2022 M2 Macbook Air Owners Thread (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

I continue to use my iPad as a full blown computer while traveling back and forth to my parents. What can’t it do for me?
AAA Gaming (tbf the pros can’t either)
Virtualization host (VMware, VirtualBox)
Full blown Lightroom and FCPX
3d printer control (tho it controls lasers and CNC!)

It eats everything else I need including light image editing, video editing etc.

The Air would have added 3 of 4 missing pieces but only the virtualization was the driver. Since that real actual need faded a bit (into just a want) I continue to wait. I’m hoping for a 1000 nit 15” M3 air that comes stock with 16gb ram tonight but I don’t think I’ll get my wish. And again the ONLY thing I need that ram bump for is to run multiple simultaneous VMs.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I would say that the iPad is in the process of evolving towards what you think of as "a full-blown computer."

Think back to personal computers when they first came out. Skip over the ones that you had to assemble yourself to the TRS-80 Model 1 and the Apple II.

Smithsonian – National Museum of American History – Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 Microcomputer
Smithsonian – National Museum of American History – Apple II (search results)

The TRS-80 had an 8-bit CPU, and came with as little as 4 KB (not MB, not GB) of RAM. Many of its owners couldn't afford the luxury of floppy disc drives, and had to store programs and data on cassette tapes. It could show 16 lines of 64 characters on its black-and-white monitor. Using special graphics characters, you could draw things at an effective resolution of 128 (horizontal) x 48 (vertical) pixels. There was no multitasking – and had there been, there would have been no firewalls between applications and the OS; no virtual memory.

Yet you could run a word processor (Scripsit) on it. When someone released the spreadsheet VisiCalc for the Apple II, that became a killer application for that machine. Likewise, Lotus 1-2-3 was a killer application for early IBM PCs and clones running MS-DOS … until Lotus (apparently) blew off developing a Windows version of their application, which let Microsoft come in and take over the Office market using programs they had written after early experience with the first Macs.

Now you can go to the store and buy a personal computer that is much more powerful than any of the workstations that were around at the time that the first IBM PCs and Macs came out. One whose operating system and CPU can (and do) enforce separation of address spaces between the OS and applications – and between applications and each other.

Technology has advanced to such an extent that even a WATCH – a WATCH – is able to run an operating system that does some of the things that used to be the province of workstations, minicomputers, and mainframes. Give iPhones and iPads another 20 years, and you may be surprised how much further they might evolve.

Those were the days, no? Trash-80's back at my high school (that also still had a rather old IBM "minicomputer"? that used punch cards and 8" floppies ), Commodore 64 at home for old-school-ish gaming, coding hobby and very rudimentary word processing (on par w/ dedicated word processing machines, not just typewriters, that I've also used on occasion), etc, early Macs for MS Word, then-lower-college-level programming courses/projects and such, yeah, PCs running VM-less DOS and not a whole lot really useful to ordinary folks, including ordinary college students -- IIRC, I did get to briefly see an early pre-3.0 version of Windoze at some point in the late-80's that nobody would ever wanna use, especially after exposure to Macs (NVM Unix workstations running some flavor of X Window), haha...

So yeah, my iPhone/iPad/ATV4K (and others' smart TVs, smart cars, etc) and maybe even my WiFi router, Fitbit and possibly my smart vacuum robot, LOL, are all probably more powerful than the vast majority of those...

_Man_

 

[JohnRice]

I’m hoping for a 1000 nit 15” M3 air that comes stock with 16gb ram tonight but I don’t think I’ll get my wish. And again the ONLY thing I need that ram bump for is to run multiple simultaneous VMs.

Since the 15" M2 Air only came out four months ago, I suspect that's a long shot.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I continue to use my iPad as a full blown computer while traveling back and forth to my parents. What can’t it do for me?
AAA Gaming (tbf the pros can’t either)
Virtualization host (VMware, VirtualBox)
Full blown Lightroom and FCPX
3d printer control (tho it controls lasers and CNC!)

It eats everything else I need including light image editing, video editing etc.

The Air would have added 3 of 4 missing pieces but only the virtualization was the driver. Since that real actual need faded a bit (into just a want) I continue to wait. I’m hoping for a 1000 nit 15” M3 air that comes stock with 16gb ram tonight but I don’t think I’ll get my wish. And again the ONLY thing I need that ram bump for is to run multiple simultaneous VMs.

But you're using an iPad Pro, not regular iPad, though, right?

Not sure about using my standard, 9th gen iPad to do lite image editing for RAW files from my Nikon cameras -- I don't even currently have a viable way to move those files onto the iPad, LOL, as I wasn't really considering doing that... though that certainly could be nice/helpful and I definitely woulda wanted OUAT...

_Man_

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I suspect tonight's presentation will be all about Macbook Pros and iMac with M3. Oh, iPad Air is rumored, too.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

As I indicated earlier, 15" M2 Air for ~$1K is tempting for sure... but I probably have other higher, related priorities for my tight-ish budget (as mentioned elsewhere), eg. in no definite order of priority, upgrade to a 45MP-plus mirrorless Nikon at some point (and probably finally leave DSLRs behind... though probably not quite all my F-mount lenses), probably the new Z-mount Tamron 150-500, probably a new Z-mount ultrawide-zoom to go w/ the 45MP-plus camera, etc.

I might also finally migrate from Windoze PC to a Mac something before actually going for whichever MB Air... or not (before) since I'm cheap bastard, LOL...

_Man_

 

[JohnRice]

I suspect tonight's presentation will be all about Macbook Pros and iMac with M3. Oh, iPad Air is rumored, too.

I guess you'll find out tomorrow morning?

 

[Sam Posten]

Since the 15" M2 Air only came out four months ago, I suspect that's a long shot.

Unless the pro evolves into an air form factor

 

[Sam Posten]

Just realized we are all thinking about this wrong. It’s obviously just gonna focus on scary movies in the Vision Pro