I swear since covid and everyone being at home more, they just find more reason to complain over everything
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M2 MacBook Air throttling is being vastly over-exaggerated
- Thread starter mattyjoe
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Great post and a very good point here.
I decided to be brave and open four Safari tabs on my new M2 Air. I forgot that Mail was still open. I'll pour it back into the box and see if I can get a refund.
I'm a little more interested in what the deal is with the 10 core GPU. According to some videos, it actually results in worse performance than the 8 core. Not just in benchmarks, but in gaming.
Now I completely understand the 'just get a pro' mentality when it comes to gaming and heavy lifting, but surely an upgraded component should be an actual upgrade!
I'm still searching for videos/articles that cover this in a non-clickbait way, but sadly that's not the internet we live in.
Now I completely understand the 'just get a pro' mentality when it comes to gaming and heavy lifting, but surely an upgraded component should be an actual upgrade!
I'm still searching for videos/articles that cover this in a non-clickbait way, but sadly that's not the internet we live in.
It's not entirely unexpected.
The M1 MBA was essentially recycling a form factor that had been in use since 2018. I suspect Apple was able to maintain the price in part because of this. With the 2022 MBA, you have the costs associated with designing a new M2 chip, in addition to the R&D involved in designing a new form factor, plus the huge upfront costs involved in obtaining the equipment needed to manufacture it.
In short, the new MBA costs more because it costs more to make. Perhaps more than what some people are prepared to shell out, but Apple is not obligated to put out cheap products either.
My wife just came from a 2017 Intel 13" MacBook Pro to an M2 MacBook Air. When I got home from work today she exclaimed that she'd been using her Mac all day and it "wasn't even warm." She was so ecstatic because her old laptop would burn up doing even the trivial tasks that she uses her computer for. I expect her experience will be far more in line with the majority than the people whining about 15% decreases with multi-hour benchmarking. It's the 'Air' for a reason.
If you relly want speed just get a Mac Book Pro!
Yeah if its her first Apple Silicon Mac thats going to be the reaction. It really is an improvement over the battery sucking space heaters Intel calls "laptop chips." Good for her, tell her to enjoy it. I remember the feeling when I first got my M1 MBA (Wow!) and then later my M1 Max MBP (OMFG!)
My issue with this thread, and the whole (counter) reaction to the negative coverage surrounding the M2 SSD/thermal throttling is, why can't people here seem to accept that the 2022 M2 MBA can simultaneously be a great machine for a lot of people (like your wife,) but that the cuts/compromises Apple made (specifically the SSD more than the to be expected thermal throttling in a fan-less design) really suck and make it a much worse machine for a lot of people for whom the 2021 M1 MBA was fine?
Because to me that's thing. It's not a bad product in the grand scheme of things, but in some ways it's noticeably worse than its predecessor (something rather uncommon in the industry.) Apple made some (well, mainly one very) disappointing, ******, and anti consumer choices and deserves to be called out on them. At the same time, the machine of course deserves praise for what it gets right. It really doesn't have to be more complicated than this.
Anything is designed to throttle. Our iPhones throttle since 2007.
Throttling is a feature - or else the components would be grilled under heavy load. This feature is even more important when the device does not have any cooling - no fan.
Basically when you export a video on a MBA it will end up throttling if the video is too long, and in some conditions eg playing some heavy games.
But maybe buying a MBA to be a video editor or a gamer is buying the wrong device.
Throttling is a feature - or else the components would be grilled under heavy load. This feature is even more important when the device does not have any cooling - no fan.
Basically when you export a video on a MBA it will end up throttling if the video is too long, and in some conditions eg playing some heavy games.
But maybe buying a MBA to be a video editor or a gamer is buying the wrong device.
Yeah, to be honest you're totally right. I guess there are two perspectives to take on it; one where you look at it simply as a product in the 2022 laptop space with no context of Apple's other laptops (where it's an incredible machine and one of the most complete offerings on the market), and then one where you look at it specifically in the context of comparison to its predecessor (where there are areas it has taken a step back vs. its predecessor).
It would be easier to defend some of the compromises if the price had stayed the same, since it could be written off as a way to defeat margin-eating inflation monsters without raising the price, but in this case it seems they implemented cost-cutting measures and raised the price. Not a great combo. I do still think it's a net gain over the M1 Air for its intended audience, though, when you break down the pros and cons.
Pros of M2 Air vs. M1 Air:
- Larger screen
- Brighter screen
- Better webcam
- Lighter weight
- Better speakers
- MagSafe
- Faster top-end CPU and GPU performance
- Shiny new design (okay, this is subjective, but I think most of the masses would take the new, fresh design)
- Significantly lower SSD performance for the base model
- Seemingly worse thermal performance under sustained loads
Anyway, I guess that's my devil's advocate argument for them. I still think it sucks that the SSD speed was halved, though again I don't think it will be noticeable to most users.
Even if it is throttling considerably, I get it. It's the Air. It was built for thinness and portability. It was not built to be a workhorse.
