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0 pointsanakaine2y ago0 comments

I'm one of those industry long timers who can and will use just about anything, and has occasionally over the years owned macs of various form factors. For the past decade thanks to corporate work I've been entirely Windows and Linux based.

I picked my daughter up an m1 macbook air about a year ago. It was an absolute delight of a machine to use. Light weight, no fans, no hot bits during general usage, long battery life, a screen that didn't upset my eyes, and importantly the OS just got out of the way during general usage.

I wound up buying myself an m1 air about 6 months later.

My only gripe is that I wish it had more RAM, but even then the unified memory approach has made my expected ram usage vs actual ram usage a bit of an odd thing. It consistently uses less ram than I'd normally anticipate. That said, more ram by default would help fill in those times when I do load it up.

0 comments

spaceman_20202y ago

I picked up a M3 Macbook Pro and this thing works like an absolute beast.

I currently have Photoshop, Illustrator, VSCode, multiple Chrome windows - each with 20-40 tabs - and this thing is not even sweating.

I get 8-10 hours of useful work out of it even on battery.

Completely changed the way I work

skunkworker2y ago

I upgraded from a 2015 MBP with 16gb of ram to a M3 Pro with 36gb. It’s a night and day difference, the machine is much more responsive and I mainly use it 30 min a day, or sometimes for a few hours in a row. And charge about once per week, getting about 14hr battery life.

danpmurray2y ago

How much RAM does it have, and have you ever wished you had more?

internetter2y ago

I can answer this. I have a very similar workload to OP. I've found myself with resolve, affinity photo, chrome, vscode, spotify, ect open simultaneously, and have had absolutely zero struggle on my 8gb air.

If you become "enlightened" you can notice that sometimes when you, say, open your spotify window after a long time elsewhere, the spotify is briefly unresponsive. Not in a way you notice, more in the sense that if you are looking for it, you can see hints it is swapping.

The only time I wish I had more is when I got into iOS development and began running VMs on my mac.

1 more reply

TMWNN2y ago

My current and previous MacBooks have had 16GB and I've been fine with it, but given local LLMs I think I'm going to have to go to whatever will be the maximum RAM available for the next model.

Similarly, I am for the first time going to care about how much RAM is in my next iPhone. My iPhone 13's 4GB is suddenly inadequate.

piva002y ago

My MacBook Pro M3 has 36GiB RAM and does all of the comment above + music producing (dozens of VSTs on some 1-2 dozens tracks) + projection mapping and can run some LLM models locally like the Mistral ones.

I've only managed to hear the fan when chatting with a LLM, for anything else it's been an absolutely silent beast.

3 more replies

dividedbyzero2y ago

I have an M2 Air with 24gb and it has no problems running Brave with 800-ish tabs, development workloads (a bunch of VSCode projects, several docker containers, lots of iTerm terminals), low-end CAD and 3D printing apps, CaptureOne and a bunch of Electron apps in parallel with room to spare. I've found I can fit more into those 24gb than into the 32gb of the Intel Mac I had before that (however that's possible).

3 more replies

spaceman_20202y ago

Honestly haven’t felt like it didn’t have enough RAM even once.

My daily driver before this was a Ryzen 5700x desktop with 64GB RAM, so I know what a powerful processor + RAM combo feels like.

Haven’t even heard the fan even once.

bredren2y ago

What were the things that held you up from making the switch?

nine_k2y ago

Good that it works for you and your daughter!

I have to use macbooks at work, and they do bother me. The mirror-finish screen always reflects bright lights into my eyes, be it a window or a ceiling light at a distance. The OS is thankfully a certified Unix, but the GUI, while having a few brilliant features, also has warts like no way to align or snap windows, apps running without a window, with only a menu bar, with a window from a different app showing, etc. This continues for many years, so it's likely a design principle.

Of course, Windows is even worse in the GUI department, there's no comparison.

So, sadly, a Macbook remains the most sane computer for non-technical people :(

skydhash2y ago

> This continues for many years, so it's likely a design principle.

