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Apple Announces MacBook Air With M2 Chip Available to Order Starting July 8, Launches July 15
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32gb is overkill. I am a programmer, having multiple IDE's open, Multiple browsers with dozens of tabs. Working on 10 cores / 16 GPU and 16gb. Not a single fan that starts to spin. Get 1 TB storage instead.
The only reason someone will require 32GB or more is if they were using VMs...VMs eat RAM like candy!
I'm also a developer - have been for nearly 2 decades now.
My experience is the opposite of yours as 16 GB on my work's MacBook Pro is just not enough these days. I have both Xcode and Android Studio open frequently with both spinning up emulators. Pair that with VSCode and quite a few browser windows and what you end up with is fans running at max speed most of the time. It drives me crazy.
24 or 32 GB definitely wouldn't hurt.
The trouble is your experience somewhat contradicts the poster whom I was replying to. Unless iMovie has some memory management issues.
I have spent weeks researching whether 16GB ram will be sufficient for my use - university study (Humanities), hobbyist music production (Ableton, Logic Pro), heavy multitasking. No video editing or software development. My current Windows PC has 16GB but once purchased my MacBook will become my primary computer and the PC will be used only for gaming. 16GB on my PC works for me but I haven’t started my degree yet and I want enough headroom for the future with heavy multitasking (likely with cursed Electron apps) and making music. Hence my leaning towards a 24GB Air which will cost me about the same as a 16GB Pro.
There is so much (mis)information out there and even the less subjective testing still leaves me scratching my head about whether 16GB will be enough for me. People will just say “If you’re making music just get a Pro” but it’s not that simple. 32GB would take it over £2K which is a bit more than I want to spend. I like the thinner and lighter Air M2 and the CPU power will likely (hopefully) be enough. Plus the battery life will be better than the Pro. Although the M2 Air might throttle more heavily than the M1 version. And the Pro’s screen is very tempting. And I don’t dislike the Pro’s design. And it will definitely have sufficient CPU power. But then I could get 24GB for the same price as 16GB in the Pro. And round and round my thinking goes…
not exactly. RAM usage has nothing to do with fan speeds really. with 16 GB RAM you will notice a lot of compressed memory. with 32 GB you will have more headroom & less likely to resort to compressed memory. everything will feel snappier. in a few years you will wish you had more RAM, not more CPU GPU power or more storage.
basic users that open 1 browser & use a few tabs & check email & watch netflix will be fine with 8 or 16 GB. but anything more than that the 16 GB will hit its limits, although it can still run smoothly & without issues, it's more limiting than 32 GB.
Hi LMS. No kids here (just cats) but I'm a teacher and a student, too. Your level of use sounds similar to mine. I have tons of windows open--browser tabs, Excel and Word, a statistical analysis program I use for teaching and academic research, sometimes Skype or Zoom, too. But I do very little that power users would consider processor-intensive.
You won't have a problem with performance on the M2 MacBook Air like you did on the 2017 Air. Starting with the M1 MacBook Air introduced in December 2020, Airs have been much more powerful and cooler-running than any previous Air. That M1 Macbook Air will continue to be in the lineup, and even though it's nearly 2 years old, it is still an excellent laptop. The M2 Macbook Air will be a little better in terms of performance, and a lot better in other ways -- better display, webcam and speakers.
Regarding what configuration to get: the first decision when you're configuring your machine through Apple's website is whether to get the 8-core GPU or the 10-core GPU. I don't think most people will notice the difference; I definitely wouldn't in my use-cases. Next is RAM and SSD. If you can afford it, get 16gb RAM and 512gb SSD. Each of these adds $200 to the price; if you can only afford one of these two, I think the SSD upgrade is probably more important than the RAM upgrade (though some might disagree and argue that you can plug in an external SSD to increase storage but you can't plug in an external RAM module).
A cheaper option is to get the M1 Macbook Air, the one from December 2020. Despite being the cheapest mac in the lineup, it is a really really excellent computer and will continue to be for years. When I got mine, I was near the end of my first full semester of heavy pandemic online teaching. My previous computer (a Macbook Pro from early 2020) sometimes couldn't handle Zooming with my class while having lots of other apps running and windows open, my webcam, and a high-res camera I had pointed at a whiteboard in my office The M1 Macbook Air could handle it EASILY, and never got hot.
