Eh, this machine will be more than up to the task of easily handling the average user's needs. My 2012 Air with 4GB RAM still flies, and I do heavy design and web work. This machine, with its 8GB RAM and probably much faster SSD would be overall faster, even if considered "underpowered" by geeks and power users.
The thing is, I am both a geek and a power user… And have been so for many many years. I had to do very professional work on machines that were much slower than this only a few years ago.
In my opinion there is no such thing as a slow Mac anymore.
Don't forget the SSD was not standard on the original Air. The 64GB SSD was a $999 option, for a $1799 computer.
Personally I expect performance to be adequate. 8GB RAM was a smart move on these, and I still feel OS X's GPU centric model will prove to be an advantage over running Windows on the same hardware.
Exactly...I thought the SSD upgrade was closer to $1200, pushing that configuration to close to $3,200.
As noted above, the MBA was Jobs' baby. This new MB ships with 8GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD standard. That is 4X the RAM and 4X the SSD storage of the original 2008 MBA (with a Retina screen!) at almost a third of the price. This is clearly in line with Jobs' prior product development strategy.
And he knew this, of course, and he chose to ignore it to make his troll points for the day.
I thought we were doing so well in this thread by ignoring him, until you and dugbug quoted him.
Sorry to give you are hard time. I really thought you had the winning post on the importance of weight and thinness re the MacBook.
So this whole review is based on geek bench scores on a lenovo yoga 3. The reviewer even says that the macbook has not been released yet but bases his review on a competitors notebook running windows 8.
Can we base reviews on shipping products? By the way anyone expecting to run photoshop or pro software on this kind of machine is always going to be disappointed, you run pro software on a pro machine like the Macbook Pro. Note books are meant to be small and light and not meant to do heavy lifting. You can't rate battery time either when looking at a windows notebook for your reference because apple does a lot of things with the os to help battery life. Just like they do with iOS. Also to add like many have said here Geekbench does not test the gpu just the cpu, Apple is doing a lot with open cl these days and can off load a lot of tasks to the gpu. That is one reason why final cut pro x can render so fast. Because of open cl. Why don't we wait and test the real machine.
The performance is just one of several ways in which this machine is compromised. Skylake is expected to bring a 5% performance increase, and that isnt nearly enough to give the MacBook an acceptable performance at below 5 watt.
Can you explain why this machine isn't possibly acceptable to millions of people that will surely buy it?
I would be upgrading from a 13" mid-2012 MBP with 4GB RAM and a spinning disk. Photoshop and Xcode don't exactly blaze on the old MPB, but the performance is serviceable. I suspect the Core M's lower clock speed to be more than offset by the doubled RAM and the high speed flash storage. I'll also get a couple of hours additional battery life in a package that's less than half the weight (4.5lb vs. 2lb).
I'm still tempted to get the new 13" rMBP, but I'll wait until the MacBook is out to compare the two side by side.
I don't think I want to spend $1200 for a Atom based Laptop, even if it's an Apple one
This is a big step backwards, Apple should have replaced the Air line with this and priced it at $800
Where are these fuckwad comments coming from? :no: Try reading up on Core M before making stupid comments about its performance per watt compared to Atom.
If a lot of people buy the MacBook, making the sacrifice of speed for portability, then that will give Apple confidence that they are but one or two generations away from using their A-series chips in these 'air' style laptops.
This is the first break to test the waters. For what it's worth, I think there is ample room for such a beast in Apple's product matrix. Might be a year or two down the road, but the convergence is titillating.
There'd be new sacrifices that we don't know right now but also new features and bonuses such as being able to run iOS Apps.
I wouldn't be surprised if the reemergence of the MacBook is so that the MacBook Air can follow the physical look and size of the MacBook but be based on Apple A-series.
Like the Apple Watch, this shows the new trend of Apple post-Jobs that is more willing to put its 'No' products in front of the public as well as its 'Yes' products. It's a similar strategy to Google, and certainly helps to keep the street talking, if not exactly buzzing, in the absence of the mega hits to which Apple has become accustomed. The danger, of course, is implosion Google Glass-style.
It'll be interesting to see the reviews.
How is this a "No" product? It is perfect for huge segment of the population. By you reasoning, the MacBook Air and iPad were also "No" products released under Jobs.
I can't wait for the new 15" MacBook Pros. Any guesses on the dedicated GPU Apple might use for the upcoming 15" MBP updates?