I read that Apple follows a document model, where the application is kinda a background thing a window is supposed to be for a specific task. Not like Windows where the main windows is the hub of interaction. So you use CMD + <backquote> to switch between these tasks and CMD + TAB for switching between applications. The menu bar is part of the application, but windows can modify it to suit the focused tasks.

I've used Rectangle for quick window management, but in time I've come to understand the philosophy so it does not bother me as much. It's more leaned into the desktop analogy than other OS.

baxuz2y ago

Yes, and this is the reason why there is a shared menu bar and why many early macos apps had a number of floating windows, like Photoshop.

The desktop represents the active app, and a window is the active document in that app.

This doesn't make all that much sense with today's screen sizes and multiplatform apps.

1 more reply

SamuelAdams2y ago

You can also use AltTab if you prefer windows tab styles.

https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

spaceman_20202y ago

I agree with your misgivings about window management in MacOS. The way Windows does it is so much more intuitive.

For window snapping, there are countless apps that will easy solve your problem. But I get why you would struggle - I still get frustrated at times with the way MacOS works.

atraac2y ago

> no way to align or snap windows

Just download Rectangle for free. I recently switched from Dell XPS to M3 Pro and that was my gripe to. One install and it's much better, moving windows with ctrl+opt+arrows is also close to Windows and makes it fairly usable.

ksec2y ago

I really wish Apple would put 12GB RAM by default instead of 8GB. We now have high resolution that uses more memory and sharing Memory with GPU. In reality this is less than 8GB with Graphics Memory.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

spaceman_20202y ago

I picked up a M3 Macbook Pro and this thing works like an absolute beast.

I currently have Photoshop, Illustrator, VSCode, multiple Chrome windows - each with 20-40 tabs - and this thing is not even sweating.

I get 8-10 hours of useful work out of it even on battery.

Completely changed the way I work

skunkworker2y ago

danpmurray2y ago

How much RAM does it have, and have you ever wished you had more?

internetter2y ago

The only time I wish I had more is when I got into iOS development and began running VMs on my mac.

1 more reply

TMWNN2y ago

My current and previous MacBooks have had 16GB and I've been fine with it, but given local LLMs I think I'm going to have to go to whatever will be the maximum RAM available for the next model.

Similarly, I am for the first time going to care about how much RAM is in my next iPhone. My iPhone 13's 4GB is suddenly inadequate.

piva002y ago

I've only managed to hear the fan when chatting with a LLM, for anything else it's been an absolutely silent beast.

3 more replies

dividedbyzero2y ago

3 more replies

spaceman_20202y ago

Honestly haven’t felt like it didn’t have enough RAM even once.

My daily driver before this was a Ryzen 5700x desktop with 64GB RAM, so I know what a powerful processor + RAM combo feels like.

Haven’t even heard the fan even once.

bredren2y ago

What were the things that held you up from making the switch?

nine_k2y ago

Good that it works for you and your daughter!

Of course, Windows is even worse in the GUI department, there's no comparison.

So, sadly, a Macbook remains the most sane computer for non-technical people :(

skydhash2y ago

> This continues for many years, so it's likely a design principle.

I've used Rectangle for quick window management, but in time I've come to understand the philosophy so it does not bother me as much. It's more leaned into the desktop analogy than other OS.

baxuz2y ago

Yes, and this is the reason why there is a shared menu bar and why many early macos apps had a number of floating windows, like Photoshop.

The desktop represents the active app, and a window is the active document in that app.

This doesn't make all that much sense with today's screen sizes and multiplatform apps.

1 more reply

SamuelAdams2y ago

You can also use AltTab if you prefer windows tab styles.

https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

spaceman_20202y ago

I agree with your misgivings about window management in MacOS. The way Windows does it is so much more intuitive.

For window snapping, there are countless apps that will easy solve your problem. But I get why you would struggle - I still get frustrated at times with the way MacOS works.

atraac2y ago

> no way to align or snap windows

ksec2y ago

I really wish Apple would put 12GB RAM by default instead of 8GB. We now have high resolution that uses more memory and sharing Memory with GPU. In reality this is less than 8GB with Graphics Memory.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse