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15" M2 Macbook Air 256GB Confirmation?

Drewps5co0tt

Drewps5co0tt

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 17, 2010
190
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Has it been confirmed yet if the 256 base model only has one chip or if it has 2, 128GB chips? Or are we still waiting on a teardown video? I saw a lot of vids yesterday posted for unboxing/reviews, where people got their laptops a day early (which I was expecting to happen).
 
Not even news. Why would anyone think it's different to the 13" in any way apart from the size?
 
Who knows, you never know what they are going to do. So if you order 512GB or higher, you will have two NAND chips?
 
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JPack said:
Pretty common use case is running out of RAM. When that 8GB is full, you're hitting swap.
Click to expand...
But if your use case is doing tasks that max out the RAM, then you should have gone for the 16GB in the first place. The 8GB is more than enough for basic needs.
 
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bbfc said:
But if your use case is doing tasks that max out the RAM, then you should have gone for the 16GB in the first place. The 8GB is more than enough for basic needs.
Click to expand...

So why did Apple include the virtual memory swap function at all?

M1 users swap but M2 users don't?
 
As much as I like the 15" Air I'm wondering who's buying this in my territory because it's priced too high. We're in 2023 not 2003, so a real-world base configuration for someone serious enough to drop over a grand on a computer is going to be 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM. Because why other than vanity would you want to spend over a grand on a laptop if its specs are so rudimentary that it's only good enough for web-browsing. But a 512GB/16GB MBA is a not-cool £1800 where I live. That's. A. Lot. It's really not difficult to find a branded 15" Windows laptop with those specs or better for much less. And that's why they outsell Macs by goodness knows how many to one.
 
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MajorFubar said:
As much as I like the 15" Air I'm wondering who's buying this in my territory because it's priced too high. We're in 2023 not 2003, so a real-world base configuration for someone serious enough to drop over a grand on a computer is going to be 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM. Because why other than vanity would you want to spend over a grand on a laptop if its specs are so rudimentary that it's only good enough for web-browsing. But a 512GB/16GB MBA is a not-cool £1800 where I live. That's. A. Lot. It's really not difficult to find a branded 15" Windows laptop with those specs or better for much less. And that's why they outsell Macs by goodness knows how many to one.
Click to expand...
100%, 16/512 is $2800AUD here, rippoff. A fefurb 14” M2 16/512 is 80 bucks cheaper lol.
 
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JPack said:
So why did Apple include the virtual memory swap function at all?
Click to expand...
Because that's how we build operating systems (and the hardware that allows for memory swap) in 2023, to be resilient and reliable. Seriously, what kind of question is that? Would you like your computer to start killing processes or just crash when out-of-memory instead?
 
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Toutou said:
Because that's how we build operating systems (and the hardware that allows for memory swap) in 2023, to be resilient and reliable. Seriously, what kind of question is that? Would you like your computer to start killing processes or just crash when out-of-memory instead?
Click to expand...

So why shouldn't consumers expect good swap performance with 256GB storage?
 
MajorFubar said:
As much as I like the 15" Air I'm wondering who's buying this in my territory because it's priced too high. We're in 2023 not 2003, so a real-world base configuration for someone serious enough to drop over a grand on a computer is going to be 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM. Because why other than vanity would you want to spend over a grand on a laptop if its specs are so rudimentary that it's only good enough for web-browsing. But a 512GB/16GB MBA is a not-cool £1800 where I live. That's. A. Lot. It's really not difficult to find a branded 15" Windows laptop with those specs or better for much less. And that's why they outsell Macs by goodness knows how many to one.
Click to expand...
Apple is not a budget brand. I use Windows on my high end gaming PC but I loathe it as a day to day productivity OS. Macs are worth the premium price. If you want to save money and get a budget plastic Windows laptop to save $400 or whatever then you do you. I agree with you that when you spec it up the cost can really ratchet up. But I can't tell you how nice it is to be typing this on my new 1TB/16GB 15" Air. Such a wonderful upgrade from my 15" 2018 MBP.
 
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Resident Guru said:
I agree with you that when you spec it up the cost can really ratchet up. But I can't tell you how nice it is to be typing this on my new 1TB/16GB 15" Air. Such a wonderful upgrade from my 15" 2018 MBP.
Click to expand...
This is the issue. The price of the BOTL configurations are about what I'd expect to pay for a premium device, factoring-in 'Apple tax', but they are useful really only as toys. Factor-in +£400 to equip it with what I consider to be a minimum specification to make it useful for anything but rudimentary tasks (512GB SSD/16GB RAM), and that is a tough cookie to swallow. It's Apple admitting in a roundabout way that most people are going to buy these products as status symbols / electronic jewellery / high-end MS Teams terminals, because 8GB RAM is not enough to do anything serious these days, and a paltry 256GB SSD is going to drive you instantly to outboard storage if you're into any form of media creation.

There are £200 Lenovos with the same onboard storage and RAM as a £1800 MBA. There's no way the paltry RAM and storage specifications in the base model can be objectively justified for the price, and spec'ing it up to be a productivity-capable tool is eye-wateringly costly.
 
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Apple has dropped their RAM prices by $20 today, I just noticed this.

Edit: They also seemed to have dropped the prices on SOME of the SSD configs too! They must be hearing all the complaining about their prices.
 
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bbfc said:
But if your use case is doing tasks that max out the RAM, then you should have gone for the 16GB in the first place. The 8GB is more than enough for basic needs.
Click to expand...
I don't agree. My 8 year old laptop came with 8GB of ram lol (I upgraded to 16). I'm not buying a new laptop 8 years later with 8GB.
 
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Drewps5co0tt said:
Apple has dropped their RAM prices by $20 today, I just noticed this.

Edit: They also seemed to have dropped the prices on SOME of the SSD configs too! They must be hearing all the complaining about their prices.
Click to expand...
No they haven’t. You must be looking at the EDU store.
 
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