or more.

That wasn't typical performance — most of the time the MacBook Air managed to keep up with my actions, but here and there you could tell it was struggling: an extra second to switch between apps, a touch more confusion about the resolution of an external monitor, a spinning beach ball lasting longer than usual. Not deal-breakers, by any means, but as they add up, they get more noticeable.

 

[EugW]

Good to hear. Yeah I was thinking the verge.

The Mashable review also had me concerned...

That laggy typing thing he describes has happened to me very occasionally on a quad-core iMac i5 2017 with 24 GB RAM. I think it's a software issue, at least in my case.

BTW, I noticed the other day on my MacBook that Powerpoint was using 100% of the CPU (out of virtual 400%), doing absolutely nothing. I didn't even have a presentation loaded. I had been editing a Powerpoint presentation but then closed the presentation, leaving the application still technically running in memory. Normally that would be 0% CPU usage until called upon again, but nope this time it was using up effectively 40% of my resources (assuming 400% is more like 250% real world).

That explained why my battery seemed to be draining faster at that time.

 

[crzdcolombian]

got it. they sounds of the keys are kind of annoying. Also the fact I have to buy a dongle for USB to import all my stuff from my last computer.

They keyboard I hate coming from a 2013 MBA. The dongle thing should have been free like the headphone jack adapter on the iPhones

 

[Kimcha]

got it. they sounds of the keys are kind of annoying. Also the fact I have to buy a dongle for USB to import all my stuff from my last computer.

They keyboard I hate coming from a 2013 MBA. The dongle thing should have been free like the headphone jack adapter on the iPhones

Let’s just be realistic: These things will not change with apple anymore.

If you are bothered by the keyboard or USB-c, then you should switch to PCs.

I think both are fine though. I have a 2017 tb-MBP and had the keyboard problem after around 8 months.

This shouldn’t be happening on an expensive computer as this, but practically the impact is very low. It can be resolved with some blow air yourself and you can use a software solution like unshaky.

Here in HK they replace the keyboard within a day or two and do it on weekends. I have replaced mine twice already and hopefully the next time it happens they will replace it with a new machine.

On top of that the 2016 and 2017 macs have the extended 4 year warranty, which greatly reduces the risk.

The ports are also a non-issue in my opinion. I just replaced all the cables of my hard drives with usb-c versions and stuffed all my travel bags with usb-c to A adapters. Problem solved.

 

[Ma2k5]

Let’s just be realistic: These things will not change with apple anymore.

If you are bothered by the keyboard or USB-c, then you should switch to PCs.

I think both are fine though. I have a 2017 tb-MBP and had the keyboard problem after around 8 months.

This shouldn’t be happening on an expensive computer as this, but practically the impact is very low. It can be resolved with some blow air yourself and you can use a software solution like unshaky.

Here in HK they replace the keyboard within a day or two and do it on weekends. I have replaced mine twice already and hopefully the next time it happens they will replace it with a new machine.

On top of that the 2016 and 2017 macs have the extended 4 year warranty, which greatly reduces the risk.

The ports are also a non-issue in my opinion. I just replaced all the cables of my hard drives with usb-c versions and stuffed all my travel bags with usb-c to A adapters. Problem solved.

On principle, I’d abandon using a MacBook if a keyboard troubled me this much after gen 3.

For me to have to use compressed air, unshaky or replace a keyboard in such an expensive machine is a joke. Why should my experience be regressed to that level when pre-2016 I had 0 issues?

Sub £300 laptops don’t suffer from keyboard issues like these, it’s almost criminal Apple knowingly released these machines - and yes it’s knowingly, no way they missed this during testing on all 3 generations.

 

[Kimcha]

On principle, I’d abandon using a MacBook if a keyboard troubled me this much after gen 3.

For me to have to use compressed air, unshaky or replace a keyboard in such an expensive machine is a joke. Why should my experience be regressed to that level when pre-2016 I had 0 issues?

Sub £300 laptops don’t suffer from keyboard issues like these, it’s almost criminal Apple knowingly released these machines - and yes it’s knowingy, no way they missed this during testing on all 3 generations.

I totally agree with you. Which is why I video record it every time the keyboard acts up, even if it’s just for one second and then taking it to apple for a replacement.

They decided to continue including an unreliable keyboard, so I have decided to make them pay. And if their customer service turns out to be as good as some people are saying, I might get a brand new computer out of it.

Already I got a free battery replacement out of it.

Sure, I would prefer not to have to deal with any of that... But since I have to anyways, I might as well make the best out of it.

Switching away is not an option for me. So if you can’t fight’em, at least make them pay and get benefits

 

[Viper-FFM]

My benchmark:

MacBook Air, 16GB RAM, 512GB SDD

Comparing this to my 5 yer old MacBook Pro 13'' Late 2013, i7, 16GB RAM, performance is underwhelming.


Multi-Core is score is about 10% higher on my 5 year old machine. Single Core and OpenGL are better on the new Air.
Not sure for now but I tend towards sending it back and getting the fu*** TouchBar MBP 13'' inch as battery life seems pretty good with that machine, too, while also having that improved performance I am looking for.

 

[Ma2k5]

I totally agree with you. Which is why I video record it every time the keyboard acts up, even if it’s just for one second and then taking it to apple for a replacement.

They decided to continue including an unreliable keyboard, so I have decided to make them pay. And if their customer service turns out to be as good as some people are saying, I might get a brand new computer out of it.

Already I got a free battery replacement out of it.

Sure, I would prefer not to have to deal with any of that... But since I have to anyways, I might as well make the best out of it.

Switching away is not an option for me. So if you can’t fight’em, at least make them pay and get benefits

I’m really starting to think buying a 2015 model is the best thing to do until 2020/21.

 

[Falcon80]

My benchmark:

MacBook Air, 16GB RAM, 512GB SDD

View attachment 802352

Comparing this to my 5 yer old MacBook Pro 13'' Late 2013, i7, 16GB RAM, performance is underwhelming.


Multi-Core is score is about 10% higher on my 5 year old machine. Single Core and OpenGL are better on the new Air.
Not sure for now but I tend towards sending it back and getting the fu*** TouchBar MBP 13'' inch as battery life seems pretty good with that machine, too, while also having that improved performance I am looking for.

Without looking at the benchmark result, do you feel the experience is smooth?

 

[dof250]

My benchmark:

MacBook Air, 16GB RAM, 512GB SDD

View attachment 802352

Comparing this to my 5 yer old MacBook Pro 13'' Late 2013, i7, 16GB RAM, performance is underwhelming.


Multi-Core is score is about 10% higher on my 5 year old machine. Single Core and OpenGL are better on the new Air.
Not sure for now but I tend towards sending it back and getting the fu*** TouchBar MBP 13'' inch as battery life seems pretty good with that machine, too, while also having that improved performance I am looking for.

How is the fan noise?