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.
If you are really worried about gaming performance, the MB Air is not the right machine. It's fine to look at benchmarks to compare performance, but the MBA is clearly not intended to be a high end graphics machine. Kind of like comparing an Audi A4 with an Audi R8. the A4 is a wonderful car, but it doesn't have the performance of an R8
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.
Depends on what you mean. Most won't scale to as many threads as you will throw at it, i.e most octacores are not ideal for games because they give up some per-core performance. But dual cores are starting to limit more and more AAA titles, and certainly a 7W dual core with low base clocks would limit them compoundingly more so, for both the low ST and MT performance.
If you want to get an eGPU rig for games on a Macbook, I'd first suggest looking at the cost of the setup and ask if a lower end MB and a separate gaming rig wouldn't be better for you, but if that's the setup you wanted I'd really say the 13" quad core MBP is the minimum for any recent moderate GPU.
If you just have a GPGPU compute task, that's of course another matter and it'll depend on how much the task uses the CPU at all.
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.
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.
If what I've highlighted is the tasks that you're looking for, then get yourself a quad-core 13" MBP instead. The Retina MBA is not optimized for video tasks.
My Macbook Air Retina arrived today. It is very elegant and beautifully designed, more compact, and noticeably faster than my previous 2014 Macbook Air. That is the upside. On the downside, I mention 3 down factors compared to the older Macbook Air:
1. The new Retina model no longer has an illuminated Apple logo on the lid - I miss that.
2. No more MagSafe connector: that is a minus: MagSafe is wonderful, easy to connect, and I liked the the little green or orange light that showed you when it was charging or full. That is all gone.
3. Crappy adaptors or no adaptors: For the old Macbook Air, Apple sold an excellent Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor. That no longer works with the new Macbook Air, because the new MacBook Air does not accept Thunderbolt (unless you double dongle) ... and Apple does NOT make a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (which is ridiculous). So, instead, I purchased from the Apple store the Belkin USB-C (not Thunderbolt 3) to Ethernet adaptor ... even though it gets an appalling rating on the Apple store (most users give it 1 out of 5 stars). I have measured the performance with the Belkin adaptor, and in every test, the Belkin USB-C adaptor has been slower on the new Mac than using Apple's old Thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor on the old Mac - an appalling outcome. That is going backwards ... not going forwards.
Apple needs to wake up and start making a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (and a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI adaptor). In the meantime, I will have to now go buy a Thunderbolt 3 dock.
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.
If what I've highlighted is the tasks that you're looking for, then get yourself a quad-core 13" MBP instead. The Retina MBA is not optimized for video tasks.
This happens with every new device. It is compared to the top of the line and the score is comparatively reduced. This review is good and the machine gets a solid 4 out of 5, but the con is that its lacks graphical oomph. But is that a fair detraction? If you need graphical oomph you wouldn't even be shopping for an Air, would you. Maybe it lacks oomph relative to similarly targeted competitors in which case it is all fair, but anyone complaining that the Air is not a MBP is just missing the point.
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.
If what I've highlighted is the tasks that you're looking for, then get yourself a quad-core 13" MBP instead. The Retina MBA is not optimized for video tasks.
This happens with every new device. It is compared to the top of the line and the score is comparatively reduced. This review is good and the machine gets a solid 4 out of 5, but the con is that its lacks graphical oomph. But is that a fair detraction? If you need graphical oomph you wouldn't even be shopping for an Air, would you. Maybe it lacks oomph relative to similarly targeted competitors in which case it is all fair, but anyone complaining that the Air is not a MBP is just missing the point.
"But is that a fair detraction?" => To me it isn't since it wasn't designed for graphics oomph. Even if you look at Windows competitors that use the 15W U-series quad-core cpus, they only have Intel HD620 integrated graphics which have no more or less graphics oomph than the Retina MBA
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:
For some people they seemed to work great, but the number on one-star reviews is pretty damning.
