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New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

apple.com

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Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#121

Post by princevegeta89 »

blehn wrote: post #118

I really wanted to love the 13" Air but two things made me switch to the Pro after trying it for a few weeks. One is that the internal speakers suck in comparison to the Pro. I 'm not looking for audiophile quality from laptop speakers, but the Pro speakers are good enough for casually watching youtube videos, TV shows, podcasts, etc, whereas the Air speakers are harsh and tinny. The second is that the default resolu…

The speakers on Pro are definitely audiophile range. To me the screen quality alone was enough to drive me away from Air.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#122

Post by starkparker »

ketzo wrote: post #49

The degree to which Apple has kinda just “won” laptops is nuts to me. $999 for an 13-inch M2 Air is just bonkers. You can easily pay $1500, even $2000 for Windows laptops that are hotter, heavier, AND slower.

And pretty much any M2 MBA model is across-the-board worse than an equivalent 18-month old refurb M2 MBP 13, available at the same price.

With the size difference between the MBA and MBP almost eliminated, the M2 MBA was a superfluous SKU at launch, much less now.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#123

Post by dboreham »

dbbk wrote: post #84
snizovtsev wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$999 is for soldered 8GB/256GB crap. Add $400 for 16GB/512GB models.

I can guarantee you that most people buying the $999 laptop have 5 Chrome tabs open and don't store files on their computer. 8GB/256GB is fine.

Then they could use a $200 Chromebook.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#124

Post by smoldesu »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #92
sempron64 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. It is probably the best laptop in the $1K price range for laptops that don't have a GPU, but that's basically it. The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that there is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs, processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical quality…

I bought a laptop for about $600 with a GPU (RTX 3050). The display... is not comparable. Sure, it's 144hz compared to the Mac's 60hz... but it's only 74% NTSC at 250 nits with 1080p, so the color accuracy and dim picture is distractingly bad. And as for sleep, it's just useless. You close it with 70% at night and it's dead by morning. Supposedly the battery is the same size, but even when it's awake, the battery nev…

As a dissenting example, I got a 14" Lenovo Ideapad with a Ryzen 7 for $250 on Ebay. It's got a nice 1440p HDR display, a great iGPU for gaming at low-power, and an 8-core CPU.

If you want an ultrabook experience, get ultrabook hardware.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#125

Post by toomuchtodo »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #121
blehn wrote: post #118

I really wanted to love the 13" Air but two things made me switch to the Pro after trying it for a few weeks. One is that the internal speakers suck in comparison to the Pro. I 'm not looking for audiophile quality from laptop speakers, but the Pro speakers are good enough for casually watching youtube videos, TV shows, podcasts, etc, whereas the Air speakers are harsh and tinny. The second is that the default resolu…

The speakers on Pro are definitely audiophile range. To me the screen quality alone was enough to drive me away from Air.

What's the Pro sweet spot currently for RAM/disk/screen?

Edit: nvm, looks like the Air supports two external displays but the Pro only supports one.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#126

Post by gnicholas »

Keyframe wrote: post #63

Outside of pricing, why would one buy Air vs Pro these days? I've had OG Air back in the day and tapered form factor was great. I recently was in an Apple store and looked at pro and airs.. they felt same, and also air seemed heavy (compared to ye olde tapered one). Now with Pro at 14" and Air pushing to 15".. why?

MBAs are much smaller/lighter. The MBA with its lid closed is just a little bit taller than the MBP with the lid open. I love my 13" MBA!

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#127

Post by princevegeta89 »

ketzo wrote: post #49

The degree to which Apple has kinda just “won” laptops is nuts to me. $999 for an 13-inch M2 Air is just bonkers. You can easily pay $1500, even $2000 for Windows laptops that are hotter, heavier, AND slower.

For the $999 you can find Windows laptops with a dGPU and specs upto at least 1TB/32GB. And also maybe OLED screens.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#129

Post by postalrat »

sombrero_john wrote: post #94
postalrat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't docker's filesystem performance still terrible in macox compared to linux?

Good enough for local development

If you can get away with the performance of machine that feels 10 years older than it is.

Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

#130

Post by nicbou »

Keyframe wrote: post #63

Outside of pricing, why would one buy Air vs Pro these days? I've had OG Air back in the day and tapered form factor was great. I recently was in an Apple store and looked at pro and airs.. they felt same, and also air seemed heavy (compared to ye olde tapered one). Now with Pro at 14" and Air pushing to 15".. why?

For me: price and weight. I frequently travel with my laptop, often with a single backpack or on a bike.

The Air is also way overkill. I had a 12" MacBook before that. It ran the software that I wrote. I write markdown in Sublime Text and run python scripts.

There just isn't a reason to get something beefier.

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