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There is no need to because most users don't care about those things, they just want a machine that works and will last for a while; there is no controversy regarding those things. As long as it gets mail, surfs the web, and does light document work well, they have a machine that meets their needs at a price they can afford. They'll never really need to upgrade their machines so more memory and a higher price is a worse value proposition.

Spot-on. You nailed it for millions of happy Apple customers whose computing needs are light or modest.

Not everyone needs a computer to find the next prime number or decrypt secret military communications from hostile foreign countries. :)
 
Ok, great. Now MR posters can finally stop complaining about this minuscule issue.

Now, onto the last “minor” complaint - 8 GB as the entry level RAM configuration.
At least there is a silver lining to this. Keeping the base chip at 8gb puts more pressure on devs, both Apple’s and third party, to optimize for less ram usage, which benefits those of us who spec up our machines. All of our 16gb+ macs run better as a result of them holding the line at 8gb for so long 🤗
 
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These minimum specs would be ok for a starting price of 799,-. Imagine if it was always at this price and they made RAM and SSD upgrades in 100,- steps instead of 200,-. The Mac sales would skyrocket, edu market, grandma and prosumers alike would all be happy and get a new laptop with their desired specs. Also what happened to displayoptions like in the good old days? Why not give it an option for matte or 120hz screen?
Sales would go up and profits would go down. Companies care more about profits. Successful large companies have a small army of people calculating what is known in economics as price elasticity and determining what combination of features and pricing optimize profitability. So, in short, grandma can keep using what she's using and Apple will make more money.

Besides...grandma will probably be dead soon anyway. Funerals and coffins are expensive. Grammy should save her money for things that count, not sending memes to her grandkids on a new M3.
 
Besides...grandma will probably be dead soon anyway. Funerals and coffins are expensive. Grammy should save her money for things that count, not sending memes to her grandkids on a new M3.

Grandma won't care how much her coffin costs. What affects her now is how long everything takes to get done on a $500 Dell, and how the battery is dead because she forgot to charge it daily. She absolutely should make her remaining time as joyous as possible by upgrading to a new M3.
 
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Grandma won't care how much her coffin costs. What affects her now is how long everything takes to get done on a $500 Dell, and how the battery is dead because she forgot to charge it daily. She absolutely should make her remaining time as joyous as possible by upgrading to a new M3.
Where do you think Grandma is going with a laptop? And especially where she cares about battery life?

Grandma usually says "I don't need your dang whippersnapper technology" and is happy with her i3 8GB Mac. In fact, lots of people much younger than Grandma on here talk about how those machines are still serving their purposes.
 
Where do you think Grandma is going with a laptop? And especially where she cares about battery life?

Grandma usually says "I don't need your dang whippersnapper technology" and is happy with her i3 8GB Mac. In fact, lots of people much younger than Grandma on here talk about how those machines are still serving their purposes.
Grandpa on my side was always ordering the latest gadgets. Grandma on wife's side was absolutely thrilled when we swapped her Dell with a MacBook (a few months prior to M1, d'oh!). She'll take it with her when she travels to Europe next month, likely along with her iPad which she loves a lot. She also loves her Kindle.

There's no reason for Grandmas to be luddites.
 
Grandpa on my side was always ordering the latest gadgets. Grandma on wife's side was absolutely thrilled when we swapped her Dell with a MacBook (a few months prior to M1, d'oh!). She'll take it with her when she travels to Europe next month, likely along with her iPad which she loves a lot. She also loves her Kindle.

There's no reason for Grandmas to be luddites.
Grandmas are usually luddites as-is.

I gift my parents in their 70s a lot of new tech stuff. It goes mostly unappreciated.

I suspect my old folks are more common than yours.

Still, that's beside the point. Apple isn't going to change its pricing because of Grandma. So most Grandmas can continue to deal with those beat-up Dells you all mentioned, like it or not!
 
These video thumbnails nowadays are way too cringey and full of clickbait.
IMG_6261.jpeg

What exactly is cringe-y or clickbait-y about this?

Guy excitedly points to laptop internals implying tear down. Words say Apple listened.

Both seem to be on-topic for the content of the video assuming it matches the summary provided here by Macrumors.
 
What exactly is cringe-y or clickbait-y about this?

Guy excitedly points to laptop internals implying tear down...

That. Guy pointing excitedly at laptop internals is not normal. It's a cringey thumbnail. Nobody would act like that normally.

Words say Apple listened.

