Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference is really obvious during code compilation or other tasks that can take advantage of all cores.
Someone should sell a little app for Mac that glows red when an upgrade would have been useful (e.g, when you maxed out your max Mac). I suspect mine would be green almost all the time, even on this almost three year old M1 Max.
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
#62"MacBook Air can also run optimized AI models, including large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models for image generation locally with great performance."
Worthless PR. Further down, another selling point is "MacBook Air supports cloud-based solutions, enabling users to run powerful productivity and creative apps that tap into the power of AI, such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly." Wow. Until they support CUDA or more ML/AI implementations on their chips, this is just marketing speak.
Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#63Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#64The 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.
Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#65Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#66The 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.
$999 is for soldered 8GB/256GB crap. Add $400 for 16GB/512GB models.
Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#67Earlier 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.
Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#68I can't tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro. Corporations have become pros at exploiting our human psychology. Their ads can make you believe that the smallest bump in improvements will make your older computer appear useless in comparison. That's why it's for the best if you avoid ads as much as possible.
An interesting difference with the new pro models, if you want to pay around $5k, is that you can have 128Gb unified Ram in them and run inference locally with exciting LLMs.
If Apple releases on-device AI, this will be an effective way of getting people to upgrade like they used to, but haven't had to recently. For example, I bought Pro-level computers in my younger years, but now would only consider an MBA, mini, or iMac. But they could get me to go for a Pro if it were the only way to get more RAM for better AI performance. It will also likely shorten upgrade cycles since newer computers would have the latest and greatest performance. When I bought my M2 MBA years ago I suspected it would last me a long time. Now I'm not so sure since I don't have a ton of RAM.
Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#69The 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 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 control that confuse consumers and leave them unhappy. This is the flip side of choice in prioritizing, say, gaming performance over battery life while optimizing price or vice-versa.
Also my personal opinion is that 90% of consumer frustration comes from the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep between Windows, Intel/AMD, and OEMs. Consumers expect to be able to close their laptop and for it to preserve battery instead of becoming hot or dying the bag. That really needs a solution.
Re: New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
#70Outside 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?