sky not falling

[fisherking]

good article on macworld about throttling/overheating on the M2 air. makes it's point well; that the M2 air is, simply, the next step in the evolution of that model.

but... why would i take the word of a reputable, long-established source over a kid on youtube?

(and the answer is: i would) 👍

 

[richard13]

Well, whaddayaknow? The sky isn't falling after all. I think the YouTube channels, that shall remain nameless, and are now completely banned from my suggestions, needs to re-evaluate their lives.

Anyway, have you gotten your M2 yet? How do you like it?

 

[Apple_Robert]

That kind of common sense won't be tolerated around here, especially by the MBP folks who keep trying to sell MBA people on the MBP. lol

 

[planteater]

Controversy sells. It's all about clicks. We live in a click society, but I'd like to think that most people can see through it and rationalize the Air's place in the world. It's an awesome machine. I'd be all over it if I needed a ~13 inch screen laptop.

 

[planteater]

That kind of common sense won't be tolerated around here, especially by the MBP folks who keep trying to sell MBA people on the MBP. lol

I've noticed that it's become common amongst the "advice" given here that certain people tend to advocate what they need, not what the person seeking advice needs. It's unfortunate that more can't separarte their needs or desires from that of the people looking for an honest assessment of a given machine for their needs.

 

[fisherking]

Well, whaddayaknow? The sky isn't falling after all. I think the YouTube channels, that shall remain nameless, and are now completely banned from my suggestions, needs to re-evaluate their lives.

Anyway, have you gotten your M2 yet? How do you like it?

somewhere 'between the 9th & the 16th" (but not shipped yet, so, sigh, not the 9th). am forced to do all my work on an 2019 intel imac... like a sucker. 🤣

 

[1BadManVan]

somewhere 'between the 9th & the 16th" (but not shipped yet, so, sigh, not the 9th). am forced to do all my work on an 2019 intel imac... like a sucker. 🤣

Like a peasant* 😅

 

[Barham]

I've noticed that it's become common amongst the "advice" given here that certain people tend to advocate what they need, not what the person seeking advice needs. It's unfortunate that more can't separarte their needs or desires from that of the people looking for an honest assessment of a given machine for their needs.

It's this very issue that has me posting more often. And that I was in the market and purchased a MacBook Air recently. I'm a teacher and often get asked these kinds of questions by my students who know I'm an absurdly well-informed Apple nerd, when they're choosing a laptop for college. I always start by asking what they want to use it for.

 

[sjperformance]

Last time I bought a laptop was 7-8 years ago. That was a dell. I’ve been an apple buyer since the iPhone 4s. We got iPads, iPhones, AirPods in my household. Last year I got my step son an air m1 that he loves and still brags about how fast it is. I got an air m2. Im highly satisfied with it. Money well spent. What an amazing, fast, quiet, light machine. I can do everything I need to do on it. It’s like an instant on and off like iPhones/iPads. At work we use Lenovos with windows server. Those machines upset me. I call my IT guy 1-3 times a month. I don’t get macs for work because we don’t need them. We just email. Web. Run quickbooks from server to run our business. When I use my air m2 it’s just fun. Web surfing. Work emailing. Keyboard really good too. Trackpad a great experience. It’s an awesome little machine. So much power under that little hood.

 

[m1maverick]

Well, whaddayaknow? The sky isn't falling after all. I think the YouTube channels, that shall remain nameless, and are now completely banned from my suggestions, needs to re-evaluate their lives.

Anyway, have you gotten your M2 yet? How do you like it?

Just what is it that all these "they who shall not be named" YouTubers are saying about the MBA that has so many MBA people's panties in a bunch?

 

[richard13]

somewhere 'between the 9th & the 16th" (but not shipped yet, so, sigh, not the 9th). am forced to do all my work on an 2019 intel imac... like a sucker. 🤣

Well, hopefully sooner rather than later. Please let us know what you think of it when it does arrive.

 

[fisherking]

Well, hopefully sooner rather than later. Please let us know what you think of it when it does arrive.

i hope i remember how to use a laptop computer by the time it arrives...

 

[fisherking]

Just what is it that all these "they who shall not be named" YouTubers are saying about the MBA that has so many MBA people's panties in a bunch?

there's the same hysteria with every new apple product (or OS, for that matter); lots of words like 'fail' 'is it worth it', 'fallen off', 'the air can't export two 8K videos at once without getting warm' 'last year's model was better', ad infinitum.

but some of the youtube videos are great, and really, imho, all of them are entertaining....