I don't think they have an option to go with AMD as it looks like AMD just does integrated chips at that level so if they bother including a dedicated GPU at all, I'd expect the NVidia 950M, which hasn't improved much over the 850M but is about double the 750M in the current Macbook Pro. However, I reckon dedicated GPUs are no more for Apple's laptops. The Iris Pro 7200 in Skylake should be about 80% faster than the 5200 and with 16GB of RAM minimum, they can allow it to use up to 4GB of video memory. If Intel has a dynamic core design with Skylake that lets the CPU work as an SMT processor, dedicated GPUs are out because for computation it's just not worth it and it means they don't have to do dynamic GPU switching.
The biggest problem that everyone seems to ignore when it comes to power usage and performance is HOW LONG the CoreM in the new MacBook is able to run at full throttle.
It is able to run at speeds close to the performance of of the CPU in the 14/15 MacBook Air, but not for very long at a time. After a few minutes at full speed, the fanless CPU gets too hot, and needs to throttle down either the CPU or the GPU or most likely: Both. That leads to constant slowdowns for the user, and a computer that is never able to perform at full speed for any extended period of time, even when the battery isn't a problem and it's hooked up to an outlet.
The Macbook is an entry-level laptop so it's not something that performance-conscious users would buy, likewise with the Air. There's a test of a slightly older Core M chip here, which shows some throttling going on:
Both CPU and GPU throttled to about half their peak performance with about 30 minutes heavy load and the laptop got hot enough to be uncomfortable on a lap. It was tested going up to 6 Watts, having a base power draw of 4.5 Watts. Apple says the Macbook is 5 Watts so might manage a bit better. After about 10 minutes heavy load, it dropped to about 70-80%.
Even at half performance, that's 2008/2009 Macbook Pro level, which people still use ok.
It won't show 'constant slowdowns' running Office or web browsing or streaming video. Gaming and heavy processing will likely slow it down but like I say, if you know you're a gamer or into heavy processing, why would you buy the entry-level laptop? That's the main thing that differentiates the high-end laptops.
One benefit with the processor limit is that no matter how hard you try to push the Macbook, it couldn't drain the battery quicker than about 8 hours. If you ran the Macbook Air at full speed, the battery would drain in just over 2 hours. You could be out somewhere and not realize that something was hogging the CPU and the machine runs out of power halfway through the day. This isn't possible to do with the Macbook and I think people will appreciate that benefit.
This move to fanless is the last time there will be a move to a tighter thermal design so from this point onwards, performance will keep improving and it promotes some growth in their laptop line.
So this whole review is based on geek bench scores on a lenovo yoga 3. The reviewer even says that the macbook has not been released yet but bases his review on a competitors notebook running windows 8.
Can we base reviews on shipping products?
Agreed.
Even then, if we are to look at a device on the market to draw a vague comparison, the Lenovo is not the device to use for said comparison. Like I said in my earlier post, the ASUS T300 Chi (5Y71), a fanless tablet based on Intel's Core M reference design, scores much higher in Geekbench, 2944 single-core and 5680 multi-core (source). Still, Geekbench doesn't tell us much about overall + GPU performance. If anyone is interested in a little bit of speculation, there are full reviews of the 5Y71 in the T300 Chi online.
Besides, it is a deal breaker with no Thunderbolt and Ethernet ports, and a single USB port. Because hubs and adapters are calling for trouble, besides being awkward and inconvenient.
its an ultra-portable. if you can't work w/ a dock, then it sounds like you need something other than an ultra-portable.
I believe Apple have made a very big mistake not putting that retina into the Macbook Air lineup and put a %u2018standard%u2019 display into this new Macbook to improve its performance and battery life.
I have a fully specced out 13%u201D mid-2013 Macbook and they have not given me enough of a reason to move to the new Macbook Air.
The new Macbook is too underpowered, and I won%u2019t ever get a Macbook Pro as it runs too hot for my lap.
i dont believe they're supposed to give you any reason to upgrade a two-year old machine. i sure dont...what i love about macs are how many years of service i routinely get out of them. my current primary desktop is a mid-2011 iMac, w/ SSD, 20gb ram, 2gb vram -- the thing flies and i love working on it. my previous MBP was a 2008, which i upgraded only last summer.
