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2 weeks of daily use, Base Midnight M2 MBA
- Thread starter LucidityStudios
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I wasn't even talking directly about that issue. I was speaking more about the echo chamber of youtube. Buuuuuut, since you brought it up, with the new design, different screen, upgraded processor, higher res webcam, etc, etc. there certainly is an argument to be made that it is just as good a value. Your hard line stance is what is wild.
I'd love for you to explain what is hard line about my "stance". The M1 MacBook Air being a better value buy when it released in 2020 than the M2 MacBook Air was when it released in 2022 is just an opinion, and a fairly mild one at that.
One could argue that a device in 2022 should have a better screen, upgraded processor, and a different design to the M1 MacBook Air, especially considering the M1 MacBook Air's design was already somewhat old when it released two years ago. But if someone thinks the M2 MBA is actually just as value for money as the M1 Air was, all the power to them. It's fine.
Yeah the 2 MBA is 0.3" more when measured diagonally, but does anyone know if the screen is actually **larger** or **smaller**? Like the area of the screen. The notch is still a large area that could be used for more menu bar drop down menus (e.g. in Bbedit) or more 3rd party menu bar icons. I also like to go to "System Preferences > Dock" and actually hide the menu bar to gain more vertical space on my laptop, this is worthless now with a large black hole in the top middle.
It's definitely bigger. I just measured with a sewing tape, and the diagonal from the bottom edge of the menu bar at the top left (slightly below the notch) to the lower right corner of the actual visible display is 13 7/16", or 13.4375".
I don't have an M1 MBA to measure, but if its visible display is truly 13.3", then the M2's display EXCLUDING the menu bar and its notch is already 0.1375" larger on the diagonal. And then you add in the menu bar area as a bonus.
The entire screen does measure 13.6", using the same measuring tape.
Hi,
I’m using MacBook Air 2018 8gb/256gb, I’m facing issue lagging for that outlook mac and open the Ms office such as excel and words.
It’s also lagging in WhatsApp apps as compare to windows laptop.
I am planning to change to M2 but I wonder if there is any improvement m2 in this apps?
I’m using MacBook Air 2018 8gb/256gb, I’m facing issue lagging for that outlook mac and open the Ms office such as excel and words.
It’s also lagging in WhatsApp apps as compare to windows laptop.
I am planning to change to M2 but I wonder if there is any improvement m2 in this apps?
I don't have a windows laptop to compare with, but Apple Silicon is definitely faster than a 2018 Intel Mac.
I would definitely recommend getting 16GB RAM though.
Get the M1 MBA with 16GB RAM if M2 MBA with 16GB RAM is too expensive.
Outlook/Office eats RAM faster than the Cookie Monster eats cookies.
Apple seems to really like that 999 floor on their laptop market. I don't know if this is 100% always true but it feels like it lately. My guess is that the M1 Air would’ve stuck around at 999 regardless of inflation if the M2 Air couldn’t hit the 999 target at launch. The “sub 1000 dollar” notebook seems like one of those board member marching orders given to the CEO.
Eventually this new chassis’s R&D costs will be recouped, supply chain will stabilize, and it will fall to 999 in a few years.
The content area (area below the menubar and notch) is the same size as the full screen on the M1. You are gaining space because the menubar can be moved up above that area leaving all the room below for app content.
There is a configuration option to push the menu bar below the notch. It draws a black bar across where the menu bar would have been. This simulates the old screen size. I don’t understand why you might want to make your screen smaller but it is possible.
There are several free apps that will make the menu bar background black. This has the effect of making the notch hard to see if it bothers you.
The OS gracefully handles the case where apps have large numbers of menus and automatically shifts the extra menus to the right side of the notch. If this interferes with app icons that are on the right side, you can do what many of us did even before the notch and install Bartender (are an alternative app). It lets you move a lot of those app icons to another panel that appears when you mouseover or click on the menubar.
You don’t need to auto hide the menu bar now since it has been moved out of the way. I suppose if you were to move it below the notch that feature might still work. Have not had any interest in trying.
