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by kllrnohj 1416 days ago
> importantly desktop-comparable speed for even heavy tasks like photo/video editing are really, really good

Because it has dedicated hardware to make photo & video editing good. Which is great, if that's your jam. It's dead silicon if it isn't, though. M1/M2 strike a great balance for performance & battery life, absolutely. But it's very narrow in what it can achieve desktop-comparable speeds on when it comes to heavy workloads, and other laptops are drastically faster at rather large areas of consumer computing like gaming.

> Honestly unless you're required to run windows, it makes a macbook kind of a no brainer right now

Or if you're just a casual / lite user but want something other than 13.3", which is the only size Apple offers an economical model. Or if you really like having a touch screen, which Apple refuses to do for some reason. That second point is basically the entire reason my SO is hunting for alternatives to the Air.
2 comments
sovnade 1416 days ago
You're right..the lack of a touch screen is weird.

I do use mine for dev work/etc though (M1) and it's completely fine, even with only 8gb. I've never had any slowdowns or felt like it was holding me back.

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KptMarchewa 1416 days ago
>But it's very narrow in what it can achieve desktop-comparable speeds on when it comes to heavy workloads

Very generally, Java is one of those things. CPU performance is really, really good for non-rosetta workloads.

I agree though that despite Apple's wild claims the general GPU performance isn't that good - not that it's bad for very quiet laptop.

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kllrnohj 1416 days ago
> Very generally, Java is one of those things. CPU performance is really, really good for non-rosetta workloads.

Single-threaded (or "lightly threaded") absolutely. But if we're saying "desktop-comparable" and "heavy workloads" I'm gonna assume a multi-core workload and go throw things like the 5950X or 12900K into the ring at a minimum, and the 5995WX at the extreme. M1 ultra starts at $4k after all, it's absolutely fair to include Xeon-W & Threadripper Pros against that. M1's big cores punch above their weight, but they still can't make up that much of a core count deficit.

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