That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying people didn't care enough to protest, it's not what's important to them. They're like... "oh well at least it's thinner and lighter and has a retina screen". Apple received the message that they don't need to keep things upgradable. Compare to the reaction of the butterfly keyboard, which actually got Apple to reverse course.
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15-Inch MacBook Air With M2-Like Chip Spotted in Developer Logs
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I don't fundamentally disagree, but it's become quite fashionable to read into the absence of choice a tacit agreement with whatever choices manufacturers have made.
I'm fairly confident that the ability to install a new hard drive or RAM or change the battery wasn't the most important factor when choosing a computer, or else people would have bought a PC and switched to Windows.
But that doesn't mean it's unimportant. If I had the choice between a MacBook Air and a slightly thicker MacBook that I could keep up to date I would not buy an Air. Some people absolutely would.
People keep buying Macs with soldered RAM and storage and a battery they can't remove because they want a Mac and that's all Apple offers. To turn around and say that's what people want because the sale's figures prove that, which happens quite frequently, really confuses things.
Apple probably has data that shows that people want light and thin laptops. They probably also have data that shows that making things non-removable and selling upgrades and highly inflated prices is really good for the bottom line and can be defended with light and thin - and there you go.
I think people winged and moaned, but for a long time it was hard to get a decent, trendy, good looking laptop that offered those, so they had little alternative. Complaining directly to Apple doesn't help, if Apple doesn't want to do it. The butterfly keyboard was crap, and even Apple realised that. They policy to deliberately make Macs a bitch to repair isn't crap for them, as it reduces the length of time people keep one device, and it forces people to buy Apple's RAM and storage, at multiples of the market rate.
Well, Apple isn't the only company doing this now, it's in all electronics. Most people don't upgrade their old devices, they just buy new ones that are better overall. So in that way, it's not really cost effective to keep things upgradable for the minority, especially when smaller and lighter is a selling point.
I agree with all that but there's a bit more to it. It costs a lot less to make things non-removable/non-upgradable. Every connector adds cost and adds to the overall size of the device, even if it seems like a small difference. But these things add up. Even more important is it adds a much larger point of failure from a QA perspective. All the same reasons DIP ICs stopped being socketed before things moved to all SMD components.
In addition to this, with ASi sticking the RAM into the CPU package does make it perform way faster. Unfortunately I don't think we're ever going back to external RAM modules, and PCs will probably eventually all be the same way.
I’m getting so pissed off with Apple. Their base specs have been the same for the last 10 years and they have the audacity to charge £200 for minor upgrades that cost next to nothing.
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The GPU core number is not something definitive that points towards a new SoC. Why? Simple: The M2 chip on the iPad Pro is a 8 core CPU and a 10 core GPU SoC.
Have a longer battery life, or use a smaller battery and therefore smaller dimensions while still getting the same run times.
Is it that hard to think of a reason?
This is the part which I would like to question.
Yes, it can be profitable for Apple when you pay their premium for extra ram and storage. Thing is, it probably also takes time for them to produce a unit with the desired configurations (a custom spec can easily push the delivery date out several weeks). The premium is there to cover the fact that these are likely very low-volume orders that come in sporadically, and it costs Apple money when they have to stop the production line just to fabricate a few custom models that ask for additional ram and / or storage (ie: no economies of scale).
Meanwhile, Apple stores and retailers typically stock the default model. I would really like to see how many people are ordering custom configurations and whether this is really that much more profitable over everyone else simply opting for the stock models.
The only reason I can think of for Apple to stock so much of the base model is because their data does indeed indicate that 8 gb ram / 256 gb storage is sufficient for the majority of their user base. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense to devote so much of your production capacity to making something that nobody wants. You are right in that most people do value thin and light laptops, and I am also willing to wager that they do not really care about the inability to upgrade it after the purchase. You are looking at someone like a student or teacher whose computing needs are not likely to change very much over time. They will use it into the ground, and then buy whatever the next best replacement is.
Why not just make 16gb ram / 512 gb storage the default then? Because it would be overkill for over 90% of MBA users, it just increases costs for Apple, and as a business, you don't give your consumers everything they want (especially when a lot of it essentially boils down to "I want more stuff for free").
In this context, I feel the more tech-savvy users here are making the mistake of valuing utility over aesthetics (a very common oversight made by tech pundits in the early days of covering Apple).
