Saturday, March 29, 2025
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Sunday, March 23, 2025
I Want Apple to Bring This MacBook Pro Feature to the MacBook Air - CNET
I Want Apple to Bring This MacBook Pro Feature to the MacBook Air
"Commentary: The M4 MacBook Air has all the power and ports I need. But I could use one Pro feature that's still not an option for Apple's thin-and-light laptop.
The MacBook Air's display is big and bright but has only a basic 60Hz refresh rate.
Josh Goldman/CNETThere are plenty of reasons to pick a MacBook Pro over a MacBook Air. For most people, it's getting the increased performance from an M4 Pro or M4 Max chip. For others, it's getting a bit more display, a 14.2-inch panel versus 13.6 inches on the smaller models or 16.2 inches to 15.3 inches on the larger MacBooks. And for others still, it's getting a better port selection with an extra Thunderbolt port to go along with an HDMI connection and SDXC card slot.
My primary laptop is a 14-inch MacBook Pro, but I don't really need Pro-level performance. After reviewing the new 15-inch MacBook Air M4, I'm nearly ready to trade my 14-inch Pro for the 15-inch Air. I love the Air's thinner and slightly lighter design and bigger display. But there's one thing holding me back. One feature exclusive to the MacBook Pro that I'm afraid I'd miss on the MacBook Air that's otherwise better suited to me. I'm not sure I can live (and scroll) without a ProMotion display.
Watch this: M4 MacBook Air Review: Still Fantastic Even if Not Much Has Changed
Display differences
The MacBook Air's Liquid Retina is a great laptop display. It's bright and sharp with accurate color. But it's not the Liquid Retina XDR display you get with a MacBook Pro. The 1,600-nit Liquid Retina Display XDR on a MacBook Pro is much brighter than the MacBook Air's 500-nit Liquid Retina display and bright enough for HDR content editing. My occasional video editing projects don't involve HDR video or extend beyond iMovie, so I'm willing to leave the extended dynamic range of an XDR display to the realm of the MacBook Pro.
MacBook Pro displays also boast higher resolutions and pixels-per-inch counts but the MacBook Air's resolution presents a very sharp picture with more than enough pixels to my eyes. So I'm not asking for a higher resolution than what's currently offered on either MacBook Air model.
However, with the amount of scrolling I do, what I want on the Air is the faster refresh rate you get on a Pro. Apple labels it as ProMotion and it provides an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz. That means it refreshes its image 120 times a second for smoother motion. With an Air, the display refreshes at a steady 60 times per second.
The MacBook Pro's ProMotion display has a refresh rate that is twice as fast as a MacBook Air's.
Lori Grunin/CNETWhen I tested the new 15-inch MacBook Air, I looked at it next to my 14-inch MacBook Pro. And from this side-by-side comparison, I noticed the smoother motion when scrolling through web pages. The motion in YouTube videos or Netflix shows didn't look any smoother to me, but the more fluid motion was clear to me when I was browsing the web, an activity I do much more than watching YouTube or Netflix on a MacBook. Text stayed more legible on the Pro as I scrolled down a page. On the Air, letters and words blurred as I moved down the page, making it more difficult to keep reading while scrolling.
And the adaptive part? A ProMotion display adapts the refresh rate depending on what's happening on your screen. When things are active and moving -- watching a movie or scrolling through an article, for example -- it cranks it up to 120Hz. When things are more static or when the display is sitting idle, it can drop the refresh rate to as low as 1Hz to conserve battery life.
My AirMotion compromise idea
I suppose it is called ProMotion for a reason -- a feature exclusive to the MacBook Pro. Any MacBook Pro from 2021 and onward has a ProMotion display. You'll also find Apple's ProMotion displays on its other "Pro" devices. iPhone Pro models got ProMotion displays starting in 2021 along with the MacBook Pro, but Apple introduced the ProMotion display with the iPad Pro in 2017. ProMotion is doubly important on an iPad Pro because it allows for smoother movement and scrolling and provides a more natural and responsive feel for drawing, sketching and writing.
A display with an adaptive refresh rate would bring smoother scrolling and longer battery life to the MacBook Air.
Josh Goldman/CNETI'd argue that smoother scrolling from a ProMotion display is something all MacBook users can appreciate, unlike a true pro-level feature like a super-bright XDR panel needed for creating and editing HDR content. Plus, the adaptive part of ProMotion would help with battery life, another item that all MacBook users would certainly welcome.
Plus, with MacBooks no longer the longest-running laptops I've tested -- they've fallen behind Copilot Plus PCs based on Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors -- it's in Apple's interests to bring ProMotion or something close to it to the MacBook Air to improve battery life.
