15-inch MacBook Air hands-on: Just what some folks were asking for
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Welcome. It's very Apple to give every feature a special name. Some of the classic features that make window management a breeze (for me) are Exposé, Mission Control, and Spaces. Rather than try to describe them, it's better for you to search YouTube to explore them. New as of last year is Stage Manager, which hasn't caught on with me personally. Then there are unnamed system-wide keyboard shortcuts for switching among open apps (command-tab, which is very powerful when combined with other easy to use keys or mouse movement) and command-tilde for switching between windows in the same app.
Upvote
12
(13
/
-1)
I have been using Macs and Windows for 10+ and I am not a big fan of Mac windows management, specifically the fact that you have to enter full screen view to have side-by-side applications.
BetterSnapTool is what I am using for windows management
Upvote
11
(13
/
-2)
No pictures for me either, Firefox/Kiwi/Chrome on Android.
I even tried bypassing the pihole, which got me a bunch of junk but not photos for the article.
On topic: I like the combination of light weight and larger screen here.
I doubt I'll ever return to a Mac, but I hope it's successful enough that there are more similar designs made for Linux and/or Windows.
Upvote
0
(3
/
-3)
2,880 x 1,864 at high-ppi is 1,440 x 932px UI equivalent, at perfect pixel doubling.
Remember when the 13" MacBook Air already gave you a 1,440 x 900 UI, pre-retina? I remember. I feel like the retina era has forced us to use non-even scaling just to get the same workable area of physical desktop space, which frustrates me.
Remember when the 13" MacBook Air already gave you a 1,440 x 900 UI, pre-retina? I remember. I feel like the retina era has forced us to use non-even scaling just to get the same workable area of physical desktop space, which frustrates me.
Upvote
2
(4
/
-2)
Option 1: try holding the alt key while clicking the three top left buttons for arrangement options
Option 2: playaround with the expose options: I for one like to map "show desktop" on a function key for drag & drop interactions
Option 3: get the bettersnaptool for extensive additional customization if the on-board tools are not sufficient
Check this threat for a gazillion of neat little macOs tricks:
https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...ks-and-stupid-cool-mac-tricks-thread.1481237/
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
No, of course you are right, you can't make the laptop smaller than the screen. But you can minimize the bezel. And the truth is both the 13" as well as the 15" Air have a lot of bezel.
The pro models have less bezel. Not to talk about what other manufacturer do these days, the Dell XPS 13 for example is much smaller than the 13 Macbook Air.
I guess you can say for the 13" you need that extra space for good speaker and all the other things. And smaller also means less battery. So sure, don't push the 13 to it's limit. But what's the point for the 15"? The battery is more than generously large. So, why?
Upvote
-10
(1
/
-11)
Yea. I so miss the 12" Macbook. And it would finally work great with an M chip!
Like the iPad Pro 12 but with a proper clamshell keyboard and a proper opera
Upvote
1
(2
/
-1)
A cheap DisplayLink dock provides this capability (albeit using a Screen Recording OS kludge). Works like a charm with my base M1 Air. In fact, I occasionally add my 11” iPad Pro as a fourth screen for palettes and the like.
Upvote
-2
(3
/
-5)
Heard it on atp.fm podcast, but here is a link to a possible reason - basically, the display controllers take up quite a lot of space: https://web.archive.org/web/20220720083049/https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1549672947060772865
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
Apple has a huge weight in the consumer laptop market in the US (except at the very low end, as you say), and LG and Samsung may only do well in South Korea (wasn't Samsung also selling decently well in Europe? Anyway), but HP and Lenovo (and to a lesser extent Dell, Asus, Acer, and HP) do sell a lot of laptops to consumers worldwide, and not only at the low end of the market.
As a European, I do get the strong impression that US tech websites focus greatly on MacBooks and give much less attention to the rest of the laptop market. Understandably so, mind you, as these websites are based in the US and cater first and foremost to a US audience. But sometimes you get articles making comments like those regarding the surprising lightness of this 15" MacBook Air, and you go 'uh, doesn't Lenovo, the best-selling company in the laptop market globally, make several 15" laptops this light or lighter?'...
Upvote
-15
(8
/
-23)
First of all, note that apps are one thing, and 'document windows' are another. An app can be running, but not have any documents open; or it can have lots of document windows, but there's still only one app. Command Tab cycles through applications, not windows. Command ` (backtick) cycles through the foremost application's windows.