I hope this helps a bit. Good luck! And bless you for being a Mom and a teacher!
Sounds like you are using an Intel MacBook Pro. Probably not relevant to a discussion about a fanless MacBook Air. With a fast SSD (not the 256GB) when you aren't using those IDEs they should be either compressed or swapped out to the SSD. When you switch back to whatever IDE you need next, it is swapped back in and another is swapped out. None of that should take much time on a human scale.
Personally, I prefer to close apps when I'm not using them. Xcode opens almost immediately if it's been used recently. I don't know anything about the Android IDE but it is probably Java and slow to open so you probably want to leave it running. VSCode is a clunky Electron app unfortunately. It has a ton of features and plug-ins but memory efficiency isn't one of its traits.
I'm getting 24 GB because of Docker. My 16 GB M1 Air has been fine but I can see future use where a few more Docker images are going to start pushing the limits. Speed hasn't been close to a problem and 16 GB of RAM has been adequate but I'm looking forward to 24 GB.
We’ll find out tomorrow, but the M2 MacBook Pro 16GB models are currently showing July 19-21 delivery dates vs. immediate availability for the 8GB models.
Since I'm buying this for the form factor rather than performance, I don't care too much about the SSD. I'll be switching from a 2018 MBP 13" that still runs well enough for me and which I'd keep a bit longer but for the ****** defective keyboard and a battery at the end of its life cycle.
For some people this clearly won't be enough but I'm using an old MPB with only 8MB of RAM, and its quite alright for the light duty tasks - mostly word processing, emails, internet - that I use it for. I'll take the 16MB if it won't delay things too much, but I'm assuming that it will add several weeks and I need a replacement pretty badly and will take the 8MB if need be.
Here are my questions and thoughts as someone who does some number crunching /maros/etc. in Excel on my Mac:
1. How well does your 2017 MBP perform doing what you will be doing? How much memory does it have? If it OK but a bit slow with 8GB then an 8GB MBA will probably suffice?
2. Can you afford 16GB without a problem? If so, go for the 16GB.
3. If you are using a program such as Excel, chances are the demo unit at an Apple store will have one. Id'dask to run te spreadsheet and see how it performs on units there. Or if you have a friend with an M1 MBA ask if you can try out teh computations on their machine.
You still fail to understand the point of mentioning $400 Lenovo laptop is the 8GB RAM and faster 256GB SSD so $1200 M2 MBA should have more RAM and SSD that's not slow. It's a bonus that it can play AAA games at all that AS Macs can't
If I want to flex, gaming laptop with 16GB RAM, 1TB to 2TB SSD and Nvidia GPU that costs the same as M1 MBA but is faster than $5K Mac Studio 64GPU on 3D rendering, GPU compute and plays Doom Eternal at ~160fps 1080 ultra.
People don't buy Macs to game so your argument was stupid to begin with. It is like saying a pickup truck is better at hauling stuff than a compact car is. And?
You came to troll, and you got smacked back quick. And just can't help yourself. Now you randomly bring up a gaming laptop like any of us give a crap about it.
You're just throwing a tantrum because you were proven wrong. My M1 MBA is only good as a Chromebook and not much else like you imply.
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I think that says more about the user than it does about the product in this case.
Not OP, but sounds like you have a similar use case to mine! I'm also a teacher and researcher who mainly uses Chrome, Zoom, and Rstudio for coding midsize datasets (up to a few hundred thousand obs).
You say get the upgrades if you can afford it -- is this based on your experience with the base M1 MBA? It also sounds like the M1 MBA handled all your needs pretty handily, so just want to clarify.
Reducing the speed of the M2 chip is a GOOD thing. Otherwise it would overheat.
By doing this Apple doesn't need to put any fans in the MacBook Air which is fantastic!
So all is good then? Why do you even care about the MacBook Air when a $400 Windows PC is better for you?
There is no way that Apple will sell a MacBook below $500 in the next 10 years, so you should just continue buying Windows PCs.