Apple's New 15-inch MacBook Air is the 'World's Thinnest' - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

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    Can never be too rich or too thin said Lady Cassandra.

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  • I like 'em with enough steel reinforcement

    that I don't have to worry about picking my laptop up by a corner and having the weight of the screen bend and break the motherboard.
    
    My ultrabook makes me nervous if I try to pick it up without using both hands. This sounds worse.

• If you need something hip to slice yourself with.

  I don't particularly care about thinness, though. The amazingly thin for its time thinkpad 570 was plenty thin and had a very nice keyboard. And a trackpoint. And a non-glossy screen. Haven't really seen anything that good since. Laptop tech marches on, but it does tend to stick us with whatever's barely enough for indiscriminate suits. A laptop to get serious work done? It's been a long, long time.

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    Apple fanbois have asked for an Apple branded shaving kit for years, now. Finally, they seem to be closer to getting one.

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      Wow, you could probably shave your chest with it.

• The took the ugly notch from the iphones, and put it on the new screen. The easily could have put it on the top of the screen, but that wouldn't be as ugly.

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    You are absolutely clueless. First, if you don't like it, go to System Settings -> Display, Show all resolutions, and turn it off. You just threw 74 pixels of screen real estate away. Second, if you actually bothered looking at any MacBook, there is no space you could move that notch to,
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      Wow you're dumb. The notch is a front facing camera that removes screen real estate.

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        The alternative to a notch, is a bezel where the space to the sizes of the camera is just solid material instead of part of the screen.
        The notch gives you extra screen space either side of the notch. Given that MacOS generally has a menubar at the top of the screen and most of the useful parts of the menubar are at either side, putting the camera in the middle of the menubar is actually a good idea, otherwise the menubar would be underneath the camera and take up a bit more of your vertical space.

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          You think the notch provide increased screen real estate? I think it takes it away. And it is visually annoying.

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            Without the notch, you'd have a thick black bar running right across the top of the screen (see the older macbooks).

            Don't think of it as a notch that's taken away the center of the screen, think of it that they've given you extra screen space either side of the camera. If you compare to the previous generation macbook, the height of the screen to the bottom of the notch is still greater than the total height of the previous version.

            • Re: The notch

              So what you're saying is that Samsung and all other companies did it better, since their notches are generally smaller ðY

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              dunno, my Samsung phone just put a circle where the camera is, I loose the real estate of a icon without notches or bars, its really not that hard

          • Re: The notch

            In that case yo donâ(TM)t think. At the top of the screen you have the menubar, and the notch is just a bit in the middle thatâ(TM)s black. 74 extra pixels. Turn off the notch, 74 pixels gone. Or you have a huge bezel instead of the notch, 74 pixels gone.
            
            Or more correctly 74 pixels not added. The MacBook screens are 16:10 with 74 pixels extra height.

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              Wow your heads about to explode over 74 pixels.

              • Re: The notch

                Idiot. Apple is giving you 74 pixels more screen space unless you have some compulsive whatever disorder and you complain about it.

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            I bought a 14" M1 MBP when they first came out (and still use it). I noticed the notch for all of 30 min, then simply didn't notice it any more. Same on my iPhones; the Dynamic Island of the iPhone 14 Pro was annoying for all of 5 minutes, then you don't see it.

            It's a non-issue.

            • Re: The notch

              Itâ(TM)s absolutely an issue if you never used a Mac in your life and need something to complain about. Yes, for real users, it isnâ(TM)t.

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      I think the OP was implying Apple could've just made the lid itself slightly taller to accommodate the camera. Even with phones I think it's pretty stupid that manufacturers go with the aesthetic of compromising the display experience with notches and punch holes instead of having a slightly larger top bezel.

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        While I'd have agreed with you on notched phones a priori, having used *both* kinds of phones now I've found it to be a non-issue. In practical terms one doesn't actually *function* better than the other. What polarizes people is how they feel about bezels vs how they feel about notches.

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          The notch is particularly irksome with video and gaming content where the app developer doesn't take into account that some people don't want the notch getting in the way. But that's mostly down to Apple's refusal to add some sort of system-wide user option to limit an app to only the visible area of the display on iOS.

          I haven't used any Android phones with notches/hole punches yet, so I'm not sure if they do provide an option to limit the display area.

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            I used to think that way too.
            reading this article, I realized have no idea whether my Samsung S22 Ultra has a notch or a hole. I had to unlock it to figure that out.
            It has a hole.
            And so, I realized the very thing that I had complained about years ago was part of my life for 5 months, and I was completely oblivious to it.
            Suffice to say, it's not really an issue. That comes from someone who had a dead pixel on a monitor and had to change it, because it was really annoying.

