Who is keeping 15" Air?

[kp98077]

Question: one big difference I noticed between the 15" air and the 14 m2 Pro.
15 Air - left large side (1"+) on most screens
14 m2 Pro did not leave any extra space on sides
why is this? Is the 15 m2 Air not optimized? If not when will it be?
thanks!

 

[ctjack]

Question: one big difference I noticed between the 15" air and the 14 m2 Pro.
15 Air - left large side (1"+) on most screens
14 m2 Pro did not leave any extra space on sides
why is this? Is the 15 m2 Air not optimized? If not when will it be?
thanks!

Default resolutions are different because nominal resolution differs.
Defaults are below:
Mbp 14 1512 x 982
Air 1710 x 1107 (default)

As can be seen, air has more space in both directions to fit more stuff, thus leading to your edges which are not filled.

 

[kp98077]

Default resolutions are different because nominal resolution differs.
Defaults are below:
Mbp 14 1512 x 982
Air 1710 x 1107 (default)

As can be seen, air has more space in both directions to fit more stuff, thus leading to your edges which are not filled.

How can I fill them ?😃

 

[ctjack]

How can I fill them ?😃

Can you please send a pic of what window is creating those?

 

[kp98077]

Can you please send a pic of what window is creating those?

yeah, I can do that when I am back at home, mainly was for selected sites I believe, like youtube, CNN etc. The entire page/screen would be filled in on the 14 pro but not on the 15, it would have huge gaps to the right and left.. wondering if I can change this on the 15? (resolution).

 

[CloudsNeverDie]

How can I fill them ?😃

Hold option and double click on the left or right edge of the window to make it maximum width, or install https://rectangleapp.com/ and use the title bar to drag the window to the top to really maximize it.

I have no idea why Apple still makes it so hard to do something so simple as maximize a window, without actually making it full screen. On Windows you can just double click on the title bar.

 

[ctjack]

I have no idea why Apple still makes it so hard to do something so simple as maximize a window, without actually making it full screen. On Windows you can just double click on the title bar.

Yeah, window management is so-so. I use Swish for these purposes - only 2 fingers slide up gesture.

 

[applesed]

I’m in the return period but thinking of keeping it. I’m not running out of memory / sluggishness like I did often on my 16gb ram lg gram, just on too many Chrome tabs, the extra 8gb and better memory management seems to be helping. And Preview is much better and lightweight than Acrobat. MacOS is easily a better experience also.

It’s so much nicer experience on the couch than the 16, and that’s where I use it most of the time or on a single external. I can drop it on a pillow without worrying about blocking a fan, and generally the bottom is not hot or warm with primary usage of Netfliix, Preview, Chrome.

I can also kick up the resolution to 3 or 4k with switchResX and betterDummy for more than two side to side apps, I could not do this with the Intel Iris on the Gram.

Would like eventually an m3 if it supports two externals or a thinner version of the 16, but for now this hits the sweet spot. I only have the need for two 27” 4k screens for maybe 10% of the time, and got a DisplayLink adapter for those times. Works good enough for what I need that for, particularly if just pdfs on the extra screen. I could see myself trading this in for the m3 or riding with this the next 2-3 years.

The midnight color is great. Looks blacked out at night, and a deep blue color during the day. Don’t mind the smudges much, and they show more on the back, which is the part of the computer I look at the least. After years of silver and space gray, it’s a cool change. Reminds me of the coveted black MacBook I never got to use.

 

[6749974]

I cant imagine settling for the screen on the 15 air when the 14pro exists

• 15-inch Air: $1299, 1.3-inches bigger display
• 14-inch MBP: $2000, 1.3-inches smaller display

Pre-empting the counter argument: I understand the MBP can be found on sale, but so can the Air.

If you're not watching movies all day, the screen difference is minimal to common users. Personally, I'm avoiding MBP displays because blooming is an issue for me. Catch me buying the MBP when Apple brings dual-stacked OLED in 2025-2027.

 

[Zest28]

• 15-inch Air: $1299, 1.3-inches bigger display
• 14-inch MBP: $2000, 1.3-inches smaller display

Pre-empting the counter argument: I understand the MBP can be found on sale, but so can the Air.

If you're not watching movies all day, the screen difference is minimal to common users. Personally, I'm avoiding MBP displays because blooming is an issue for me. Catch me buying the MBP when Apple brings dual-stacked OLED in 2025-2027.

With IPS you have permanent blooming on your entire screen as blacks are grey.

And watching videos falls under “common” usage really.

 

[6749974]

With IPS you have permanent blooming on your entire screen as blacks are grey.