The comments on those threads are interesting. Some aren't about the adapter at all, they're objecting to NEEDING an adapter (in other words, complaining about the absence of legacy ports on the Mac). Others are about the price, which is a valid complaint but doesn't say anything about how well it works.
I have the first two of the four you listed and they work fine for me.
The exception seems to be Apple's video adapter. Lots of comments from people who just plain can't get it to work. I haven't tried that one myself, as I bought a cheap alternative from Amazon. Mine works perfectly, though it did teach me an important lesson. The USB-C port on the adapter is not a data connection, it's there to power the computer. The one I bought does exactly what it was designed to do -- pass 45 watts to the computer. Unfortunately my 15" MaBook Pro wants twice that much to keep the battery charged while working. I bought it when I first got the machine and didn't think to check that spec. I know better now.
[...] I have measured the performance with the Belkin adaptor, and in every test, the Belkin USB-C adaptor has been slower on the new Mac than using Apple's old Thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor on the old Mac
Weird. I went from a 2009 17" MacBook Pro to the 2016 15" MacBook Pro. That means I went from an actual ethernet port on the machine itself to the Belkin adapter. I never bothered measuring either, but if there's a difference it's too small for me to notice. The speed of file transfers across the network suggest it's maximizing the gigabit throughput of the infrastructure.
Maybe there's something about the Air that slows down ethernet traffic, or perhaps you have a defective adapter? Both seem unlikely, but there must be something going on for our experiences with the same adapter to be so different.
Flashback to the Air I used at work back in 2011 -- I loved the design back then - absolutely nothing else like it, heads would turn on the airplane. Fast forward to deja vu 2018, any change to the hinge? I hate Wintels, but I currently use a thinkpad at work and must say I like the ability for the screen to fold completely flat - guarantees no accidental damage. Ive are you listening?
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.
Depends on what you mean. Most won't scale to as many threads as you will throw at it, i.e most octacores are not ideal for games because they give up some per-core performance. But dual cores are starting to limit more and more AAA titles, and certainly a 7W dual core with low base clocks would limit them compoundingly more so, for both the low ST and MT performance.
If you want to get an eGPU rig for games on a Macbook, I'd first suggest looking at the cost of the setup and ask if a lower end MB and a separate gaming rig wouldn't be better for you, but if that's the setup you wanted I'd really say the 13" quad core MBP is the minimum for any recent moderate GPU.
If you just have a GPGPU compute task, that's of course another matter and it'll depend on how much the task uses the CPU at all.
That’s what I mean in the previous post. Most games aren’t optimized well for multi-cores, though some may optimized better for quad-cores. Even so, higher frequency always faster.
A dual-core with 1.6GHz is definitely no match to quad cores, not sure if both can boost to 3.6GHz though.
I just don't understand the point of the MacBook now. The new MacBook Air is better in everyway, aside from weight, thinness & starting storage capacity, which to me, is not worth paying that much more for. In Canada here, the MacBook's $1729 price tag just doesn't carry as much value as the new MacBook Air's $1499 tag does. Without any major upgrades or updates, I'd say the MacBook could easily use a $500CDN price reduction to keep it competitive.
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.
It's pretty simple, really: if the thing you need to run is graphically intense -- 4K video, gigantic RAW photos, top-drawer games -- then the MacBook Air is not for you. It's for normal people, i.e. people who do almost none of those things. The Air can very comfortably handle streaming (I assume you mean things like FB Live et al) and encode/decode thanks to the T2 chip, which supplements the consumer-class GPU. If you do a LOT of those video things, you might want to look at the iPad Pro (which is way faster at that) or the MacBook Pro 13 (which is a bit faster at that).
But for normal people doing normal things, the MacBook Air is a very solid choice, particularly for most types of students.
This would be a phenomenal laptop if the 512GB SSD 16GB RAM configuratuon were priced at $1299 and the 256/8 GB version cost $999.
For education, Apple could sell the 128/8GB version for $899, and for volume purchases by schools, the same laptop could be priced at $849.
