They could probably also cite stats of how it compares to the M1, but that would lead to potential confusion as journalists and bloggers mix up which stat is which. Marketing people want one message, said clearly and repeated often.
However, AFAIK there are none that compare to M1/M2 in terms of efficiency and relative performance.
I might be wrong - I'm comparing an old budget ThinkPad (L580) to 2021 and 2023 MacBook Pros here.
Noteworthy for me is that this 2019 i5 with 16GB (Lenovo L580) still trashes all AMD notebooks that I ever used in that regard. Xubuntu lasted me a work day easily on that machine. But performance was slow of course.
Even in single thread tasks in interpreted languages, the speed difference between that 2019 i5 and an M1 Pro is around factor 5-10, with the Mac inaudible compared to the i5 sounding like a small airplane (cough, legacy webpack frontend build).
Also here, my experiences are probably distorted by price range differences.
Then there's all the stuff that really matters: virtually unlimited multitasking, reliability (wireless, graphics especially), trackpad, speakers, WebRTC, etc etc
And with a current MBP, you really need to do very expensive tasks (ML, huge builds etc) to notice any performance or battery life degradation.
I now have a 2022 M2 13" and I can go 10+ hours w/o a charge doing normal work shit which generally includes 4-6 hours of video chat and 2-4 hours of development.
For me, the upgrade was well worth it. I now treat my computer like I do my phone; I charge it once a day overnight.
Note: maybe not M3 the name, but at least the 3nm transition.
That doesn't get into the battery life. My M1 air has mostly been used on road trips to check email, or do light reading. No video or work. I can get pretty much a full 4-6 day trip on a full charge just doing email/reading in the evening a couple hours a night. This has been pretty fantastic imo. Never had any other device that could achieve that before.
I've used M1 Max and M2 Pro for work, and both are fantastic... x86_64 docker used to be a pretty big issue for some images, but it's been great outside of that. The drive I/O is outstanding, and can build large web/node apps faster than my 5950X desktop with a 980 pro drive.
Biggest down sides come down to the money sink if you want/need more storage or memory in the box. It's WAY overpriced for what it is, and you might be better served with a DIY desktop or framework laptop. There are also some workloads that are a true miss. Not to mention gaming as an entire use case that is pretty poor. Not to mention the UX is rather dated at this point, and I really wish some of the hotkeys were more aligned with Windows and Linux. Muscle memory is a pain when you jump back and forth.
Airs don't even need a fan.
Beta support is there in DisplayLink software on macOS for scaled 4K displays, but it does not provide full colour bit depth. The colours are washed out and the display lacks contrast.
So yes, Display Link works, but it’s not a solution for anyone wanting a Retina experience.
I’d be pleased for someone to tell me in wrong and show me how it can be done!
The hoped for model goes the other direction - a new 11" MBA.
The weight is more important and this seems impressive. 3 pounds seems light for a laptop with a 15" display. And based on where we are in Apple's product cycle, I imagine it will hold up pretty well.
I feel the same way about the gigantic phones of today, by the way. I want my phone to be small.
I recognize that I'm apparently in the minority here.
Getting to a point where I'd like to upgrade my original M1 Air, but figure I might as well wait for whatever is after the current M2 generation. However if that means a 15" form factor, no thanks.
~~~ MacBook Air 11" ~~~
Height: 0.11-0.68 inch (0.3-1.7 cm)
Width: 11.8 inches (30 cm)
Depth: 7.56 inches (19.2 cm)
Weight: 2.38 pounds (1.08 kg)
~~~ MacBook Air 13" ~~~
Height: 0.44 inch (1.13 cm)
Width: 11.97 inches (30.41 cm)
Depth: 8.46 inches (21.5 cm)
Weight: 2.7 pounds (1.24 kg)
~~~ Difference (New compared to old) ~~~
Height: 0.24 inches thinner (at its thickest point)
Width: 0.17 inches wider
Depth: 0.9 inches deeper (which helps give you a much nicer trackpad and function keys)
Weight: 0.32 pounds heavier (5.12 ounces)
Why does it cost $400 to add another 16GB of RAM when the chips themselves cost $50 on Best Buy? Is it that much more expensive to make the RAM small enough to fit in the Air?
When they first came out, there was a great deal of hay made over the fact that this was still the base RAM—and then people started using them, and reporting that it was fine. As long as you're not trying to put them under heavy loads, 8GB RAM is plenty for the M1 and M2.
And if you want to put it under heavy load...then you're not really the target customer for the base model, are you?
Software didn't start needing less RAM. All that changed is that RAM and SSD speeds became much faster which allowed for faster swap which reduced the perceived impact of low RAM. If you watch the Activity Monitor, Memory would run into yellow all the time with 8GB machines.
So, you still need RAM based on the use case, Intel or Apple Silicon, and if you pair low RAM with small SSD, you'll just wear out the SSD sooner.
At this moment I am on a 16GB M2 Air and using 14.6GB of RAM. The only substantial app I have open is Chrome.
Maybe you should try using Safari? It's not only much better with memory, it doesn't actively punish you for avoiding giving Google direct access to all your browsing...
They're rated for what, 150TBW in their lifetime? Suppose it lasts double that, then a macbook would last somebody like me 1-3 years before the ssd died and the entire machine became scrap
Disappointing to see higher £ numbers than $. Even accounting for 20% VAT, the price should only be £1,250
The reason I'm asking is that, given the upcoming M2 Macbook Air, I'm debating whether to have someone swap out the keyboard for my M1 or just go ahead and upgrade to M2. But if the keyboard on my M2 is going to start dying in a couple years no matter how well I take care of it then I'll pass and go with the repair instead.
> They fixed the keyboard issue with the 16" Macbook Pro Intel series, which came out 4-5 years ago.
Fixed what keyboard issue? Clearly, GP is experiencing an issue across these generations. You can add my anecdata to that as well: intermittently cruchy/blocked keystrokes on my 2020 M1 MBA, exactly like my old ~2016-2018 MBPs.
> a powerful 8-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores
> a 10-core GPU
> a 16-core Neural Engine
> M2 delivers 100GB/s of memory bandwidth and supports up to 24GB of fast unified memory (pretty sure the base is 8GB, but it doesn't explicitly say)
> up to a 6K external display (via the Thunderbolt ports, no mention of 2+ externals afaict)
> a 3.5mm headphone jack
> up to 500 nits of brightness and support for 1 billion colors
