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15-Inch MacBook Air With M2-Like Chip Spotted in Developer Logs

Abazigal said:
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.
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If the base model is enough for you, then yeah, but we were talking about spec upgrades.

If I were to buy a computer today I might like at least 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD to really make this thing future proof and not rely on external HDs and the cloud for everything. If I were to buy a T14 AMD that would cost me £176 extra, while Apple charges £600. How is that not highway robbery?

Others are right, of course, that it's always been this way. That doesn't make it less ridiculous.
 
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Apple consumers are willing to pay a premium. But as we have seen proven out in sales, a product with no reason to exist such as the M2-driven Macs, especially the base model Airs and consumers will reject them. Expect another huge flop with an M2 driven 15" Air
 
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rp2011 said:
Apple consumers are willing to pay a premium. But as we have seen proven out in sales, a product with no reason to exist such as the M2-driven Macs, especially the base model Airs and consumers will reject them. Expect another huge flop with an M2 driven 15" Air
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Per Macworld during Easter’s sales Amazon had the M2 8GB Ram/ 256GB SSD Mac Mini was $499.
When the Mac mini launched in 2005, it was a tremendous value at $499, but the latest model hasn’t been that cheap since then. That makes Amazon’s sale a true throwback and the best Mac value you’re likely to find all year!
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So where is the premium in that example?
 
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SW3029 said:
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.
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My M1 MacBook Pro 13 inch averages around 18 to 20 hours of battery of life. With larger battery in a 15 inch chassis, how much battery life are you really looking for? Are you gonna spend 8 hours at the cafe typing Word documents and watching YouTube videos? Lets be realistic.
 
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SW3029 said:
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.
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It never works that way. It won't be 20-30% longer battery life, it will be faster with some additional battery life. They're always going to push the machine harder when the capability is there, rather than just let the battery life increase. Beyond just clocking the chip higher, they will put more features into MacOS that will tax it more.
 
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Populus said:
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.
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For sure. I’m not saying it’s right just a theory, the baseline MacBook Air’s have followed that pattern so far. Also rumors have said they will do a new 13 inch I believe. But why?
 
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Jim Boonie said:
OLED should be standard going forward. LCD is dead. 120HZ screens should be standard going forward on every apple product as well.
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OLED is only a small improvement over LCD and has it’s own issues. I have a 120HZ iPad Pro and a 60Hz MBA and it’s hard to tell the difference in most cases. It might be nice to have 120HZ but I would not pay much of a premium for it on a MacBook.
 
Seeds said:
For sure. I’m not saying it’s right just a theory the baseline MacBook Air’s have followed that pattern so far. Also they’ve said they will do a new 12 inch I believe. But why?
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Apple hasn’t said that they were doing a new 12” and neither have most of the rumor reporters. It seems more wish-casting than anything firm. Perhaps Apple will do it eventually but there are no near term indications.
 
Tagbert said:
OLED is only a small improvement over LCD and has it’s own issues. I have a 120HZ iPad Pro and a 60Hz MBA and it’s hard to tell the difference in most cases. It might be nice to have 120HZ but I would not pay much of a premium for it on a MacBook.
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As commented Samsung found that 90HZ OLED panels gave similar refresh rate performance compared to 120Hz LCD panels.
 
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Tagbert said:
Apple hasn’t said that they were doing a new 12” and neither have most of the rumor reporters. It seems more wish-casting than anything firm. Perhaps Apple will do it eventually but there are no near term indications.
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My mistake I meant 13 inch air. Although there was talks of a new 12” possibly just a MacBook a while back.

Gurman actually again mentioned the 13” in his newsletter today saying

“Moving on to the Mac, Apple has several new models in the works: a 15-inch MacBook Air, an updated 13-inch MacBook Air, an entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, a refreshed 24-inch iMac, the first Mac Pro with in-house chips and updated high-end MacBook Pro models.”
 
Tagbert said:
OLED is only a small improvement over LCD and has it’s own issues. I have a 120HZ iPad Pro and a 60Hz MBA and it’s hard to tell the difference in most cases. It might be nice to have 120HZ but I would not pay much of a premium for it on a MacBook.
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I’d imagine there would be more of a risk for burn in on an OLED MacBook. Not to mention the mini led stuff has been incredible. I’d say on par with OLED.
 
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Realityck said:
still the M2 could easly be the 8/10; rather then cheaper 8/8 SoC.
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Yes it could be. It could also be a base M3 with a 10 core GPU.

Apple launched the M2 late last June. I have difficulty believing that Apple would push out a never before released 15" MBA in June of this year, with a full year old SOC.

Reports are that the M3 SOC began production in December '22? And they're gonna put an M2 in this? Doesn't add up.
 
IG88 said:
Yes it could be. It could also be a base M3 with a 10 core GPU.

Apple launched the M2 late last June. I have difficulty believing that Apple would push out a never before released 15" MBA in June of this year, with a full year old SOC.

Reports are that the M3 SOC began production in December '22? And they're gonna put an M2 in this? Doesn't add up.
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You mean like this example
who said that was a M3? Wouldn’t it be more likely for Apple/TMSC to producing their effort against A17 which is suppose to be first 3nm SoC for iPhone 15? I think the qty of iPhones 15 involved is far greater then anything else that Apple sells this year. ;)
 
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Seeds said:
I’d imagine there would be more of a risk for burn in on an OLED MacBook. Not to mention the mini led stuff has been incredible. I’d say on par with OLED.
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Doesn't the edge shadow irritate you? Surely they need to fix that shortcoming of mini-led...
 
sw1tcher said:
8GB base memory still? That means $200 to upgrade to 16GB.

And the base model will have the slow 256GB SSD too.

Oh, Apple.... :rolleyes:
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Exactly what I was about to say. 15-inchers have had 16GB ram as standard for almost a decade, cost of a 2x8gb upgrade kit for ordinary PCs is $40 at most nowadays, 512gb SSDs go for less than $30 (or 50 if you take a high end one, which SSDs in Apple’s baseline models certainly aren’t), yet apple is still charging customers prices as if was still 2015. It’s getting out of hand.
 
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ric22 said:
Doesn't the edge shadow irritate you? Surely they need to fix that shortcoming of mini-led...
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Honestly I don’t notice it. I can see it if I’m looking for it. But I don’t otherwise notice it in my day to day.
 
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Anglagard said:
M3 Air would seriously hurt Macbook Pro M2/M3 sales, so it makes sense they would not do that.
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I disagree I think there will still be room for the MacBook Pro. Although an m3 max MacBook pro might kill what they have rumored for the Mac Pro. Maybe they’re doing an M2X??
 
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Seeds said:
I disagree I think there will still be room for the MacBook Pro. Although an m3 max MacBook pro might kill what they have rumored for the Mac Pro. Maybe they’re doing an M2X??
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And I don't want a MBA15 for extra specs. I want a large screen MacBook at a reasonable price. I would never buy MBP14 because it's too small, and never 16 because it is too expensive, so they aren't losing anything to the MBP15 because I'd never buy the Pro. It would be a sale gained and would pull me more into the Ecosystem.
 
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GMShadow said:
The current M2 products are as follows:

Mac14,7 - 13" MBP M2
Mac14,5/9 - 14" MBP M2
Mac14,6/10 - 16" MBP M2
Mac14,2 - 13" MBA M2
Mac14,3/12 - Mac Mini M2

And this is Mac15,3? Yeah, I'm sure Apple just incremented the major version number for no reason and it's totally staying with M2. ;)


(and before someone asks, the Mac Studio is Mac13,1/2).
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You are missing the iPad Pro M2 11 and 12.9.
 
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