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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

#521

Post by pquki4 »

geodel wrote: post #496
Meninoyo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that's their gatekeeping. I looked at the price for m3 and if it would have 16gig it would literally be perfect for just 1k but nope 8 more gigs cost you an arm and a leg

You really are in market for Apple laptop and 200 dollar more for extra 8GM RAM is arm and a leg for you?

You forgot to mention the 256GB SSD.

I had a Macbook Pro 2015 with 256GB SSD. (Base model was 128GB). It was a very painful experience even back then. Yet almost ten years later, we are here, still paying $200 to upgrade to 512GB, when almost every Windows laptop comes with 512GB. FYI a 1TB NVMe gen 4 drive costs less than $100.

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

#522

Post by [deleted] »

sva_ wrote: post #489
Longhanks wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, most people looking for "just a notebook" don't care about any of those things. They want a low maintenance, high performant (for day-to-day tasks, not gaming) portable computer with a great battery that runs Chrome, Office and Spotify, and comes with great customer service - nothing comes close to being able to bring your Mac to the next Apple Store.

> nothing comes close to being able to bring your Mac to the next Apple Store. Ah really? Ever heard of worldwide on-site next day repair warranty?

[deleted]

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

#523

Post by bogantech »

bsder wrote: post #334
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.

What's extremely absurd is that most models in the x86 space seem to have gone backwards on screen resolution. My 5 year old Lenovo Carbon X1 14" is 2560x1440 while I can't buy a current X1 with anything above 1920x1200 for any price. WTF?

What I will never understand is that the screen options differ depending on which market you're in.

When I was looking at Thinkpads there was never any better options than 1920x1200 but if I switched to the US site I could order with the HiDPI OLED screen.

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

#524

Post by Cu3PO42 »

miles wrote: post #377
brocket wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I accidentally discovered a huge hack for this by upgrading to a 49" DQHD monitor. It's the exact same resolution as two 27" 1440p monitors so it's like any Apple silicon chip has always supported dual external displays. And it was a much better overall value compared to buying 2 displays + over-specced macbook.

Do you mind sharing the monitor model? Found the Samsung LC49G97TSSNXDC for $999[1], but also a reddit thread about some issues with it and a 2019 MacBook Pro[2] (which is admittedly Intel rather than Apple silicon-based). [1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-odyssey-49-1000r-curved... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace/comments/mb9vnv...

I have two Samsung Ultrawides, one at home, one at work. They both work perfectly fine with my M2 Max MBP, including at 120Hz. I have connected them directly and via a Lenovo TB4 docking station. No issues either way.

One thing you should be aware of is that having two seperate monitors can be an advantage for Window management on macOS. With two monitors, I can swap spaces on one of them and keep everything as is on the other. With only one it's not that easy.

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

#525

Post by balaji1 »

jm4 wrote: post #301
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 think even worse than that is that they still only put 8 GB RAM in the base and middle options.

The RAM being so low is confusing. Given RAM is one of the cheaper components. I guess they do some smart swap memory using SSD - but my Air laptop struggles to run PowerPoint, few browser tabs and video calling at the same time.

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

#526

Post by danpmurray »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #497
anakaine wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those industry long timers who can and will use just about anything, and has occasionally over the years owned macs of various form factors. For the past decade thanks to corporate work I've been entirely Windows and Linux based. I picked my daughter up an m1 macbook air about a year ago. It was an absolute delight of a machine to use. Light weight, no fans, no hot bits during general usage, long battery l…

I picked up a M3 Macbook Pro and this thing works like an absolute beast. I currently have Photoshop, Illustrator, VSCode, multiple Chrome windows - each with 20-40 tabs - and this thing is not even sweating. I get 8-10 hours of useful work out of it even on battery. Completely changed the way I work

How much RAM does it have, and have you ever wished you had more?

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

#527

Post by overstay8930 »

qwertox wrote: post #475
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally made the switch to Apple after being thoroughly frustrated with Windows laptops. It's not even close to a competition. Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them. Most Windows laptops have abysmal batteries, to the point that you can barely call them laptops. The trackpads are downright unusable. The keyboards are a hit or a miss. And for some reason, so many companies…

> And for some reason, so many companies are still shipping laptops with 1080p screens in 2024. I am in the group of people who go for Full HD. It's enough for me, my eyesight is relatively bad. Then again, I use 3 monitors.

meanwhile Mac Studio users waiting for 5k monitors @ 144hz

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

#528

Post by mbreese »

makeitdouble wrote: post #419
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…

> Apple continues to simplify the laptop naming scheme, we're at a point where it's simply: > Air OR Pro > Small screen OR big screen The weird part of that argument to me: to arrive to that point you've already made a ton of choices that need to be educated. You decided on the form factor: you don't want a convertible (neither a Surface like tablet + keyboard, nor something like a Yoga). You decided to forgo touch.…

You’re going about your decision tree backwards. People don’t say “I don’t want a touchscreen” or “I don’t want to game”. You don’t make decisions based upon what you don’t want to do… you make them based upon what you do want to do.

I was talking with my dad recently, and he wanted a new computer that could handle email, a little Excel, Facebook, and some other light web browsing that didn’t get stuck in an infinite reboot loop for system updates (which somehow his Windows got stuck somehow). There are a bagillion options for Windows laptops that fit those needs. He ended up not being able to make a decision and is still using his same old laptop.

Whereas my son wanted a desktop computer that would support playing Valorant at 60fps at 1440. That narrowed things down substantially and ended up building one to his specs.

If a Mac fits your requirements, then you have far fewer decisions. And that’s part of the point. For the a long time, Apple has stuck to a restricted set of SKUs. This is by design. It’s not that they couldn’t offer a touchscreen, or a convertible, or a xMac. It’s that they’ve been there… had many form factors and SKUs and it almost killed the company.

Even if you say you want a Dell laptop — have you ever tried to browse their site? If you say you want a laptop you’re presented with 68 options (I just did this). 68.

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

#529

Post by bredren »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #497
anakaine wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those industry long timers who can and will use just about anything, and has occasionally over the years owned macs of various form factors. For the past decade thanks to corporate work I've been entirely Windows and Linux based. I picked my daughter up an m1 macbook air about a year ago. It was an absolute delight of a machine to use. Light weight, no fans, no hot bits during general usage, long battery l…

I picked up a M3 Macbook Pro and this thing works like an absolute beast. I currently have Photoshop, Illustrator, VSCode, multiple Chrome windows - each with 20-40 tabs - and this thing is not even sweating. I get 8-10 hours of useful work out of it even on battery. Completely changed the way I work

What were the things that held you up from making the switch?

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

#530

Post by pquki4 »

pixelbath wrote: post #81
elthran wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Cynic/Windows user here with a genuine question - why is this interesting? I'm currently looking at my wife's old corporate-issued windows laptop, which is running 2 external monitors as well as it's own display - am I missing something here, or is this just a case of Apple being held to different standards to other manufacturers in terms of feature parity?

It's not interesting in a "wow, Macbooks can finally support two external displays" as much as "this does make this intentionally-small form factor slightly more tolerable." Comparing the port count/capabilities of the two isn't a fully fair comparison though. The Apple Silicon Macbook Air models are likely 1) much faster than that corporate-issued laptop (even if it's workstation class), and 2) much smaller and quie…

"Users can buy a MacBook Pro"

as if $500 isn't money to you. Maybe it indeed isn't, but that is a lot of money to many people.

FYI Intel Macbook Air has supported dual external monitors 2018-2020, and same for base Macbook Pro 2012 (Retina) - 2020.

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