Hell, I think that's pretty good. I have a mid-2011 MBA with an i5 in it, and it's powerful enough. I have an iMac on the desktop at home for the big stuff. My MBA is powerful enough to record into Logic, which is probably the heaviest lifting I make it do.
I wouldn't use my MBA as my only computer, but as a "satellite" to an iMac, it's great. I expect the new Macbook would be great in the same application.
It would be if it had ports to communicate with the analog world. This makes me wonder how quickly support hardware will adapt to USB-C.
I don't see a lot of workloads that fall between this and the 15" mbp.
There is a whole world of performance potential between a Core M based device and a MBP.
Typically if you can leverage all available power, there's a pretty significant gap there.
I don't know about that, I'm sitting here with a new 13" MBP that is doing fairly well as a middle of the road machine performance wise. do I wish that it was faster? Sometimes but it is performing really well and the fast SSD makes for a huge upgrade over conventional machines.
I see sluggishness due to ram and disk access far more than cpu bound problems when it comes to lighter tasks.
If it wasn't for my old MBP breaking down I would have waited for SkyLake. DDR4 should vastly improve the bandwidth issue to RAM, which is one of the biggest problems "APU" type designs have.
There is a whole world of performance potential between a Core M based device and a MBP.
Sure performance. I was referring to realized performance on the user end. The Core Ms are clearly aimed at lighter tasks. My words drifted a little off topic there, but I originally said that it needs to be judged on how well it runs the currently shipping versions within a certain class of software. How it compares to something from a few years ago that shipped with different software isn't as important. It's likely to be more demanding today. I just don't think most of that is cpu bound. OSX lag is often Apple's fault. I see some complaints about it on the rmbps, yet they don't vary much across gpu models, suggesting it's more an IO bottleneck (bad fencing practices or something of that sort).
Quote:
I don't know about that, I'm sitting here with a new 13" MBP that is doing fairly well as a middle of the road machine performance wise. do I wish that it was faster? Sometimes but it is performing really well and the fast SSD makes for a huge upgrade over conventional machines.
It does. Like I said even if you're short on memory, it lessens the performance hit. I've used a 512GB SSD drive as boot for a while.
Quote:
If it wasn't for my old MBP breaking down I would have waited for SkyLake. DDR4 should vastly improve the bandwidth issue to RAM, which is one of the biggest problems "APU" type designs have.
It still might not improve it right away. Typically they will try to keep gpu clock rates locked to some multiple of memory clock if at all possible, but obviously the way it is now is problematic for small reads. I suspect that when DDR4 is actually in use, you'll start to see newer designs leverage that bandwidth. It may not happen right at skylake.
Right before this new Macbook came out, I picked up an i7 MBA refurbished.
Single Core/2894. Multi Core 5615.
Funny. I did too.
I wanted to buy the new Macbook but a couple of things swayed me to the 13" Factory Refurbished MBA. I picked up the i7, 8GB, 512 SSD.
My mind was made up when I would have had to get a bunch of USB-c adapters to use the Macbook with anything.
It was also nice the MBA had 3 hours more battery life (nearly 5 according CNET)
My wants:
Important:
USB ports
512SSD
SD Card Reader
Like but not critical:
Retina Display
MagSafe adapter
Thunderbolt - I have Ethernet gigabit adapter.
Deal breakers:
Carrying around adapters to get what I need.
Ultimately the i7, longer battery life won out. Both have Wireless AC and it's fantastic, but when you are moving Gigs of pictures Ethernet still is king by a long way. The Retina screen is great, but I don't consider it critical especially after about 5 minutes, I don't even notice it.
I would love to have the new MacBook but the Air is still king for me. I may have done just as well with the MacBook Pro with similar specifications (and less battery life) and got a Retina display, but I didn't think about it.
This is true.... it will be an ideal laptop for many people. So many people have MacBook Airs and Pros that they barely squeeze the potential out of. The new MacBook would be perfectly suited to them. Might not be greater performance, but Apple has achieved greater engineering, and that moves technology forward. We should be grateful.
That's true of almost all computers and their users.
I know, just like what started the thread, processor speed has made very little difference on my upgrades of my PC's throughout the years. I always convinced myself the processor numbers would make a much bigger speed difference but it didn't. It's pretty much true on my Macs too.
The single biggest speed increase is by far the SSD. It made my 2010 Mac like new. At this point computer processor upgrades make no difference with the exception of battery life. There are times that it helps me process batch pictures a little faster in Aperture, but still, nothing, compared to the SSD.
For me it's like going to a lap dancing club, why wind yourself up for no return... It looks it wonderful, has a retina display but I read it is a lot slower than an Air so I'm not sure what the a retina display will have to push if the CPU's can't do any thing substantial.