Apps normally operate within the safe content area below the notch. If they want to they can request the size of the full screen and draw content in that area too. Not many do but they could if it was useful.
Most people that I know personally that were initially averse to the notch eventually found that they just don’t notice it after a while. Just like you don’t notice your nose in the middle of your visual space. (Unless you close one eye). the human visual system is amazing.
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hmm. when i lean into the top center of the screen, all i see is the notch = design fail...
True!
A poster above said his MBA M2 has a 1TB model, presumably 2 x 512GB on the motherboard.
I have the 1TB model also, with the 24GB ram and 10 gpus at its screams along.
Even the Verge’s stats showed that the MBA M2 is faster than an MBA M1 whether throttled or running at full speed. It’s a great machine!
$400 more for us in Australia, too. I bought the 10/24/1TB model in Midnight. That one is $3249 here.
Arrived on Tuesday the 2nd of August, 6 days earlier than Apple estimated the week-long delivery window started at (which was Monday 8 to 15 August). Used a genuine Apple Thunderbolt 3 cable purchased online and picked up at the local Apple store with Migration Agent from an M1 Air to the new M2.
Transferred across the contents of my desktop, download and documents folder via SSD so that the transfer of the rest of the OS, apps and settings went faster.
Told me it would take over 4 hours at first, but once again, Apple underpromised and over delivered, with the estimate fluctuating between going lower, and then higher again, and then lower, and in the end it took, I think, about 1.5 hours.
Startup is faster, screen is bigger and brighter, the keyboard is genuinely a little bit bouncier and nicer to type on, and a gazillion times better than the Butterflt keyboard abomination from 2015, and the full size function keys are good to have back, too.
The M2 just feels smoother than the M1, with that M1 MBA having 8/8/512.
So in every way this machine is better.
The notch is there, and yes, it IS annoying to see a blank space where the menu entry would have been displayed.
But I use Bartender 4 (which actually is playing up for the moment on my MBA M2, but still hides all the other icons I don’t want to see, and it’ll get fixed.
And on my M1 MBA the space next to the camera is bezel, so I do appreciate the little bit of extra desktop real estate underneath the notched menu bar, so it’s still a win - and turn on the mode that lets you start rhe MBA M2 display under the notch, so it just becomes black bezel if you really hate it and get the same dimensions as the MBA M1 screen but 25% brighter!
I use Ubar 4 and now have it permanently displaying on the MBA M2, rather than having it autehide - and can hide it whenever needed but, I’m experimenting leaving it on.
I also turn on tap to click, 3 finger a drag and various other things including Paragon NTFS to personalise my Mac, but of course in the transfer it all transferred across!
I did have to activate various things but that’s normal when moving to a new Mac.
I use the dock on the left hand side, but this one is staying on auto hide.
Wish it had 5G, a touch screen for true iPad app compatibility, could have the screen fold up over the keyboard so you could turn it into an iPad and I wish it then also had stylus support.
But that’s probably all to come with the MacPad Air M5 or something, years and years after the WWDC announcement that macOS and iPadOS wouldn't merge.
Until then, the silence of no cooling fans blissfully continues, and it’s very nice to see MagSafe return, too.
The price rise is because of the new design, the shortages and delays, and of course, inflation.
And most PCs and most/all? pre-M1 Macs have slower SSDs than the new but slow 256gb base chip on the base M2 MBA.
So the dissent is a storm in a teacup, and if you are coming from an 8/256 MBA M1, treat yourself to at least a 512GB SSD, and get at least 16GB as well if you can for more software flexibility and better being able to run future macOS versions.
A great MAChine all round!
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I value no sound from fans, weight, footprint and battery life.
The MacBook Pros has so little value to me that I would rather pay $2000 for a MacBook Air than getting a 14" MacBook Pro for free and being forced to use it.
I want an even lighter and smaller Mac than the MacBook Air, such as the 12" MacBook. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't make a computer like that anymore.
