"Microsoft says the new Atom processor provides users with 10 hours of video playback."
I thought the MS Slab o' Crapo was designed to create content; not consume it!? Come on, MS, how many minutes will it run a graphics-intensive application before sending up smoke signals and spinning up internal fans to howl like a Dyson vacuum cleaner..?
No word yet on, "Will it Blend, will it Bend, or how well it will hide that you're getting serious work done on an iPad hidden behind Slab o' Crapo propped up with a crutch..."
Now that it now runs real Windows, there's nothing technically preventing you from running visual studio.
Core M is definitely better than Atom. That being said, OS X is a resource pig on RAM (you really need 8GB minimum) whereas Windows will run okay in 2GB. They've actually reduced Windows 10's hardware requirements to 1GB.
Now, I would buy the 128/4GB model of this, but I don't think performance will be that bad on the thing. It'll still be flash storage, not a spinning hard disk.
Ulitmately, this isn't a MacBook competitor. This is a straight shot at Apple's iPad plans for the enterprise. Not having any biometric access will hurt them though.
You are either being purposely obtuse (trolling?) or you don't understand (well) the diversity in modern operating environments.
Desktop programs are large, they include tons of resources and this is what customers have come to expect (i.e. hugely functional with every feature, widget & gadget). OS X preloads (and attempts to keep resident) as many of those resources as it can. Both theses are so because RAM (and execution and IO) on the desktop are plentiful.
iOS on the other hand runs "light" software (tight code and small resources ICT desktop software) therefore it is able to take a similar kernel and make a VERY light ram and execution footprint. (because execution and RAM on tablets (and phones) are extremely constrained, as is power)
While nonsense, your statement does highlight, very plainly, why you can't have a "universal" OS as MS is attempting to do. They are very different environments with very different software, parameters and expectations.
(It is) worth noting that MS has been trying to jam this stupid idea (desktop windows on a tablet) down the throats of customers for 20 years (resulting in spectacular flop after spectacular flop for nearly two decades) and it hasn't worked. Guess what, it still dosen't.
Microsoft doesn't get tablets and they never will.
But Microsoft practically invented the tablet...if you mean specifically a PC with a desktop OS that you interact with via a pen. And runs Windows. And goes absolutely nowhere for 20 years until someone else comes up with a working tablet model.
No, really, they shouldn't. Or, more importantly, they won't. Apple are selling iOS and MacOS devices as complementary devices that fill different needs, but work best together. This, if anything, is what Microsoft doesn't get. People want a tablet and a PC for different things, trying to combine them means compromising on both, and leads to a poorer user experience.
1) A netbook, which I define as running on the anemic Atom, typically only cost around $300. What else do you get with with this "net tablet" for an extra $200?
2) I hope we get some real world performance comparisons between the iPad and Surface "net tablet". My money is on the iPad besting the Surface.
So basically Windows on ARM is shit. Nice waste of money, MS.
So true and (perhaps more importantly) way to screw your customers who actually bought in to your crap OS (well... the couple hundred people who actually bought an arm powered MS surface ;-)
It is funny though, MS is screwing (it's dwindling) customer base on both the desktop, and the tablet sides. The desktop users just want (or are forced to run) windows they don't what the windows 8-9-10 metro-esque blockey-blocks touchscreen crap and or to learn a different way of doing things that serves no purpose. And it is worth noting; it has never run worth a crap on their tablet hardware (in comparison to a real tablet)
Core M is definitely better than Atom. That being said, OS X is a resource pig on RAM (you really need 8GB minimum) whereas Windows will run okay in 2GB. They've actually reduced Windows 10's hardware requirements to 1GB.
Sorry, I strongly disagree. I do heavy duty design work on my Air, which has 4GB of RAM, and have been doing so for almost 4 yrs with no major issues. Also, I'm pretty sure OSX is much more efficient with RAM than Windows. I have yet to see a modern Windows machine run decently using less than 4GB of RAM. I don't know where this myth that OSX "needs" 8GB RAM has come from. I someone like me can get by fine on 4GB, I don't see how 95% of the population wouldn't. Is 8Gb better? Sure, and if I was buying a machine today there's no way I'd go for less than that. But 4GB is more than useable on OSX.
Sorry, I strongly disagree. I do heavy duty design work on my Air, which has 4GB of RAM, and have been doing so for almost 4 yrs with no major issues. Also, I'm pretty sure OSX is much more efficient with RAM than Windows. I have yet to see a modern Windows machine run decently using less than 4GB of RAM. I don't know where this myth that OSX "needs" 8GB RAM has come from. I someone like me can get by fine on 4GB, I don't see how 95% of the population wouldn't. Is 8Gb better? Sure, and if I was buying a machine today there's no way I'd go for less than that. But 4GB is more than useable on OSX.
