Apple Announces New MacBook Air Models With M3 Chip

[profcutter]

Well, since you agreed they were 8Gb chips, not 8GB, I was under the impression you would need 16 chips for 16GB, since there are 8 bits in a byte. I haven’t had to calculate this stuff in a few decades, though.

I mean sure, if they had 16 chips in there, but if you've ever seen the m1 with the cover off, it's just 2 chips. Two at wholesale mass quantities, maybe 4 dollars a piece? Again without the model number, no way to know. I'm not taking my M1 Max apart.

 

[profcutter]

I mean sure, if they had 16 chips in there, but if you've ever seen the m1 with the cover off, it's just 2 chips. Two at wholesale mass quantities, maybe 4 dollars a piece? Again without the model number, no way to know. I'm not taking my M1 Max apart.

Look, I'm entirely out of my element here, I'm not a wholesale hardware parts buyer, but it's DDR5 RAM modules. I have no idea if this is the real chip, but if you can find a price on Samsung

K3LK7K70BM-JFCP​

those are 64Gb DDR5 RAM chips. I don't know if it's the right package, or the right number of balls for the application, but I'm seeing similar pricing less than 5 dollars a chip. 2 chips, still more like 10 dollars for 16GB, not 200.

 

[Rob9874]

I have an M1 MBA, and skipped the M2 even though I really liked that form factor and Midnight color. Figured I'd wait till the M3 MBA came out. But reading these comments, you're talking me out of upgrading. I use it mainly for web browsing, but may get into some Garage Band or Logic Pro use this year. Are there any M1 owners planning to upgrade, and if so, why?

 

[svish]

Minor upgrade. Would have been nice to have new colours. Surprised that Apple has not even updated the wallpapers for the new device.

 

[Quackington]

Eh, well, I have an M1 MBA and feel perfectly fine. Upgrades at this point are really for anyone with an Intel MBA or someone who wants to but doesn’t need to.

Even some of us with Intel MBPs don’t feel the need just yet. I have a 2020 13”, think it was the last one released before the M1. Does what I need it to do for now, not 4 years old yet.

 

[Flynnsworth]

they are offering 2.9% over 12 months or 4.9% over 24 months, those as the rates are variable they may change in future if interest rates change. Considering the UK base rate is 5.25%, that pretty competitive and arguably better than 0% when the base rate was 0.5%.

For some reason, there is no Barclays option at checkout on the Education store. Only PayPal which is 14.9%

 

[F27]

Is the better anodisation only on the Midnight colour or have they done it with all the colours on the M3 Air? It’s not just fingerprints, people were having trouble with the finish wearing off the around the ports. I also wonder if they have done anything about the poor thermal management, i.e. none.

 

[Duncan-UK]

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.

its nothing to do with the speed of the chip. More that my intel MBP battery is not as good as it once was. Also the price of the 15 inch with 16gb is now roundabouts what I’d be prepared to pay. Having said that I’m almost certainly going to try and get another 12-18 months out of my MBP.

 

[Houpla]

Do you expect monumental changes every 12 months? Do you not read the specs before complaining about the specs?

Yes, I do expect improvement in CPU architecture. It will soon be 4 years since M1 was released. Almost all the speed increase M1 to M3 can be explained by higher clock frequency. Meanwhile AMD and Intel have made significant progress improving IPC (instructions per clock).

 

[robertosh]

Apple has always priced goods in EUR to be (approximately) the same as the USD price.
$1099 + 20% VAT = $1319 = €1214.
€1299 seems right when taking into account forex fluctuations and making the price end with 99.

I feel really embarrassed. I did not expect prices to be without Tax on the US store! 😌
😌😌

 

[boak]

I'm holding out for the M4, which I expect to have a jump in the Neural Engine

 

[boak]

I feel really embarrassed. I did not expect prices to be without Tax on the US store! 😌
😌😌

Yeah it's because each state and each city have their own sales tax rate. Even the price labels in grocery stores do not include tax.

 

[hajime]

When the lid is closed, does one external monitor acts in mirror mode only or in extended screen mode or up to the user?

 

[Lioness~]

I will get away cheaper with this MBA then last time 🤑
Either Apple are becoming cheaper, or somthing else, such as currency conversion /tax/ time etc.

When I bought my 2018 MBA I payed, translated to $, 2000,-
I found the old invoice from Apple from 2018.
This time a new MBA (but with the old MBA $ ~330 trade-in too) will cost me approx. $ 1250,-

Can't recall if I had a trade-in when I bought the 2018 MBA, but not necessarly. The portable usually are bought in between the desktops. Sometimes I've only had 1 of them, depending on various reasons.

 

[CarAnalogy]

I have an i7 2020 air, it runs fine with sonoma…

My mistake, I forgot they made an i7 version of that. I have the i5 16/512. So not the fastest. I don't use it much anymore. When I busted it out recently, yes it does work but maybe it's because I use this MacBook Pro now but it felt incredibly slow.

Good to hear the i7 version is running well, at the time I thought that might be overspec'd for a machine like that.

 

[Dozer_Zaibatsu]

My M1 MBAir has lasted for just over three years. Was flawless. Did everything. I also took it everywhere. Put on a table in my garage to listen to podcasts while I worked out or hammered my thumb in the garage. Had it seated on the kitchen counter to listen or watch things or cooked or when the family was busy and I ate alone. I had it as a sidecar at work for communication or troubleshooting troublesome code.

I paid extra to get 16GB of RAM and it never struggled.

And finally last month the screen went wonky. Secret crack or water damage? One of 'em. Even babying it, I couldn't prevent it.

