I'm starting to think that if one knows anything beyond the kindergarten level -- they are in the minority
😂
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Base Model M3 MacBook Air Has Faster SSD Speeds After Controversy With Previous Model
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I'm starting to think that if one knows anything beyond the kindergarten level -- they are in the minority
😂
I think it's hilarious that anyone thinks a year-over-year decline in Mac sales was due to the vanishingly tiny number of people who know or care about the differing speeds of 2X128 vs 1x256 SSD chips.
By this logic, the coming year's sales numbers should see a sudden huge wave of Mac purchases due to them switching back to the faster SSDs. Anyone here see that happening? 🤣
Nobody thinks one single feature is a silver bullet. But it's clear Apple is putting all around effort on slowing that decline in sales by making MBA more competitive.
- Reduced price from $1,199 to $1,099
- Added "Pro" dual-display support
- Added "Pro" fingerprint resistant finish
- Added 16/512 config for retailers with discounts
- Improved SSD performance
You had some people before suggest that nobody would notice a slow SSD when it clearly affects those with 8GB RAM.
Blah blah blah blah
And complaints about the complaining...When do MR posters who complain about the complaining finally stop though?
That's the REAL question!
It's complaints, all the way down.
I'm not really bothered by having a low default RAM spec, but there is one area where it limits customers. A lot of resellers will only stock the base spec Macs and you can't get upgraded specs from them. This also happens in other countries where Apple doesn't do direct sales, like Malaysia where the only option is to buy from resellers and they only offer the base spec models. This means that in those places you are limited to whatever base spec Apple is building. I can see where that would be frustrating.
"40% decline in Mac sales" is one of those eye catching headlines like you might see on YouTube.
It was a 40% decline after an historic high volume of sales from people upgrading while working from home. The sales numbers came back down to a little higher than before covid. Also, all other computer makers were experiencing similar drops in sales probably for the same reason.
fyi @HackMacDaddy
Kudos to Max Tech for forcing Apple to return to the dual SSD solution for M3 MBA.
A much better solution… kill once and for all the pathetically anemic 256GB option. ALL models should start at 512GB with upgrade options for 1 or 2 TBs.
It's been that way for almost 2 years as volumes of the lower quantity chips are much reduced so are scarcer. Apple is trying to protect their margins for upgrading to the lower priced, higher spec'd parts. Yet no nothings still say "I don't need more storage/RAM and neither do you."
You have to understand the expectations for Apple Silicon in 2020/2021. Many people thought it would wipe out x86. Intel and AMD were declared dead.
Today, after the upheaval from M1, Apple still has only a 10% global market share for PCs. Apple was at around 7% in 2019. How many M1 moments will Apple have in the future? In the grand scale of things, M1 didn't do much for Apple. That's why the 34% decline in Mac sales was so surprising - the momentum was supposed to continue, even after remote work.
It's called advertising and it's to make you stand out from the crowd in a single still.
I doubt its that. There prices of NAND have gone up so they are probably getting better deals on the 128 chips.
It's all about the benjamins, if they can save a few cents they will do it. this time it appears to be helping the situation.
Apple is still expensive, even the lowest end models (without other retailer discounts) are $1k+.
A lot of people buy the $400-500 laptops, or the cheaper chromebooks for their kids.
Apple could easily make a cheaper plastic laptop, they just choose not to do it.
Prices for NAND are based on the number of Gbits. Everyone in the industry uses 128GB chips. If the demand for NAND increases, all NAND prices increase by the same amount.
Apple is responding to lower demand for Mac. They lowered the price of MBA from $1,199 to $1,099. That's the opposite of Benjamins.
Sigh. It has nothing to do with wanting "free stuff" and everything to do with the amount of applications & things people do with their laptops these days, 16gb should be the absolute minimum a laptop ought to have.
I don't know why you feel the need to be so condescending in every post you make. Seems you didn't learn anything from your recent suspension from the forums.
those numbers suggest that marketshare went up 40+% from 2019 to today (7% marketshare to 10%) - I'd say M1 was quite a success considering that ...
iPhones are getting more and more expensive, yet Apple continues to win market share.
Even if Apple were to make a plastic AppleBook, what's the max. global market share it would get? An additional 3%? The decline shows Apple Silicon and macOS alone aren't enough to fight x86. Apple hates pulling the price lever.
there were rumors a year or 2 ago that apple would introduce a Chromebook-like computer - hasn't happened yet and no rumors since ...
Apple is in the premium segment and looks they will stay there ...
2019 was the absolute tail end of a pretty meh run for the Mac
2016-2019 had some of the worst laptops they've made (on the whole) and the end of 6 years of the Mac Pro just "sitting there for sale, untouched"
M1 was great -- and a large portion of the "great" was in relation to where things had stagnated to by 2019 with the Mac.
well, the chart below tells a little different story, US only, more or less stagnant since 2013 and then certainly an uptick, probably mainly due to Covid, and the long-term impact of that is still tbd...
Apple PC market share in the U.S. by quarter 2025| Statista
In the first quarter of 2025, Apple shipped **** percent of all PC units in the United States.
www.statista.com
Perhaps you could share your source for that claim. I don't think any of us without inside info can claim to know what they pay for chips.
Dont be fooled. M1 MBA is still the fastest.