I agree. OS X will use all the RAM you through at it but it doesn't require that much RAM. To updrade to Yosemite you need a minimum of 2 GiB RAM, and I recently bought a new Mac mini with the 4 GiB RAM soldered in. (If I have any issue with that purchase it's that I was unable to find the previous year's model that also contained USB 3.0 but no soldered RAM so that I would be able to get version updates for a longer time frame, which has no bearing on its current abilities.)
I'd also add that, in my experience using superficial data collecting, the Windows platform doesn't utilize RAM as efficiently as the Mac OS X platform.
You are either being purposely obtuse (trolling?) or you don't understand (well) the diversity in modern operating environments.
Desktop programs are large, they include tons of resources and this is what customers have come to expect (i.e. hugely functional with every feature, widget & gadget). OS X preloads (and attempts to keep resident) as many of those resources as it can. Both theses are so because RAM (and execution and IO) on the desktop are plentiful.
iOS on the other hand runs "light" software (tight code and small resources ICT desktop software) therefore it is able to take a similar kernel and make a VERY light ram and execution footprint. (because execution and RAM on tablets (and phones) are extremely constrained, as is power)
While nonsense, your statement does highlight, very plainly, why you can't have a "universal" OS as MS is attempting to do. They are very different environments with very different software, parameters and expectations.
(It is) worth noting that MS has been trying to jam this stupid idea (desktop windows on a tablet) down the throats of customers for 20 years (resulting in spectacular flop after spectacular flop for nearly two decades) and it hasn't worked. Guess what, it still dosen't.
I'm sorry, are you from 1995?
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slurpy
Sorry, I strongly disagree. I do heavy duty design work on my Air, which has 4GB of RAM, and have been doing so for almost 4 yrs with no major issues. Also, I'm pretty sure OSX is much more efficient with RAM than Windows. I have yet to see a modern Windows machine run decently using less than 4GB of RAM. I don't know where this myth that OSX "needs" 8GB RAM has come from. I someone like me can get by fine on 4GB, I don't see how 95% of the population wouldn't. Is 8Gb better? Sure, and if I was buying a machine today there's no way I'd go for less than that. But 4GB is more than useable on OSX.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
Well, I would never buy a Mac with a spinning disk and haven't used one in years. The vast majority of Macs Apple sells have SSDs, or at least fusion drives. But yes, I see your point. I'm sure paging is much less painful and less noticeable with SSDs.
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
Yes, this. I've just in the past few days performed a clean install of Yosemite and installed a few apps. As I look, the kernel alone is using almost 6gb of RAM. I've got SSDs in both of my Macs (early-2011 MBP and mid-2011 Mac Mini) and they scream, but performance was pathetic when the swap lived on a HDD. The downside to swapping on a SSD is that the constant rewrites will (in theory) drastically reduce its life. I recently upgraded the Mini with 16gb of RAM (largely because I run Windows in a VM and, as such, the RAM I allocate to the VM is not swappable) and will soon do the same with the MBP.
Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
1) My 2014 Mac mini has a 5400 RPM HDD.
2) Even if that's the case, does that mean the MBA can have less memory because of the faster SSD. In the same vein, but from a SW standpoint, it's like how iOS can have less RAM than Android because it's more efficient at using resources.
3) How much is memory is wired on your machine? On my MBP with 16 GiB it's 2.10 GiB with an uptime of 6 days. On my Mac mini with 4 GiB it's 0.6 GiB with an uptime of 17 days.
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
You don't understate memory management, "free memory" (i.e. unused memory) is wasted memory.
That OS X quickly fills unused memory doesn't mean it requires it. It is trivial (almost nil execution and IO) to clear stored (but currently unused) blocks, however it is not trivial to reload them (if you clear them just to have lots of "unused ram")
OS X runs fine on 4GB, so does windows. But a gig? Duuuuuude.... what you been smoking
You can easily monitor your VM (including swap) with top (command line utility) 5th line down will give you (updated ever second) framework sizes as well as dynamic swapins and swapouts.
You don't understate memory management, "free memory" (i.e. unused memory) is wasted memory.