Not this argument again. Blooming has to do with a shape that is created around objects. This is distracting and registers as error or artifacts. Where as when the entire screen is dark-gray due to full panel backlight bleeding (which is common on all IPS panels)—that is not blooming. Two separate things. Use google if you're unclear of the definition of what blooming is.

What matters to me is that IPS bleed does not distract my brain during viewing, nor register as an error/artifact. Blooming does, especially because I watch media with closed captions, and use macOS in dark mode. Telling me they are the same thing isn't just wrong, it isn't helpful.

And watching videos falls under “common” usage really.

Yes, but there's a difference between, "I watch YouTube videos" and "I'm buying this $2k MacBook Pro with the express purpose of watching cinema on a nightly basis, and/or editing HDR videos." So you can find people who are happy with the Air display, and you will find people who find it necessary to buy the best screen possible because it is their main cinema viewer. Both use cases, or values, are valid.

 

[Zest28]

Not this argument again. Blooming has to do with a shape that is created around objects. This is distracting and registers as error or artifacts. Where as when the entire screen is dark-gray due to full panel backlight bleeding (which is common on all IPS panels)—that is not blooming. Two separate things. Use google if you're unclear of the definition of what blooming is.

What matters to me is that IPS bleed does not distract my brain during viewing, nor register as an error/artifact. Blooming does, especially because I watch media with closed captions, and use macOS in dark mode. Telling me they are the same thing isn't just wrong, it isn't helpful.

Yes, but there's a difference between, "I watch YouTube videos" and "I'm buying this $2k MacBook Pro with the express purpose of watching cinema on a nightly basis, and/or editing HDR videos." So you can find people who are happy with the Air display, and you will find people who find it necessary to buy the best screen possible because it is their main cinema viewer. Both use cases, or values, are valid.

Please, I own the 16” M1 Max MBP and M2 MBA. With the M2 MBA, the entire screen is blooming.

The entire screen has a “grey glow” on the M2 MBA while the 16” MBP has blacks that are so good, you cannot even see the notch if there is a black bar.

Besides, the 14” M1 Pro MBP goes for $1400 these days with more RAM and bigger + faster SSD.

 

[kp98077]

• 15-inch Air: $1299, 1.3-inches bigger display
• 14-inch MBP: $2000, 1.3-inches smaller display

Pre-empting the counter argument: I understand the MBP can be found on sale, but so can the Air.

If you're not watching movies all day, the screen difference is minimal to common users. Personally, I'm avoiding MBP displays because blooming is an issue for me. Catch me buying the MBP when Apple brings dual-stacked OLED in 2025-2027.

this is a horrible comparison, you are comparing a base model air (8gb!!!) to a MBP with 16gb!

 

[toobravetosave]

to each their own but to have a vocal problem with blooming (an overstated non issue to begin with) while somehow tolerating the dull bleed of lcd blacks is pretty odd

 

[CloudsNeverDie]

Let's distinguish three things here:

• Blooming - faint illumination around anything bright. There is none on LCDs. Blooming is present on Apple's MiniLED displays, but minimal on the MBP MiniLEDs due to the very large number of dimming zones.
• Backlight bleed, which means light leaking around the edges or corners of the display, typically visible only on black areas of the screen. This is common on many LCD displays due to layer alignment and the edge-lit nature of LCD backlights. There is no backlight bleed on MiniLED displays because the dimming zones can turn off completely.
• Limited contrast ratio, which is what produces the slight gray across the entire display. Apple's LCDs typically have a contrast ratio of ~1500:1, which is very good, but black is never true black but rather dark grey. MiniLEDs have infinite contrast ratios and can produce true blacks.

Personally I have no problem with blooming and barely notice it (probably because I wear contacts which produce their own bloom effect), while I don't like backlight bleed because I tend to use dark themes. Limited contrast ratio only bothers me when watching TV and movies.

 

[profH]

I’m in the return period but thinking of keeping it. I’m not running out of memory / sluggishness like I did often on my 16gb ram lg gram, just on too many Chrome tabs, the extra 8gb and better memory management seems to be helping. And Preview is much better and lightweight than Acrobat. MacOS is easily a better experience also.

It’s so much nicer experience on the couch than the 16, and that’s where I use it most of the time or on a single external. I can drop it on a pillow without worrying about blocking a fan, and generally the bottom is not hot or warm with primary usage of Netfliix, Preview, Chrome.

I can also kick up the resolution to 3 or 4k with switchResX and betterDummy for more than two side to side apps, I could not do this with the Intel Iris on the Gram.