They do have lower values. They both weighs more and have a larger footprint and the MacBook Pros have fans.
Unless, Apple pays us to use those other Macs, it doesn't really matter what other features and specifications they have.
I loved the original 12" Retina MacBook (despite how slow it was, and I had the base model). IMO it is Apple's best laptop design ever by FAR, especially if it had MagSafe and the USB-C port. However, now that I've been using the larger screen on this M2 Air for about a week (midnight, base storage, 16GB RAM) I don't think my nearly 40yr old eyes would want to go back to 12". But man, my daughter still uses a 12" MacBook and I pick it up and just marvel at it to this day. Love, love, love that design (minus the keyboard, obv, though I liked it too, just can't trust it).
Also, you're one of the only people I've seen (and I've been hearing a lot of this on podcasts recently) say what I've ALWAYS thought about the 11" MacBook Air, which is that the aspect ratio was 16:9! And at least for me, that always felt absolutely terrible on a Mac. It was a neat little computer, but every time I used one in the Apple store I closed or walked away from it immediately because I couldn't stand MacOS in 16:9.
As for the M2 Air, especially in terms of Storage-Gate 🙄, I'm coming from an M1 Air base model and this machine feels better in every way. When setting it up, I ran everything without closing it, including all browser tabs, all apps that I install, and Adobe Audition to set up plugins (plus their apps to authenticate), Audio Hijack, Sound Source, all of it. And I couldn't even get it to swap.
Now that being said, I imagine swap will occur the first time I have a big audiobook project going. We'll see if I notice. But I'm betting really hard that I won't. Am I saying you can't make the M2 Air show the difference in storage speed? No. But I am saying with pretty solid confidence that anyone who would consider a 256GB machine will never know the difference. And I say that in a "Holy ****, this computer is so fast!" way, not a "Lame non-nerd dummies will be bamboozled by Apple's crafty marketing liars into buying a trash computer!" way. 😉
As someone else pointed out, swap is not sequential reads and writes. It is small random reads and writes and that means latency will matter more than top sequential speeds. The strategy with an 8 GB/256 GB M2 MacBook is to make sure that latency stays as low as possible. Make sure you keep a substantial amount of free space available on the internal 256 GB SSD and you probably won't notice any slowdowns. This probably will require use of an external drive though for most uses.
I was just mentioning swap because that's the benchmark that the YouTubers/podcasters were all crying about as a theoretical place where it would matter. Also, sequential read/write of a file large enough to perceptually tell the difference (that is, "Does it feel slow if I don't measure?" not "Is it actually measurably slower?") seems a very very corner case for a 256GB computer of any kind because you'd have to be doing it all the time before getting the M2 and after.
Perfectly reasonable. I'd be sorely tempted by a 12" remake with Apple Silicon, magic keyboard, reduced bezels etc. All I'm saying is the M1 MacBook Air was in a real value class of its own when it released, to the point that you didn't have to ask too many questions to just throw the recommendation at someone.
With the M2 MacBook Air, it's not quite as simple:
*It's in a higher price class than the M1 MBA
*It has limitations on the base model (SSD speed) that the M1 MBA didn't have
*The M1 MBA exists as a competitor on the lower end
*The 14" Pro exists as a competitor on the higher end
*Pro Motion now exists on Macs, so the question has to be asked why they didn't include this on the M2 MBA
All the above wasn't the case when the original M1 MBA came out. The above doesn't make the M2 a bad buy, it just means as a buyer you have to think harder about it, and there are some reasons to think you might not be getting quite the value for money you would have got with the M1 in 2020. If you think it through and end up still getting the M2, that's fine.
Apple could have made the current entry in its fanless, ultra portable laptop category a bit of a better buy. Just because the category that the M2 MBA exists in is your favourite category and the only category you're really considering, doesn't mean it's beyond scrutiny in terms of value for money.
