Apple Announces MacBook Air Now Starts With Increased 16GB of RAM With No Price Increase

[gugy]

There has been an upgrade - there is an optional matt screen version. It is 1,000 nits as well. Going way back, Apple's matt screens or anti reflection screens cost a heap more, and were only available on the top notebook configuration. And one pays a heap to get such a screen on an OLED iPad Pro (due to having to order a costly drive upgrade). So IMO the anti reflection is very good value. I reckon they'll be back ordered for a long time. So that means IMO, one will get a unit manufactured some time after the first ones. Which could be a good thing too.

I was speaking of stand-alone displays like the ASD and XDR.

 

[Schrödinger’s]

Apple’s return policy is 14 days. You’ll have to have a manager at the Apple Store override it to return it if it’s been less than 3 weeks ago but more than 2 weeks ago. No credit possible, you’ll have to order the new one.

I was told by an Apple sales person that you can call them up to 30 days and ask for a refund, if you ordered online. So it may be worth a try even after 14 days!

 

[BrandoCalrissian]

A surprise but not in some ways. I believe this is all in response to their scramble on the AI train. The RAM was fine for normal computing tasks but for AI and on device AI it’s not enough.

It’s a pity for people who recently bought MacBooks as essentially those who bought the 8GB versions could end up horribly hobbled in terms of AI support and Apple will probably use the RAM spec as a cut off for OS support.

MacBooks Air with 16 GB will likely be far longer supported by OS updates than the 8 GB versions unless they just drop lots of AI support for the lower spec.

These unexpected updates to RAM mid cycle scream scrambling and no forward long term anticipation or thinking. Apple has for too long been restrictive on RAM but has been caught out by the increased requirements of AI.

Passing the electricity and computing costs of AI to the end user. This move to upgrade all device RAM is cheaper than building out billion dollar data centers for centralized processing.