          • Re: The notch

            You never used a MacBook, right? When an app switches to full screen mode, the notch is not part of that. Unless the developer opts in and uses the free 74 pixels for something useful.

      • then the others would complain

        and if they made it that much taller to not have the notch, the *other* folks would be complaining about the wasted real estate that could have put screen on either side of it . . .

      • Re: The notch

        If apple removed the notch and made the lid taller for an extra 74 pixels, then they could also add the notch back for 74 more pixels.

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    I wish Jobs were still around. He'd have cussed out whatever asshole came up with the idea and thrown them off the roof. At least Apple can power their new campus by wrapping his corpse in copper wire.

• Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

  by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @01:32PM (#63577519)

  Whats the big deal about how thin it is?

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        We found the guy that's never worked in corporate America. How else would one do it? All companies have locked down configs that only allow their own devices on their networks. I would love to have one device with VirtualBox images for all my work/client requirements but that's not the real world...

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    It's just stupid.
    It makes it harder to have useful ports, like Ethernet and USB-A.

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      Last year I went to buy a new laptop and noticed it had no headphone jack. What the hell is wrong with these laptop manufacturers?

    • Re: Why?

      Useful ports⦠The EU is coming after apple for not switching to usb-c exclusively.

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    I know times have changed a quality is quite a bit different these days, but I remember when buying my first laptop, my boss at the time (Gateway's laptop service manager) told me "if it's advertised as the thinnest laptop, you don't want to go anywhere near it." That advice has always stuck with me, right or wrong.

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    Here's what I think matters about having an *unusually* thin device these days: it makes it easy to sell as a premium product.

    That's really the only sensible justification. There's diminishing benefits thinness, and I suspect there are few people that gain any *practical* benefit by making a device less than 20mm thick or so. And there are all kinds of practical and engineering challenges in making such a device, which is why you will only see devices sold at premium prices venturing into this territory.

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    It's cool until you realize the keyboard probably has no key travel to absorb typing impact - have fun with that. I guess if you are true touch typist but I tend to pound the keys and need something to absorb the pressure. Can't stand modern laptop keyboards for this reason. But eh I only buy economy so what would I know?
    
    I learned on a mechanical typewriter, are students naturally just light typists now since it's all touch pads and chicklet keys?

• Did they have to go to a retro manufacturer to get this stuff? 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD? A good quality 1TB NVME SSD is $50 retail and 16GB SODIM DDR5 RAM from the nr1 manufacturer also goes for 50 at retail. I get they want to get some margins but can they for the love of god just make the base model $100 more expensive and include some stuff that will last a couple years?

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    You answered your own question. Apple makes the base models horribly under-spec'd so anybody who knows better has to spend more initially, and anybody who doesn't has to upgrade (by buying an entirely new machine) sooner.

    It is a practice that has entirely put me off their platform, since I generally cheap out by buying laptops with the lowest RAM and storage specs and upgrade them myself. In fact, I recently snagged an open box Yoga 6 Ryzen 5 (only Zen 2, though) from Best Buy for $350ish. RAM is unfortu

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      Or, regular users who aren't technically proficient at computer hardware buy them and then don't understand why they're so slow and always running out of space. Then they have to buy another, more capable laptop, and $PROFIT$.

      Or, they put the Mac on a shelf and buy a Lenovo. But we don't speak of that.

• What other spec is there?

• What a clunker compared to my old 15" LG Gram that weighs in at 2.2 pounds.

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    The newest 15" LG Gram is only 2.18 pounds [lg.com]. There is a noticeable practical difference between 2.18 and 3.3 pounds. There is no noticeable difference between 11.5mm and 12.4mm that is discernable to a human eye. Even if there were a discernable difference, there is no practical utility from the 0.9mm difference.

• Doesn't realy lool that thin, i think the surface laptops a thinner.

• Finally! A laptop that can be folded on two axes! Never mind that crackling sound you hear when the thing folds perpendicular to the 'official' hinges...

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    I still use my old 11 inch Air when travelling. Having something that small and light that you don’t notice it and fits in a daypack really changes things when you travel. I can carry it all day and not notice it.

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        Ok, "OS X Dinosaur" made me laugh. Good job.

• Thin has made phones dangerously fragile. Let's hope you don't press your skinny laptop too hard.
  
  Give me a nice, sturdy, thick laptop. One that can take a hit without the body or the screen smashing, and is repairable outside a clean room.
  
  But that would cost the manufacturers in repeat sales, and the sheep don't care. They actually believe they need thin.

