Focus of debate for the new Macbook air should be, what user segments it
can or can not serve ? How far the performance of new air can address
the daily computing needs of which user segment.
The old MBA dominated personal high school computer choice back in the day. The new model will be great for the classroom. Not sure about after hours though. Should have had the “u” series processor in dual core config to compete with low end XPS and Spectres. But Apple didn’t want to threaten MBP sales, and it would have made the rMB look really bad as an option.
It trades performance with near-silent operation and much longer battery life, both are really competitive characterstics on the market.
They are not that great especially on benchmarks, but it can do some heavy tasks just fine. It's still the best Intel can offer when it comes to performance/consumption.
I have a m7 MacBook and I can do serious works with tolerable speed.
I am interested in whether a fast eGPU gets bottlenecked by the 7W processor. i.e. if you install the same game on the new MBA and on a MBP, and use the same eGPU, does the MBA get a lot less fps?
Sure it would, you can already see this with the 13 vs 15 CPUs, and the Pro 13 is a higher bar not to bottleneck the GPU with four cores and higher clocks. Depends on the task/title of course, but a 7W CPU will certainly bottleneck modern mid-high end GPUs a fair bit.
We also have to take in to account that that is an OpenGL benchmark and OpenGL is heavier on the CPU than Metal, but the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark on the same page (a Metal game) also showed that CPU matters.
I think even on the PC side, CPUs are starting to bottleneck GPUs, with the new 2080Ti, if you run it at less than 4k, even high end overclocked CPUs can't keep up with it.
I am interested in whether a fast eGPU gets bottlenecked by the 7W processor. i.e. if you install the same game on the new MBA and on a MBP, and use the same eGPU, does the MBA get a lot less fps?
Sure it would, you can already see this with the 13 vs 15 CPUs, and the Pro 13 is a higher bar not to bottleneck the GPU with four cores and higher clocks. Depends on the task/title of course, but a 7W CPU will certainly bottleneck modern mid-high end GPUs a fair bit.
We also have to take in to account that that is an OpenGL benchmark and OpenGL is heavier on the CPU than Metal, but the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark on the same page (a Metal game) also showed that CPU matters.
I think even on the PC side, CPUs are starting to bottleneck GPUs, with the new 2080Ti, if you run it at less than 4k, even high end overclocked CPUs can't keep up with it.
Bottlenecking? Sound to me just faster CPU means faster tasks. If you're talking about games, most aren't really optimized for multi-core.
It’s a great all-around machine and is beaten by the MacBook only in terms of weight, really (which can be a major factor for some users). The design is very popular and its general strong performance in typical-user tasks should ensure that it sells well, though I think the 13-inch function-key MBP offer notably more “bang for the buck” at a comparable price point — at least for now (I expect the non-touchbar 13-inch MBP to be discontinued when the next round of MBP updates happens).
For Maciekskontakt: Anker and Aukey both make good-quality USB-C docks, you can find them on Amazon. HooToo is another brand to look for, but I don’t know if the ones that connect directly to the USB-C port (and were designed for MacBooks) will fit as precisely on an MBA. All three of the brands I mentioned offer docks with short USB-C cords to avoid this potential issue.
It’s a great all-around machine and is beaten by the MacBook only in terms of weight, really (which can be a major factor for some users). The design is very popular and its general strong performance in typical-user tasks should ensure that it sells well, though I think the 13-inch function-key MBP offer notably more “bang for the buck” at a comparable price point — at least for now (I expect the non-touchbar 13-inch MBP to be discontinued when the next round of MBP updates happens).
For Maciekskontakt: Anker and Aukey both make good-quality USB-C docks, you can find them on Amazon. HooToo is another brand to look for, but I don’t know if the ones that connect directly to the USB-C port (and were designed for MacBooks) will fit as precisely on an MBA. All three of the brands I mentioned offer docks with short USB-C cords to avoid this potential issue.
"I think the 13-inch function-key MBP offer notably more “bang for the buck” at a comparable price point — at least for now "
Per GeekBench 4 scores, that machine is 17% faster on multi-core tests vs the Retina MBA, so it isn't that much faster. Plus the rMBA has TouchID, better security via the T2 chip and much improved sound system.
Focus of debate for the new Macbook air should be, what user segments it
can or can not serve ? How far the performance of new air can address
the daily computing needs of which user segment.
The old MBA dominated personal high school computer choice back in the day. The new model will be great for the classroom. Not sure about after hours though. Should have had the “u” series processor in dual core config to compete with low end XPS and Spectres. But Apple didn’t want to threaten MBP sales, and it would have made the rMB look really bad as an option.