That OS X quickly fills unused memory doesn't mean it requires it. It is trivial (almost nil execution and IO) to clear stored (but currently unused) blocks, however it is not trivial to reload them (if you clear them just to have lots of "unused ram")
OS X runs fine on 4GB, so does windows. But a gig? Duuuuuude.... what you been smoking
You can easily monitor your VM (including swap) with top (command line utility) 5th line down will give you (updated ever second) framework sizes as well as dynamic swapins and swapouts.
Free memory is wasted, yes. Paged memory shouldn't happen if you have enough RAM. OS X doesn't manage it well, and won't release it as needed.
Windows 10 is designed to run on 1GB, though 2 would be better.
2) Even if that's the case, does that mean the MBA can have less memory because of the faster SSD. In the same vein, but from a SW standpoint, it's like how iOS can have less RAM than Android because it's more efficient at using resources.
3) How much is memory is wired on your machine? On my MBP with 16 GiB it's 2.10 GiB with an uptime of 6 days. On my Mac mini with 4 GiB it's 0.6 GiB with an uptime of 17 days.
1. I know.
2. That's how they get away with 4GB, but I think it's very notable that they ship the MacBook with a default 8GB of RAM, despite the fact it's clearly not in the same class as the MBP. They also ship all iMacs with 8GB minimum, even the 1.4GHz $1099 model.
3. I'm away at the moment, but I'd note that I'm running Lion, not Yosemite or Mavericks.
That's how they get away with 4GB, but I think it's very notable that they ship the MacBook with a default 8GB of RAM, despite the fact it's clearly not in the same class as the MBP. They also ship all iMacs with 8GB minimum, even the 1.4GHz $1099 model.
That might be because of planned Mac OS X changes coming down the road (not necessarily this year), and/or a great deal on RAM, and/or a result of lowered sales with the Mac mini's 4 GiB of soldered RAM, competition, or something else.
I'm away at the moment, but I'd note that I'm running Lion, not Yosemite or Mavericks.
1) That means you aren't even using the RAM compression algorithm, which was introduced in Mavericks.
2) I don't know enough about how Mac OS X uses RAM to be able to say that you're system is hoarding it wrong*, but I can say that I've never had a RAM issue with Mac, and I just stopped using an iMac from 2002 with 1.25 GiB RAM running Tiger with Mac OS X Server.
Comments
"Microsoft says the new Atom processor provides users with 10 hours of video playback."
I thought the MS Slab o' Crapo was designed to create content; not consume it!? Come on, MS, how many minutes will it run a graphics-intensive application before sending up smoke signals and spinning up internal fans to howl like a Dyson vacuum cleaner..?
No word yet on, "Will it Blend, will it Bend, or how well it will hide that you're getting serious work done on an iPad hidden behind Slab o' Crapo propped up with a crutch..."
Now that it now runs real Windows, there's nothing technically preventing you from running visual studio.
Core M is definitely better than Atom. That being said, OS X is a resource pig on RAM (you really need 8GB minimum) whereas Windows will run okay in 2GB. They've actually reduced Windows 10's hardware requirements to 1GB.
Now, I would buy the 128/4GB model of this, but I don't think performance will be that bad on the thing. It'll still be flash storage, not a spinning hard disk.
Ulitmately, this isn't a MacBook competitor. This is a straight shot at Apple's iPad plans for the enterprise. Not having any biometric access will hurt them though.
You are either being purposely obtuse (trolling?) or you don't understand (well) the diversity in modern operating environments.
Desktop programs are large, they include tons of resources and this is what customers have come to expect (i.e. hugely functional with every feature, widget & gadget). OS X preloads (and attempts to keep resident) as many of those resources as it can. Both theses are so because RAM (and execution and IO) on the desktop are plentiful.
iOS on the other hand runs "light" software (tight code and small resources ICT desktop software) therefore it is able to take a similar kernel and make a VERY light ram and execution footprint. (because execution and RAM on tablets (and phones) are extremely constrained, as is power)
While nonsense, your statement does highlight, very plainly, why you can't have a "universal" OS as MS is attempting to do. They are very different environments with very different software, parameters and expectations.
(It is) worth noting that MS has been trying to jam this stupid idea (desktop windows on a tablet) down the throats of customers for 20 years (resulting in spectacular flop after spectacular flop for nearly two decades) and it hasn't worked. Guess what, it still dosen't.
Because the New MacBook isn't just a souped up overpriced tablet with a non-removable keyboard? Awesome.
But Microsoft practically invented the tablet...if you mean specifically a PC with a desktop OS that you interact with via a pen. And runs Windows. And goes absolutely nowhere for 20 years until someone else comes up with a working tablet model.
