MacBook Air (2020) (1 Viewer)

[Thomas Newton]

Highlights:

• A keyboard similar to the one in the 16" rMBP, with a change to the mechanism (hello scissor, bye bye butterfly) to greatly reduce the chances of dust and dirt taking out the operation of keys.
• CPUs now have up to double the performance (and up to four cores; before the limit was two cores).
• SSD storage starts at 256 GB. Previously it started at 128 GB. You can now order up to 2 TB.
• Touch ID sensor.
• T2 security chip.
• Supposedly better sound (more bass).
• Quad-core + 8 GB RAM + 512 GB SSD = $1299 USD. Upgrade to 16 GB RAM for another $200.

Still only two USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports, but they need some differentiators for the 13" rMBP. Hope they update it soon so that all of their notebooks offer the new keyboard.

 

[Ayesh_Perera]

Thought of buying a new macbook.but a bit confused about selecting a macbook version.

Since im a university student , my purpose of using the macbook will be mainly for "machine learning projects" and for "virtualizing (run virtual machines)".So what i need to know is ,

which laptop is better ,out of macbook pro 13 256gb and macbook air 2020 i5 version.?

Since the 2020 macbook air has lots of similar specs of macbook pro 13 and cheaper than the macbook pro ,will it be helpfull for me to do my expected tasks ?

 

[DaveF]

Are you using your laptop to run machine learning? Or using it as the terminal to access university servers that run the ML? My concept of ML is high-end GPU computations that aren’t very “laptop” suitable. But, I don’t know what’s done for college classes.

What does the college recommend? Does all your software run on the Mac? Not sure we can advise you on what laptop to buy.

 

[Thomas Newton]

which laptop is better ,out of macbook pro 13 256gb and macbook air 2020 i5 version.?

The 13" MacBook Pro is generally more powerful, often comes with 4 USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports as opposed to 2, and may feature a Touch Bar.

On the other hand, the 13" MacBook Pro still has the "butterfly" keyboard (thought to have worse typing feel and to potentially be a lot more unreliable). The ones that have a Touch Bar lack a physical ESC key. It used to be the case that all of the Airs were 2-core while many of the MacBook Pros were 4-core, but I believe all or nearly all of both types of machines are on the 4-core page now. Because the MacBook Pro has a more powerful (higher TDP) CPU, it may chew through its battery a bit faster.