It trades performance with near-silent operation and much longer battery life, both are really competitive characterstics on the market.
If they'd offered an i7 option for about $200 more, I'd be buying one as my need for high end graphical power is less than it used to be. As it is, and with my 2013 MBA (maxxed out) still running like new, I'll be hoping the Pros get a refresh to a cooler processor that can use low power DDR Ram by next summer (and one more iteration of the KB for longevity and "apparent travel" would be nice thank you) and I'll go all in on a 15" just to future-proof the s*** out of my computing needs for the next bunch of years, covering the likely transition to totally next gen A-chip powered Macs (which will play out over a fairly extended time for all apps, peripherals, drivers, etc. to negotiate)....
If they don't make that upgrade, probably a 13" Pro in about in the middle of the price range to tide me over a year or two.
But - and I seem to be in the minority - I find this an upgrade with lots of niceties on the surface, but unnecessarily limited by and anemic processor and graphics.
Focus of debate for the new Macbook air should be, what user segments it
can or can not serve ? How far the performance of new air can address
the daily computing needs of which user segment.
The old MBA dominated personal high school computer choice back in the day. The new model will be great for the classroom. Not sure about after hours though. Should have had the “u” series processor in dual core config to compete with low end XPS and Spectres. But Apple didn’t want to threaten MBP sales, and it would have made the rMB look really bad as an option.
It trades performance with near-silent operation and much longer battery life, both are really competitive characterstics on the market.
If they'd offered an i7 option for about $200 more, I'd be buying one as my need for high end graphical power is less than it used to be. As it is, and with my 2013 MBA (maxxed out) still running like new, I'll be hoping the Pros get a refresh to a cooler processor that can use low power DDR Ram by next summer (and one more iteration of the KB for longevity and "apparent travel" would be nice thank you) and I'll go all in on a 15" just to future-proof the s*** out of my computing needs for the next bunch of years, covering the likely transition to totally next gen A-chip powered Macs (which will play out over a fairly extended time for all apps, peripherals, drivers, etc. to negotiate)....
If they don't make that upgrade, probably a 13" Pro in about in the middle of the price range to tide me over a year or two.
But - and I seem to be in the minority - I find this an upgrade with lots of niceties on the surface, but unnecessarily limited by and anemic processor and graphics.
Maybe Intel doesn't make an i7 option in the 7W Amber Lake CPU series?
I was convicted that I was going to buy one of these while watching the “keynote” but when the first AI article was pulled, for what I can only assume was because they reported the unflattering benchmarks, it gave me pause.
Can you also point to reliable docks? Fancy USB-C is powerful, but so far very few accessories work reliably.
This is a problem - I went on the Apple Store to look for a Ethernet - USB C adapter and was struck by how poor the reviews were on not just the Ethernet adapter, but pretty much all of the usb c adapters. USB C/thunderbolt may be theoretically capable of doing everything, but actually getting an adapter that works appears to be an issue
I am interested in whether a fast eGPU gets bottlenecked by the 7W processor. i.e. if you install the same game on the new MBA and on a MBP, and use the same eGPU, does the MBA get a lot less fps?
Sure it would, you can already see this with the 13 vs 15 CPUs, and the Pro 13 is a higher bar not to bottleneck the GPU with four cores and higher clocks. Depends on the task/title of course, but a 7W CPU will certainly bottleneck modern mid-high end GPUs a fair bit.
We also have to take in to account that that is an OpenGL benchmark and OpenGL is heavier on the CPU than Metal, but the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark on the same page (a Metal game) also showed that CPU matters.
I think even on the PC side, CPUs are starting to bottleneck GPUs, with the new 2080Ti, if you run it at less than 4k, even high end overclocked CPUs can't keep up with it.
Bottlenecking? Sound to me just faster CPU means faster tasks. If you're talking about games, most aren't really optimized for multi-core.
Yes, I'm talking about games, these results are all over the Internet.
The fact is that GPUs have been advancing at a much faster rate than CPUs for several years now. It has now reached the point where if you buy a 2080Ti and run it at 1080p, even a modern 6 or 8 core i7 will not be able to keep up with it. The GPU will be ready to render the next frame but the CPU will still be processing player movement or AI or networking, and the GPU will have to sit idle. The answer of course is to set the resolution to 4K to slow down the GPU to the CPUs level.
It's just important for people to realise that if they buy a little 7W CPU and hope to later plug in a mammoth GPU they might be disappointed. When articles talk about the potential of TB3 for expansion they should mention this.