As an aside - I was staunchly against fans and bulk just like you, but work ended up getting me a 14" Pro as my work machine. My idea of what a 14" laptop is was kinda outdated. It takes up a smaller footprint than 13" laptops used to take up, and the weight is not as much of an issue as I thought it would be. The fans are also quite different to what I expected. You basically don't hear them ever. Even when running Cinebench for 10 minutes, or playing Minecraft for 4 hours, or WoW Classic (Burning Crusade) for 2 hours, I straight up didn't hear them at all. Using this laptop that I never would have bought with my own money has changed my perspective somewhat. Considering how great my experience with the 14" has been, I don't personally consider the extra portability of the M2 MBA to be worth the loss of the features of my 14", and the active vs passive cooling thing isn't an issue for me given both computers are essentially silent anyway. A 12" MacBook would be in a class of its own though, and that's a big enough difference to where I'd have to think pretty hard about which one I preferred.
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Reading this thread up until here is like trying to bash the head against a brick wall. Exhausting.
Great video! Still wanted the smallest, fastest MacBook available, and that’s still the MBA M2, so I don’t regret my 10/24/1TB/midnight purchase one bit.
I always stuff my bag with too much stuff as it is, a heavier laptop is a no go, and the work I do was being done on an M1 just fine.
Anyway, a great, clear eyed video. The only thing I don’t agree with is the final conclusion - the MBA M2 is a great choice for many users.
Just don’t get the 8/256 model if you feel the need, the need for speed.
And buy the M1 if saving extra cash is important, whether it’s the 8/256 or not, then buy it!
Either model will be fantastic.
And… with 24GB RAM, it’s amazing to see I often only have between 5 and 8GB Ram free after doing various things. I’m glad I didn’t settle for 16GB RAM.
It’s a shame Apple didn’t just go for 16/512 as standard, and charges more for that model.
Then we wouldn’t be having these arguments, but for those using an MBA M2 8/256 from a dreary Windows PC or an Intel Mac will be having a great time and clearly aren’t using their devices for really endless full-on work.
I do lots of video editing with Camtasia on the M2 and it never breaks a sweat - and didn’t on the M1 MBA, either.
they just needed to not cheap out on the 256 model and saved a lot of headache. make it 8/512 standard with the faster ssd speeds for that new starting price. Most people would have been very happy with that
Oh well, the fact they are still struggling too keep up with demand tells me they aren't losing much sleep over any of this lol.
Yeah, Apple knows their market well, the 8/256 will be perfect for the vast majority of users, slower SSD speeds or no.
The rest will upgrade the MBA M2 or buy a 14-inch or larger MBP.
The whole thing’s a storm in a tea cup, anyone upgrading from an Intel Mac will see a huge difference, and they still have the choice to go M1 MBA anyway.
Also if Apple did go 512GB standard on the MBA M2, then people would ask why they didn’t on iPad pros etc.
Trolls gotta MaxTroll though. Clicks and ads, they have no real product other than flapping their lips, so flap they do as they get themselves and their followers into a flap.
No clap clap from me, the Maxfappers can flap off 😂🤣
I am really enjoying my M2 Air a few weeks in. I went for it for my reasons which are not important. Although everyone is correct in that it is not value for money within the current line-up.
I have the 16GB/1TB model. Spec for spec I could have got an M1 Air for a few hundred less or I could have got an MBP 14 for slightly more. Choices right.
But I fully expect when the new 14/16 models arrive their price is going to show that the M2 MBA is not that bad in terms of value going forward if you want the latest and greatest. They are going to hike prices across the board, we or they are in a transition period that makes the M2 Air appear like poor value today, but not for long.
I have the 16GB/1TB model. Spec for spec I could have got an M1 Air for a few hundred less or I could have got an MBP 14 for slightly more. Choices right.
But I fully expect when the new 14/16 models arrive their price is going to show that the M2 MBA is not that bad in terms of value going forward if you want the latest and greatest. They are going to hike prices across the board, we or they are in a transition period that makes the M2 Air appear like poor value today, but not for long.
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