You have to realize that speed comparisons happen each year, even though the low end processors of today beat high end processors of two years ago. 4 years ago I was running Lightroom and Photoshop quite happily on a processor slower than this Core M. It's certainly fast enough for the average user'so needs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pmz
The thing is, I am both a geek and a power user… And have been so for many many years. I had to do very professional work on machines that were much slower than this only a few years ago.
In my opinion there is no such thing as a slow Mac anymore.
Comparing a new notebook to the experience you recall from a couple years ago using an older notebook for high end professional work fails to take into account that current professional applications are much more demanding than they were a few years ago.
The biggest disadvantage of doing professional work, such as graphic design, on a notebook, is the small size of the SSD. I have a 15" rMBP with 750 GB SSD and I still carry around a 1 TB WD Passport that is almost completely full with large .psd images of our products and zipped packaged projects going back a few years. I realize that is not typical usage but for me it is since I am always asked to pull pieces and parts of older designs and update with them new specs or make different sizes such as turn a magazine ad into a trade show graphic or take clips from one movie and edit it into a new movie.
All laptop/notebooks are a compromise for high end graphic design. It just depends on how much compromise you are willing to accept.
My MBP is not my primary machine, just for use when traveling.
Comments
The thing is, I am both a geek and a power user… And have been so for many many years. I had to do very professional work on machines that were much slower than this only a few years ago.
In my opinion there is no such thing as a slow Mac anymore.
Exactly...I thought the SSD upgrade was closer to $1200, pushing that configuration to close to $3,200.
And he knew this, of course, and he chose to ignore it to make his troll points for the day.
I thought we were doing so well in this thread by ignoring him, until you and dugbug quoted him.
Sorry to give you are hard time. I really thought you had the winning post on the importance of weight and thinness re the MacBook.
So this whole review is based on geek bench scores on a lenovo yoga 3. The reviewer even says that the macbook has not been released yet but bases his review on a competitors notebook running windows 8.
Can we base reviews on shipping products? By the way anyone expecting to run photoshop or pro software on this kind of machine is always going to be disappointed, you run pro software on a pro machine like the Macbook Pro. Note books are meant to be small and light and not meant to do heavy lifting. You can't rate battery time either when looking at a windows notebook for your reference because apple does a lot of things with the os to help battery life. Just like they do with iOS. Also to add like many have said here Geekbench does not test the gpu just the cpu, Apple is doing a lot with open cl these days and can off load a lot of tasks to the gpu. That is one reason why final cut pro x can render so fast. Because of open cl. Why don't we wait and test the real machine.
Maybe in some alternate reality where Microsoft's science fair projects are somehow relevant (or "successful.")
Maybe he meant "successful" in comparison to the somewhat less successful Surface RT?
Core M .. aka Atom
I don't think I want to spend $1200 for a Atom based Laptop, even if it's an Apple one
This is a big step backwards, Apple should have replaced the Air line with this and priced it at $800
Can you explain why this machine isn't possibly acceptable to millions of people that will surely buy it?
I'm still tempted to get the new 13" rMBP, but I'll wait until the MacBook is out to compare the two side by side.
Where are these fuckwad comments coming from? :no: Try reading up on Core M before making stupid comments about its performance per watt compared to Atom.
I wouldn't be surprised if the reemergence of the MacBook is so that the MacBook Air can follow the physical look and size of the MacBook but be based on Apple A-series.
How is this a "No" product? It is perfect for huge segment of the population. By you reasoning, the MacBook Air and iPad were also "No" products released under Jobs.
And he knew this, of course, and he chose to ignore it to make his troll points for the day.
I thought we were doing so well in this thread by ignoring him, until you and dugbug quoted him.
Sorry to give you are hard time. I really thought you had the winning post on the importance of weight and thinness re the MacBook.
Point taken...and to think I took him off my block list just to do that.
For sure and I'll add to that, for those people that want / need a bigger than 9.7" screen.
One thing they should do is turn the power supply into a usb hub.
I don't think they have an option to go with AMD as it looks like AMD just does integrated chips at that level so if they bother including a dedicated GPU at all, I'd expect the NVidia 950M, which hasn't improved much over the 850M but is about double the 750M in the current Macbook Pro. However, I reckon dedicated GPUs are no more for Apple's laptops. The Iris Pro 7200 in Skylake should be about 80% faster than the 5200 and with 16GB of RAM minimum, they can allow it to use up to 4GB of video memory. If Intel has a dynamic core design with Skylake that lets the CPU work as an SMT processor, dedicated GPUs are out because for computation it's just not worth it and it means they don't have to do dynamic GPU switching.
