Apple's 2019 256GB MacBook Air Includes Slower SSD Than 2018 Model

[TheShadowKnows!]

The read and write speeds of SSD's are overrated. What matters a lot more in real world use is the access times.

Pretty much ANY SSD has an access speeds 100 times that of a spinning hard drive, and that's where the real payoff is.

Only if you're copying super large files might you start to see the benefit of crazy fast read/write speeds. And even then, only if you're copying that super large file from and equally fast drive (otherwise the source drive will be the bottleneck).

Not so, "Big Boy"

Have you ever heard of "virtual memory" and "paging"?

The speeds shown above are aligned to today's ultra, low-cost SATA 3.0 SSDs and not PCMCIA SSDs.

The internal SATA SSDs with 250GB capacity are now retailed for less the $40. (Check NewEgg, et al.)

The amount of swapping a system will perform depends on the amount of AVAILABLE MEMORY.
AVAILABLE MEMORY::= FREE + CACHED MEMORY
It is not only for "large files".

And, if you use, for example, a Windows VM (to access corporate and educational programs not available under MacOS), then you are going to swap like crazy, when you only have 8GB of memory.

No offense dude. I think you need to be (re)educated on virtual memory.

 

[BigBoy2018]

Not so, "Big Boy"

Have you ever heard of "virtual memory" and "paging"?

The speeds shown above are aligned to today's ultra, low-cost SATA 3.0 SSDs and not PCMCIA SSDs.

The internal SATA SSDs with 250GB capacity are now retailed for less the $40. (Check NewEgg, et al.)

The amount of swapping a system will perform depends on the amount of AVAILABLE MEMORY.
AVAILABLE MEMORY::= FREE + CACHED MEMORY
It is not only for "large files".

And, if you use, for example, a Windows VM (to access corporate and educational programs not available under MacOS), then you are going to swap like crazy, when you only have 8GB of memory.

No offense dude. I think you need to be (re)educated on virtual memory.

Ok, so you’ll agree then that assuming you have a suitable amount of ram (which I do), THEN the read/write speeds of SSD’s are overrated?

Maybe you only have 8gigs of ram or so. But I always make sure to have enough ram for almost any use case.

 

[definitive]

Anyone surprised? They've been doing the same thing on lower capacity (I believe 7&7+) models of iPhones.

 

[LordVic]

Ok, so you’ll agree then that assuming you have a suitable amount of ram (which I do), THEN the read/write speeds of SSD’s are overrated?

Not necessarily. All OS's will do some paging even if you have sufficient RAM. A lot of software also uses temp files on disk that can benefit from speed.

There are things that matter with NVME. yes, if you're average use is just firing up notepad, word, chrome. you'll probably not notice the difference between SATAIII SSD and NVME SSD. But start doing more complex tasks that do a lot of IO and that difference starts to be noticable. In addition, larger programs that need to load more into memory will benefit greatly from NVME.

Example in point: Games can be quite tremendously large with lots of content streamed to or from disk. Something as simple as, Cities Skylines for example has benefitted from moving from SATA based SSD to NVME for me in the way of load times that are significantly quicker.

in addition, many of us do numerous things at the same time. Yesterday I built 5 Windows 10 VM's and a PFSENSE VM and ran and installed them all at the same time. My disk IO usage was up in the 2,000 to 3,000 range.

Or the Database backup for the terrible engine I use, which peaked at 3,900Mbit/s when it was running.

the point is, Not all workloads are the same. Advertising "fastest" speeds, then cheaping out and using a set of storage that is slower than the cheap options available retail today is just more of the same of Apple cheaping out where they think they can hide it in order to maximize profiteering.

 

[justperry]

Bitterness from the MR crew who can't even afford paying $1,099 for MBA.. Responding on a forum in the middle of a work day

FYI, this site visitors/members are from all corners of the world.

Wow. You don't see this often on Macrumors; someone talking sense and logic.

Plenty of places on MR where you can find this, seems like you look in the wrong places.

Reminder that you can get a 1TB, 1600MB/s NVMe SSD on Amazon for under $100.

Apple charges $600 for the MacBook Air 1TB upgrade, and for a slower SSD apparently.

But yeah thank you Apple for finally offering fair SSD prices.

Not the quality of Apple's SSD's, this has been discussed ad nausea.

Let me educate you, those SSD's are TLC while Apple's ssd's are MLC, big difference.

There goes the defense from the cheerleaders here who frequently spout off: "Apple get's to charge higher prices for their SSDs because they're so much faster than windoze SSDs!"

Now that Apple's SSD's are about as slow as 1TB NVME SSD's going for ~$100-$125 means the ripoff continues...

As above.

 

[jav6454]

So many ignorant posters. Sequential speeds do not matter in real world performance. Apple could have went with a slower sequential drive; however, in the end, it's the QD1 and QD4 4KB reads that matter. If those stayed the same or went up, then this SSD is better.

Right now, a good SSD is doing 85-95k IOPs in Random Read. If this MBA matches that Apple sacrificed nothing.

