Just imagine not buying it in American $'s and in Canada with a ridiculous 13% sales tax. This is even with Apple reducing the price by around $70 off the pure $ exchange. Ridiculous amount of money for an opening price point laptop.
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Apple's MacBook Air vs. Microsoft's Surface Laptop 2
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Just imagine not buying it in American $'s and in Canada with a ridiculous 13% sales tax. This is even with Apple reducing the price by around $70 off the pure $ exchange. Ridiculous amount of money for an opening price point laptop.
And the SSD in the "old" Air is upgradeable to up to 2TB SSD. And - it has a comfortable and reliable time-tested keyboard design. Apple should have put a Retina display on the old design and nobody would be complaining. Sometimes classic is superior. Steve...
While I don't disagree, I just bought a 256GB 2018 MBA for $1149 and am very happy with it. If I didn't get this I probably would have picked an XPS13, which I like a lot but am glad I have this instead.
Edit: link for anyone interested, though it is an in-store offer so you need to be close enough to a Microcenter:
https://www.microcenter.com/product...-a-late-2018-133-laptop-computer---space-gray
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Wha?
The MBA's single-core is 51% faster than the MBP's multi-core!
The MBA is also likely to have a much faster SSD than the aftermarket one in the MBP.
Heck, even the integrated graphics seem to fare significantly better than the GeForce that MBP had.
They both suck. Your better off buying an older MacBook Air or a regular Surface
Just imagine not buying it in American $'s and in Canada with a ridiculous 13% sales tax. This is even with Apple reducing the price by around $70 off the pure $ exchange. Ridiculous amount of money for an opening price point laptop.
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seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if Mac sales in Canada weren't nearly zero.
Granted, I'm not out in the world a whole lot these days and anecdotes dn't prove a trend,
But I don't see modern MBpro's or Airs pretty much anywhere anymore. I still see older Airs. A couple Pro's now and then. But almost no Apple laptops.
when I used to work in the downtown core about 10 years ago, they were EVERYWHERE. now? you'll see more people sitting outside with Surface pros or HP laptops than Macs
The Starbucks by my house that I visit a little too regularly almost never has people sitting there with macs at all. the price points are absolutely ridiculous.
I can get a new XPS 15 that will out perform the air and surface laptop 2 for $999. If we are just talking about the air vs surface laptop 2 the surface laptop is the better machine. Much better processor and cheaper price. The air should start at $599.
You need to do a direct comparison. I think you would find that '10x' extra SSD (exaggerate a little?) speed isn't giving you as much benefit as you think it is.
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It's not even about performance... lots of iPhone owners want just an entry level Apple laptop to do basic stuff (and stay integrated with their iPhone imessages, notes, etc).
Entry level starts at $1200. Crazy.
So much this. I remember being excited about new product releases. These days, it tends to be "Ugh, why didn't X make it in?" or "Ugh, what gimping tradeoff did they decide to make this time?"
The Pismo G3 400 was my first Apple laptop. The 2014 15" rMBP was my twentieth! I was pretty excited about most of the new releases, and I always found at least some value in upgrading.
That purchase was over 4 years ago now, and I haven't felt that kind of excitement since. I purchased a 2016 15" rMBP and returned it. I have a 2017 15" that sits under my coffee table, and I use it basically as a local Postgres machine. I voluntarily choose to use an almost 5 year old design. That's really sad.
I am curious about the folks complaining about Apple's new generationally lower prices on laptops. I have priced comparable HP and Dell laptops on several occasions for instrument control applications. The Mac as configured for the end use is always comparable to lower in cost. You have to factor in the OS and productivity licenses.
I remember like it was yesterday when an Apple laptop cost between $3-5k. And it was better than what you could buy elsewhere for that or higher. Apple has shifted to lower price points, but does not yet "bottom fish". If you want a low cost computing device, try a used Mini or an iPad. As for newish laptops they are comparably priced when similarly configured with typical minimally required software for the typical task.
For many of us the software cost well exceeds the device cost.
Rocketman
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=13-inch+MacBook+Air&rh=n:172282,n:541966,n:13896617011,p_89:Apple&s=price-asc-rank&dc&_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1523949321&fst=as
This one might be "better".
https://www.amazon.com/Apple-13-inch-MacBook-Storage-Refurbished/dp/B07J4H4G8G/ref=sr_1_25_sspa?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1523949321&fst=as
Since you are talking about current machines, I don't think you searched hard enough...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CTHN94Z?aaxitk=z8Q-ceFp7xcm70n3-62QMw&pd_rd_i=B07CTHN94Z&pf_rd_p=e037c154-e093-48a4-b127-477e5e294e3f&hsa_cr_id=6122205950901&sb-ci-n=asinImage&sb-ci-v=https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61t1X5eEaRL.jpg&sb-ci-a=B07CTHN94Z
Many reviews state it outperforms Macbook Pros with similar specs, and costs the same as a Macbook Air. Probably my next machine.
EDIT: By the way, it includes the needed dongle for USB-A, additional USB-C, HDMI and VGA connectivity, at no extra cost. Oh, and still has a functional standard laptop keyboard.
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Not to mention the cost of installing the Office Suite of apps most people will want.
At best you're up for $99 per year. Factor that in over the 3-4 year life cycle of your laptop and it's suddenly not so cheap.
Admittedly Numbers, Pages and Keynote don't offer all the functionality of the Office equivalents but I'd argue most users would get by with using them.
Can't say this enough.
I wouldn't advise anyone to buy a (2016 - onward) Apple laptop until there is a clear redesign that is verifiably more reliable than the idiotic design they are currently using.
From 2018 reviews by Laptop Mag:
2018 MacBook Air: 2,100 MBytes/sec
Surface Laptop 2: 203 MBytes/sec
Doing the division to get a ratio is pretty straightforward.
I know that given a choice, especially with my use cases previously stated, I'll choose an SSD that does sequential reads 10X faster than another, and the benefit is worthwhile.
You might not make that choice, or given your position, might be happy with a spinning hard disk. And that's OK. For you.
Again...for you it doesn't matter. Stay with a HDD, if you care to.
I suspect you believe the super fast M.2 NVMe Samsung SSDs, just doesn't matter, as well. That's OK.
My comment is an extension to my own personal experience. It was not intended to imply any difference to the MacBook Air. You may have inferred that, but it certainly was not implied at all. ie: I haven’t had people ask me what I thought of the MacBook Air. However, I have had three people so far ask me about my thoughts on the Surface Laptop 2.
Umm, reading comprehension time. I wasn't comparing SSD's to HDD's. There is a HUGE difference between an HDD and ANY SSD. My point was always that theres a huge law of diminishing returns when it comes to comparing SSD read/write speeds.
You get more than just apps for that $99/year. 1TB of OneDrive storage as well. What’s the 1 year cost of equivalent iCloud storage?
$9.99 USD a month for 2TB. Apple does not offer a 1TB choice. So, $120 a year to get more cloud storage, but the waters are muddier at this point. You have feature-rich apps on MS Office side, but only half the cloud storage, but it’s $20 cheaper per year.
What’s my point? ... the decision about which to get is not as clear cut as some people make it out to be. There are pro’s and con’s, and when all things are considered, the choices aren’t all that different.
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Ah, resorting to insults, now. Speaks volumes.
Once more, for you a 10X increase in read speeds doesn't matter. For others, it does. Maybe it would be best to speak only for yourself and your computing needs. Rather than everyone else's?
Is your opinion on Samsung's M.2 NVMe SSDs the same? Doesn't matter?