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    Rest assured those selling overpriced shitty hardware are breaking out the violin quartet to compose something for you...in memory of this planned disaster and massive profits.

    Or in this case, they actually believe they need OSX. From proprietary ports to removing inputs, it's quite amazing what you can do with a captured audience.

• Few asked for a thinner notebook but many have asked for USB A.

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    The ones that don't need thinner can pay double the price for the "Pro" model.

• And most difficult to repair. No thanks.

• Is buy a cover so it doesn't break. Not the crap apple sells, but something from Supcase, or their competitors.

  Thin = breakable and easily pushed.

  Getting the stupid thin stuff is like getting those moronic wireless earbuds where on instantly get lost/seperated because their is no wire connecting them.

  Elegant and pretty does not equal functional and worthwhile.

• First off, there's Bendgate. Which apparently no one at Apple remembers. Not even the engineers.

  But more importantly in a world full of body positivity, why the hell is society giving Apple a pass for this horrific attack against thicc electronics? I'd love to know.

  • Re: Bendgate is now Thiccgate

    Strange enough, bendgate stopped a month after these devices started to be sold. New Apple device -> someone with more brawn than brain bends it as hard as they can -> lots of views. Then people get bored with it, and bending stops.
• I am running an Air M2 (16GB, 0.5TB) in "clamshell mode" to be able to simply unplug it and travel. I have had to buy an external hub (OWC Thunderbolt Dock) to connect everything needed: monitor, Time Machine SSD, the OWC dock itself, occasional thumb drive (via adapter). Plus the renegade SuperDrive will only work if directly connected to an internal Apple port, so that requires unplugging something or reserving a port on the Air. OTOH, only the monitor and OWC hub need AC power directly. Apple really does
• I don't want a gossamer laptop that will wilt in my backpack and can't be repaired. This just makes the world worse as other vendors chase what Apple does, even when it sucks.

• My partner recently bought and returned a current gen 12.9" iPad Pro because the damn thing kept throttling the display brightness because it was overheating while running a simple 2D game. That's what too thin for proper thermal management gets you, and Apple seems totally okay with it. It would be like if a car manufacturer sold a vehicle that overheated at highway speeds, and everybody just somehow considered that to be perfectly normal.

  I bet this laptop would be absolutely lovely for running long Hand

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    "It would be like if a car manufacturer sold a vehicle that overheated at highway speeds, and everybody just somehow considered that to be perfectly normal."

    That would be the 2005 Ford Thunderbird.:-)

• Technical constraints mean that this is going to be breakable, but I will acquiesce to the usual analogy -- I don't like 'em skinny. Put some meat on those bones, and don't put me at risk of an exploding battery pack because engineers failed to allow enough 'breathing space' for a Li-Ion cell that expands over use.

  I think I preferred unsmart flip-phones.

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    Replying to self. At least flip-phones allow replacement of the battery before an apartment-wide incident occurs.
• I'm pretty sure Apple engineers all want to be the thinnest at the urinals too. Garbage products from a crap company. I have to deal with an iOS box on occasion. For everything else I have a Lenovo running Linux that runs circles around the Mac in terms of compile performance (and everything else performance).

• I'm surprised at the number of comments this Apple yawnfest has garnered. It's no wonder the laptop market has fallen off so badly in 2023.

  Tiny tweak: HURRAY!

  1080p camera: GREAT!

  Port count: ALMIGHTY!

• Once again, a company has chosen one of the least-useful metrics to "improve" their product. Was anybody griping about how thick the last product was? No, they weren't. What they were asking for is more ports (or fewer dongles) and better battery life. Is there any significant body of consumers that wouldn't prefer an extra 50% (or more) of battery life for a laptop that is 1mm thicker and a few grams heavier? No, there is not.

  One can only hope this madness one day stops. We reached the usefulness of

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    I use a macbook for work and I'm so SO tired of dongles. I'd gladly put up with some thickness so they could add some ports.

• I’m still using my old 11 inch MacBook Air as my travel machine. At 1kg (2.2 freedom units) and small enough to fit on a tray in cattle class it is the perfect machine when you move about a lot.

  I guess no one in Apple’s design team ever sits at the back of the plane.

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    I think "freedom units" and "cattle class" are my new favorite phrases for this week.

• I thought we'd gotten past thinness as a metric. Yeah, ok, it's thin. And models from five years ago still fit in my backpack just fine.

  I'm reminded of the Dilbert strip where they're making their products thin and slippery, because it markets well, and when they slip out of the users' hands and need repair or replacement, the company can blame it on the users.

• Toast those cheese sandwiches while doing compiles!