The Macbook is an entry-level laptop so it's not something that performance-conscious users would buy, likewise with the Air. There's a test of a slightly older Core M chip here, which shows some throttling going on:
http://www.ultrabookreview.com/5868-asus-zenbook-ux305-review/
Both CPU and GPU throttled to about half their peak performance with about 30 minutes heavy load and the laptop got hot enough to be uncomfortable on a lap. It was tested going up to 6 Watts, having a base power draw of 4.5 Watts. Apple says the Macbook is 5 Watts so might manage a bit better. After about 10 minutes heavy load, it dropped to about 70-80%.
Even at half performance, that's 2008/2009 Macbook Pro level, which people still use ok.
It won't show 'constant slowdowns' running Office or web browsing or streaming video. Gaming and heavy processing will likely slow it down but like I say, if you know you're a gamer or into heavy processing, why would you buy the entry-level laptop? That's the main thing that differentiates the high-end laptops.
One benefit with the processor limit is that no matter how hard you try to push the Macbook, it couldn't drain the battery quicker than about 8 hours. If you ran the Macbook Air at full speed, the battery would drain in just over 2 hours. You could be out somewhere and not realize that something was hogging the CPU and the machine runs out of power halfway through the day. This isn't possible to do with the Macbook and I think people will appreciate that benefit.
This move to fanless is the last time there will be a move to a tighter thermal design so from this point onwards, performance will keep improving and it promotes some growth in their laptop line.
So this whole review is based on geek bench scores on a lenovo yoga 3. The reviewer even says that the macbook has not been released yet but bases his review on a competitors notebook running windows 8.
Can we base reviews on shipping products?
Agreed.
Even then, if we are to look at a device on the market to draw a vague comparison, the Lenovo is not the device to use for said comparison. Like I said in my earlier post, the ASUS T300 Chi (5Y71), a fanless tablet based on Intel's Core M reference design, scores much higher in Geekbench, 2944 single-core and 5680 multi-core (source). Still, Geekbench doesn't tell us much about overall + GPU performance. If anyone is interested in a little bit of speculation, there are full reviews of the 5Y71 in the T300 Chi online.
Besides, it is a deal breaker with no Thunderbolt and Ethernet ports, and a single USB port. Because hubs and adapters are calling for trouble, besides being awkward and inconvenient.
its an ultra-portable. if you can't work w/ a dock, then it sounds like you need something other than an ultra-portable.
I believe Apple have made a very big mistake not putting that retina into the Macbook Air lineup and put a %u2018standard%u2019 display into this new Macbook to improve its performance and battery life.
I have a fully specced out 13%u201D mid-2013 Macbook and they have not given me enough of a reason to move to the new Macbook Air.
The new Macbook is too underpowered, and I won%u2019t ever get a Macbook Pro as it runs too hot for my lap.
i dont believe they're supposed to give you any reason to upgrade a two-year old machine. i sure dont...what i love about macs are how many years of service i routinely get out of them. my current primary desktop is a mid-2011 iMac, w/ SSD, 20gb ram, 2gb vram -- the thing flies and i love working on it. my previous MBP was a 2008, which i upgraded only last summer.
You have to realize that speed comparisons happen each year, even though the low end processors of today beat high end processors of two years ago. 4 years ago I was running Lightroom and Photoshop quite happily on a processor slower than this Core M. It's certainly fast enough for the average user'so needs.
The thing is, I am both a geek and a power user… And have been so for many many years. I had to do very professional work on machines that were much slower than this only a few years ago.
In my opinion there is no such thing as a slow Mac anymore.
Comparing a new notebook to the experience you recall from a couple years ago using an older notebook for high end professional work fails to take into account that current professional applications are much more demanding than they were a few years ago.
The biggest disadvantage of doing professional work, such as graphic design, on a notebook, is the small size of the SSD. I have a 15" rMBP with 750 GB SSD and I still carry around a 1 TB WD Passport that is almost completely full with large .psd images of our products and zipped packaged projects going back a few years. I realize that is not typical usage but for me it is since I am always asked to pull pieces and parts of older designs and update with them new specs or make different sizes such as turn a magazine ad into a trade show graphic or take clips from one movie and edit it into a new movie.
All laptop/notebooks are a compromise for high end graphic design. It just depends on how much compromise you are willing to accept.
My MBP is not my primary machine, just for use when traveling.