Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Announces New MacBook Air Models With M3 Chip

soyazul said:
The MacBook Air M3 is the best laptop in the world for most people.
Capable of doing all the tasks for most of the professional roles out there, even a lot of creative tasks and gaming.

- Best materials in the segment
- Best microprocessor in the segment
- Best performance in the segment
- Best OS in the segment
- Best trackpad in the segment
- Best GPU in the segment
- Best Post-sell in the segment.
- Best battery life in the segment
- Best Speakers in the segment
- Best overall experience

The 16 GB RAM Config is the computer to buy, use, and recommend for various years.
Click to expand...
It's still laughable how hard Windows laptops suck, no matter the price.

I work in a field where Windows software is a requirement, so I have tried Windows laptops for work.

You can buy a Lenovo ThinkPad, Dell XPS/Latitude or HP EliteBook/ZBook for more than 2000€ and the fan is still loud, battery life still sucks and general build quality, trackpad or speakers are ok at best.

Most tech reviewers giving positive reviews are flat out lying because they are sponsored to do so.

Ignore what they say, ignore what they recommend, just look at what they are actually using themselves. Almost all of them use MacBooks.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: Bow Commander, _Mitchan1999 and D_J
Wowereit said:
It's still laughable how hard Windows laptops suck, no matter the price.
Click to expand...

Maybe on build quality / materials -- that's subjective of course

On specs, however, you can get enormous value on components and capabilities, especially if you catch a sale.

Some of the latest OLED Ryzen ThinkPad sales have been INSANE
Under $1k for machines with nearly $3k MSRP
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999, MacUser1, sir_timbit and 1 other person
torontotim said:
Lots of pretty dumb comments about this being a 'meh' update, no difference from the M2 (except of course all the differences), complaints about comparisons to the Intel generation (which will be their prime source of upgrade customers)...

WTF got up everybody's backsides today? Do you expect monumental changes every 12 months? Do you not read the specs before complaining about the specs?

Most buyers of the M3 Air are going to be Intel MacBook owners - not M1 or M2 Air owners. I don't know who people thinks is out there buying a new laptop every 2-3 years, but it's not 90% of Apple's laptop customers.
Click to expand...
I certainly don't remember monumental changes from one Intel release to the other, but having Intel processors over PowerPC made a huge difference, as did PowerPC over Motorola 680x0.
 
  • Love
Reactions: _Mitchan1999
bousozoku said:
Oh, no. It's just like the iPhone logic board. They fail how often?
Click to expand...

Not fully refuting your point, but aren't the usage/wear patterns and size of transfers possibly quite different on a Mac?

And I assume a Mac user may have much longer expectations of the machine usage?
(many more years I would assume)
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999
RichP74 said:
What are you even talking about? How's iCloud inferior to any other cloud backup like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure?
Click to expand...

Syncing services like iCloud are NOT backups
This is off topic for here, but I encourage you to dig into it more

(trying not to go full John Siracusa here ... lol)
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999
turbineseaplane said:
It's so bizarre that they are even mentioning the Intel models at this point

That was nearly half a decade ago!
Click to expand...

It's not bizarre but sensible. It's 3 years and 4 months since the M1 MacBook Air was released for sales. Lot's of people keep their Macs for longer.

Trying to get someone with a M1 or M2 MacBook Air to upgrade is a waste of product marketing resources. The people who owns a recent MacBook Air and want to upgrade, will upgrade no matter what marketing Apple does.
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999, D_J, jdb8167 and 2 others
turbineseaplane said:
Not fully refuting your point, but aren't the usage/wear patterns and size of transfers possibly quite different on a Mac?

And I assume a Mac user may have much longer expectations of the machine usage?
(many more years I would assume)
Click to expand...
I would expect that the iPhone is going to have much more aggressive use of storage space and would fail early. That would suggest to me that the Mac SoC module would last for quite a while because only the heaviest of tasks running 18 hours a day are going to cause problems.

While I want separate components, I don't believe that this arrangement for Mac is all that dangerous. Backups should always be required, and hopefully, Sonoma's Time Machine is working well. The typical SSD is only guaranteed for 3-4 years, some to 5 years. Is that less dangerous if a premium internal SSD could fail after 3-5 years?
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999 and turbineseaplane
krspkbl said:
You're right it wouldn't hurt Apple. In a way I get what they are doing but at the same time if they bumped base to 16GB they could start charging for 32-48GB on the Air.... think of the prices for that lol
Click to expand...

Of course it would hurt Apple's revenue and profit. A lot of people wold then not pay the extra $200 for upgraded RAM.

