It's bizarre to me they're still bragging about performance relative to Intel macs. I guess there's been diminishing returns after the ARM transition, or else they'd be comparing to M1?
For an M1 user, there's not a lot of incentive to upgrade because they already got the huge boost in terms of battery life and performance. If you love the styling, or you need a larger size, you might upgrade. But lots of people are still running Intel MBAs or MBPs and so they're pitching to that audience.
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.
I suspect the majority of mac owners still have intel based macs so they want to highlight the performance improvement to those users - since they may be most likely to upgrade?
It's correct that there are Intel chips that last as long as ARM macs.
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 had a 13" MBP with the last Intel chips and no whatever bar. I got at most 4 hours of battery life during the work day.
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.
On Apple's own site they claim "up to" 40% faster than M1 Air. Maybe that's true? The problem with comparing it to contemporary Intel models is neither their performance nor efficiency looks terribly amazing. They are marketing to existing macOS users and it is easy to demonstrate that M2 stomps all over a 10th-generation Core MBA.
I think it could be a combination of:
1. Marketing speak because it sounds better to compare it to the much slower Intel Macs than to the fast M1. Plus the gains between and M1 and M2 are marginal compared to Apple Silicon vs. Intel.
2. They are marketing more to Intel Mac owners/potential PC switchers rather than M1 owners.
It's useful for folks currently running Intel Macs (or considering a used one). For other folks, not as useful since the last Intel MacBook only ran 10th gen. As an example, the top end 13 inch 2020 MacBook Pro used an i7-1068NG7. A current Intel i7-1360p will get about 2.4x the multi-core performance of that old 10th gen chip, even outperforming an M2 in most multi-core workloads.
Depends heavily on the workload. A lot of tasks can use the newer accelerators in the M1/M2 over what was in 10th gen Intel. The higher end Intel models also had the issue of running hot and stuttering in practice which really sucked, as underclock/undervolt would have made the experience much better even at the cost of 5% performance on all-out workloads.
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.
Maybe they are making that comparison for the people they want to upgrade to the new macs and not for people that just got their M1 MacBooks.. making m1 to m2 comparison for intel mac users would not make much sense in that case.
There is still a lot of people to move over to the ARM side. Most people haven't made the move yet. I'm just about to myself. It makes more sense for them to focus on migrating people over at this stage.
I have a 16" MBP primarily because of the screen size — I use a lot of screen real estate. A 15" Air is perfect for me, so I'm looking forward to maybe picking one of those up when I'm ready to part with my current MBP.
MacBook Air uses Thunderbolt 3, which only requires 1 additional display. Thunderbolt 4, which the MacBook Pro 14/16 has, requires support for connecting at least two additional displays. [0]
DisplayLink still does not fully support 4K hiDPI displays correctly.
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!
Looks great, but base RAM is still only 8GB which (incredibly) is barely enough to browse the internet these days.
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?
Nope, the $400 isn't really the price of 16 GB of RAM, it's more like the price difference between a "MacBook with 8 GB RAM" and "MacBook with 24 GB RAM". These two products are priced separately and aimed at different customers with different budgets.
Have you actually tried using one of the Apple Silicon Macs with 8GB RAM?
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?
I don't how/why/where these myths have been perpetuated from that Apple Silicon Macs magically needs less RAM or magically Apple Silicon Macs are better at memory management.
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.
that performance is due to extremely aggressive use of swap on the SSD, which is non-replaceable. I often use 4-7GB of swap, and wrote a TB in one day once when testing it. This "speed" is like goku's set himself on fire ability: it is killing him, but it makes him a bit more powerful. Ie, it's going to kill those macbooks long term
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
Thanks for that, that was a lot more informative on the specs (minus the usual marketing fluff, but hey!). Here are some key details that were missing from the original article:
> 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
Don't forget that Apple has shipped slower SSDs in their base (128GB) models of MBA and MBP. So if you want a full-speed SSD you have to upgrade that. Hopefully they'll bump the base RAM from 8GB to 16GB, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. So it could be an extra $350 for those two upgrades. Still not a bad price for what the machine is, but until we know the base config, it's not clear how good a deal it is.
i have a perfectly usable MBP right now, but this is the laptop that i've been waiting for. seems to hit the sweet spot on price while having a large screen but still "thin & light".
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.
As long as it is isn't a sign of the 13" being phased out. I was already annoyed that the MBA line came with a larger form factor than the old retina MacBooks.
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.
Readit News
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.
[0]: https://www.thunderbolttechnology.net/tech/faq
Deleted Comment
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!
https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-13-and-15-m2/specs/
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.
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
> 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
Disappointing to see higher £ numbers than $. Even accounting for 20% VAT, the price should only be £1,250
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.
To you
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)
Being a few millimeters thinner doesn't actually help it fit into a small backpack any better.
Dead Comment