I see nothing in this article but click bait about pointless sequential speed tests.

 

[TheShadowKnows!]

Ok, so you’ll agree then that assuming you have a suitable amount of ram (which I do), THEN the read/write speeds of SSD’s are overrated?

Dude, I am pointing also at the cash grab. Apple's defense force states that SSD prices are high because they are world-record speed daemons.

My point is that now Apple is providing, under the covers, proprietary SATA SSD ("protected" by the T2 chip). And charging equivalently to PCMCIA SSD upgrades.

[With Apple you better buy the largest amount of memory you will ever need within the lifecycle of the laptop, otherwise you will experience swapping at SATA SSD rates.]

 

[name99]

Alright guys let’s pretend to act surprised

Those price cuts had to come from somewhere

Uhh...
the real issue here is know-nothings pretending “I is an engineer”.
For most consumer use cases by FAR the most important aspect of SSD performance is the random access behavior, not the streaming behavior. And no-one here is reporting the random access behavior...

It may well be that Apple rebalanced the SSD design to improve the random access performance. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t — but we can’t comment until someone reports that data...

 

[nutmac]

If you ask me, Apple should've gone even further and offer even slower and far cheaper consumer grade SSD (500-600 MB/sec variety liek Samsung 860 Evo) on MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac mini, and reduce the price even further.

 

[code-m]

I'm surprised that they'd skimp so much on storage when the storage tiers offered are pretty run of the mill and should easily be able to handle faster than that.

to put it in perspective. You can pick up a NVME Based 500GB SSD for retail $110 capable of 3,000+mbps sustained read/write.

this cheapening out, especially on non-replacable parts like storage is further entrenching us old Mac fanboys that the Mac is a dumpster fire right now

Edit:
i'm wondering if it's not the storage itself that's slow and the bottleneck in the Air, but the lower classed CPU they downgraded to for the 2018 air. I'ts now using a "Y" series ULV (think MacBook CPU) instead of the previous Air's generation "U" series CPU. it's slower, less cores, less cache, less overall everything and less headroom for performance.

Both of these are pretty inexcusable cheaping out though for a $1000+ laptop

Penny pinching across the board

Apple we care about the user experience*


*as long as that experience results in max profits from prior quarters to offset the decision to increase prices for products due to market saturation/peak demand

 

[BigBoy2018]

Dude, I am pointing also at the cash grab. Apple's defense force states that SSD prices are high because they are world-record speed daemons.

My point is that now Apple is providing, under the covers, proprietary SATA SSD ("protected" by the T2 chip). And charging equivalently to PCMCIA SSD upgrades.

[With Apple you better buy the largest amount of memory you will ever need within the lifecycle of the laptop, otherwise you will not experience swapping at SATA SSD rates.]

I don't disagree with you that the T2 chip - in that it prevents SSD upgrades - is one of the worst things Apple has done. I've upgraded the SSD at least once on every single Mac I've ever owned. Since the introduction of T2 chip saddled macs, I have not bought one with a T2 chip. I might have to break down one day and get one with a T2 inside, but I sure as hell won't be happy about it.

 

[code-m]

If you ask me, Apple should've gone even further and offer even slower and far cheaper consumer grade SSD (500-600 MB/sec variety liek Samsung 860 Evo) on MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac mini, and reduce the price even further.

Future MBA, 32GB internal storage and expand with SD card, hello ChromeMacOSbook

 

[LordVic]

So many ignorant posters. Sequential speeds do not matter in real world performance. Apple could have went with a slower sequential drive; however, in the end, it's the QD1 and QD4 4KB reads that matter. If those stayed the same or went up, then this SSD is better.

Right now, a good SSD is doing 85-95k IOPs in Random Read. If this MBA matches that Apple sacrificed nothing.

I see nothing in this article but click bait about pointless sequential speed tests.

Incorrect, and IOPS is also a misleading measurement that can overstate performance depending on the platform.

Anecdote Time: I had nutanix sales people try and push that the Nutanix platforms 4million or so IOPS meant that no matter what, it was the correct choice for my databases. So I had them provision a top of the line cluster for me to test... Despite having millions of IOPS performance was less than our current spinning rust based server.

The reason is a bit more complicated than average user probably knows or cares, but it evidences that raw benchmark numbers do not always accurate predict performance outcomes

As well, you're partially write about the 4k read/writes. But most day to day computer users are not doing bulk of 4k read/writes, but typically somewhere between larger and smaller hybrid. For example, reading an OS from disk to memory is going to do more consecutive, and sequential reading. Same with the bulk of larger programs loaded off disk. if you swap a lot, you'll get a lot more 4k read/writes. If you do a lot of database work, you'll get that read/writes of 4k.

it always comes down to use cases. but IMHO, if you're paying for top of the line, you best be getting top of the line. Something Apple doesn't seem to be trying to deliver.

SO while you think this was clickbaity (it was), your comments are also fairly innacurate and generalizing of the impact of the slower storage.

but you do bring up one valid point. Sequential read/write isn't the whole story and would love to see if someone could run and post a crystal disk mark run or two of this computer to see what all the reported metrics are.

