I ran Lightroom, Photoshop, Mail, Quicken, Turbotax, MSWord, MSExcel, OneNote, many times with four of those apps at once. No issues as everything ran fine. In short, a person can do some very useful stuff.
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Best Buy Selling M1 MacBook Air for $650, a New All-Time Low Price
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if apple continue to produce them for a promo price with fixed promo deals or volumes, it would be a good way to “compete” with pc laptops. assuming that cost for M1 chips have gone down for them, they are able to sell these for cheaper. This sales strategy might not have worked with intel chips, assuming intel would not sell much older chips to them or in a much cheaper way.
the air m1 is just a very good competitive deal for that price compared to other laptops.
Nah. This is the Apple way. Continue to produce 2-3 year old devices as new, for a lower price/entry point. They've already amortized their production/development costs, so they keep good margins while bringing down the price to entry.
You can do almost anything. I did, and ran it pushing a Pro Display XDR @ 6K60 (base M1 Mac mini).
BB's price drop is merely a price matching move to match Walmart so their support people don't spend all their time approving price matches with Walmart. Plain and simple. Amazon, Walmart and BB are constantly changing their prices to match each other on electronics.
If one has a need to run Windows, or one simply wants a screaming deal on something preowned but well spec'd, there are absolutely reasons to buy an Intel Mac
Per Daring Fireball, Apple is continuing to manufacture the M1 MacBook Air so Walmart, exclusively, can sell the base model for $700.
LOLNO
Everything I have is still 6502, 65816, 68k, PowerPC, or Intel. (Just picked up a Macintosh Portable the other day, I've wanted one since 1989.)
I'm not at all exited about the ARM chips. I still need x86 virtualization, I don't know how soon that'll be something I can get away from. And contrary to Apple's claims, the ARM chips aren't really that much faster than the Intel hardware.
They are faster, yes, but just as importantly they are faster at 1/4 the power. That means your M1 laptop's battery lasts way, way longer. It's a completely different world with ARM-based processors.
The power savings don't matter much if one needs x86 stuff and the machine can no longer do it
(or if you're on desktop where the efficiency is mostly not important)
I'm not convinced that's really the case. The M1 MBA thermal throttles, and there's not much you can do about it, it doesn't even have a fan that you can crank up with Macs Fan Control. They can't handle ANY GPUs, they can't handle more RAM than they ship with, they can't handle as many displays as the Intel Macs, they can't... it's a long list.
The Acorn RISC Machine isn't a new chip. It's been around a LONG time. And EVERYTHING is hitting a wall now, the end of Moore's Law is a real thing because we're near the point where traces literally can't get smaller without quantum computing being a workable thing because a trace on silicon can't be less than 1 atom.
0.1 NM is, without question, the absolute end without quantum computing, and 0.5 NM is probably unrealistic.
It's a good deal for a computer that isnt your primary. But the days of needing a computer and a laptop are over since MBP's can be both. But if you have a windows machine, its the only Mac you'll ever need.
There is a reason why apple sells new produced laptops through walmart: bringing anything cheaper than the m2 and m3 air offered at 900-1000 on the apple website will undercut their reputation and sales of higher priced models.
Dumping them under wallmarts name helps to reduce the direct price shopping and also allows to reach another group of potential customers (walmart shopper’s behavioral profile).
Not sure if serious. The M3 MBA have the same poverty specs. I would rather spend $649 than $1099 or $1299 for basically the same computer for light use. M3 has very little meaning for light users unless they really need to plug in 2 external monitors in clamshell mode.
I highly doubt that. My son is using this same configuration for the past 3 years for all kinds of software development and school work. Never has any problems.
If they wanted to match Walmart, they wouldn't have gone $50 lower. Their support people wouldn't be price matching $699 by selling things for $650. So, no, I don't believe it's "merely" a price matching move. They're clearing out stock, plain and simple. The actual price at which they're clearing stock may have been motivated by Walmart, but it's not the only reason they dropped the price.
You can think he's a corporate shill all you want (and there have been plenty of times I have said myself that he can't pull his head out of his own ass to see the light of logic), but he actually does have a relationship with and talk to people who work at Apple who would know these things. There's a difference between dismissing his unfounded cheerleading and dismissing things he has no reason to lie about.
I don't even know where to begin... How about: You think 1 nanometer is the end of the process road? You think instruction set architectures don't matter? You don't think the inefficiencies of x86 don't hinder it vs. ARM-64? You don't think RISC-V and others aren't going to replace ARM?
It's a never-ending cycle, my man. Saying things like "absolute end without quantum computing" sells yourself short. Plus, only a Sith deals in absolutes
M1 Air is still my main driver. Working just dandy.
Don't lie. 8GB is plenty of memory. I use Safari and 10 other apps simultaneously all day long with zero issues. No slowdown at all.
Are you confusing "reserved RAM" with "consumed RAM"?
I don’t think he’s lying, he’s just getting bad data.
Nobody is going to tell him “yes we have a whole bunch of extra stock laying around so we did a deal with Walmart to get rid of it”
Channeling any messaging through Gruber is intentional corporate PR.
Anyone gobbling it up should be thinking a little harder. They flat out discontinued this model. They’re dumping stock.
Did you see the immediate reaction from other retailers that have stock on hand themselves?
Instantly they undercut the price because they don’t wanna be left holding the bag
Let’s be smarter everyone.
Stop listening to John Gruber or anything Apple says
It’s all PR