Here is an odd possibly outlier thing... been happy w the 10/16/1T I was able to pick up on launch day (finally moving on from my 2012 Mac Mini). BUT, as this is my first M series Mac, I thought I'd install an iPad game I enjoy as time filler and play it... just because I could. And of all the things this little game is making the M2A HOT. Like, I can't have it on my lap hot. The game is a super basic, simple, no frills turn by turn game - so it's not like there's huge demand for... anything. But for whatever reason it's turning the machine into a panini maker. Not exactly a reason for reurning the machine, but vaguely concerning nonetheless.
From the videos I’ve seen, the new speakers sounded worse. Where did you see that they are better?
Of course it has its maximum performance limit, but whether or not it is artificially throttled before that point due to the ability of the case it is in not being able to dissipate the heat is another question.
That’s not how Apple markets it on the official webpage.
New speakers sound more hollow and boxy in reviews but have to hear it in person before finalizing my opinion.
Every time I read something like this I almost choke on my coffee. Go ahead and scroll back several years with that ridiculous butterfly keyboard. It was unbelievable how many people were claiming “it’s the best keyboard I ever used!” Or, “there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s not a flaw but a design decision!” There are literally hundreds of comments to that effect whenever someone would dare question the keyboard.
Guess what - it was a flaw, and Apple is paying for it now. Now we have the throttling issue and people are just as quick to say - but even throttled it’s as fast as the M1 Air (shouldn’t it be faster - I mean that’s the whole point of a next generation chip). Or, “it’s a design decision and compromise.” Really? That’s an awfully strange design decision - especially when users have already pointed out how to inexpensively ameliorate a lot of the issue.
Rather than being so quick to justify Apple’s decisions - how about this option - maybe they blew it. They’re not flawless. They make mistakes and this could be one of them. Maybe the computer isn’t “perfect” (whatever that is), but it’s perfectly fine for you.
But really, don’t be so quick to justify or forgive something that was so easy to discover and so easy to replicate by claiming it was “a design decision”.
This machine is *mostly* not even for people who would be aware of this.
And, for some that are aware of this, it is still enough. The throttling is not going to hurt you in the long run. You’ll just know it’s there 3 times per year when you encode a video or something.
And, for some that are aware of this, it is still enough. The throttling is not going to hurt you in the long run. You’ll just know it’s there 3 times per year when you encode a video or something.
The throttling is no different than any other fanless design, such as iPhone and iPad, the 12” MacBook (which would be an amazing machine with ASi), and the M1 Air throttles as well. The M2’s worst moment is as good or better than the M1’s best. That’s very fair for a 2nd Gen chip (again, we’re talking about fanless here). 3nm chips next to around will be significantly better.
It can more than handle the workload of the market segment it targets.
Max Tech have the comparison of 10 GPU vs 8 GPU
I had the last Intel Air briefly, and that was overheating garbage. I'm still amazed that we have fan-less computers this powerful, and there's way too much speculating without actually using these laptops. All the complaints are based on bars in a graph and pictures of the cooling, and not actual use of actual programs getting slow.
I decided to be brave and open four Safari tabs on my new M2 Air. I forgot that Mail was still open. I'll pour it back into the box and see if I can get a refund.
Look, no fingerprints when it melts! 🤣
I do want to repeat one thing here:
You CANNOT expect people to not throw heavy workloads on those "entry-level" M2 MacBook Air. Most are not "educated tech-savvies" like most of us here, and all they get are the word of mouth and ads. It is always a terrible assumption to expect users to use the equipment you design for the general public unless it is extremely limited in how to use it, which this MacBook Air cannot do so.
While it is true that 15-20min sustained workload is pretty rare, it still shows that passive cooling can only go so far. It's just that the possibility of people buying this machine and using it for heavy workload (sucks Mac don't have many games available, much less than on Linux) is so low Apple doesn't really care. Otherwise, the design would've been a bit different.
One unfortunate consequence of this debacle is the narrative is more or less set, so M2 MacBook Air "reputation" (if there is one) has been damaged. I seriously doubt it will affect the sale but future buyers would expect M3 differently than they treat M2 now, especially if M3 doesn't offer 30%+ CPU performance boost over M2.
You CANNOT expect people to not throw heavy workloads on those "entry-level" M2 MacBook Air. Most are not "educated tech-savvies" like most of us here, and all they get are the word of mouth and ads. It is always a terrible assumption to expect users to use the equipment you design for the general public unless it is extremely limited in how to use it, which this MacBook Air cannot do so.
While it is true that 15-20min sustained workload is pretty rare, it still shows that passive cooling can only go so far. It's just that the possibility of people buying this machine and using it for heavy workload (sucks Mac don't have many games available, much less than on Linux) is so low Apple doesn't really care. Otherwise, the design would've been a bit different.
One unfortunate consequence of this debacle is the narrative is more or less set, so M2 MacBook Air "reputation" (if there is one) has been damaged. I seriously doubt it will affect the sale but future buyers would expect M3 differently than they treat M2 now, especially if M3 doesn't offer 30%+ CPU performance boost over M2.
So what? If someone runs a heavy workload on an M2 it’ll still work but maybe a bit slower than a computer with a fan. The case will get a bit warm. Why does any of that matter? The M2 Air is still plenty fast enough even if it throttles.
What debacle? The one made up by YouTubers looking for quick hits? I doubt Apple cares.