 

[zombierunner]

Nice one Tim

 

[BigBoy2018]

Not necessarily. All OS's will do some paging even if you have sufficient RAM. .

The minute amount of paging that is done when you have suffiicient ram paired with any SSD (even a 'slow' 500GB/s SSD) will not be noticable IMO

 

[SuperMatt]

it always comes down to use cases. but IMHO, if you're paying for top of the line, you best be getting top of the line. Something Apple doesn't seem to be trying to deliver.

I don’t think a MacBook Air fits the description of "top of the line." The Air is, in fact, the bottom of their line of laptops.

 

[LordVic]

The minute amount of paging that is done when you have suffiicient ram paired with any SSD (even a 'slow' 500GB/s SSD) will not be noticable IMO

Depends also on software.

Adobe's CC stuff for example requires disk swapping, even if you have more than enough RAM.

as I said, it's really specific to the workload and what is being done. there's no hard/fast rule on "fast enough". Hence, if I'm spending money on a premium priced laptop, I want premium and the best parts, so that its available IF i need it.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Does not matter how slow the SSD is when the CPU drops power by 50% because it is always over heating. You know why it is called the MacBook "Air", cuz you have to blow air on it while it is in use.

I always have fans blowing on my Gold Air & I have to use a fan control software to increase the internal fan; Apple has the fan trigger point too low!

What do you mean too low? It’s just right so when the CPU melts through the mother board you have to buy a new Mac!

 

[ksec]

For Christ Sake.

Larger Capacity SSD are usually faster due to more channel being used, for Example [1] . And that is especially true on a 128GB SSD that is consider as tiny by today's standard.

On another Note, Apple needs to up their SSD Controller performance, it used to be state of the art, it is now not even consider as Top performing any more.

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/14636/sandisks-extreme-pro-nvme-3d-ssd-gains-capacity-up-to-2-tb

 

[LordVic]

I don’t think a MacBook Air fits the description of "top of the line." The Air is, in fact, the bottom of their line of laptops.

it's Apple's "bottom of their line" but it's still a premium priced laptop in comparison to the greater laptop market.

hence if I'm paying the premium for Apple computer, I expect premium parts.

if Apple is just going to give you non-premium parts and run of the mill everyday performance, that's fine. But the pricing should reflect that. a 1,000MBit storage on a $1099 ultrabook is pretty lackluster for Apple.
[doublepost=1563213821][/doublepost]

For Christ Sake.

Larger Capacity SSD are usually faster due to more channel being used, for Example [1] . And that is especially true on a 128GB SSD that is consider as tiny by today's standard.

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/14636/sandisks-extreme-pro-nvme-3d-ssd-gains-capacity-up-to-2-tb

The 256 GB NVME SSD that came default in both my Lenovo and my Razer Blade Stealth are faster than this.


capacity isn't the problem here. It's either lower specced chips chosen by Apple, or the lower specced CPU chosen by apple. Either way, it's a concious decision by Apple.

 

[ksec]

The 256 GB NVME SSD that came default in both my Lenovo and my Razer Blade Stealth are faster than this.

That is Apple SSD slower than Lenovo or Razer, nothing to do with MacBook Air 2019 being slower than 2018.

I edited my reply just when you quote me, Apple needs to up their SSD speed game. ( Something to do with their T2 controller )

 

[LordVic]

That is Apple SSD slower than Lenovo or Razer, nothing to do with MacBook Air 2019 being slower than 2018.

Edit: Thanks for the reply update, I was confused lol

I don't think it's the T2 chip. if you look at the chipset used on the MacBook Pro 15", it's T2 as well, but capable of speeds even slightly faster than traditional NVME.

this is likely less to do with T2 and more to do with Apple just opting to use components that are rated lower than they chose previously. It makes some sense that this is related to the recent price cut down to 1099 for the 2019. Apple lowered the price, so to maintain their margins (which always come as Apple's #1 priority), they had to cut costs elsewhere.

Cutting storage quality is an easy way of cutting costs while hiding that you cut costs. In a device like the MBA, it's not unreasonable to believe that the users are not power users looking for the fastest power (Y series CPU after). So for those who don't pay attention, or know the difference, they're getting a lower quality and lower specced part snuck into their computer instead of the previous premium performing part.

it's nothing more here than Tim Cook playing with margins to appease investors. Nothing more.

 

[MauiPa]

I guess it's only relevant compared to the competition. As far I can tell, it is still twice as fast as the Dell XPS 13, and other brands. But, haters gotta hate. Ae buyers of the Air really speed freaks? I also wonder with the CPU used if the SSD was ever a bottleneck at all. Final point, never heard of the French magazine this article quoted. I have no reason not to believe it, but........

 

[PickUrPoison]

All you guys who own MacBook Air server farms are going to be pissed.

Nice... not sure all your likes caught the sarcasm though

 

[Mr. Dee]

We should all wait until the year 2030 for the perfect MacBook Pro.