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Apple Announces New MacBook Air Models With M3 Chip

CarAnalogy said:
Mmmmmmmmm nope. Do you have that Intel MacBook Air?

Comparing to Intel is just cherry picking stats.

Yeah, go ahead and downvote logic. Why not compare it to M1? Because then they don't get to say things like 13x faster.
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Yeah, why not compare it to the M1? (Because Apple did, yet someone won’t bother reading it and complained anyway? At least they made an effort.)

“Apple says that the new MacBook Air is up to 60% faster than the M1 model and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air.”
 
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MajorFubar said:
I see we're still being screwed over here in the UK regarding the price which is an eye-watering £1300.
So....all the people who defended Apple's UK pricing in 21/22 on weak GBP and strong dollar, where are you all now that the exchange rate is back up to £1.27 per $? For those of you who can't add up that means a base M3 MBA should be £865.35 + VAT (aka purchase tax), which is currently 20%, so £1,038.

Absolute crazy pricing. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.
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He also had the decency to tell you, he was ******* you over.
 
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hans1972 said:
The first MacBook Air with minimum 8Gb of RAM was the 2017-model.

I can't understand why someone is insulted by hardware specs.
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It's just gotten to the point of incompetence. It's like selling a Ferrari with $10,000 brakes and V12 engine, and then using wooden wagon wheels for tires. These laptops won't come anywhere close to their potential with 8 lousy gigs of RAM.
 
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Duncan-UK said:
Why? What about those people happily still using intel Macbooks? if you have an AS MBA then there’s absolutely no need or relevance to upgrading, so if you are in the Mac ecosystem then growth is going to come from the enormous intel installed user base.

I’ve got a MBP that I bought in December 13. It still works well but the new M3 MBA is the first time I’ve felt tempted to upgrade.
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I’ll counter with “why now, then?” M3 is not that much faster than M2, I have a hard time believing that you felt that eleven times faster was not enough, but thirteen times is. You probably just needed a little time to get used to the idea.

I do get the point that for many people, including me, the question is not whether to buy Mac or Windows, but when to upgrade old Mac to new Mac. But, my hope is that next year the AS platform has matures enough and become ubiquitous enough that we don’t have to talk about old Intel anymore.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
It's so bizarre that they are even mentioning the Intel models at this point

That was nearly half a decade ago!
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Almost 50% of Mac users are still on Intel chips.

Apple is trying to persuade them to transition with performance figures. Apple says,

"[...] the new MacBook Air is up to 60 percent faster than the model with M1 and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air."​

If you're complacently satisfied with the Intel Air, Apple is hoping 13x triggers FOMO.
 
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SAdProZ said:
Almost 50% of Mac users are still on Intel chips.
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I wonder how many of them would be happy to upgrade if the pricing wasn't so outrageous to get the spec they might need/prefer?

Base pricing can look interesting, and then you see their 6, 8 or 10x markup on SSD & RAM and it quickly becomes a "close the browser window and pass on that idea" situation
 
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CarAnalogy said:
Mmmmmmmmm nope. Do you have that Intel MacBook Air?

Comparing to Intel is just cherry picking stats.

Yeah, go ahead and downvote logic. Why not compare it to M1? Because then they don't get to say things like 13x faster.

When Intel releases a new processor, do they compare it to the model three generations prior? Does anyone else do this for any reason other than cherry picking stats?

And how long do they keep doing this? Until every Intel Mac is officially called obsolete? In five years are they still going to be saying "50x faster than the fastest Intel Mac!"

If they're going to compare it to an Intel Mac from four years ago, why not compare it to an Intel processor of today? Even when they ostensibly try that, they cherry pick stats. Yes it has faster single threaded CPU performance than "the (unspecified) 'competition!'" But uh don't look at GPU or multicore or absolute processing power. Just look at the performance per watt!
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What's the purpose of Apple's product marketing? To increase sales.

Who are most likely to upgrade to a new Mac? People with an old Mac. What does an old Mac run on? Intel CPUs.

How long are Apple product marketing going to do this? Until the market share of Intel Macs is pretty low. It's important for Apple from a resource and cost perspective to get rid of Intel as fast as possible. Having as few user's on Intel Macs helps in this regard.

Why not compare to a modern Intel CPU? People who bought Windows PCs after Apple debuted Apple Silicon, are probably the least likely people to switch to Macs. They're happy with Windows (or Linux). They have a new machine. Why waste marketing resources on them when it won't increase sales?

When you look at Apple as a company organised to make revenue and profit, what they do makes so much more sense. Or logic as you would call it.
 
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Do we have to wait until Friday to know if the SSD speed is comparable with the MacBook Pro M3 Pro or intentionally slowed down like those M2 series?
 
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turbineseaplane said:
I wonder how many of them would be happy to upgrade if the pricing wasn't so outrageous to get the spec they might need/prefer?

Base pricing can look interesting, and then you see their 8-10x markup on SSD & RAM and it quickly becomes a "close the browser window and pass on that idea" situation
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I think they haven't upgraded because thats just the underlying nature of technology adoption. If you look at this bell curve graph, the late majority and laggards aren't motivated like you or I when it comes to this product category—they buy "new Macs" when their old Mac breaks, basically. Sales don't work on them, in terms of triggering the adoption of a new product.

I'm a laggard with iPhones. They don't excite me so I held onto my slow-as-molasses iPhone 6 until it died. I then bought an iPhone SE 2 and will hold onto that until it dies. No mortal sale will entice me to upgrade.

And so Intel Air users still rocking a dual-core i5 with poor battery aren't easily persuaded to spend any money on a new Mac. They will when it dies or their spouse gives them a hand-me-down.

I think at best, Apple is trying to trigger the few people that are in the late majority for other reasons. Maybe they have up-to-date desktops but their travel laptop is 13x too slow and they're like, "OK, time to upgrade my travel laptop now that you put it like that."
 
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