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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

#551

Post by eropple »

zdragnar wrote: post #429
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.

You could just get a Chromebook for that and save yourself a ton of money. It's what my wife did, and she's not wanted anything else for seven years. It isn't close to an apple device in terms of materials or performance, but at a tenth of the cost of a pro it makes a lot of sense.

I've had a couple of Chromebooks and enjoyed them, but I never found one with a keyboard that didn't feel terrible to type on. Does one exist today?

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

#552

Post by microtonal »

jpalomaki wrote: post #518
skadamat wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that even Apple products have gotten confusing. But still 1-2 orders of magnitude less I feel than other laptops?

I think the lineup and config options on Apple laptops and tablets are carefully planned to make you spend more than you intially thought. You start with the idea of cheap model, then start going the ladders up.

Maybe, but I know plenty of non-tech people that just buy the baseline MacBook Air and are happy with it.

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

#553

Post by AnthonyMouse »

chongli wrote: post #404
jm4 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even worse than that is that they still only put 8 GB RAM in the base and middle options.

I disagree, and I always upgrade the RAM even though I don’t like paying more. Why? Because it puts pressure on developers to keep the bloat under control. Think of an alternate universe where Apple does the opposite: every new model they push the envelope and double the baseline RAM compared to the previous year. In that world you’d have all the software growing in memory use without bound. Consumers would be forced…

> I disagree, and I always upgrade the RAM even though I don’t like paying more. Why? Because it puts pressure on developers to keep the bloat under control.

Shouldn't you be doing the opposite then? Keeping the baseline amount so you can know what it's like for people without a large budget and stop patronizing the applications without acceptable footprints in that circumstance?

> In that world you’d have all the software growing in memory use without bound.

We already live in that world. In the 90s you could run Netscape Navigator on a machine with 8 megabytes of memory. I've seen individual browser tabs use more gigabytes than that.

And not all of this is Electron bloat. The Stable Diffusion XL model is ~13GB. In general the quality is going to be proportional to the model size. So for the thing to get better, people need machines with more memory. And 8GB is already too small.

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

#554

Post by wubrr »

dangus wrote: post #531
bloopernova wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears. I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I have to buy a DisplayLink adapter to do what the Intel macbooks did with zero problem.

It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use. To me it’s not really relevant what the old computer models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips had different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a different design entirely. I’m split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation trick or a leg…

I work on a m2 pro and the external monitor issues don't end.

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

#555

Post by michaelt »

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…

> it boggles my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework is an except) still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for consumer laptops

And the crazy thing is, despite Dell having 170+ laptop SKUs they don't use that fact to actually have a wide range of products.

You'd think with 170 different SKUs they could produce an ultrabook with ports, wouldn't you? A modernised version of the E7270? Apparently not, though.

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

#557

Post by organsnyder »

dangus wrote: post #531
bloopernova wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears. I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I have to buy a DisplayLink adapter to do what the Intel macbooks did with zero problem.

It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use. To me it’s not really relevant what the old computer models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips had different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a different design entirely. I’m split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation trick or a leg…

Only the M2 & M3 Max chips support more than two external monitors[1]. Those start at $3200, and are overkill for the vast majority of use-cases.

There's no excuse for a $2000+ machine to not support more than two external monitors. DisplayLink on MacOS is far from ideal, either: it works alright, but it has to use the screen recording functionality in the OS, which causes anything with protected content to freak out.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571

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

#558

Post by jsz0 »

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.

Obviously a planned obsolescence tactic. If the base models were 16GB there's a fine chance Apple wouldn't see another dollar from those customers for another 10+ years at minimum. The average customer doesn't understand their memory requirements and cannot be expected to predict how they may change in the future. It's the only thing they got left they can use to trick customers into buying a machine that will need to be replaced sooner.

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

#559

Post by wubrr »

dangus wrote: post #519
itsoktocry wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them. They are awesome, but not perfect. Way over-priced storage and RAM upgrades, can't connect multiple monitors unless you pay up, and you're stuck with MacOS. Any one of these could be reason enough for people to look elsewhere.

Price: if that’s the major qualm that’s not really a product flaw. The best product usually commands the highest price. Stuck with macOS: technically not true, Asahi Linux exists. Connecting multiple monitors: a legitimate negative limitation unusual at the MacBook Air price point, but still something that only a small fraction of consumer laptop buyers care about.

> The best product usually commands the highest price.

apple products being the perfect exception :)

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

#560

Post by Klonoar »

eastbound wrote: post #306
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…

> 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. HN used to say that System76 were the best laptops ever, so I bought two of them. They’re an incredible pile of shit, in addition to the battery life or the clunky build, the fans turn on and off like my gamer boyfriend’s PC back i…

> HN used to say that System76 were the best laptops ever

Are you sure about this...? Every System76 convo I've ever seen on here has plenty of people chiming in to note that they're simply junk Clevo shells. It's a known issue with them.

Ideologically I love System76 (and I would buy one of their desktops, if I was still a desktop man). I would never buy one of their current laptops.

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