I am interested in whether a fast eGPU gets bottlenecked by the 7W processor. i.e. if you install the same game on the new MBA and on a MBP, and use the same eGPU, does the MBA get a lot less fps?
Sure it would, you can already see this with the 13 vs 15 CPUs, and the Pro 13 is a higher bar not to bottleneck the GPU with four cores and higher clocks. Depends on the task/title of course, but a 7W CPU will certainly bottleneck modern mid-high end GPUs a fair bit.
We also have to take in to account that that is an OpenGL benchmark and OpenGL is heavier on the CPU than Metal, but the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark on the same page (a Metal game) also showed that CPU matters.
I think even on the PC side, CPUs are starting to bottleneck GPUs, with the new 2080Ti, if you run it at less than 4k, even high end overclocked CPUs can't keep up with it.
Bottlenecking? Sound to me just faster CPU means faster tasks. If you're talking about games, most aren't really optimized for multi-core.
Yes, I'm talking about games, these results are all over the Internet.
The fact is that GPUs have been advancing at a much faster rate than CPUs for several years now. It has now reached the point where if you buy a 2080Ti and run it at 1080p, even a modern 6 or 8 core i7 will not be able to keep up with it. The GPU will be ready to render the next frame but the CPU will still be processing player movement or AI or networking, and the GPU will have to sit idle. The answer of course is to set the resolution to 4K to slow down the GPU to the CPUs level.
It's just important for people to realise that if they buy a little 7W CPU and hope to later plug in a mammoth GPU they might be disappointed. When articles talk about the potential of TB3 for expansion they should mention this.
I've never heard any games use that much of processing power to begin with, most of them are terrible at multi-core support and still does. If the CPU part does tend to "lag", it's most likely caused by lazy programming.
Other than that, 10 frames difference doesn't seems like much of a deal once you surpass 60 FPS (and some games in the benchmark runs faster on the 13" than 15", probably due to faster single-core speed).
But it will be slower on the Air due to lower clock speed and two less cores, no doubt.
Can you also point to reliable docks? Fancy USB-C is powerful, but so far very few accessories work reliably.
Huh? Which accessories have you found that don't work reliably? I've found none. The only thing that's come close is a cheap passive 4-port USB-C to USB-A hub I got from Monoprice that won't pass enough current to power up a thumb drive (it passes data just fine, it's only power delivery that's a problem). All my peripherals work perfectly.
Can you also point to reliable docks? Fancy USB-C is powerful, but so far very few accessories work reliably.
This is a problem - I went on the Apple Store to look for a Ethernet - USB C adapter and was struck by how poor the reviews were on not just the Ethernet adapter, but pretty much all of the usb c adapters. USB C/thunderbolt may be theoretically capable of doing everything, but actually getting an adapter that works appears to be an issue
Most of the complaints I've seen on Apple and Amazon seem to come from people having trouble distinguishing between USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt.
I have the Belkin ethernet adaptor, Apple Thunderbolt 3-to-2, a couple of the Apple C-to-A adaptors, and bunch of USB-C to whatever the device uses (B, micro-B, mini-B, Lightning) cables of various sorts, and all of them work perfectly.
The only let-down so far is a cheap 4-port hub that doesn't pass power for some reason (maybe it wasn't designed to -- it was really cheap -- or it might even be defective for all I know) but even that passes data just fine.
I want new Macbook Air to succeed and succeed well. So, far all articles are like unboxing, first hand reviews. I am looking for real life usage(some youtubes) of how far new Air can push it's performance boundary while using in different computing environment including video(encode/decode,streaming,etc) Apps. Can it comfortably replace 13" Macbook Pro for college students for daily usage or it come short in certain scenarios ?
OR we need Function keys 13" lower end Macbook Pro that sits in-between new Macbook Air and 13" 2018 Macbook Pro.
Still a very weird strategy by Apple. Why not just ditch the current MacBooks and reintroduce the new MacBook Air as the MacBook? Now they have three laptops that overlap so much in price and features... The Air isn’t really positioned clearly. For $100 you have a better spec MacBook Pro (heavier but still very portable) and for about the same price you have a Macbook that has somewhat older specs but otherwise is pretty much the same concept as the Air. Why bother at all with the Air as a separate product line?
I am interested in whether a fast eGPU gets bottlenecked by the 7W processor. i.e. if you install the same game on the new MBA and on a MBP, and use the same eGPU, does the MBA get a lot less fps?
