New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model

Post by imtringued » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #19

_ph_ wrote: post #4

Apple might have chosen cheeper SSDs to lower prices - which in principle think is a good idea on the entry level laptop, even cheap SSDs are plenty fast - why are they still charging insane prices for their SSD upgrades? Current market prices for SSD are between 150 and 300€/tb. For SSD upgrades in the MB Air, Apple is charging 240€ for each upgrade step. That means prices between 1920€/tb (128->256g) and 480€/tb (5…

I just bought a 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD for $110.00 off Amazon. It's about 1Gbit/sec slower than the next price point but it's about 2 or 3 times as fast as my existing SATA SSD. The next-highest price point was a 3Gbit/sec 1TB SSD for about $150.00.

Post by josteink » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #19

_ph_ wrote: post #4

Apple might have chosen cheeper SSDs to lower prices - which in principle think is a good idea on the entry level laptop, even cheap SSDs are plenty fast - why are they still charging insane prices for their SSD upgrades? Current market prices for SSD are between 150 and 300€/tb. For SSD upgrades in the MB Air, Apple is charging 240€ for each upgrade step. That means prices between 1920€/tb (128->256g) and 480€/tb (5…

I just bought a 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD for $110.00 off Amazon. It's about 1Gbit/sec slower than the next price point but it's about 2 or 3 times as fast as my existing SATA SSD. The next-highest price point was a 3Gbit/sec 1TB SSD for about $150.00.

Post by oarsinsync » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

bleomycin wrote: post #53

Domenic_S wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I just picked one up a couple weeks ago, it's my first non-MBP but seeing as I have a company-provided i7 MBP I didn't feel like I needed another powerhouse machine for side projects and occasional coding for fun. I love that I have no touch bar but I do have Touch ID. Coming from a 2014 MBP 13 I definitely didn't notice the slower SSD speed -- editing raw camera files in Lightroom is really fast and the display…

The biggest bummer of these machines is apples lack of vp9 hardware decoding in macos, it makes 4k youtube unwatchable. For high motion content (mountain biking videos) 4k is the only way to watch even on a tiny laptop screen due to youtube’s horrific compression. Its an absurd limitation considering the hardware has full support for it! I know it sounds insane but I returned mine for a quad core 13” mbp just to brut…

Post by cpuguy83 » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #45

cgriswald wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, I'm not sure. The vast majority of people I know who have an Air or MBP have an older model without Touch ID. They might appreciate it if it is there, but they won't miss it in its absence. The only two people I know who've ever owned one that had it both returned it because they otherwise hated the device. For me personally, Touch ID makes sense on a phone, because I can do it with a single hand. For a…

I'm on a 2018 MacBook Air, the only model has F-keys and Touch ID, and I love it. Once you get used to sudo using your fingerprint, it's hard to go back. :)

Post by throwaway-hn123 » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #57

cgriswald wrote: post #6

> Before you go and start casting aspersions at Apple, the move makes a lot of sense. It'd be one thing if it did this and raised the price, but it actually lowered the price by $100, and the education discount brings it down to $999, making it the most affordable modern MacBook laptop ever (the outdated MacBook Air does not count). Which is fine for the entry-level model. Is it true for the more expensive model? The…

They probably could have saved money by ditching the worthless touchbar.