The 2018 MacBook Air could serve the needs of 50% of today’s Mac users, and such descriptive pricing could seriously expand the Mac user base. Apple needs to bring new users into the Apple ecosystem. The iPod used to be such a lure. Then, it was the Mac Mini.
iPhone is too expensive to lure people into the Apple ecosystem, but the 2018 MacBook Air has this potential, however not at the prices it was released.
Macs don’t make up a big part of the Apple’s revenue. Apple should not be so greedy with the entry-level Macs.
My Macbook Air Retina arrived today. It is very elegant and beautifully designed, more compact, and noticeably faster than my previous 2014 Macbook Air. That is the upside. On the downside, I mention 3 down factors compared to the older Macbook Air:
1. The new Retina model no longer has an illuminated Apple logo on the lid - I miss that.
2. No more MagSafe connector: that is a minus: MagSafe is wonderful, easy to connect, and I liked the the little green or orange light that showed you when it was charging or full. That is all gone.
3. Crappy adaptors or no adaptors: For the old Macbook Air, Apple sold an excellent Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor. That no longer works with the new Macbook Air, because the new MacBook Air does not accept Thunderbolt (unless you double dongle) ... and Apple does NOT make a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (which is ridiculous). So, instead, I purchased from the Apple store the Belkin USB-C (not Thunderbolt 3) to Ethernet adaptor ... even though it gets an appalling rating on the Apple store (most users give it 1 out of 5 stars). I have measured the performance with the Belkin adaptor, and in every test, the Belkin USB-C adaptor has been slower on the new Mac than using Apple's old Thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor on the old Mac - an appalling outcome. That is going backwards ... not going forwards.
Apple needs to wake up and start making a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (and a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI adaptor). In the meantime, I will have to now go buy a Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Double dongle. It works great, if looks ridiculous.
My Macbook Air Retina arrived today. It is very elegant and beautifully designed, more compact, and noticeably faster than my previous 2014 Macbook Air. That is the upside. On the downside, I mention 3 down factors compared to the older Macbook Air:
1. The new Retina model no longer has an illuminated Apple logo on the lid - I miss that.
2. No more MagSafe connector: that is a minus: MagSafe is wonderful, easy to connect, and I liked the the little green or orange light that showed you when it was charging or full. That is all gone.
3. Crappy adaptors or no adaptors: For the old Macbook Air, Apple sold an excellent Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor. That no longer works with the new Macbook Air, because the new MacBook Air does not accept Thunderbolt (unless you double dongle) ... and Apple does NOT make a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (which is ridiculous). So, instead, I purchased from the Apple store the Belkin USB-C (not Thunderbolt 3) to Ethernet adaptor ... even though it gets an appalling rating on the Apple store (most users give it 1 out of 5 stars). I have measured the performance with the Belkin adaptor, and in every test, the Belkin USB-C adaptor has been slower on the new Mac than using Apple's old Thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor on the old Mac - an appalling outcome. That is going backwards ... not going forwards.
Apple needs to wake up and start making a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (and a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI adaptor). In the meantime, I will have to now go buy a Thunderbolt 3 dock.
What does the TB3->Ethernet adapter get you that a USBc->Ethernet adapter will not? I have that exact adapter for those rare times I need. a LAN connection and it works just fine for me.
How often are you going to use this method of connection? It's a laptop first, not a desktop. If it's going to be seeing desktop duty, consider getting a TB3 dock and you'll have all the ports you'll ever wanted.
MagSafe was nice, but I got over that quickly. I've quickly grown accustomed to having everything on one cable, versus having to deal with multiple cables.
My Macbook Air Retina arrived today. It is very elegant and beautifully designed, more compact, and noticeably faster than my previous 2014 Macbook Air. That is the upside. On the downside, I mention 3 down factors compared to the older Macbook Air:
1. The new Retina model no longer has an illuminated Apple logo on the lid - I miss that.
2. No more MagSafe connector: that is a minus: MagSafe is wonderful, easy to connect, and I liked the the little green or orange light that showed you when it was charging or full. That is all gone.
