Apple Says New MacBook Air Up to 23x Faster Than Intel-Based Model, But Read the Fine Print

[ItsGavinC]

comparing it to a 6yo chip is peak dishonesty

Not one bit. That's largely who will be upgrading--those who have had machines that are 5+ years older.

 

[ItsGavinC]

That comparision makes M1 Air really impressive. 60% - 80% of M4 Air's performance, but with around 60% of M4 Air's price.

Yeah, love my M1, and not upgrading yet. I've had it for 4 years now. Maybe I'll upgrade next year. Battery health is poor, but speed-wise it's totally fine.

 

[klasma]

To be fair, when I hear "up to 23x faster", I don't think, "wow, I guess it'll be 23x faster at most things", I expect that's the very best case, and it portends considerable, but lesser, improvements at other tasks, which seems to be borne out.

Yeah, it's more like "we couldn't find anything more than 23x faster". It's an upper bound.

 

[Velin]

nVidia cards have stooped to this status too.

Yes. All they're doing is pumping in more watts to boost clocks. Improve the heatsinks and thermals a bit. Market it as a "generational uplift" and double the price.

Also, AMD had a nice GPU release yesterday, I think. Good performance, reasonable MSRP. Shocking.

 

[opuscroakus]

OMG Snow Leopard!! Literally my favorite OS of all time! I thought I was the only one who had a special place in my heart for it.

You aren’t the only one. MacOS could definitely use a Snow Leopard treatment.

 

[Fowl]

The feature uses machine learning to increase the resolution of images, while preserving sharpness and details.

In other words, the 23× is thanks to the Neural Engine. For most everything else, 3×-ish.

 

[kwikdeth]

We still have a couple of those in our fleet at work, and just booting the damn thing is painful. I'd submit them as the worst Mac Apple's made in the last 25 years.

I'll take that bet and raise you the original CoreDuo, non-64 bit Intel macs. Or the base 2014 mini.

 

[ossifer]

Do people still fall for “up to”?

 

[KPOM]

Yeah, love my M1, and not upgrading yet. I've had it for 4 years now. Maybe I'll upgrade next year. Battery health is poor, but speed-wise it's totally fine.

The leap from Intel to M1 was huge. Apple timed it perfectly. Intel had stagnated (and for the Air Apple used a “low” watt 7W processor instead of that 15W processor that powered most Windows laptops at the time). It was also right before Intel finally got its act together with sub-14nm processes.

M1 nearly doubled the performance of the early 2020 Intel Air. We aren’t going to see a jump like that anytime soon. M4 is a decent upgrade from M3 on single core performance, which is more important for the average Air user.

Have you considered replacing the battery? You could likely get another 2-3 years out of the M1. The M6 Air should be a nice jump.

 

[KPOM]

In other words, the 23× is thanks to the Neural Engine. For most everything else, 3×-ish.

4.6x on Geekbench.

 

[KPOM]

Not one bit. That's largely who will be upgrading--those who have had machines that are 5+ years older.

Exactly. My mom is replacing a 2019 13” MacBook Pro with this. The 14” Pro wasn’t an option as she likes the size of the 13”.

 

[Joshuaorange]

and safari still sucks and freezes constantly.

Try restarting it.

 

[0049190]

Sounds like they have a problem persuading MBA users on old Intel chips to upgrade.

 

[Reason077]

We still have a couple of those in our fleet at work, and just booting the damn thing is painful. I'd submit them as the worst Mac Apple's made in the last 25 years.

Yeah, my 2017(?) 13" Intel MacBook Pro was pretty awful. Going to the M1 Air was a massive upgrade.

 

[Reason077]

Nah. Maybe the iBook. lol. The PowerBook stopped at G4 btw.

Huh? The PowerBook G5 is still rumoured to be unveiled any week now, isn't it?

 

[Reason077]

Sounds like they have a problem persuading MBA users on old Intel chips to upgrade.

Or they want to get the remaining Intel Mac users to upgrade before they drop support for x86 in macOS.

 

[Fuzzball84]

Repeat along with the rest of the class: "my use case is not everyone else's use case".

I'd venture a guess that what you think is wildly off. Nobody I know has only 5 to 10 tabs open.

I find this disrespectful. That’s why I said, “I think”. So maybe consider this the next time you post a comment that aims to humiliate rather than provide your own opinion.

But I find this typical of certain Mac rumors members. There is a certain arrogance and elitism.

“Nobody I know” because me and my friends have 100s of tabs open 😀

 

[Fuzzball84]

I’d say the Apple marketing team target a certain section of society and it’s USA centric. So they love numbers like this and then put the specifics in the small print; which is maybe not normally read, or actively ignored as that big number excites those neurons and then persuades them that last years M3 really needs an upgrade 😀

 

[SkweeBop]

OMG Snow Leopard!! Literally my favorite OS of all time! I thought I was the only one who had a special place in my heart for it.

I'm racking my brain trying to remember which machine was my Snow Leopard machine!

 

[Fuzzball84]

I'm racking my brain trying to remember which machine was my Snow Leopard machine!

Sounds like you had a few machines. Tim loves you

 

[LastZion]

I just want it compared to my 2021 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro.
I’m tired of lugging around this monster, she’s too heavy.

Ha, thats funny! Thats exactly what I just ordered this new computer to replace. I finally snapped. I think I have developed tendonitis in my elbow from this beast. Enough is enough - hoping there isn't too much lag (or none at Allin performance). Will report back Tuesday!

 

[Fuzzball84]

Or they want to get the remaining Intel Mac users to upgrade before they drop support for x86 in macOS.

I’d say they would just drop support and then eventually people will upgrade.

Apple will drop support whether or not people upgrade. That’s how it is and will almost certainly always be.

Apple needs people to be constantly upgrading to keep revenues flowing,

Whereas for other OS’s this isn’t as much the case. For example Microsoft will support OS and hardware longer as they have a lot more businesses that have certain hardware and software requirements that are not so easy to move from one to the next, or appreciate LTS (Long Term Support) as with Linux too. Also, Microsoft makes a lot of money from subscription services which can actually be good value for customers compared to perpetual licenses that are expensive.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

The most important thing is to make software be more stable and smooth like Snow Leopard. That will make things much better and feel much faster as well.

That's the thing with Apple now. They'd much rather release faster SoCs than actually fix the software to work better. The compute power we have in our pockets these days is obscene but it's being squandered by shoddy programming and massive OS overhead.

 

[svish]

Any new MacBook will be more than capable of doing most of the tasks. Interesting to see how far Apple Silicon has come. None of the Intel Macs can match Apple Silicon.

 

[sdfox7]

Just goes to show how bloated and inefficient software in general has become. Programmers no longer code for efficiency or performance. MacOS for example is now a 15GB installer.

It's the only way to generate new hardware sales. I'm doing the same thing on my computers that I was doing 15 years ago so I don't care about all the bells and whistles. I just need productivity.

Technology Industry Handbook:

Build X device --> continually stuff up the software like a bloated pig --> generate new computer and phone sales