I bought a new MBA (arriving today as a travel companion) but my bet is this time next year (or not long thereafter) we will have an MBA sporting an Apple chip even more powerful than the new iPad Pro that doesn't need an eGPU.
Still a very weird strategy by Apple. Why not just ditch the current MacBooks and reintroduce the new MacBook Air as the MacBook? Now they have three laptops that overlap so much in price and features... The Air isn’t really positioned clearly. For $100 you have a better spec MacBook Pro (heavier but still very portable) and for about the same price you have a Macbook that has somewhat older specs but otherwise is pretty much the same concept as the Air. Why bother at all with the Air as a separate product line?
It has Thunderbolt 3 and T2 security chip => corporate market. Individuals may do better with the 13” noTB MBP without hardware security.
Can you also point to reliable docks? Fancy USB-C is powerful, but so far very few accessories work reliably.
This is a problem - I went on the Apple Store to look for a Ethernet - USB C adapter and was struck by how poor the reviews were on not just the Ethernet adapter, but pretty much all of the usb c adapters. USB C/thunderbolt may be theoretically capable of doing everything, but actually getting an adapter that works appears to be an issue
Most of the complaints I've seen on Apple and Amazon seem to come from people having trouble distinguishing between USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt.
I have the Belkin ethernet adaptor, Apple Thunderbolt 3-to-2, a couple of the Apple C-to-A adaptors, and bunch of USB-C to whatever the device uses (B, micro-B, mini-B, Lightning) cables of various sorts, and all of them work perfectly.
The only let-down so far is a cheap 4-port hub that doesn't pass power for some reason (maybe it wasn't designed to -- it was really cheap -- or it might even be defective for all I know) but even that passes data just fine.
The only adapter I have so far is a USB A - USB C adapter that I got at Best Buy to read a security key for work, and it works fine. Looking at Apple's web site:
Comments
I have a m7 MacBook and I can do serious works with tolerable speed.
I think even on the PC side, CPUs are starting to bottleneck GPUs, with the new 2080Ti, if you run it at less than 4k, even high end overclocked CPUs can't keep up with it.
For Maciekskontakt: Anker and Aukey both make good-quality USB-C docks, you can find them on Amazon. HooToo is another brand to look for, but I don’t know if the ones that connect directly to the USB-C port (and were designed for MacBooks) will fit as precisely on an MBA. All three of the brands I mentioned offer docks with short USB-C cords to avoid this potential issue.
Per GeekBench 4 scores, that machine is 17% faster on multi-core tests vs the Retina MBA, so it isn't that much faster. Plus the rMBA has TouchID, better security via the T2 chip and much improved sound system.
If they don't make that upgrade, probably a 13" Pro in about in the middle of the price range to tide me over a year or two.
But - and I seem to be in the minority - I find this an upgrade with lots of niceties on the surface, but unnecessarily limited by and anemic processor and graphics.
It's just important for people to realise that if they buy a little 7W CPU and hope to later plug in a mammoth GPU they might be disappointed. When articles talk about the potential of TB3 for expansion they should mention this.
Other than that, 10 frames difference doesn't seems like much of a deal once you surpass 60 FPS (and some games in the benchmark runs faster on the 13" than 15", probably due to faster single-core speed).
But it will be slower on the Air due to lower clock speed and two less cores, no doubt.
I have the Belkin ethernet adaptor, Apple Thunderbolt 3-to-2, a couple of the Apple C-to-A adaptors, and bunch of USB-C to whatever the device uses (B, micro-B, mini-B, Lightning) cables of various sorts, and all of them work perfectly.
The only let-down so far is a cheap 4-port hub that doesn't pass power for some reason (maybe it wasn't designed to -- it was really cheap -- or it might even be defective for all I know) but even that passes data just fine.
Now they have three laptops that overlap so much in price and features... The Air isn’t really positioned clearly. For $100 you have a better spec MacBook Pro (heavier but still very portable) and for about the same price you have a Macbook that has somewhat older specs but otherwise is pretty much the same concept as the Air.
Why bother at all with the Air as a separate product line?
Apple's USB A - USB C dongle got 2.5/5 stars with 65/114 people giving it 1 star
The Belkin USB C - Gigabit Ethernet adapter got 1.5/5 stars, 32/43 people gave it 1 star.
Belkin USB C - VGA adapter got 2/5 stars
Apple Multiport USB C - HDMI/USB A/USB C adaptor got 2/5 stars, 276/391 people gave it one star
For some people they seemed to work great, but the number on one-star reviews is pretty damning.