Apple will increase default RAM when they feel it will hurt their sales or when regular users with simple tasks and applications can't really run them on 8Gb of RAM.
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999
turbineseaplane said:
Not fully refuting your point, but aren't the usage/wear patterns and size of transfers possibly quite different on a Mac?

And I assume a Mac user may have much longer expectations of the machine usage?
(many more years I would assume)
Click to expand...

Durability of NAND is mostly a made up concern for anything that isn't used as a file server or scratch disk.

If you aren't writing to it 24/7, the NAND will easily outlive the rest of your notebook.

Soldering NAND in a notebook is still pretty crappy when M.2 2230 exists. It's slightly more than one third the size of already small M.2 SSDs. That would make it user upgradeable while barely taking away more space than soldered NAND.

Obviously never going to happen, because it would stop Apple from charging about 10x for their storage upgrades.
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999 and turbineseaplane
bousozoku said:
While I want separate components, I don't believe that this arrangement for Mac is all that dangerous. Backups should always be required, and hopefully, Sonoma's Time Machine is working well. The typical SSD is only guaranteed for 3-4 years, some to 5 years. Is that less dangerous if a premium internal SSD could fail after 3-5 years?
Click to expand...

It sure would be amazing if Apple would lean into encouraging backups, at least on desktops, by having a 2nd NVMe slot or perhaps space for an internal SATA drive. They could even sell models specced with a drive already in there.

I think a lot of folks would be interested in the data safety and security of such an option, costs aside.

I know I have some price insensitive family members who would opt for something like this ... and would pay to not have cable spaghetti on the desktop. After all, the minimal and attractive form factor is a part of why they choose Apple.
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999 and bousozoku
This is EXCELLENT news! The 16GB memory model is now one of the standard configurations. This means in one year when all the retailers are discounting stock, the 16GB model will be a great price.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: _Mitchan1999 and MacUser1
turbineseaplane said:
It sure would be amazing if Apple would lean into encouraging backups, at least on desktops, by having a 2nd NVMe slot or perhaps space for an internal SATA drive. They could even sell models specced with a drive already in there.

I think a lot of folks would be interested in the data safety and security of such an option, costs aside.

I know I have some price insensitive family members who would opt for something like this ... and would pay to not have cable spaghetti on the desktop. After all, the minimal and attractive form factor is a part of why they choose Apple.
Click to expand...
Perhaps.

They can barely figure out how to have external drives right now. The Mac Pro is a bit of an expensive joke with limited expand-ability. In the future, they'll figure it out but how many generations will it take?
 
  • Haha
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999 and turbineseaplane
My 2018 Intel MBA is NOT fast now, that’s for sure. Will be super-great to upgrade it soon to a new M3.
Re. trade in, it’s to Apple’s advantage, they pay a lot more for old Macs and devices than anywhere elsewhere. So in that case it’s worth it to buy and trade in old stuff with Apple as I see it.
98% of the case it's great services too.

Will buy 16/512 - have 16/256 on my old MBA. I could use a bit more space for the next 5-7 yrs,
But will sit with it a week or 2, in case I change my mind.
First I was drawn to Midnight, but Starlight it will be I think now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999
StrangeNoises said:
yes, but running an external monitor and the lid open to run the internal one too is the sort of thing you only need to do if you can't drive two external monitors. ;)
Click to expand...
?? Not true. With the internal display right there it makes total sense to use it for more screen real estate no matter what one's setup is. I have driven three 4K external displays with my MBPs for years, always also using the MBP display. I tried it once in clamshell mode but it made no sense to me.

The purpose of external display(s) is to improve productivity. More is better for folks in that improve productivity mode. Wasting good screen real estate only makes sense for those who only want one display for simple single-minded content consumption.

When I first added an external display to MBP a decade ago I had limited desk space, but the MBP with its display fit fine directly under the 4K Viewsonic display. Images work on the external display with palettes on the MBP worked so well I built a large stand-up desk and added two more external displays, with concurrent work in process (Filemaker, Mail, Photos, Affinity, etc.) everywhere. Today two VESA-mounted external displays plus the MBP works for me; anything less is frustrating (I use 3 external but two 32" would work). The new specs on the M3 are a huge upgrade for MBA.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999
RichP74 said:
Pathetic the base RAM isn't 16 gigs yet. I have an M2 Air with 16 and it's a beast. 8 gigs of RAM just kneecaps these poor laptops, even for day to day use.
Click to expand...

Then you haven't used a MacBook Air with 8Gb MacBook Air.

They work fine for a certain class of users who don't use applications which require a lot of memory all the time.
Browsing and using Office + Teams (or similar stuff from Google) would be good examples.
 
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999, D_J, Mainsail and 7 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back