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Base Model MacBook Air With M2 Chip Has Slower SSD Speeds in Benchmarks
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I ordered a 24GB MBA M2 with 1TB SSD so I could have 8GB for any VMs I might want to run and still have 16GB for the MBA M2 side of things.
Aside from paying through the nose, did I TIFU?
The M1 MBA isn't going to be around forever..... I bet come Sept it will be discontinued. The the M2 Base 256 will be the entry level machine. Entry level isn't going to be the best performer. Never has been. People are acting like this is a huge deal.... It's not for professional use.
Whataboutisms are a clear indicator that something is wrong. You aren’t going to get a direct response when you had to make that kind of leap to justify what Apple has done here.
You being upset and dismissing these complaints as ‘bitching’ doesn’t invalidate the criticism. Reviewers have a job to do, consumers should be critical to question dumb decisions Apple has made over the years.
The M2 Pro 256GB model is obviously for people who think they are Pros, but aren’t.
Doesn’t make sense? I know.
Apple uses Pro as a marketing term… but it definitely has Pro models that fit the claim
The machine is a better machine than the last cycle even with one 256GB chip. There are a handful of stress tests that showed slower performance, but for the most part, this machine is faster, especially concerning graphics, which increased by 35-40%. Anyone buying a 256GB machine isn't a performance user, while most of the people complaining here probably wouldn't settle for less than 1TB with or without this issue. Everyone who comments that the base should have been 512GB is an example of someone who would never have bought a 256GB machine in the first place. They just want more storage for free so their upgrade to 1-2TB would cost less.
But the average person who wouldn't know a RAM chip from a CPU thinks 256GB is too much storage or is just fine. My wife, for instance, would have been happy with a 128GB version (I think she uses 50-60GB, mostly email and documents) and would never have noticed a slowdown of any kind since she doesn't do anything stressful enough to manifest any slowdowns.
The problem with FUD, as pushed by MaxTech and others, is that the impressions seems to be that the 256GB M2 machine is slower in every way than the M1 version, when it's mostly false. The M2 machines are mostly faster, except in a handful of cases. Meanwhile no one notices the 512GB version and above beats the pants off of just about any machine in its class. But I doubt people who buy 256GB versions would have noticed the boost in performance with 512GB any more than they'd notice any slowdowns. This is probably why Apple decided to do this only with the lowest base model. If they couldn't get their hands on 128GB chips in enough quantity to meet ship dates, they compromised by not pushing it back by months by using the more plentiful 256GB chips they were able to get. Remember there was that disaster at the two Western Digital factories in February that ended up destroying trillions of gigabytes worth of flash storage. Think that might have had some impact? Even if Apple didn't buy from them (we don't know), it influences the total supply in the market. With Apple's volumes, they usually require a lot more than most.
Or get a Samsung. They have a reputation for cheesing benchmarks and getting banned. S22's anyone?
Cinebench is designed to stress the machine to its limits. Most users aren't going to do anything close to pushing the machine to their limits even if they were photo and video editors. Take a look at your usage. If you tend to stress your machines that much, I'd suggest an M1 Pro MBP 14". You'd be looking in the wrong class of machines because you should always provide yourself with some overhead.
If it were a cost cutting measure (unlikely since two chips are usually cheaper than one), then why didn't Apple do it on any of the other machines? Why do the 512-2TB machines have two chips? Nobody's ever answered that question. Could it be... lack of supply? Also, if it were done purposefully to push people to upgrade, why are base machines so easy to get while upgrades have a 6-12 week delay? It's a stupid way to push upgrades if none of them are available. The simplest solution is the likeliest. They couldn't get enough 128GB chips.
Exactly.
Steve and Tim clearly do a lot of things very differently.
The one thing they don’t do differently is trying, by any means possible, to get as much money from your wallet as they can.
I don’t think so. I think it’ll be around until Apple can lower the price of the M2 down to $999.
They have absolutely no reason to discontinue it, and it’s not like they haven’t kept around old products for long after they’ve been replaced before.
Looking at you 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro, which somehow stuck around till 2016.
and Apple Watch Series 3 and Apple TV HD which somehow still exist
Being the CEO of a publicly traded company kinda requires that.
Ummm yes. If the user doesn’t notice a problem it’s not a problem.
Since I got fast PC laptop earlier this year it cooled my need for new MacBook but still anticipate release of M2 Mac Mini later this year. I hope by that time there won’t be issue with NAND chip supply or they release 512MB as base model. But it would probably bother users who purchased base portables for higher price with less flash storage even though they get a lot more for their $ than just computing.
I'll bite -- I do think it's fairly unattractive
If I had one, I'd keep it under my desk anyhow...but ... you asked
I think it looks good, I have it on my desk and am not ashamed of the appearance
All is in the eye of the beholder. What you may like another does not. That is life. No need to convince each other about something inconvincible. There is no arguing about taste.
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I don't recall saying anything about someone else's opinion or trying to convince them of anything.
The critics should be ashamed of themselves for constantly trying to stir up drama where none existed in the first place. The supposed “issues” with overheating and slower SSDs are just that - drama. The M2 MBA is faster and users will not notice the slower storage in normal everyday usage.