No, really, they shouldn't. Or, more importantly, they won't. Apple are selling iOS and MacOS devices as complementary devices that fill different needs, but work best together. This, if anything, is what Microsoft doesn't get. People want a tablet and a PC for different things, trying to combine them means compromising on both, and leads to a poorer user experience.
2) I hope we get some real world performance comparisons between the iPad and Surface "net tablet". My money is on the iPad besting the Surface.
So basically Windows on ARM is shit. Nice waste of money, MS.
So true and (perhaps more importantly) way to screw your customers who actually bought in to your crap OS (well... the couple hundred people who actually bought an arm powered MS surface ;-)
It is funny though, MS is screwing (it's dwindling) customer base on both the desktop, and the tablet sides. The desktop users just want (or are forced to run) windows they don't what the windows 8-9-10 metro-esque blockey-blocks touchscreen crap and or to learn a different way of doing things that serves no purpose. And it is worth noting; it has never run worth a crap on their tablet hardware (in comparison to a real tablet)
Core M is definitely better than Atom. That being said, OS X is a resource pig on RAM (you really need 8GB minimum) whereas Windows will run okay in 2GB. They've actually reduced Windows 10's hardware requirements to 1GB.
Sorry, I strongly disagree. I do heavy duty design work on my Air, which has 4GB of RAM, and have been doing so for almost 4 yrs with no major issues. Also, I'm pretty sure OSX is much more efficient with RAM than Windows. I have yet to see a modern Windows machine run decently using less than 4GB of RAM. I don't know where this myth that OSX "needs" 8GB RAM has come from. I someone like me can get by fine on 4GB, I don't see how 95% of the population wouldn't. Is 8Gb better? Sure, and if I was buying a machine today there's no way I'd go for less than that. But 4GB is more than useable on OSX.
I agree. OS X will use all the RAM you through at it but it doesn't require that much RAM. To updrade to Yosemite you need a minimum of 2 GiB RAM, and I recently bought a new Mac mini with the 4 GiB RAM soldered in. (If I have any issue with that purchase it's that I was unable to find the previous year's model that also contained USB 3.0 but no soldered RAM so that I would be able to get version updates for a longer time frame, which has no bearing on its current abilities.)
I'd also add that, in my experience using superficial data collecting, the Windows platform doesn't utilize RAM as efficiently as the Mac OS X platform.
You are either being purposely obtuse (trolling?) or you don't understand (well) the diversity in modern operating environments.
Desktop programs are large, they include tons of resources and this is what customers have come to expect (i.e. hugely functional with every feature, widget & gadget). OS X preloads (and attempts to keep resident) as many of those resources as it can. Both theses are so because RAM (and execution and IO) on the desktop are plentiful.
iOS on the other hand runs "light" software (tight code and small resources ICT desktop software) therefore it is able to take a similar kernel and make a VERY light ram and execution footprint. (because execution and RAM on tablets (and phones) are extremely constrained, as is power)
While nonsense, your statement does highlight, very plainly, why you can't have a "universal" OS as MS is attempting to do. They are very different environments with very different software, parameters and expectations.
(It is) worth noting that MS has been trying to jam this stupid idea (desktop windows on a tablet) down the throats of customers for 20 years (resulting in spectacular flop after spectacular flop for nearly two decades) and it hasn't worked. Guess what, it still dosen't.
I'm sorry, are you from 1995?
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
Sorry, I strongly disagree. I do heavy duty design work on my Air, which has 4GB of RAM, and have been doing so for almost 4 yrs with no major issues. Also, I'm pretty sure OSX is much more efficient with RAM than Windows. I have yet to see a modern Windows machine run decently using less than 4GB of RAM. I don't know where this myth that OSX "needs" 8GB RAM has come from. I someone like me can get by fine on 4GB, I don't see how 95% of the population wouldn't. Is 8Gb better? Sure, and if I was buying a machine today there's no way I'd go for less than that. But 4GB is more than useable on OSX.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
I'm sorry, are you from 1995?
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
Well, I would never buy a Mac with a spinning disk and haven't used one in years. The vast majority of Macs Apple sells have SSDs, or at least fusion drives. But yes, I see your point. I'm sure paging is much less painful and less noticeable with SSDs.
I'm sorry, are you from 1995?