 

[chrono1081]

I lost a lot of respect for a lot of YouTubers over this debacle. It really showed how little many of them actually have deep knowledge about tech. Any IT person worth their salt knows to never EVER go by benchmarks alone. Benchmarking software isn't indicative of real world use even on the most punishing of workflows.

I ordered my M2 Air fully expecting to likely return it for a Pro but decided just to try it out. I hammered the crap out of it for days after I got it.

I ran Houdini simulations for hours, edited/exported 4k video in Final Cut, made music in Logic (20 tracks before I got bored adding tracks), made graphics in Motion, animated and rendered in Blender (which isn't optimized for Metal yet), did tons of Xcode work, played lots of Final Fantasy 14, sculpted in ZBrush, and more...

...and this thing handled every bit of it and never got warm nor was there any noticeable slowdown from throttling. You'd think that an impossibility if you looked at 90% of the tech reviewers on Youtube. They're doing a bad job by swaying people away from a great system.

Honestly the best review of the MBA M2 on Youtube I found was MobileTechReview's review, who said pretty much the same thing: Throttling/overheating isn't really a problem in real world use.

 

[canopic]

Honestly the best review of the MBA M2 on Youtube I found was MobileTechReview's review, who said pretty much the same thing: Throttling/overheating isn't really a problem in real world use.

Did you see his new video? Seems like his attitude has changed a bit

I was on team "it's an Air, it's not going to have the best cooling, get the pro if you want sustained performance" and team "the single chip 256gb decision is no big deal to most people" previously.

After watching that video though? Seems hamstrung, badly at times.

Seems like Apple saved peninies, or maybe a few dollars, to make the laptop appreciably worse.

Maybe not to everyone. Maybe only to 10% or 15% buyers. But we aren't talking about it being "slightly worse" in some benchmark scenarios in exchange for those BOM savings...

...it looks like as a whole the thing is limited to 60-70% of it's potential under sustained load due to that air gap (rather than the heat spreader on the M1).

...and just 15-20% of its potential under the 256GB config under certainly fairly normal looking "benchmarks". I don't care if Lightroom is considered "benchmark and not real use", that performance differential is disturbing.

I know he's looking at 256gb/8GB vs 512GB/16GB here. We really need a 16GB/256GB or 8GB/512GB benchmark for clarity. But I'm going to guess most of those massive improvements form speccing up are down to the SSD and not the RAM, for obvious reasons. We never saw these massive jumps with the M1's going from 8GB to 16GB, gains were always more subtle. Unless there is something weird going on like the M2 taking better advantage of RAM (doubt it) this is an even bigger knock on the 256GB config than we've seen previously.

The air-gap annoys me even more. Just filling it with a thermal pad in there to move the heat about is giving you the same kind of gains that you would get from like four generations of intel chips. Why do this? I don't think anyone could argue extra 2-3 degrees on your lap under loads is a good trade off for this cost in performance. I think this decision was made to make the pseudo-pro TouchBar m2 look better in comparison. The M2 air was too good and they clipped it's wings.

If someone I knew was buying an M2 Air I would 100% force them to get 512GB. And if I personally was getting one I would also have to buy the thermal pad! And I hate that I have to say this or do this. I don't like new Apple products having these weird "don't buy this model" "don't get this config" choices hanging in the air.

M1 Air was easy - "buy whatever you want, they're all fine"

 

[Cryates]

I lost a lot of respect for a lot of YouTubers over this debacle. It really showed how little many of them actually have deep knowledge about tech.

 

[Cryates]

Did you see his new video? Seems like his attitude has changed a bit

I was on team "it's an Air, it's not going to have the best cooling, get the pro if you want sustained performance" and team "the single chip 256gb decision is no big deal to most people" previously.

After watching that video though? Seems hamstrung, badly at times.

Seems like Apple saved peninies, or maybe a few dollars, to make the laptop appreciably worse.

Maybe not to everyone. Maybe only to 10% or 15% buyers. But we aren't talking about it being "slightly worse" in some benchmark scenarios in exchange for those BOM savings...

...it looks like as a whole the thing is limited to 60-70% of it's potential under sustained load due to that air gap (rather than the heat spreader on the M1).

...and just 15-20% of its potential under the 256GB config under certainly fairly normal looking "benchmarks". I don't care if Lightroom is considered "benchmark and not real use", that performance differential is disturbing.

