What makes Word the best tool for serious writing? I use Pages for writing papers (for humanities courses) and vim+pandoc for math. I have dabbled with Word here and there over the years but I've never seen anything that would indicate to me that it's amazing for writing. Personally, I can't figure out what's going on with the ribbon. It just seems to be a heavily modal interface which is not particularly discoverable.

I've also dabbled with Pages lately, and I don't think I've found any features for now that I desperately miss from Word. Now granted, this is just my workflow, which I believe is fairly basic. But the thing is, most people's workflows are basic. I'm gonna guess that about 80% of people wouldn't miss anything by switching from Word to Pages.

It's a typical example of collaboration lock-in that you'll encounter in so many other areas. It's the reason why so many people are forced to use Adobe apps or Visual Studio.

The most important feature of Word is that everyone has it.

But nothing about that applies to the writing process itself. You could be like George RR Martin and write in WordStar for DOS and then convert the files over to Word before you send to your editor. The main issue there is how often you need to correspond (which may be seldom for a novelist like Martin).

Because otherwise, I have zero idea what that sentence was supposed to imply. If "serious writing" actually means "typing words in a serious manner" in the original comment, then I don't really have much to say, except that OC is probably spewing utter nonsense.

Since a free iCloud account gives you access to the online version of Pages, collaboration with others seems to be covered, including simultaneous editing.

I used to use Word and I'll sometimes use it if I need to if that's what a publisher is using but I never really loved the ribbon and there's way too much clutter that I never use.

I have to say, the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one. It strikes a perfect balance between screen size, weight, and responsiveness, and the battery is always much, much better than anything else. In all, I feel the least amount of internal resistance when I have to reach for the Air, lift the lid, and start typing, while all other computers have one or more practical or psychological barriers.

Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything - far from it. But I'm a huge MBA fan...

That describes all of them. M1 and earlier are 13.3", M2 is 13.6".

At one point there was an 11" Air but the last model in that size is from 2015: 7 years ago.

Shame it's gone IMO, I love the size. My current laptop is a 2014 11" Air.

If you get a good deal on an M1, by all means get one as you can save a lot of money. But in real-life usage, any M2 is faster than the M1.

Although I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple "updated" the current 256GB M1 Air they still sell to use a single flash chip like the M2 models.

I stopped reading, when my Envy had better battery life and Better keyboard than my MacBookAir M1.

You forgot the OS.

Not M1 Air, but I once used my M1 Max MBP for virtual onsite interviews. It was about 4 hours of videocalls on Google Meet + code editing using coderpad or something similar + i had a bunch of personal/unrelated tabs (50+) in chrome on another virtual desktop + 1hr break where i was reviewing my notes and such. Did it all fully on battery, no plugging in. After all was said and done, my laptop charge dropped from around 95% to 71%. No overheating, fans never kicked in either.

I didn't give the details... so here I go. I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy.

Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people)

Edit: I forgot to say, I don't hate Apple or the Macbook at all. it's the notebook that's first on my list, when I suggest a good model.

I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy.

Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people)

When you can buy a DELL with 6x the SSD speed you realize that Apple SSD solutions a dumpster fire.

The thing is you want different stuff from the CPU arch up through the kernel for responsive interactive use than for compiling a big Rust program. Apple have fucking killed it on the former, and Intel’s Gracemont stuff has made a kickass machine for the latter cost 1000 bucks at Best Buy.

But I find myself using the i9-12000K way more often. It clocks to 5-ish GHz on 8 Gracemont cores without making much if any noise, and DDR5 makes a shockingly big difference. And it’s “build a box with Best Buy parts for 1-2 thousand bucks” cheap.

Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?

The Ryzen 7 5800x3d trades blows with Intel's top chip, with many games benefiting enormously from its monster 96mb L3 cache. It will be superseded by the upcoming Zen4 chips, but the nice thing about the 5800x3d is that it's a drop in upgrade for most AM4 motherboards.

Having the whole slab of TSMC’s best new process locked-in until the heat death of the universe doesn’t hurt.

Samsung S22 Ultra (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 934, multi-core: 2925

iPhone 13 (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 1706, multi-core: 4661

That's not just TSMC's best process node. Oh, and the CPU of the S22 Ultra is made on Samsung's 4nm process.

Having the best transistors always doesnt hurt.

When using it for work, I get approx 6 hours.

I'm confused when people report 20 hours usage. I'm guessing this is during very light work and it looks if sleep time?

FYI. My previous Lenovo p15v also got approx 6 hours. That was a great laptop as well - as good as the new MacBook, just without the looks.

Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me.

Maybe I was just already spoilt and lucky and expect8nh too much. 6 to 8 is still much better than 5 years ago.

The discussion about the MacBook Air and you are comparing to a MacBook Pro 14". I have both laptops and the battery life of the Air under heavier use is definitely better than a Pro. This is not surprising, the M1 Pro/Max have double the number of performance cores, the efficiency cores run at a higher clock, plus the Pro has active cooling and a brighter display. At the same time, the battery of the 14" is larger, but not twice as large (49.9 vs. 70 Wh).

I think for regular users, getting two day battery life on an Air is pretty normal. For instance my wife regularly used her Air for two work days before charging.

I connect to the real computers via Apple Silicon appliances because they’re cool, quiet, tender fonts properly, play sound properly, etc.

I know a lot of people are into the Desktop Linux thing. “Mine is great ever since I upgraded to PulseAudio blah, everything is awesome as song as you never close the lid…”

Have fucking fun with that.

Until then a few hundred dollars a year to be in a better ecosystem is not even worth second guessing.

Ableton releases new major versions of their DAW once every couple years. Standard edition is $450. Full edition is $750. Upgrading to the next major version is $240 or so (provided you already own a previous one).

Logic Pro? You pay $199, and you are done. Logic Pro had a massive major update a year or so ago, fully free. Not only it is cheaper, there are no different editions or costs for upgrades. For a one-time cost (that is already cheaper than major competitors), you get perpetual massive updates with no bs or extra costs. In terms of major commercial DAWs that are actually used in the industry, Logic Pro hands down is a great bang for the buck.

I can see the logic, they're not maintaining a whole part/inventory just for the lowest config. I'll let everyone else argue over whether it's worth the penalty or not.