Just yesterday I just bought a used Dell Latitude 7400 yesterday. I could return it. But it comes with 32GB of RAM. I am going to crack it open first thing and put 1TB M2 SSD on it and put Linux on it. With shipping and tax and the extra SSD is still less than the cost of me replacing the screen on the M1.

But I had really hoped the Mac would last a couple more years. Kinda sucks.

I saw this and wondered. For a moment I thought I could return the used Dell. But I probably won't. Because I'm using it for web, writing, and watching and listening to content, I'm probably better off with a cheap laptop that I don't care much if it gets smashed. And 32GB of RAM even on toasty Intel is still 32GB.

The M series are great laptops. But Apple is going to make you pay to get actually usable amounts of RAM.

Maybe a mini. Less bad things can happen since it sits in one place. If they allowed me to snap in extra M2 storage, I'd buy one in a hot minute. Let's see if M3 Mini gets updated.

 

[cawgijoe]

My mistake, I forgot they made an i7 version of that. I have the i5 16/512. So not the fastest. I don't use it much anymore. When I busted it out recently, yes it does work but maybe it's because I use this MacBook Pro now but it felt incredibly slow.

Good to hear the i7 version is running well, at the time I thought that might be overspec'd for a machine like that.

I have the MBA i5 16/512 also. Works fine, but seriously thinking about upgrading to the M3. Apple trade in is only $375. It does feel slower than it used to when new.

 

[CarAnalogy]

I have the MBA i5 16/512 also. Works fine, but seriously thinking about upgrading to the M3. Apple trade in is only $375. It does feel slower than it used to when new.

I have a stack of old Lenovo Tiny computers from companies replacing their fleets and not even wanting them anymore. Put an SSD in and it still runs faster than that old MBA. Only computer I've ever seen with an SSD and it's still that sluggish.

For $375 you may as well keep it though. Mine ironically runs Windows in Boot Camp better than it runs macOS. But it still randomly crashes.

I may just have a dud. It has segfaulted several times in its life. That has literally never happened with the MBP I'm using now. It'll be two years old soon and is still only slightly less fast than the day I got it. And that's just app launches which I'm hearing is a Sonoma bug.

 

[Cape Dave]

I suspect that since that earlier estimate was low by 800%, that the cost is higher than you suspect. And I don’t think Apple buys sticks of RAM for these, since the RAM is integrated on the CPU module for the M series, so you would have been closer using your original word chip, I believe.

Copy that, I forgot about the integrated Ram

 

[uploaded]

Guys, I read pages and pages here about the price of RAM and HD. For me, this is incomprehensible.
Right now I'm sitting in front of my MBA M1 16/1TB and I'm happy that the MBA M3 15 inch has finally come out.
The 13 inch was a bit too small for me and I wanted to wait for the M3 because the switch from M1 to M2 wasn't really worth it.
Now there's an M3, with 15 inches, fast WLAN, better graphics, dual monitor support...an awesome thing.
The price has always been outrageous...but you can sell them again at a discount. I ordered the model with 24GB and 2TB. I'm looking forward to it!

 

[gimarbazat]

Gone are the days when Apple used to make a truly light or air computer. No need to make them heavy with a 18 hour battery. The 12” MacBook is a gem except the screen is a little small. Hope one day they will make a really light computer. Even the giant iPhone aka iPad Pro is not exactly light.

 

[Mainsail]

I posted this on another thread, but it fits here too:
Page after page of shock, indignation, and pearl clutching over something that was entirely predictable prior to this release. The entry M3 iMac and M3 MBP start at 8GB. There is nothing surprising about the base configuration of the M3 MBA.

The MBA is a portable everyday computer for college, office work, and home use. The target market are people that primarily use: mail, messages, MS Office, iWork, Photos, Safari, FaceTime/Zoom, and maybe an occasional iMovie. You can do some video and photo editing on the MBA, but regardless of the amount of RAM, it is not the right tool for those that do 4k video encoding for a living. It's a fanless computer for goodness sake. The MBP is a much better choice for that kind of work.

I have yet to hear one report of real world performance issue from people using a base configuration MBA for the kind of everyday computing that is the target market for this computer. So, for those that want to be indignant, keep staring at active monitor and posting about memory pressure whilst opening 30 tabs in Chrome and encoding video. Keep posting thread after thread about how Apple is ripping us off with an 8GB configuration. We get it. It would be nice if RAM and storage upgrades were cheaper. BTW - Check out the MS Surface upgrade pricing...not much different. Meanwhile, the rest of us, those actually using these base MBAs, will just continue to enjoy our computers and get stuff done with them.

 

[John___]

Still love my M1 Air. I do wish in 2024 though, the base model had 16GB of ram.

 

[jouster]

Well... I use 2 external monitors attached to my MacBook Pro when doing zoom meetings: Documents we're editing together on one monitor, full screen zoom on another so I can actually see who's talking, and additional information, like info I need from a web browser on the MacBook Pro screen. So maybe I'm an outlier, but I can't imagine I'm the only one using two external displays attached to my MBP.

I don't think you're an outlier for MBP use.

But I think that, once again, Apple knows its audience well enough to realize that few MBA users--outside of posters to tech websites--will need or expect to be able to use multiple external monitors.

I'm speculating here, but I suspect that the majority of MBAs will never be plugged into anything except an electrical outlet.

 

[uploaded]

I don't think you're an outlier for MBP use.

But I think that, once again, Apple knows its audience well enough to realize that few MBA users--outside of posters to tech websites--will need or expect to be able to use multiple external monitors.

I'm speculating here, but I suspect that the majority of MBAs will never be plugged into anything except an electrical outlet.

Every MBA user I know uses an external monitor...