Would like eventually an m3 if it supports two externals or a thinner version of the 16, but for now this hits the sweet spot. I only have the need for two 27” 4k screens for maybe 10% of the time, and got a DisplayLink adapter for those times. Works good enough for what I need that for, particularly if just pdfs on the extra screen. I could see myself trading this in for the m3 or riding with this the next 2-3 years.

The midnight color is great. Looks blacked out at night, and a deep blue color during the day. Don’t mind the smudges much, and they show more on the back, which is the part of the computer I look at the least. After years of silver and space gray, it’s a cool change. Reminds me of the coveted black MacBook I never got to use.

I'm a similar boat; picked up a 15in 1TB/16GB and I'm -really- impressed; this is truly the one I was waiting for (to triple as a travel machine and work-home-from-studio-display-machine and personal machine, while complementing my number crunching iMac Pro at work). I really don't miss ProMotion at all the way I do on an iPad where smooth scrolling is so central to the experience.

Unfortunately, I picked up so many additional machines in the time it took Apple to produce this beauty that I'm not sure I can justify keeping it -- specifically, an M1 Air hobbled with insufficient RAM to work well docked with a Studio display, and a 16" M1 Max as a number crunching monster/desktop replacement for home. Much as I'm impressed by the M1 Max, the use case for its gorgeous display and chassis (vs. just having a Studio) is surprisingly limited -- its too heavy to want to carry around regularly on foot or to comfortably use in an actual lap (although the cooling is amazing). It's hard to see the case for the Max vs. a studio + Air unless you're the sort of person who is always working at a desk, but a different desk each day (so that not all desks will be equipped with a great monitor and peripherals), that you are generally driving to.

 

[6749974]

Please, I own the 16” M1 Max MBP and M2 MBA. With the M2 MBA, the entire screen is blooming.

The entire screen has a “grey glow” on the M2 MBA while the 16” MBP has blacks that are so good, you cannot even see the notch if there is a black bar.

Besides, the 14” M1 Pro MBP goes for $1400 these days with more RAM and bigger + faster SSD.

I've gotten into arguments with people like you on this very topic and they go nowhere because you won't ever concede the definition of the term. You have to look up the term blooming. There's a technical and conceptual difference. I'll give you an analogy in the form of a multiple-choice question:

Would you rather

A. Your entire home be painted a slight off-white?​

​

B. Your entire home be painted pure white but there's random splotches of distracting off-white color everywhere, to the point where it looks like stains, and people can't help but notice and be distracted by those stains, while walking around?​

Your argument is, "stains on your wall are the same thing as having your entire wall be off-white." No, they are not the same thing. One is embarrassing and makes you look like a slob. The other is something your brain doesn't register as an error or a sloppy mess.

I have an M1 Pro 16-inch MBP and 12.9-inch iPad Pro with mini LED in my possession, and years of experience with both, which is why for my personal laptop I chose the MacBook Air. I don't like blooming (or stains on my wall).

For the record, the M2 Air's display has better contrast at 1400:1 compared to most IPS displays which tend to advertise 1000:1 but measure closer to 800:1. The Apple Studio Display is about 1100:1—and no one complains about contrast—and yet the M2 MacBook Air even beats that.

 

[6749974]

this is a horrible comparison, you are comparing a base model air (8gb!!!) to a MBP with 16gb!

You misunderstand completely; I'm not making the case that one is better than the other—I was answering the question why anyone would choose to purchase a 15-inch Air when the 14-inch MBP exists. And the answer is, "Plenty of people don't need the extra headroom performance of the MBP, are happy to get an even bigger display than the 14-inch, and save money while doing all that (not to mention thinness, weight per screen size, etc)."

I think it's incorrect to act like people buying the 15-inch Air are irrational buyers.

 

[kp98077]

You misunderstand completely; I'm not making the case that one is better than the other—I was answering the question why anyone would choose to purchase a 15-inch Air when the 14-inch MBP exists. And the answer is, "Plenty of people don't need the extra headroom performance of the MBP, are happy to get an even bigger display than the 14-inch, and save money while doing all that (not to mention thinness, weight per screen size, etc)."

I think it's incorrect to act like people buying the 15-inch Air are irrational buyers.

Lol - I’m certainly not acting like that, and I indeed uderstood; your thoughts are narrow minded, and irrational towards the group, we all have our views and opinion so please respect that! Your arguments are poorly based, and not based on fact or merit.

 

[6749974]

Lol - I’m certainly not acting those are irrational one way or another.
And you poorly articulated your “argument”

I didn’t accuse you of being irrational. My argument countered another, made by someone else. I wasn’t addressing you.

Please take better time to understand what you’re reading, before replying with hostility.

 

[6749974]

to each their own but to have a vocal problem with blooming (an overstated non issue to begin with) while somehow tolerating the dull bleed of lcd blacks is pretty odd

Not odd at all. Every brain is different.

