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.
With what RAM? ... and what weight? For $1700 you can get a sub-1kg Asus ExpertBook B9 with 32GB RAM and a 2TB disk and a decent 12th 12 core Gen Intel CPU. https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ExpertBook-i7-1255U-Military-B94... Not saying it is better in all respects, but definitely in some, meaning there are definitely alternatives.
FYI, that's not a 12-core CPU. It's a 2+8 core CPU.
The 2023 version is made from magnesium alloy with plastic at the back while the macbook is unibody aluminium.
The 2024 version is aluminium unibody like the macbook and the new speakers are nearly as good as macbook ones from the reviews I have read. However I have only been able to find the 4070 model which is much more expensive than the macbook. There is also the XPS 14 but it is also more expensive than the macbook
If you get the m3 air with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd the g14 is 100 dollars more expensive but the price will probably drop to lower than the macbook in sales
I'm always a bit irritated when editors still use inch measurements exclusively, when it's only used in 3 countries officially still. Not talking about screen sizes obviously, but I really don't have an intuition for what 'less than half an inch' thickness is and I'm sure there are a _lot_ of people who use English as their interface language outside of the US.
I get it. It'd be nice if all these major companies used both in and cm. Americans have to go back and forth with metric a lot and it would be useful to think of every day items in terms of both inches and cm.
Americans really do not have to go back and forth with metric a lot. Life in the glorious USA is lived unapologetically in imperial units.
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.
My glorious employer doesn’t pay for the Office suite, so I occasionally use Numbers for some very lightweight spreadsheet work on the work laptop.
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.
Almost certainly the culprits are Chrome and Slack, but is Activity Monitor actually showing a memory pressure issue? It might be unrelated to memory.
Using Slack as a web app[1] solved my issues with it. It runs using Webkit instead of Electron, which is far smoother.
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…
Having 100s of SKUs is an information denial tactic to ensure that users forfeit all of their consumer surplus[0] and pay exactly what they are willing to pay in the hopes that they get a "good one".
The problem with this tactic is that there's a lot of SKUs that give people a terrible experience and they jump to another brand.
Apple's solution to this is to instead have 50 SKUs, organize them by a few very easily understandable categories, and then price every SKU exactly within $50-$75 of one another so that there's always a meaningful upgrade for slightly more money. This is also why Apple is very stingy with storage and RAM. They use the cost of upgrades to pull you to higher priced SKUs, which then need their own upgrades, and OH LOOK there's an even nicer base model for just a little more!
[0] The amount of money you save when the thing you want to buy turns out to be cheaper than what you were willing to pay.
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.…
Am I so glad though that Apple didn't buy into the touch for the laptops. Now this comes with a caveat, if you have some like the Yoga that the hinge can go all the way around, touch isn't bad. But god, in the early 2010s when everyone was throwing touch on their laptop screens, I hated that so much. Laptop hinge only goes 120 degrees or something like that, lets throw touch screen on it! horrible idea.
Although I heard many complaints about the Yoga. Never owned one, but if I had a laptop with a touch screen, that seems like the route to go. The Surface too, but I've also heard those stop feeling snappy pretty quick and tons of thermal issues.
Definitely agree with the simplicity of purchasing an Apple computer compared to other laptop manufacturers. Headphone brands and monitor makers also suffer from this same fate :/
There's still some weirdness as you get higher in the lineup. They start to break out into different variations of each chip, with varying degrees of memory for each variation. Like you can get a Macbook Pro with an M3 Pro chip with 11 core CPU/14 core GPU, or an M3 Pro chip 12/14 cores, or an M3 Max chip with 14/30 cores for $400 more or 16/40 for $900 more. And if you do the 14/30 M3 Max, you can choose 36 or 96gb…
Love my macbooks that I've had, but yea. When shopping, it is rather aggrevating that there is no such thing really as just M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, and M3 Ultra. Its really M3, M3 Pro (11/14/15), M3 Pro (12/18/16), M3 Pro (14/30/16), M3 Max(14/30/16), M3 Max (16/30/16), M3 Max (16/40/16).
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.
I think both are true. For non-tech people, or people who don't use a computer for real hard work, who want a decent laptop, they probably just buy the baseline Air. But once you get into doing some more professional stuff on a laptop that needs power, then you fall into talking yourself into more than what you intended. I am experiencing that right now. At the time I didn't have a lot of money, working full time to support a family and going to school, so when I needed a new laptop I got the base MBA M1. Fantastic laptop. But now I am doing more intensive stuff (I also make a lot more now so I can afford it) on it and I am looking at upgrading to an M3. I am playing with the GPU and some ML, so I probably should get more than a base model M3. From there it is, whatever I decided, the next upgrade it just an extra $200. More ram would be nice. Oh wait, for another $200, I can also get the better processor with 2 more cores for CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine, why not? Oh wait, $200 more and I can double the RAM. Next thing you now, I started off with $1599 and now have talked myself into a like $2200 (haven't made the purchase yet, but that is what I am looking at).
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…
> 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". Newegg's feature selector is pretty good at sorting through this. Just uncheck all the bad screen resolutions and CPU models and see what's left. Bonus: Require at least 32GB of memory in an exact powe…
It is perfectly possible to have dual-channel 12+12GB configurations and also unbalanced 8+24GB configurations, so your test is not really accurate.