I know he's looking at 256gb/8GB vs 512GB/16GB here. We really need a 16GB/256GB or 8GB/512GB benchmark for clarity. But I'm going to guess most of those massive improvements form speccing up are down to the SSD and not the RAM, for obvious reasons. We never saw these massive jumps with the M1's going from 8GB to 16GB, gains were always more subtle. Unless there is something weird going on like the M2 taking better advantage of RAM (doubt it) this is an even bigger knock on the 256GB config than we've seen previously.

The air-gap annoys me even more. Just filling it with a thermal pad in there to move the heat about is giving you the same kind of gains that you would get from like four generations of intel chips. Why do this? I don't think anyone could argue extra 2-3 degrees on your lap under loads is a good trade off for this cost in performance. I think this decision was made to make the pseudo-pro TouchBar m2 look better in comparison. The M2 air was too good and they clipped it's wings.

If someone I knew was buying an M2 Air I would 100% force them to get 512GB. And if I personally was getting one I would also have to buy the thermal pad! And I hate that I have to say this or do this. I don't like new Apple products having these weird "don't buy this model" "don't get this config" choices hanging in the air.

M1 Air was easy - "buy whatever you want, they're all fine"

MobileTechReview is not the same as Max Tech.

Max is clickbait, Lisa is not.

 

[Janichsan]

...that the M2 air is, simply, the next step in the evolution of that model.

Paging Captain Obvious.

 

[sjperformance]

Max went from saying it sucks over how awesome it is. People like him just want clicks/views/followers. His long benchmark BS puts me to sleep. His voice isn't the best either.

 

[fisherking]

Paging Captain Obvious.

apparently not so obvious to so many youtube 'reviewers', and even... people on this very forum...

 

[Toratek]

Did you see his new video? Seems like his attitude has changed a bit

I was on team "it's an Air, it's not going to have the best cooling, get the pro if you want sustained performance" and team "the single chip 256gb decision is no big deal to most people" previously.

After watching that video though? Seems hamstrung, badly at times.

Seems like Apple saved peninies, or maybe a few dollars, to make the laptop appreciably worse.

Maybe not to everyone. Maybe only to 10% or 15% buyers. But we aren't talking about it being "slightly worse" in some benchmark scenarios in exchange for those BOM savings...

...it looks like as a whole the thing is limited to 60-70% of it's potential under sustained load due to that air gap (rather than the heat spreader on the M1).

...and just 15-20% of its potential under the 256GB config under certainly fairly normal looking "benchmarks". I don't care if Lightroom is considered "benchmark and not real use", that performance differential is disturbing.

I know he's looking at 256gb/8GB vs 512GB/16GB here. We really need a 16GB/256GB or 8GB/512GB benchmark for clarity. But I'm going to guess most of those massive improvements form speccing up are down to the SSD and not the RAM, for obvious reasons. We never saw these massive jumps with the M1's going from 8GB to 16GB, gains were always more subtle. Unless there is something weird going on like the M2 taking better advantage of RAM (doubt it) this is an even bigger knock on the 256GB config than we've seen previously.

The air-gap annoys me even more. Just filling it with a thermal pad in there to move the heat about is giving you the same kind of gains that you would get from like four generations of intel chips. Why do this? I don't think anyone could argue extra 2-3 degrees on your lap under loads is a good trade off for this cost in performance. I think this decision was made to make the pseudo-pro TouchBar m2 look better in comparison. The M2 air was too good and they clipped it's wings.

If someone I knew was buying an M2 Air I would 100% force them to get 512GB. And if I personally was getting one I would also have to buy the thermal pad! And I hate that I have to say this or do this. I don't like new Apple products having these weird "don't buy this model" "don't get this config" choices hanging in the air.

M1 Air was easy - "buy whatever you want, they're all fine"

Right here is a prime example of a victim of the YouTube clickbait phenomenon being discussed here. Hook, line, meet sinker.

If some of you had seen the industrial solid model animation exports I was working with half the day yesterday on my 10/16/1Tb M2 MBA in front of an engineering client, some of your jaws would drop. Not the slightest hitch and still had half battery power after six hours of intensive work. Had a dozen apps running including a Siemens 3D modeling package doing realtime renders through a Rosetta 2 layer while doing the export, memory pressure never exceeded 70% and the machine didn’t even get warm to the touch in a 76 degree room. Insanely performant.

I would not have dreamed trying that on a MacBook Pro three years ago, the fan noise would have been a big problem.