3. Crappy adaptors or no adaptors: For the old Macbook Air, Apple sold an excellent Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor. That no longer works with the new Macbook Air, because the new MacBook Air does not accept Thunderbolt (unless you double dongle) ... and Apple does NOT make a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (which is ridiculous). So, instead, I purchased from the Apple store the Belkin USB-C (not Thunderbolt 3) to Ethernet adaptor ... even though it gets an appalling rating on the Apple store (most users give it 1 out of 5 stars). I have measured the performance with the Belkin adaptor, and in every test, the Belkin USB-C adaptor has been slower on the new Mac than using Apple's old Thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor on the old Mac - an appalling outcome. That is going backwards ... not going forwards.
Apple needs to wake up and start making a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (and a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI adaptor). In the meantime, I will have to now go buy a Thunderbolt 3 dock.
What does the TB3->Ethernet adapter get you that a USBc->Ethernet adapter will not? I have that exact adapter for those rare times I need. a LAN connection and it works just fine for me.
How often are you going to use this method of connection? It's a laptop first, not a desktop. If it's going to be seeing desktop duty, consider getting a TB3 dock and you'll have all the ports you'll ever wanted.
MagSafe was nice, but I got over that quickly. I've quickly grown accustomed to having everything on one cable, versus having to deal with multiple cables.
The illuminated Apple logo? Really?
Don’t discount the wired Ethernet connection. Some people need to be connected via wired Ethernet. All sorts of IT tasks require wired connections. USB-based Ethernet adapters are error-prone. The way to go is definitely Thunderbolt. I haven’t seen any Thunderbolt3 to Gigabit Ethernet adapters. You have to double dongle TB3 > TB2 <-> TB2 > GigabitEthernet.
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:
For some people they seemed to work great, but the number on one-star reviews is pretty damning.
The comments on those threads are interesting. Some aren't about the adapter at all, they're objecting to NEEDING an adapter (in other words, complaining about the absence of legacy ports on the Mac). Others are about the price, which is a valid complaint but doesn't say anything about how well it works.
I have the first two of the four you listed and they work fine for me.
The exception seems to be Apple's video adapter. Lots of comments from people who just plain can't get it to work. I haven't tried that one myself, as I bought a cheap alternative from Amazon. Mine works perfectly, though it did teach me an important lesson. The USB-C port on the adapter is not a data connection, it's there to power the computer. The one I bought does exactly what it was designed to do -- pass 45 watts to the computer. Unfortunately my 15" MaBook Pro wants twice that much to keep the battery charged while working. I bought it when I first got the machine and didn't think to check that spec. I know better now.
I haven't read through all the reviews - there are always a handful of 'it costs too much' or 'arrived damaged' reviews that don't really apply, but reading the first several ethernet adapter reviews I got "slow, slow, slow," "stopped working after 2 weeks," "Freezes my MacBook Pro," "Did not work," "Drains battery when plugged in" - seem like pretty legitimate complaints.
For the USB A-C adapter I saw "major latency issues with logic," Takes 15 attempts to plug in, doesn't fit in port," "Won't fit," (about 15 of these) "Hit and miss if it decides to work," "7 of 8 went bad in a year" "Doesn't work with anything I've tried" - again, these seem like legitimate beefs.
The sad thing is, most of this could have been avoided if Apple had included a single USB A port on the computer, but they were so focused on "USB C is the future" that they neglected to account for the fact that people need to live in the present.
I have read so many articles about the different types of connectors (USB-C and its various subtypes; Thunderbolt 2 and 3 and their various subtypes; and the various different cables that might be requires for each connector) that I'm afraid to even buy a new computer because I don't know which I should get. If only I had been an IT sysadmin for the last 30 years. Oh wait, I was.
Comments
If you are really worried about gaming performance, the MB Air is not the right machine. It's fine to look at benchmarks to compare performance, but the MBA is clearly not intended to be a high end graphics machine. Kind of like comparing an Audi A4 with an Audi R8. the A4 is a wonderful car, but it doesn't have the performance of an R8
Depends on what you mean. Most won't scale to as many threads as you will throw at it, i.e most octacores are not ideal for games because they give up some per-core performance. But dual cores are starting to limit more and more AAA titles, and certainly a 7W dual core with low base clocks would limit them compoundingly more so, for both the low ST and MT performance.