Read up on things like Mission Control; Desktop Spaces, Full Screen, Split View, and Stage Manager.
PS. Don't minimize windows. They just get lost.
Upvote
6
(7
/
-1)
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
Agreed. I'm not a massive Mac user (occassional for work), but i'd buy one of those. I've tried tablets (ipad and surface) with keyboards and they always end up bigger, heavier and worse than a proper lightweight laptop. My current personal carry is a Lenovo Slim Carbon (975g or thereabouts) - a 12" macbook would be around that and a bit smaller if they stuck with aluminium (but how cool would an open weave carbon macbook be with tranlucent coloured resin over the top?).
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
Just what I was thinking, this article/page is displaying weirdly for me, as if some part of the formatting has failed to load or that it's doing some kind of resolution scaling which omits parts (even when maximised on 1080p monitor)
Upvote
0
(2
/
-2)
There are tonnes of option. Hold option-key while clicking "more space" and you'll get an extensive list of options. There are also countless of free 3rd-party apps that let you add customised resolutions.A good question. Maybe ~1920px by ~1240px, assuming it's a similar 1.5x scaling (2560 → 1680)? Using essentially 1680px on a laptop felt like a step backwards when I moved from an FHD HP Spectre 13" → WQXGA M1 MacBook Air.
Apple doesn't list the scaled resolutions on the website with the M2 models anymore, so we'll need to confirm with a review
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
I have a work supplied MBA M1 and I never see any need for more memory. The 8GB that it has is obviously ruthlessly managed by MacOS despite me having many tabs open in multiple Chrome windows, Slack (app) and potentially other apps - the memory management abilities really mean that you do not need 16GB.
My personal MBA M2 has 16GB and again it is never really stretched despite photoshop / Lightroom being resource hungry. The only time I really see it suffering is rendering video, some of the huge files from my FP can be a bit unwieldy and something like a crop on a multi-GB 12-bit DNG file can take a while.... But that is a combination of ssd speed, memory and processor - the same operation will entirely lock up most laptops.
For the vast majority of users, 8GB is sufficient. The extra storage suggested would not be a bad idea if it were not for iCloud - I am using about 150GB on my MBA, much of which is photos. But again, iCloud insulates you really nicely and 256GB is once more almost certainly enough for the majority.
Upvote
10
(15
/
-5)
train_wreck
Ars Scholae Palatinae
My 14” Macbook Pro M1 was unfortunately taken during a break-in recently. I need to get a replacement. I had gotten the Pro cause i do music production and figured I needed the power, but i have to say this new Air looks really appealing with the bigger screen…. Interesting.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
Several manufacturers make external docks using displaylink Software. I’m using a dell d6000 on my m2 13” air to run dual 4K monitors. it works great for productivity type work.
Upvote
5
(6
/
-1)
I was just reminiscing about my old laptops, and my first one for college was an old Dell Inspiron 8200. Reviews mentioned that it was a “light” 7.6 lbs. so sure, 3.3 is light. Plus many of the other “light” laptops I’ve used over the years have been so plasticky that they tend to just sag when picking them up. If a little extra weight is going into a nice, rigid shell, I’d happily take that trade.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
I've read that the speaker quality is relatively good as well.
Does the Midnight finish still have durability problems? I recall a bit of a hullabaloo about that after the first Midnight MacBooks shipped.
Does the Midnight finish still have durability problems? I recall a bit of a hullabaloo about that after the first Midnight MacBooks shipped.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
I have read there wasn't space to put a second display controller on the SoC for the M1 or M2 machines, thus just one external display
Upvote
-2
(2
/
-4)
Embrace the future, my brother, and go full widescreen. Once you have tried a widescreen essentially the size of two "normal" screens there's no going back to working with two screens split in the middle. I was sceptical at first but I love it now.
The built in screen you can use for mail/messenger/whatever other apps you like to have on the side.
Upvote
4
(6
/
-2)
I still have a working 12" G4 PowerBook in case I need to read a CDROM. It feels like it's made of depleted uranium compared to my 13" M1 Air.
This is a proven form factor as evidenced by so many other laptops in this configuration.
I personally don't see the draw of a larger display in a laptop as external displays are a thing now but I'm sure the 15" Air will be met with good demand.
The next thing I would like to see is wireless external displays. Something where I don't have to plug in a dongle to connect. When a laptop is near a display, just have a popup ask, "Would you like to extend your display?"
