The passive cooling in the MBA is actually a benefit to those who value silence. I don’t edit video often so I’m happy to take the performance hit in order to never hear a fan whirl up.
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Apple Announces New MacBook Air With M4 and 'Sky Blue' Color Option
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The passive cooling in the MBA is actually a benefit to those who value silence. I don’t edit video often so I’m happy to take the performance hit in order to never hear a fan whirl up.
Growth of market share would be nice, but the other thing that may happen is all that less expensive power might mean that folks do not need to upgrade as soon, meaning less Mac sales. My guess is that apps and OS will make hardware age-out like always, and that your forecast will come true. The current crop of very good MBAs and Mac minis will indeed improve Mac market share.
I love the Sky Blue! A difficult choice for me between that and Midnight (if I were looking to upgrade).
I have M4 MacBook Pro... it makes my house cooler instead of hotter !! 🤯
I have the same 2016 MBP with 16 GB RAM that I replaced with an M2 MBP with 96 GB RAM when it got sluggish due to limiting RAM. Your MBP was Apple's high end laptop and you are considering replacing it with Apple's low end laptop. Yes, despite being the low end the MBA chip is modern and stronger than your 2016 box, but you should be very careful about downgrading to an MBA. Literally everything about the MBP except weight is better than the MBA: display, speakers, memory bandwidth, available RAM, brightness, ports, etc. for just 10% more money if both boxes were base M4 at 32 GB RAM.
IMO 32 GB RAM (maximum available on an MBA) is the minimum you should be at for a good life cycle and smooth operation. Apps like SPSS take good advantage of RAM and OS/apps increase how much RAM is beneficial every year. If you stay involved with modeling you are likely to see usage of AI components becoming more prevalent, which totally gobbles up RAM.
An MBA is a very good value choice, but it is a lower end computer. Personally the twice-as-bright display brightness alone makes the MBP the only computer I will choose personally. Also I really like the available nano-texture display on the MBP, but that is just a bonus.
You should compare the MBA to the MBP yourself at an Apple store and also decide how much RAM your finances can allow. If I was dabbling in modeling via SPSS and the like I would buy more than 32 GB of RAM for any kind of 5+ year life cycle.
No, the MBA's passive cooling is not some kind of MBA benefit. MBPs probably have even better passive cooling. One does not typically "hear a fan whirl up" with a MBP. Frankly that is a nonsense argument made by folks who chose to pay less and get no fan capability.
MBP fans do not kick in under any kind of normal usage, the fans stay normally off. And even if one does perform heavy work [that an MBA would simply throttle] personally I do not "hear a fan whirl up" unless I really work at hearing it, and even then it is to me inoffensive. And my MBP is an M2, so the M4s are likely even better heat managers.
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we love a SKINNY legend. the fat macbook pro will never be as iconic as THE air! even mariah carey is SHOOK!
Buy more RAM and less SSD if you can, adding SSD capacity via inexpensive third party external SSD drives.
Gladly! https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/30/apple-1q-2025-earnings/
As it concerns profits I don't care how much of that profit is made up by what specific product. It's completely irrelevant. Apple is posting record numbers (as usual) and that's fine by me.....and the 2 billion repeat customers Apple has.
But since you brought it up, from that same report: Mac revenue was $9 billion, up 16% year over year
My math was never very good but I don't believe that 16% is "Single digit %"
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I have a M3 Midnight and absolutely love it, but fingerprints and dust etc. are probably more visible on that one then the lighter one.
Not that it have desturbed me the slightest at all. Apple have worked with it awhile on the midniight.
I love the shifting of blue's in midnight, depending on various light.
If you can check them out somewhere, or just trust your gut (as I did) - if you are buying.
No nano texture display option. So sad. The one thing that's stopping me from buying one!
Yep I edited it. I agree with you.
If you’re not installing games or using it for serious media creation (CS, logic etc) - and most people are not - 256 is enough for most people, especially as most of our stuff is somewhere in the cloud nowadays.
So $999 for the 13 16/256 is an incredible price for a superb laptop.
the way it works with Apple is, that you should choose the higher specced models and then upgrade.
Upgrading up from the base model is insanely expensive.
let me correct myself: hardwarewise I think the iPad Pro 13inch is Peak-Apple.
But without an option to run MacOS (e.g. as an App in a nicely integrated container with Handover etc.) it will always be 2nd for serious use to a MacBook.
You know, for someone who usually likes to share their thoughts in detail, I’m surprised you ignored my question why 2025 sucks and what was better in last years 3 months. Not really surprising though.