It even had the company’s outspokenly anti-Mac President - an old friend- shaking his head. I dare say that was fun.

The best part is, the resulting contract will pay for about 176 more mid spec M2 MBA’s like the one that did so well in the real world yesterday.

 

[canopic]

Right here is a prime example of a victim of the YouTube clickbait phenomenon being discussed here. Hook, line, meet sinker.

If some of you had seen the industrial solid model animation exports I was working with half the day yesterday on my 10/16/1Tb M2 MBA in front of an engineering client, some of your jaws would drop. Not the slightest hitch and still had half battery power after six hours of intensive work. Had a dozen apps running while doing the export, memory pressure never exceeded 70% and the machine didn’t even get warm to the touch in a 76 degree room. Insanely performant.

I would not have dreamed trying that on a MacBook Pro three years ago, the fan noise would have been a big problem.

It even had the company’s outspokenly anti-Mac President - an old friend- shaking his head. I dare say that was fun.

Yeah, maybe, I need to watch/read more to find out if those benchmarks are BS, or at least heavily cherry picked anomalies. I guess I'm taking them at face value for now.

 

[Lihp8270]

Did you see his new video? Seems like his attitude has changed a bit

I was on team "it's an Air, it's not going to have the best cooling, get the pro if you want sustained performance" and team "the single chip 256gb decision is no big deal to most people" previously.

After watching that video though? Seems hamstrung, badly at times.

Seems like Apple saved peninies, or maybe a few dollars, to make the laptop appreciably worse.

Maybe not to everyone. Maybe only to 10% or 15% buyers. But we aren't talking about it being "slightly worse" in some benchmark scenarios in exchange for those BOM savings...

...it looks like as a whole the thing is limited to 60-70% of it's potential under sustained load due to that air gap (rather than the heat spreader on the M1).

...and just 15-20% of its potential under the 256GB config under certainly fairly normal looking "benchmarks". I don't care if Lightroom is considered "benchmark and not real use", that performance differential is disturbing.

I know he's looking at 256gb/8GB vs 512GB/16GB here. We really need a 16GB/256GB or 8GB/512GB benchmark for clarity. But I'm going to guess most of those massive improvements form speccing up are down to the SSD and not the RAM, for obvious reasons. We never saw these massive jumps with the M1's going from 8GB to 16GB, gains were always more subtle. Unless there is something weird going on like the M2 taking better advantage of RAM (doubt it) this is an even bigger knock on the 256GB config than we've seen previously.

The air-gap annoys me even more. Just filling it with a thermal pad in there to move the heat about is giving you the same kind of gains that you would get from like four generations of intel chips. Why do this? I don't think anyone could argue extra 2-3 degrees on your lap under loads is a good trade off for this cost in performance. I think this decision was made to make the pseudo-pro TouchBar m2 look better in comparison. The M2 air was too good and they clipped it's wings.

If someone I knew was buying an M2 Air I would 100% force them to get 512GB. And if I personally was getting one I would also have to buy the thermal pad! And I hate that I have to say this or do this. I don't like new Apple products having these weird "don't buy this model" "don't get this config" choices hanging in the air.

M1 Air was easy - "buy whatever you want, they're all fine"

Filling in that gap and putting more heat into the chassis would mean it cannot be sold into European markets (not sure if US have the same regulations). But there’s a maximum chassis temperature for laptops.

I’ll find a clip but somebody filled out that gap with thermal pads and the bottom of the chassis was getting on for 55c. That’s beyond uncomfortable, beyond that It also caused significant increase in battery temperature too

 

[jdb8167]

Yeah, maybe, I need to watch/read more to find out if those benchmarks are BS, or at least heavily cherry picked anomalies. I guess I'm taking them at face value for now.

The 256 GB SSD is undoubtably slower in sequential writes because it uses a single flash module instead of two so misses out on some parallelism. But apparently much of the slowdowns the MaxTech has been showing is because the 256 GB drive he is using is mostly full. You lose a lot of performance on an SSD when space gets below a certain threshold because the SSD controller has to do garbage collection to find empty blocks.

For most uses you care about random reads and writes. Those writes will be highly impacted by how full the SSD is. If you can't keep 50 GB or so available either get a larger SSD or expect some slowdowns.

 

[fisherking]

Yeah, maybe, I need to watch/read more to find out if those benchmarks are BS, or at least heavily cherry picked anomalies. I guess I'm taking them at face value for now.

we all need to remember: if it's on the internet, it must be true...