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
I think the secret of “8GB is enough” is that your swap file is on a bloody fast SSD drive. With a 100MB/sec hard drive it would slow down to a crawl if you use more than 8GB. I have a cheap 800MB/sec SSD connected to my Mac, with that speed it would be noticeable and sometimes annoying. Now with a 3GB/sec SSD drive you take no notice.
And I would be curious how many people could live with not enough RAM if you added a super fast SSD drive for swapping. Say 4 times 512 GB single level cells (no slowdown) with two Thunderbolt connectors swapping at 10 GB per second. Obviously there are use cases where this doesn’t help, but plenty of cases where it does.
Last edited:
Upvote
3
(6
/
-3)
Here is a thought: You saw complaints after the first ones shipped, but now you don’t hear complaints. We saw complaints about phones and iPads that bent. We heard complaints about massive number of writes to SSD drives. We heard complaints that FaceID could be tricked by a photo. All immediately after Apple released something new. A month later - crickets. If these were real problems for real customers the complaints wouldn’t go away.
Upvote
18
(21
/
-3)
Nope. Apple Silicon Macs also swap a lot less than Intel Macs in my own practical experience.
Fast Flash is just a bonus when they finally do after all, but that's been available on newer Intel Macs as well.
Most of the speedup is by cutting out infrastructure overhead (CPU/GPU communication and separate GPU memory management in particular) and apparently more effective and faster memory compression contributes as well (at least under my circumstances).
Upvote
11
(12
/
-1)
Captain Trips
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Followed not too long after by "Warning: Insufficient Memory" messages when people found they did need / want more than 640k of memory. :^)
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
I bought a M2 MacBook Air 13" on release last year, it's my first Mac but I've become quite enamored with it over the last half year. It's great for everything other than gaming and video editing so I find myself using it more than I expected to. I have a full-on gaming desktop for heavy work but the Air is such a joy to use because it's so portable and well-designed that I find myself using it a lot.
Having a 15" model is great for anyone who wants a bit bigger screen without it coming with a much bigger machine.
Having a 15" model is great for anyone who wants a bit bigger screen without it coming with a much bigger machine.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
Yea I am complaing that air now equals 3 oz of difference. I’ve had most of the models since the PowerBook 100 series. The current 3 pounds has been the bottom for a while and as I get older - I really feel the weight in my backpack and on trips. The first air was so amazing because finally it didn’t feel like carrying a brick around with you. I had a 12 inch MacBook for a while and it was 2 pounds…. 2008 was 15 years ago… so yea I am complaining about them not getting any lighter in 15 years. I’d really like a 13 inch or 15 inch that comes close to 2 pounds. Physics be damned!
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
At home I have one massive 43" 4K display and my MBP and agree it's better, but at work all we have are cheapo Dell 1080p monitors and not being able to use two would be a dealbreaker for me.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
I don't know why you're being downvoted for this.
Most of our Mac users at work would be well served by an Air rather than a Pro, but the Air (despite what other comments have said) does not support dual monitors in the way that most of our users want (having one screen + the laptop is not ideal, when you have 2x 27" screens on the desk ready to be used).
DisplayLink docks have been the only way we have been able to make a second external screen work, and it's not consistent and relies on third party software being installed.
Upvote
10
(10
/
0)
You're being downvoted, but this has been my experience as well with an M2 MBA 13" with 8GB RAM. Most Mac average consumers won't need more and the only thing I can attribute that to is MacOS. My ex's Windows laptop with 12GB of RAM is just bog-slow all of the time and I do way more than she does. Multiple Firefox tabs, Apple Music streaming, Slack, and occasionally a VSCode window open when I'm working from home. Feels faster than my work-provided 2019 Intel i9 MBP w/16GB RAM at times.
Upvote
13
(13
/
0)
Samsung increased the weight of the entire lineup this generation, hopefully this Air gets them to reverse that trend.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
The point holds though. I recall having some sort of memory problem on my Mac mini soon after I’d bought my first SSD. Some app had gone nuts or something.
The Mac felt a little sluggish, enough to notice. But the SSD (again, early days, so not fast by todays standards) was fast enough swapping that it wasn’t obvious to me that the problem was memory.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Because his comment was a criticism of an Apple product, it's that simple.
Just like people upvoted the comment saying it's actually OK to lack this feature because macOS has a "superior windows management" which is obviously false for anyone who used macOS (comment written on a 16" M2 MBP).
Upvote
-15
(4
/
-19)