If you want to get an eGPU rig for games on a Macbook, I'd first suggest looking at the cost of the setup and ask if a lower end MB and a separate gaming rig wouldn't be better for you, but if that's the setup you wanted I'd really say the 13" quad core MBP is the minimum for any recent moderate GPU.
If you just have a GPGPU compute task, that's of course another matter and it'll depend on how much the task uses the CPU at all.
1. The new Retina model no longer has an illuminated Apple logo on the lid - I miss that.
2. No more MagSafe connector: that is a minus: MagSafe is wonderful, easy to connect, and I liked the the little green or orange light that showed you when it was charging or full. That is all gone.
3. Crappy adaptors or no adaptors:
For the old Macbook Air, Apple sold an excellent Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor. That no longer works with the new Macbook Air, because the new MacBook Air does not accept Thunderbolt (unless you double dongle) ... and Apple does NOT make a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (which is ridiculous). So, instead, I purchased from the Apple store the Belkin USB-C (not Thunderbolt 3) to Ethernet adaptor ... even though it gets an appalling rating on the Apple store (most users give it 1 out of 5 stars). I have measured the performance with the Belkin adaptor, and in every test, the Belkin USB-C adaptor has been slower on the new Mac than using Apple's old Thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor on the old Mac - an appalling outcome. That is going backwards ... not going forwards.
Apple needs to wake up and start making a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adaptor (and a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI adaptor). In the meantime, I will have to now go buy a Thunderbolt 3 dock.
I have the first two of the four you listed and they work fine for me.
The exception seems to be Apple's video adapter. Lots of comments from people who just plain can't get it to work. I haven't tried that one myself, as I bought a cheap alternative from Amazon. Mine works perfectly, though it did teach me an important lesson. The USB-C port on the adapter is not a data connection, it's there to power the computer. The one I bought does exactly what it was designed to do -- pass 45 watts to the computer. Unfortunately my 15" MaBook Pro wants twice that much to keep the battery charged while working. I bought it when I first got the machine and didn't think to check that spec. I know better now.
Maybe there's something about the Air that slows down ethernet traffic, or perhaps you have a defective adapter? Both seem unlikely, but there must be something going on for our experiences with the same adapter to be so different.
A dual-core with 1.6GHz is definitely no match to quad cores, not sure if both can boost to 3.6GHz though.
For education, Apple could sell the 128/8GB version for $899, and for volume purchases by schools, the same laptop could be priced at $849.
The 2018 MacBook Air could serve the needs of 50% of today’s Mac users, and such descriptive pricing could seriously expand the Mac user base. Apple needs to bring new users into the Apple ecosystem. The iPod used to be such a lure. Then, it was the Mac Mini.
iPhone is too expensive to lure people into the Apple ecosystem, but the 2018 MacBook Air has this potential, however not at the prices it was released.
Macs don’t make up a big part of the Apple’s revenue. Apple should not be so greedy with the entry-level Macs.
if looks ridiculous.
How often are you going to use this method of connection? It's a laptop first, not a desktop. If it's going to be seeing desktop duty, consider getting a TB3 dock and you'll have all the ports you'll ever wanted.
MagSafe was nice, but I got over that quickly. I've quickly grown accustomed to having everything on one cable, versus having to deal with multiple cables.
The illuminated Apple logo? Really?
For the USB A-C adapter I saw "major latency issues with logic," Takes 15 attempts to plug in, doesn't fit in port," "Won't fit," (about 15 of these) "Hit and miss if it decides to work," "7 of 8 went bad in a year" "Doesn't work with anything I've tried" - again, these seem like legitimate beefs.
The sad thing is, most of this could have been avoided if Apple had included a single USB A port on the computer, but they were so focused on "USB C is the future" that they neglected to account for the fact that people need to live in the present.