And that. Title could be: Entry Level M3 MacBook Air has faster SSD. Something to tell you what you're about to watch. But nope. Apple listened. You need to click to find out what the video is even about. That's click-bait. It's not the most horrible form of clickbait, but it's still clickbait.

I'm not the original poster of the comment, and this is far from the worst cringey-clickbait-y thing on Youtube, but it is what it is.
 
View attachment 2358531
What exactly is cringe-y or clickbait-y about this?

Guy excitedly points to laptop internals implying tear down. Words say Apple listened.

Both seem to be on-topic for the content of the video assuming it matches the summary provided here by Macrumors.
The fact that anyone can get so "woo-hoo" excited for Apple putting in 2 NAND Chips. In the video (first click bait channel from Max Tech that I have watched forever), he almost claims that it was because of them.

Who seriously cares about benchmarking SSD for internal any more. It makes next to no difference to anyone. How many people actually suffered with the M2 MacBook Airs? None, zero, zilch.

It will also be the last Max Tech video I will probably ever watch.
 
No, I don't need more. I have 256Gb today with 105 Gb free, and I am even using a Windows virtual machine (38Gb in size).

My data is stored in the cloud and I only need a small subset stored locally.
Wow, defending 256GB, don’t try anynof the following; pro video or photo editing, music production, gaming or animation and you’ll be fine. Also that VM is likely at the minimum size, may want to up the space … but wait you will start to run out of space.
 
Wow, defending 256GB, don’t try anynof the following; pro video or photo editing, music production, gaming or animation and you’ll be fine. Also that VM is likely at the minimum size, may want to up the space … but wait you will start to run out of space.
That's the whole point. If I need more ram or storage, then I will get a device with more ram and more storage. It's not as though options (like the MBPs) with better specs don't exist.
 
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Wow, defending 256GB, don’t try anynof the following; pro video or photo editing, music production, gaming or animation and you’ll be fine. Also that VM is likely at the minimum size, may want to up the space … but wait you will start to run out of space.

lol at doing all that on a base Air. Thankfully you don’t have to.
 
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My point … even if you pick ONE of these within a year or two you will regret getting the 256GB model - and I blame Apple, most users don’t do the math. First off after formatting you are down to 247, Mac OS uses ~20GB (today’s size, later version will undoubtedly need more) plus ~48GB or more is reserved for system data - you also want additional swap file room for those that get the paltry 8GB RAM models — a discussion in itself. BASIC ‘productivity’ apps could use an additional ~60GB. You now have used 119GB, about half the storage on ‘day 1’ … with zero documents. Load up Adobe creative suite apps, or two modern game apps (resident evil game alone =65GB) or create a couple of 4k videos, or garage band with the 50GB of instrument files, and your ‘newish’ machine is getting close to running out of space. Remember you want the apps on the Internal hard drive, not a much slower external SSD, some apps actually require it. Or you completely ‘Grandma’ it and use your new expensive Mac to solely surf the web and check email (get a Chromebook) … but I assume this forum is for users that do more than that.
 
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My point … even if you pick ONE of these within a year or two you will regret getting the 256GB model - and I blame Apple, most users don’t do the math. First off after formatting you are down to 247, Mac OS uses ~20GB (today’s size, later version will undoubtedly need more) plus ~48GB or more is reserved for system data - you also want additional swap file room for those that get the paltry 8GB RAM models — a discussion in itself. BASIC ‘productivity’ apps could use an additional ~60GB. You now have used 119GB, about half the storage on ‘day 1’ … with zero documents. Load up Adobe creative suite apps, or two modern game apps (resident evil game alone =65GB) or create a couple of 4k videos, or garage band with the 50GB of instrument files, and your ‘newish’ machine is getting close to running out of space. Remember you want the apps on the Internal hard drive, not a much slower external SSD, some apps actually require it. Or you completely ‘Grandma’ it and use your new expensive Mac to solely surf the web and check email (get a Chromebook) … but I assume this forum is for users that do more than that.


All good points. But the average user base is not equal to a typical forum member. Most people are just "grandma'ing it and doing casual use with the occasional productivity app. For those that do more than that, other options exist.

My previous Pro was 8/256 and I did not doing any gaming but I did do some basic video and GarageBand. It was "fine", but when I bought a new laptop I went larger. All the same, for the majority...

And again, I think users have a responsibility to purchase the device that is right for them. I'm not at all sympathetic to someone who buys 8/256 and then wants to run 4 x VMs concurrently.
 
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