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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

#391

Post by bluescrn »

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 add the mandatory upsells to a sensible amount of RAM and storage, and the 'bargain' Mac will be rather more expensive.

But yeah, there's still a real lack of Windows laptop competition these days, especially if you want a GPU. 'Gaming laptops' tend to come with severe heat/noise/weight/battery problems.

(And why are competitors touchpads still shit-tier compared to Apple? Even on those bulkier gaming laptops where space isn't at a premium and the price is on the premium side)

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

#392

Post by tiffanyh »

Price Ladder

Apple has some of the most amazing Price Laddering I've ever seen.

Folks complain about only 1 external monitor support, etc.

This is all part of Apple's price laddering strategy.

MKBHD does a good job describing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDPwpIFs-I

Here it's visualized (for iPad)

https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/50966-100692-nov-20...

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

#393

Post by dividedbyzero »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #248
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…

>That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Hard to be when other oems need to profit from hardware and pay windows/Intel/Nvidia/etc. For using their parts. But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do. Apple just metaphorically throws out a MacBook at the…

> But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do.

Do they? At least for the slimmer models, I was under the impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable mess.

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

#394

Post by Tagbert »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #382
jandrese wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has been complaining to me about how she regularly gets the "choose which application to terminate" dialog on her Air. I knew in my heart that 8GB wouldn't be future proof, but I underestimated how fast it would be a problem. She pretty much just runs Safari and Libreoffice Calc too, nothing that should really tax the machine.

What? I’ve caught Safari using 22GB of memory another day. Open 1000tabs and it will kill any machine.

Any browser can use massive amounts of RAM if you open a lot of tabs. Especially if they are running a lot of JS that doesn't release its memory properly. There are some sites I can go to that just continue to chew away at the RAM as long as the tab is open.

In any case, it's pretty easy for the OS to swap out browser data as it is chunkable by tab. Just because it had allocated 22GB doesn't mean that it was all active. Must was certainly swapped to SSD.

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

#395

Post by dgellow »

rkangel wrote: post #180
r00fus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it's completely acceptable for hobby usages that don't involve running offline LLMs. If you're doing work, get a Pro.

I have found 8GB RAM to be completely unusable on Windows and Linux these days. Once you've got Chrome open with half a dozen tabs and any even slightly memory hungry program (VS Code or Android Studio etc.) you're out of luck. Actually I had to have my last work laptop replaced because 8GB wasn't enough for Chrome and a Teams video call! If I tried to screen share a browser tab of Jira everything would start paging.…

I’m writing this from an x230 with Windows and 8GB of RAM. It’s a pretty old machine I’m using for FreeCAD, 3D printer slicers, and simple admin stuff, and it’s pretty usable?

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

#396

Post by bluescrn »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #278
jjice wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right that they make a damn fine laptop (the build quality stands out to me) and they do a great job in that market. Anecdotally, my Framework 13 AMD ran me 1500 and I ended up with 64 GB of ram, 2 TB of storage, and an AMD 7840U. I bought my RAM and storage separately to get that end cost, to be fair. I wouldn't be surprised if the M3 actually outperforms my processor by a bit, but having way more…

I'm torn as I consider getting my next laptop: * Framework is philosophically best, and they make solid machiness. * Macbook Air has just insane battery life and is so small.

Just remember that those Macbook batteries are glued in and still subject to degradation over cycles/time.

A consumable component designed to be excessively hard to replace, to encourage you to upgrade sooner than necessary. (Not everyone lives near an Apple store, and nobody wants to mail the laptop off for what should be such a basic service, being without it for who-knows-how-long)

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

#397

Post by Seanambers »

izacus wrote: post #385
numbers wrote: post #355

I was recently buying a Dell laptop for my sister and it boggles my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework is an except) still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for consumer laptops. I didn't enjoy the process of looking through dozens of various lines that Dell has and then other companies like Lenovo and HP earlier in the process, just to find a "mid-range usable computer with a decent screen". If you didn't…

Oh come on, you're overexaggerating a bit. If you follow your pattern with Apple, you'll end up with a measly 8GB/256GB model which will only be useful for basic browsing. (And with more and more Electron apps, might struggle even with that once you hop onto a video call.)

"will only be useful for basic browsing" nah.

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

#398

Post by tonymet »

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.

the intro price point unit is far too limited. once you start adding ram and storage the price is no longer competitive.

e.g. $1,899.00 for 15'' 16GB ram + 1TB SSD

i just bot a similar aluminum HP with Oled , Ryzen 7, 16GB , 1TB SSD for $700

the build quality is good, just a tick below apple. the fan is mild, not as good as apple.

but $1200 premium for apple ? I had to say no

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

#399

Post by Tagbert »

bahmboo wrote: post #273
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

Keep in mind 2 displays are only supported with the lid closed. So the only change is that now you can use an external monitor in lieu of the internal display.

that is what a lot of people have been asking for. Lid closed = 2 external monitors.

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

#400

Post by wilg »

system2 wrote: post #330
seam_carver wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The m3 mbp is getting macos update to match MBA m3 display support, so you'll get 2 external displays with lid closed too. https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/04/14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-...

I can do 4 monitors with my lid closed with my Dell XPS 13. It is crazy to see an Apple Laptop that costs $2000+ cannot do a laptop that costs $1000. People with money really don't know how to shop.

It is also possible they consider other factors besides one additional external monitor.
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