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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

#771

Post by vGPU »

deergomoo wrote: post #316
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 believe we are now in the 9th year of 8GB being the baseline Mac laptop RAM config. It’s incredibly stingy. For a while you could make the argument that a lot of Air purchasers wouldn’t need it, but I don’t think that’s the case any more. My wife has an M1 Air with 8GB and between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance hitches.

I have a 14 MBP M1 16/512. It’s… not great. The other day photoshop was running super slow so I opened up process manager and discovered that not only had it eaten all 16gb of ram, it was also using up ~30gb of swap space. Even just general day to day safari use will give me random lags and slowdowns that I don’t get on my desktop which is running an i5.

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

#773

Post by tehnub »

joshmlewis wrote: post #101

It's fascinating they used Excel in the product photos instead of Numbers. I wonder who actually uses Numbers these days? Or any of the Apple "productivity" apps for that matter.

They work fine for basic tasks. The other day I wanted to make a basic spreadsheet. I said why not and picked Numbers. Works fine for what I needed.

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

#774

Post by wiremine »

bluecalm wrote: post #599
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…

I think ThinkPads are better than MacBooks. You can get P14 with 32gb of RAM, 1TB SSD, very fast and quiet CPU (AMD U series), decent battery, 2.8k OLED screen and it weights 1.34kg (weight between 13 inch and 15inch new Airs). It also has imo better ports and a track point. The problem is that Windows sucks more and more with every iteration and there is nothing Lenovo or other manufacturers can do about it. Lenovo…

> I think ThinkPads are better than MacBooks. You can get P14 with 32gb of RAM...

> The problem is that Windows sucks more and more...

Not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like the ThinkPads have been technical specs, but the overall experience is worse due to the software.

If so, I might challenge your final comment, which is "you get more for your money". Ultimately, I think people want a great experience, not a bunch of specs.

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

#775

Post by pquki4 »

hollandheese wrote: post #756
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…

>Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the same as a Macbook anyway. Until you want more memory or a larger SSD then the Macbook is all of a sudden double the price of the equivalent PC laptop. >Increasingly feels like most manufacturers have given up on the laptop as an innovation center and are happy to just scrape up the consumers who can't or won't buy Apple. That's basically true, but with Apple b…

Recently got a ThinkPad T14s gen 4 with top-of-the-line AMD 7840U, 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD, for just a bit over $1k. It has very good build quality, is powerful yet quiet, and has decent battery life. It supports up to 4 displays. That's basically one of the best Windows laptops you can get.

Of course, it does not have high-DPI mini LED screen, great speakers or 18 hours of battery life, but none of that really matters, and I'd choose this any day over a similarly speced Macbook Pro 14 that would cost me $2,399.

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

#776

Post by meatmanek »

justin66 wrote: post #211
blehn wrote: post #118

I really wanted to love the 13" Air but two things made me switch to the Pro after trying it for a few weeks. One is that the internal speakers suck in comparison to the Pro. I 'm not looking for audiophile quality from laptop speakers, but the Pro speakers are good enough for casually watching youtube videos, TV shows, podcasts, etc, whereas the Air speakers are harsh and tinny. The second is that the default resolu…

As an Air user who pretty passionately hates hearing a laptop fan, my wonderment at the quality of the Pro's audio would end the moment I heard that fan whine.

I've had a similar train of thought, based on my experience with earlier Macbooks -- that I would pick the Air over the Pro specifically because it does _not_ have a fan and therefore could never make fan noise. But like spinningarrow, I don't think I've ever heard the fan on my work-issued M1 Pro MBP.

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

#777

Post by deskamess »

threeseed wrote: post #754
deskamess wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the new M3 Air w/16 GB could be comparable CPU wise to the M1 Pro? I am guessing GPU wise (for inference like apps) it probably falls behind.

CPU was never the problem with the Air it's the thermal system. Depending on what you're doing the device simply can't soak up enough heat and so it ends up throttling the CPU. It takes a long operation e.g. compilation for 10-20 mins before it really starts to fall behind the Pro models.

Thanks.

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

#778

Post by greggsy »

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.

This comes up often, but it's honestly totally fine for a non-technical user who only occasionally uses anything other than Safari and Photos.

The vast majority of their market would not fit into the developer, content creator, or just plain power-user category. There's people who just log on to do internet banking and email when they're not on Reddit or Facebook.

For some anecdata, 16/512+ would be a waste on my parents, in-laws and my whole extended family for that matter. They would benefit from it, but they're not screaming at spinning wheels, and are probably a bit more patient and accustomed to 'slowness', which is pretty subjective.

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

#779

Post by layer8 »

DinaCoder99 wrote: post #580
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.

> you're stuck with MacOS Interesting way of thinking about probably the biggest draw of the hardware.

Nah, it’s the single reason I have zero interest in Mac hardware.

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

#780

Post by pquki4 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #630
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…

This will sound slightly provocative but I genuinely wonder: why would anyone buy anything else than an apple laptop? Gaming? ideology? budget constraints? lack of familiarity with MacOS? They are marginally more expensive, but they also very easy to sell second-hand. I'm speculating that the monthly cost is on par with a PC.

Based on "marginally more expensive", I have to say you live in a bubble and likely won't understand the replies.

Just to point out one fact -- people buy $289 Gateway laptops from Walmart and use it as their daily driver.

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