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
Yes, this. I've just in the past few days performed a clean install of Yosemite and installed a few apps. As I look, the kernel alone is using almost 6gb of RAM. I've got SSDs in both of my Macs (early-2011 MBP and mid-2011 Mac Mini) and they scream, but performance was pathetic when the swap lived on a HDD. The downside to swapping on a SSD is that the constant rewrites will (in theory) drastically reduce its life. I recently upgraded the Mini with 16gb of RAM (largely because I run Windows in a VM and, as such, the RAM I allocate to the VM is not swappable) and will soon do the same with the MBP.
1) My 2014 Mac mini has a 5400 RPM HDD.
2) Even if that's the case, does that mean the MBA can have less memory because of the faster SSD. In the same vein, but from a SW standpoint, it's like how iOS can have less RAM than Android because it's more efficient at using resources.
3) How much is memory is wired on your machine? On my MBP with 16 GiB it's 2.10 GiB with an uptime of 6 days. On my Mac mini with 4 GiB it's 0.6 GiB with an uptime of 17 days.
I'm sorry, are you from 1995?
OS X is a RAM pig. End of story. As I note below, Apple manages to mask it with fast storage, but I wouldn't buy a Mac with less than 8GB these days, and I'd get 16GB if I could. Heck, on my MP with 10GB of RAM, when I run a VM that only gets 2GB dedicated, and nothing more than a browser on the OS X side, I start paging to disk. That's ridiculous.
It's actually not. The reason Apple gets away with selling 4GB RAM on the Airs is because of the fast SSD's, you don't notice the paging. Trust me, if you look at a Mac with a spinning disk, 4GB gets nasty in a hurry.
You don't understate memory management, "free memory" (i.e. unused memory) is wasted memory.
That OS X quickly fills unused memory doesn't mean it requires it. It is trivial (almost nil execution and IO) to clear stored (but currently unused) blocks, however it is not trivial to reload them (if you clear them just to have lots of "unused ram")
OS X runs fine on 4GB, so does windows. But a gig? Duuuuuude.... what you been smoking
You can easily monitor your VM (including swap) with top (command line utility) 5th line down will give you (updated ever second) framework sizes as well as dynamic swapins and swapouts.
You don't understate memory management, "free memory" (i.e. unused memory) is wasted memory.
That OS X quickly fills unused memory doesn't mean it requires it. It is trivial (almost nil execution and IO) to clear stored (but currently unused) blocks, however it is not trivial to reload them (if you clear them just to have lots of "unused ram")
OS X runs fine on 4GB, so does windows. But a gig? Duuuuuude.... what you been smoking
You can easily monitor your VM (including swap) with top (command line utility) 5th line down will give you (updated ever second) framework sizes as well as dynamic swapins and swapouts.
Free memory is wasted, yes. Paged memory shouldn't happen if you have enough RAM. OS X doesn't manage it well, and won't release it as needed.
Windows 10 is designed to run on 1GB, though 2 would be better.
1) My 2014 Mac mini has a 5400 RPM HDD.
2) Even if that's the case, does that mean the MBA can have less memory because of the faster SSD. In the same vein, but from a SW standpoint, it's like how iOS can have less RAM than Android because it's more efficient at using resources.
3) How much is memory is wired on your machine? On my MBP with 16 GiB it's 2.10 GiB with an uptime of 6 days. On my Mac mini with 4 GiB it's 0.6 GiB with an uptime of 17 days.
1. I know.
2. That's how they get away with 4GB, but I think it's very notable that they ship the MacBook with a default 8GB of RAM, despite the fact it's clearly not in the same class as the MBP. They also ship all iMacs with 8GB minimum, even the 1.4GHz $1099 model.
3. I'm away at the moment, but I'd note that I'm running Lion, not Yosemite or Mavericks.
That might be because of planned Mac OS X changes coming down the road (not necessarily this year), and/or a great deal on RAM, and/or a result of lowered sales with the Mac mini's 4 GiB of soldered RAM, competition, or something else.
1) That means you aren't even using the RAM compression algorithm, which was introduced in Mavericks.
2) I don't know enough about how Mac OS X uses RAM to be able to say that you're system is hoarding it wrong*, but I can say that I've never had a RAM issue with Mac, and I just stopped using an iMac from 2002 with 1.25 GiB RAM running Tiger with Mac OS X Server.
* See what I did there?
Because the New MacBook isn't just a souped up overpriced tablet with a non-removable keyboard? Awesome.
not at all. why? 1) it's not a touchscreen. 2) it has a clamshell design. 3) it doesnt run tablet software.
in no way is the new MB a tablet. the only similarity is awesome battery life.
Now that it now runs real Windows, there's nothing technically preventing you from running visual studio.
Be still, my beating heart.
/s, bigtime