Some brains don't take issue with discolorations and stains on their wall—and so that person won't lift a finger to clean it up—while their roommate will be annoyed by the incongruence a stain makes, and so will clean that wall right away, if not give it a fresh paint.

Me: If I see artifacts, error and incongruence in my media—I can't ignore it. When I see blooming on closed captions, or halo artifacts and LED incorrectly affecting the brightness of a person's face (eg. Severance, a night shot of Adam Scott under a cabin porch light, his face filled with blooming halo from the LED), I'm going to notice, and it's going to take me out of the moment, so much so that I recall that very scene as an example.

This phenomenon reminds of the iPad mini jelly effect—some people don't notice, yet it's all I can see when scrolling, so I refuse to buy it—call me odd all you want. Some brains are more sensitive and aware, than others, to visual phenomenon. So to me, I'll pick IPS edge-lit displays because there is no incongruence to distract me from what I'm viewing.

What I find odd is that people think this is ok, and then call me odd for being distracted by it. I am certain your eyes and brain adjust to contrast, in low light, different from mine which is why I see blooming that way, and I'm guessing you don't in the same way.

 

[CloudsNeverDie]

What I find odd is that people think this is ok

I fully support all you are saying, the extent to which these things bother people is entirely subjective and personal. I will just point out though that the MBP MiniLED has a *lot* more dimming zones than the iPad in the picture you linked, so the blooming is confined to a much smaller area and is a lot less noticeable. (edit: as it turns out, the iPad Pro actually has more dimming zones, but the MBP MiniLED seems to have a better dimming algorithm which produces less blooming - see below)

Personally I’d take MiniLED over IPS, and I’m hoping they eventually bring it to the (or an) Air. OLED, while having no blooming, just doesn’t reach the same brightness the MiniLED displays can, and then there’s the burn-in issue too.

 

[Surfsalot]

to each their own but to have a vocal problem with blooming (an overstated non issue to begin with) while somehow tolerating the dull bleed of lcd blacks is pretty odd

this

 

[6749974]

I will just point out though that the MBP MiniLED has a *lot* more dimming zones than the iPad in the picture you linked, so the blooming is confined to a much smaller area and is a lot less noticeable.

I think it's the other way around:

• 14-inch MacBook Pro has 8,040 miniLEDs spread across 2,010 local dimming zones,
• 12.9-inch iPad Pro has 10,384 miniLEDs spread across 2,596 local dimming zones

So it's the iPad Pro that has more miniLEDs, more dimming zones, and on a smaller display.

To further add to the complexity of this issue, this year Sony's X95L TV has 480 dimming zones, and yet is 3x better at mitigating blooming and halo issues inside the moving image than two other competing TVs with 1008 dimming zones and 1344 dimming zones. Some manufacturers like Apple have to dim zones way, way too much, to avoid even more blooming or artifacts in the image, so the shadow-details in the image gets very dark and hard to make out (you may have noticed), which is another reason I'm not happy watching media on Apple's miniLED displays. But Sony has better diffusion technology (including digital image algorithms)—it's not just about the number of LEDs or dimming zones that produce the final outcome—so Sony is able to get more brightness and shadow details in the image than TVs with even more dimming zones.

Perhaps Apple's upcoming miniLED technology will be along those lines—but currently Apple's isn't that great, and I'm not the only one complaining (it's usually media professionals like myself that are seeing it).

I fully support all you are saying, the extent to which these things bother people is entirely subjective and personal.

I appreciate your understanding. I'm not here to tell people what to like, mostly that blooming and IPS blacks are two entirely different things—which is why the former annoys one crowd, and the later annoys another. And I just happen to be distracted by blooming but totally valid if other's aren't.

Anyway, I'll leave everyone to their respective preferred displays. Let's all meet up in 10 years when everything is OLED.

 

[6749974]

OLED, while having no blooming, just doesn’t reach the same brightness the MiniLED displays can, and then there’s the burn-in issue too.

I forgot to mention the good news:

• Apple has been working with manufacturers on double-stacked OLED. They stack two layers of OLED pixels together, which doubles brightness, while increasing the resilience to burn in by up to 4x. Coming to iPads next year.
• Also, the biggest problem with OLED is that the blue diode (not red or green diode) requires 3x the voltage because it's so inefficient—and that's why burn it happens so often—too much voltage burns in the organic matter. Well there's a new patent for a blue diode that is 3x more efficient, and it will be licensed to all OLED manufacturers in year 2024.

Combine both innovations, and you're going to see the perfect OLED in laptops and tablets. The new problem will be price, but of course that will come down in time.