As a teacher, I work mostly with documents and still have over 100 gb free on my 256 gb M1 MBA. I do have some files stored on an external Samsung T5 drive, but by and large, I simply don’t have that much stuff to keep around.
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Base Model MacBook Air With M2 Chip Has Slower SSD Speeds in Benchmarks
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I guess it also speaks to the general lack of Apple-related controversies of late that posts like this and the iPhone 7 not getting iOS 16 are able to garner as much attention as they did.
I guess this is also in part the beauty of a capitalistic society. The customer votes with their wallet, but instead of 1 vote per person, it’s one vote per dollar, and enough people vote in this manner to make Apple insanely successful despite its small market share and the sheer amount of criticism and vitriol levelled its way.
Beg to differ. This is the base model with paltry 8GB of RAM, so swapping will occur more often than not. The slower SSD will affect users.
It's a win for Apple though. Users of the base model might notice the slowdowns later and might be nudged to upgrade to a newer MacBook Air sooner than they would've.
It reminds me of Apple sticking 5400rpm drives for the preconfigured models of iMacs. Intentionally putting a bottleneck so people would feel the slowdown later and think of upgrading sooner.
Don’t forget the Stage Manager controversy. A lot of the same people here saying that it is unacceptable for Apple to use flash that runs at 1500Mbps were also crying and complaining Apple didn’t put Stage Manager on their older iPad Pros that run 500Mbps flash. Obviously Apple was lying about those iPads being too slow to run SM while at the same time complaining that flash that runs at least 3x faster than their iPads are horrible machines that should never exist.
The 2021 M1 iPad Pros have flash that runs at pretty much the same speeds as in these M2 Macs.
In the end, it's a win win for Apple
- people buying the base model might feel the need to upgrade sooner in a few years. Win for Apple.
- knowledgeable customers like people here would at least get 512GB models. Win for Apple in upselling
- people BTO to 16/512 models with extended ship date might simply get the base 14" MacBook Pro instead, another win for Apple
It's a business strategy. Apple will break revenue records again.
It's intentional. Remember how Apple states that they don't release stage manager on older ipads because it didn't meet their level of satisfaction. Thus this reduced performance of the base model of M2 MacBooks are within Apple level of satisfaction, deliberate and intentional. It's a win win strategy. Unknowing consumers will buy this and feel their machine slowing down sooner in the future, nudging them to upgrade. Knowledgeable consumers would buy the more expensive 512GB model, more money for Apple. Those who BTO 16/512 might be pushed to just get the readily available base 14" MacBook pro. Another win for Apple
In the end, only thing Apple cares about is you giving them more money than you had planned. Upsize your happy meal .
It's one thing if Apple was transparent and honest about it, and disclose the performance discrepancy so consumers can have an educated buying decision.
But no, they just denied it and claimed they had done nothing wrong, despite their own performance claims were misleading.
Imagine when you buy shampoo, there's a small and large bottle of the same brand. You would expect that they have the same content, only differ in volume size. But apparently the smaller bottle shampoo uses inferior ingredients than the larger one despite bearing the same brand, and the company refuses to disclose the differences. It's misleading.
Apparently you don't even understand what the issue is. Apple didn't put a slower SSD in, they simply put a single-chip (channel) SSD in where the previous generation had two 128G chips (dual-channel).
It's actually a great business strategy.
The negative publicity only occurs for geeks like us, and thus we will buy at least the 512GB model whether we need it or not simply because we want the optimal perfomance. Apple wins by upselling us to the more expensive model.
The goal is to upsell and gain more profit, not to give great experience to users. It's the new vision of Tim's Apple
Apple should at least acknowledge the performance differences when on the ordering screen instead of concealing it with a gotcha. 
Apple would never say supply constraint in this context because there is no supply constraint for NAND chips. They are even going down in price. If Apple made that statements, shareholders would question Tim Cook's capability.
Tests already showed significant impact on performance and responsiveness on simple multitasking. The issue would only be fine on people only opening 1 app at a time. Might as well get an ipad then.
Just ignore base models. But for milions of people 200$ less is more important.
Why should Apple be transparent when so many people are already defending Apple? Apple only cares for one thing, getting more profit. This expose is actually beneficial for Apple as those who knows will be getting the more expensive 512GB model, or even just get the 14" MacBook Pro. Either way, Apple gets more money.
Because realistically there is no "issue". The general consumer doesn't care or need to know how many SSD chips are in their computers, it's only a thing that tech enthusiasts care about. The idea that Apple (or ANY company) would disclose something like this is laughable, and that's assuming it actually translates to real world performance.
People say this is about Apple "defenders", except it's not - this is capitalism.
LOL what? Consumers doesn't need to know what they are buying? You should apply for Apple marketing job, perfect fit.
Following your logic they can just buy the cheaper and still almost identically cappable M1 Air, no need to spend more on this skimped one unless you have a hard boner for the midnight colour.
The amount of mental gymnastics some of you guys do to justify Apple screwing the customer is hilarious.
Rule #1 seems to be: "Whatever Apple does is correct"
Wow, so many people on here defending a trillion dollar company whose CEO makes $100 million a year.
And their main reason, customer won't notice. (Well actually many would but that's beside the point.)
It's called deceiving your customers. And people are happy with that? Sadly, many clearly are.
And their main reason, customer won't notice. (Well actually many would but that's beside the point.)
It's called deceiving your customers. And people are happy with that? Sadly, many clearly are.
If Apple had stated speeds specifically about the 256 and promised that speed but delivered otherwise, that would be deceiving. Apple hasn't deceived anyone. What they did was tick off forum tech heads who have nothing better to do but complain about something they weren't gong to buy in the first place.
The exact configuration of the SSD architecture is not something most consumers care about - you're looking at it from an enthusiast perspective. It's like asking most iPhone users how many megapixels are in the camera, most have absolutely no idea, and don't care - they just want something that works and does what they need it to do.
I worked in retail selling Apple products, and I was often trying to convince customers to buy a Mac product that was good for their needs, but they would frequently buy a more expensive model that was way overpowered or unsuitable for their needs - they just wanted what looked cool or is perceived as the "latest and greatest".
I often recommend Windows computers to people I know, because Macs are not going to suit their needs, so it has nothing to do with Apple marketing - it's understanding the user base and the realities of business.
How much Cook makes is important how?
Your average customer won't notice. Your average customer doesn't ask how fast the CPU, Memory or SSD is.
"Deceiving your customers"? Did Apple specify the SSD speed somewhere that I missed reading it? You can't be deceived if you weren't told in the first place.