I love my Apple kit and normally buy everything and have given my 11 inch air to my son but despite this being my favourite device I find myself deciding to bypass this. I feel the same about the Apple Watch, the one I like is $1,000 plus and for me the version I configured is a default classic watch look and strap and I find myself feeling unable to support that price. My new iMac fully specec 27 inch retina is not performing to well either, it's slow, my early 2013 MacBook Pro is so much quicker.
Add the introduced niggles on my iPhone 6 Plus and I'm feeling a little bit jaded by Apple products. It's not bad enough to migrate back to Microsoft but it is enough to not buy any Apple products for awhile. I was up for both theApple Watch and the Macbook but I'll be giving both a miss.
Comments
It would be if it had ports to communicate with the analog world. This makes me wonder how quickly support hardware will adapt to USB-C.
If it wasn't for my old MBP breaking down I would have waited for SkyLake. DDR4 should vastly improve the bandwidth issue to RAM, which is one of the biggest problems "APU" type designs have.
There is a whole world of performance potential between a Core M based device and a MBP.
Sure performance. I was referring to realized performance on the user end. The Core Ms are clearly aimed at lighter tasks. My words drifted a little off topic there, but I originally said that it needs to be judged on how well it runs the currently shipping versions within a certain class of software. How it compares to something from a few years ago that shipped with different software isn't as important. It's likely to be more demanding today. I just don't think most of that is cpu bound. OSX lag is often Apple's fault. I see some complaints about it on the rmbps, yet they don't vary much across gpu models, suggesting it's more an IO bottleneck (bad fencing practices or something of that sort).
I don't know about that, I'm sitting here with a new 13" MBP that is doing fairly well as a middle of the road machine performance wise. do I wish that it was faster? Sometimes but it is performing really well and the fast SSD makes for a huge upgrade over conventional machines.
It does. Like I said even if you're short on memory, it lessens the performance hit. I've used a 512GB SSD drive as boot for a while.
Quote:
If it wasn't for my old MBP breaking down I would have waited for SkyLake. DDR4 should vastly improve the bandwidth issue to RAM, which is one of the biggest problems "APU" type designs have.
It still might not improve it right away. Typically they will try to keep gpu clock rates locked to some multiple of memory clock if at all possible, but obviously the way it is now is problematic for small reads. I suspect that when DDR4 is actually in use, you'll start to see newer designs leverage that bandwidth. It may not happen right at skylake.
Right before this new Macbook came out, I picked up an i7 MBA refurbished.
Single Core/2894. Multi Core 5615.
Funny. I did too.
I wanted to buy the new Macbook but a couple of things swayed me to the 13" Factory Refurbished MBA. I picked up the i7, 8GB, 512 SSD.
My mind was made up when I would have had to get a bunch of USB-c adapters to use the Macbook with anything.
It was also nice the MBA had 3 hours more battery life (nearly 5 according CNET)
My wants:
Important:
USB ports
512SSD
SD Card Reader
Like but not critical:
Retina Display
MagSafe adapter
Thunderbolt - I have Ethernet gigabit adapter.
Deal breakers:
Carrying around adapters to get what I need.
Ultimately the i7, longer battery life won out. Both have Wireless AC and it's fantastic, but when you are moving Gigs of pictures Ethernet still is king by a long way. The Retina screen is great, but I don't consider it critical especially after about 5 minutes, I don't even notice it.
I would love to have the new MacBook but the Air is still king for me. I may have done just as well with the MacBook Pro with similar specifications (and less battery life) and got a Retina display, but I didn't think about it.
This is true.... it will be an ideal laptop for many people. So many people have MacBook Airs and Pros that they barely squeeze the potential out of. The new MacBook would be perfectly suited to them. Might not be greater performance, but Apple has achieved greater engineering, and that moves technology forward. We should be grateful.
That's true of almost all computers and their users.
I know, just like what started the thread, processor speed has made very little difference on my upgrades of my PC's throughout the years. I always convinced myself the processor numbers would make a much bigger speed difference but it didn't. It's pretty much true on my Macs too.
The single biggest speed increase is by far the SSD. It made my 2010 Mac like new. At this point computer processor upgrades make no difference with the exception of battery life. There are times that it helps me process batch pictures a little faster in Aperture, but still, nothing, compared to the SSD.
I love my Apple kit and normally buy everything and have given my 11 inch air to my son but despite this being my favourite device I find myself deciding to bypass this. I feel the same about the Apple Watch, the one I like is $1,000 plus and for me the version I configured is a default classic watch look and strap and I find myself feeling unable to support that price. My new iMac fully specec 27 inch retina is not performing to well either, it's slow, my early 2013 MacBook Pro is so much quicker.
Add the introduced niggles on my iPhone 6 Plus and I'm feeling a little bit jaded by Apple products. It's not bad enough to migrate back to Microsoft but it is enough to not buy any Apple products for awhile. I was up for both theApple Watch and the Macbook but I'll be giving both a miss.