Well if M2 is really a "stop-gap" (it's not... and I find this idea hilarious), then Apple will release M3 Macs as soon as possible to un-stop gap things. Otherwise yeah, probably shouldn't expect M3 this soon. However, I also think putting an M2 variant into the Mac Pro this late would be a mistake, since no doubt they will take forever to update whatever this new Mac Pro ends up being. Updating the Mac Studio with M2 around this time on the other hand, would make perfect sense... and that's what I'm hoping/waiting for.
8GB of ram with an M2 chip is enough to do most computing tasks pretty easily. For people who use the cloud for storage 256GB storage is enough to get by.
It used to be people had a 50GB iTunes library and another 50GB of Photos. But with music streaming and iCloud for iPhone I think both of those use cases have largely disappeared.
On an automated production line there should be between zero and a negligible delay in installing different parts. It's an absolute joke to suggest this delay costs hundreds of dollars to Apple they must pass on.
The base M2 MBA has an 8 core GPU.
This is not conclusive evidence that the 15" Air will be an M2.
15" MBA would be a day one purchase for many, I reckon. Personally I'll await the M3 chip before buying.
It costs £200 to upgrade a MacBook Air from 8GB base to 16GB, while it costs £56 to do the same for a Lenovo Thinkpad T14 Gen 3 AMD.
Similarly it costs an additional £200 to upgrade storage to 512GB or £400 to 1TB from the base 256GB, while Lenovo charges £40 and £120 respectively.
Dell charges £100 more to go from 8 to 16 GB on the XPS 13, which comes with 512GB storage and can be downgraded to 256GB to save around £50.
Granted the storage is designed to be replaceable on the Lenovo, but the RAM is soldered on in either machine.
Accepting your argument that it will cost Apple extra to produce a non-base model, the pricing seems completely over the top compared to the competition. Even then, why would it cost double to go to 1TB instead of 512? These costs just don't scale.
The only logical explanation is that Apple wants to be compensated handsomely for what a pretty basic storage options in 2023.
I'm pretty sure the base models work fine for a lot of users, although I'd wager that external storage (and cloud solutions) is now more common among users who'd previously stored everything internally. I'd be surprised if that was driven by consumers really preferring to constantly plug a hard drive into their computer as much as by users doing the math.
That's not only an Apple thing, of course, since most computers now come with 256 in the base configuration and a lot of users probably buy what's on the shelf and then make do.
The fun thing is that Apple explicitly tells you for some products, iPads for example, that you should consider going for more storage to future-proof the device, so even Apple doesn't really think that it's base options are really enough.
Partially agreed, although I'd also wager that the "tech-savvy" users often tend to treat the majority of tech users as complete illiterates who will throw their expensive machine in the bin because they couldn't possibly comprehend the complexities of putting in a new hard drive or more storage.
I completely agree that most users probably not consider whether they will be able to upgrade their machine a few years down the line at the time of purchase and that other factors, such as aesthetics, matter more.
I'm not willing to believe that the idea of putting in more storage when they run out of it is not an idea that would cross a teacher's or student's mind. The reason no one really does it anymore is because it's become incredibly difficult to near impossible and that's probably by design. Apple and others obviously prefer you to buy a new machine rather than putting in more or faster storage, more RAM, exchange your battery without taking it to their service point for a fee etc etc etc
I'd wager that especially now, when money is tight with rising cost of living and everything else that's going on, more people would extend the life of their machines if that was easy to do.
Nothing new with that tact, all you can hope is what ever is selected as standard config choices eventually give us a bundle you want.
Hmm, I am looking up the thinkpad T14s, and while it is a little cheaper than the M1 MBA, it has a lower res display and integrated graphics.
What I gather is that the base model MBA is actually very competitively priced, and it’s the price of the spec upgrades that drive it over the price of an equivalently specced windows laptop. But where ultrabooks are concerned, intel still hasn’t caught up with M1, build quality often isn’t as nice (though this can be subjective), and well, windows is windows.
So at the end of the day, I find I am not really paying that much more than a windows computer. That I can also tap on the education discount further sweetens the deal a little more.
OLED should be standard going forward. LCD is dead. 120HZ screens should be standard going forward on every apple product as well.
You are right that a Word doc ain't gonna open any quicker on a M3 chip than an M2 chip. But the primary advantage of the M3 (3nm) over the M2 (5nm) won't be processing power – it'll be energy efficiency. A 3nm chip will like be 20-30% more energy efficient than a 5nm chip. That means 20-30% longer battery life. And that's what's most important in a portable laptop.
I've wanted a 15 inch MBA for over a decade now, but now that the first one is likely to have an M2 chip, I'll hang on to my Intel MBP a little longer until the M3 MBA comes out.