I understand adding a feature called ProMotion to a non-Pro product might cause Apple's marketing team some consternation. So let's do some rebranding. Call it AirMotion and give MacBook Air displays an adaptive refresh rate up to, say, 90Hz. Better yet, call it AirMotion with a 120Hz refresh rate and bump ProMotion up to 144Hz. That would maintain the Pro's edge over the Air while also helping to strengthen Apple's case that a MacBook Pro can be used for gaming.
In the end, any variety of a ProMotion (or AirMotion!) display would strengthen my ability to trade in my 14-inch MacBook Pro for the larger yet thinner and lighter 15-inch MacBook Air."
Friday, March 21, 2025
Monday, March 17, 2025
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Opinion | Trump Needs a Lesson From Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence - The New York Times
The Document That Has Uncomfortable Lessons for Trump
"Mr. Purdum is a former White House correspondent and the Los Angeles bureau chief for The Times.
Last week, The Atlantic reported that President Trump wants to display the Declaration of Independence — perhaps a rare copy — in the Oval Office. That’s fine, although the Oval is already getting so overstuffed with objets d’art as to resemble Louis XIV’s ministorage.
Indeed, it would do Mr. Trump good to be in the presence of our founding document. It would do him even more good to read it every now and then, because he might just find that Thomas Jefferson’s masterwork — which is, after all, a ringing bill of particulars against King George III — rings uncomfortably close to home, and not just because of its 18th-century Quirks of Capitalization. Take only a few piquant examples from Jefferson’s eloquent indictment of a heedless monarch:
“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good …”
Mr. Trump’s administration has frozen spending and sought to shutter agencies approved by Congress, moved to jettison government employees covered by Civil Service protections, canceled federal contracts and threatened to deport people based on their political views. In granting TikTok a temporary waiver to continue U.S. operations, Mr. Trump ignored the requirements outlined in Congress’s ban on that social media platform — and the Supreme Court’s upholding of said ban — which allows for a 90-day delay in enforcement only if the president certifies to Congress that an agreement is in place to end Chinese control. No such deal has been made, and now Mr. Trump has suggested he’s about to extend the waiver.
“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither …”
Mr. Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants is one thing; his packing some of them off to hotels in countries they’ve never lived in is another. And his specious contention that Democrats have fostered open borders to build a menacing new coalition of liberal voters is quite another still. That he’s even entertaining the idea of revoking temporary legal status for roughly a quarter million Ukrainian refugees is cruel and counterproductive. His attempt to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants born here flies in the face of the 14th Amendment.
“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice …”
Mr. Trump has purged professional staff from the Justice Department; punished law firms representing clients he doesn’t like by revoking their lawyers’ security clearances; fired inspectors general, overruled his own appointed prosecutor in the corruption case of New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, and disregarded or slow-walked his response to judicial orders.
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance …”
Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, including his coterie of juvenile engineers, has burrowed its way into the federal bureaucracy, wreaking havoc, discarding experts on issues from nuclear weapons safety to avian flu and then quickly moving to reinstate them, claiming billions of dollars in supposed savings, then quietly dropping boasts that proved unfounded.
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us …” See Jan. 6, 2021; res ipsa loquitur.
Mr. Trump has celebrated his self-declared authority to rescind traffic congestion pricing on the streets of Manhattan with the social media declaration “LONG LIVE THE KING!” and his aides have circulated a meme of him on a Time-like magazine cover wearing a golden crown. No wonder Lin-Manuel Miranda — no “sweet, submissive subject” — announced, along with the producer Jeffrey Seller, that he’s canceling a planned production of his musical “Hamilton” at the Kennedy Center next year, a run that had been envisioned as part of a celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s 250th birthday.
Mr. Trump isn’t actually guilty of one of Jefferson’s biggest beefs about King George: “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.” Nope; congressional Republicans have effectively done that all by themselves.
Jefferson was America’s original polymath: author, lawyer, farmer, architect, statesman — a “redheaded tombstone,” as the playwright Peter Stone called him in the musical “1776.” And he was pretty smart, warning in the Declaration that “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Like personal vengeance, for one.
But Mr. Trump’s presidency may well be proof of the limits of Jefferson’s — and our country’s — defining credo, that “all men are created equal.” No past president has ever been anything like the equal of Mr. Trump — or so qualified to be on the receiving end of the Declaration’s list of damning charges. He might want to think twice before installing such proof of his unfitness in his own workplace, where he and all his visitors would be reminded of its enduring power and foresight every day."