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

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

#221

Post by kjkjadksj »

gnicholas wrote: post #126
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!

Its a 0.75lb and 0.17”difference though, you’d have to be a calibrated scale to notice that outside of side by side testing.

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

#222

Post by captn3m0 »

skadamat wrote: post #160

I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild

I am hoping the limit is just a MacOS thing, like how MST1.2(?) was supported on my old MBA(2015) hardware but not available on MacOS. I could Daisy chain DisplayLink monitors on Linux, but MacOS wouldn’t let me, and I was limited to a single monitor.

I use Asahi Linux on M2 now, and the USBC display support isn’t done yet, but I am hoping it would be better than MacOS.

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

#223

Post by tylerhou »

ajross wrote: post #182
skadamat wrote: post #160

I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild

It's on-chip silicon, not a marketing feature. This kind of product design is just really hard. Mask sets get well into the billions of dollars, you can't just assemble a list of features as if they're all free. You need to decide upfront, often years in advance, what feature you think people will want to buy for the market you think you'll find yourself in. There are no easy answers. But just in general, Intel has a…

Even if there are technical limitations that prevent Apple from adding more I/O easily, as a consumer it feels like artificial segmentation/limitation.

Apart from the initial M1 MacBook Pro release, it feels like most products Apple has released in the last few years has always been missing one or two features, and the next release happens to have that feature. E.g. the first M1 Air did not have MagSafe even though the Pros did, and then Apple included MagSafe in M2 Air, but it didn't support multiple displays; now Apple is including multiple displays in M3 Air.

It feels awfully convenient that each generation conveniently has a nontrivial feature upgrade.... Apple has less incentive to make each generation "complete" -- by delaying features (more) consumers will feel obligated to upgrade per generation.

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

#224

Post by HumblyTossed »

samatman wrote: post #85
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…

> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. People love to say this without linking to a model. That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" so that the more... lite…

Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14" 14ACN6. Got one at Costco over a year ago for around $700US. Runs Pop_OS! really well.

Weight is very much light enough for me.

Edit: There is one downside I found. I replaced the 512GB SSD with 1TB and nearly needed stitches because the bottom plate was so sharp. Oh and I just looked it up, it's listed at 3.04lbs

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

#225

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #155
samatman wrote: post #85

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. People love to say this without linking to a model. That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" so that the more... lite…

> not in the same weight class as a MacBook Which might not be a consideration whatsoever. It isn't for me; I bring my laptop to the office, or from the office, and am never using it where weight makes one bit of difference.

Commuting to/from an office is usually a prime example of when a laptop's weight would matter.

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

#226

Post by briffle »

sempron64 wrote: post #69
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.

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…

My Asus zenbook 14 is around that price, has a 1TB disk, and 16GB of ram. I'm sure the processor on the M3 is faster, and probably a fair amount more battery out of it, but now I'm comparing a $1000 zenbook to a $1700 13' macbook once I add disk and memory, without the upgraded cpu.

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

#227

Post by luka-birsa »

Is anyone else annoyed that Apple are extra shifty with performance comparisons these days, comparing to M1 and not to M2 MB Airs?

I opted for a M2 Air in October seeing small differences in M2 pro vs M3 pro, so I guess I was right - the difference must be so small that Apple can't stomach the difference.

I'd rant about how they try to market new models with more and more stupid marketing when they don't have anything to show, but I guess this only means I don't need to upgrade for a while since they are all out of proper innovation...

Imagine being a fanboy for Apple this days. Nothing to look for. They are so blatant in extracting value and not bringing anything new to the table, probably best compared to Nokia in it's heyday.

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

#228

Post by skadamat »

znpy wrote: post #185
skadamat wrote: post #160

I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild

that's (quite literally) the price you pay in order to stay in the apple ecosystem. More-than-one-display is pretty much the standard on regular (non-apple) computers: you can drive as much as your system can sustain.

Right but in this case the AIR is the consumer model and it supports 2 displays while the base PRO supports 1. So it seems counter!

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

#229

Post by gamepsys »

lancesells wrote: post #55
brigadier132 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro I don't know why you bought a new one. You can have two ways to look at this, one way is your ultra pessimistic view, my view is I don't need to upgrade my laptop ever 2 years anymore. Before the M1 Max I was upgrading so often because intel macbooks sucked so much. Now I can comfortably say I'm keeping my M1 Max for a deca…

I'm on my first M1 but even with intel I got 5 to 6 years out of the Macbook Air.

As a dev I was getting ~4 years out of Intel MBPs. The old ones still did the job well, but the new ones just did everything fast enough to justify the expense. Now I just realized I have over 3 years on my M1 MBP, and I realize I'm closer to the middle of my upgrade cycle than the end.

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

#230

Post by dividedbyzero »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #77
silverlake wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weight of the 13" Air vs 15" Air vs 14" Pro is 2.7 > 3.3 > 3.4 lbs. For developers who do development on remote machines, weight and form factor are more important. I would pay top dollar for a 12" Macbook with M processor because I do my focused editing on a big screen. Other people use their laptop for everything so a 15" screen is preferred. Also, different strokes for different folks.

The 14 inch is already so light imo its probably worth it to splurge just to get things like the non gimped screen

To me the 14" Pro feels like a brick, the 16" is a veritable paving slab. I want something I can toss in a backpack and not feel it's there, which the Air is still just about light enough for. That may be because I live in a very walkable and bike-able area in Europe, and I do lots of both, I'm sure the trade-offs are different if you drive everywhere.

As for the screen, I think "gimped" is not doing it justice. I regularly use both, the Air's is a very nice screen in its own right and while there is a difference, it feels more like a relatively small increment on something already very solid, at least to me (I don't do any pro photo/video work). Same for the other differences, the Air's speakers are already pretty good, connectivity is fine (for me), I like not having a fan, it's way powerful enough for what I do.

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