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On the SSD issue, the "most people will not notice it" people miss the point. The point is whether customers are getting what they pay for or know what they are getting.

"Most people" will think they are paying for a better and faster machine. It is a reasonable assumption. Since it's newer they'd expect everything to be the same or better.

Since it's called M2 vs M1, they'd expect the chip to be faster without having other components drag it back down.

"Most people" will not know they are not getting what they pay for. "Most people will not notice it" actually makes it worse. It makes this seem like a form of fraud.
Are you paying for ~2GB+ per second transfers when you order this? Or are you paying for the capacity?
 
Fast charging w 67w would be nice but apple silicon battery life is so good it’s not really a must have like would be if it was implemented in Intel era

Webcam if you use it (I don’t really)

Speakers

Slightly more screen real estate

But yeah
Does it actually have more screen real estate though? It seems like the huge notch and larger than normal menu bar cut into whatever extra space you’d get. 13.3 vs. 13.6 I believe, right?
 
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I have no idea how in 2022 people can only need 256 GB storage. I get not everyone is me, but I've got well over 2TB and that doesn't include any movies.

Sure you can use the cloud, but that can be unrealiable, slow and/or just a PITA, so I'd at least need a NAS and then I'd rather have stuff on my actual laptop. I'd probably want 256 GB or more on my next phone, and that's just a phone! If I'm not using a laptop for more than just a bit of basic web browsing and the like then I wouldn't bother buying a high performance laptop.
 
Does it actually have more screen real estate though? It seems like the huge notch and larger than normal menu bar cut into whatever extra space you’d get. 13.3 vs. 13.6 I believe, right?

yeah, I would think it does since the notch goes into the menu bar

overall real estate still should be more
 

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it's the same **** they pulled with the iPad Air/Pro.

it literally made no sense to buy the 256GB Air when for "only" an extra £150 you get a better camera, processor, more ram, etc.

the pricing is set up to push you to the higher option.

apple is laughing because they now got an extra $200 from someone and that person is like "ya! i'm content"
For most people, they will make this transaction and not even know any of this nor will they care. Am I surprised Apple is making decisions to make itself money? No.

If I remember looking at the quarterly earnings, Apple doesn’t make a ton from their Macs unlike the iPhone and services.

Those of us who do our homework are not really surprised. As an owner of an M1 Max - I still recommend the M1/M2 Airs to family because for what they do that’s all they’ll need/want for a very long time.

Apple does a lot of things right and that’s why a lot of people buy its hardware. Is it a perfect company that puts the customer first? I don’t know of any company that does this anymore.
 
Does it actually have more screen real estate though? It seems like the huge notch and larger than normal menu bar cut into whatever extra space you’d get. 13.3 vs. 13.6 I believe, right?
Same display size for both models if we remove the menu bar area in the new display. The menu bar screen estate in the old display is now "freed up" for other material.
 
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I have no idea how in 2022 people can only need 256 GB storage. I get not everyone is me, but I've got well over 2TB and that doesn't include any movies.

Sure you can use the cloud, but that can be unrealiable, slow and/or just a PITA, so I'd at least need a NAS and then I'd rather have stuff on my actual laptop. I'd probably want 256 GB or more on my next phone, and that's just a phone! If I'm not using a laptop for more than just a bit of basic web browsing and the like then I wouldn't bother buying a high performance laptop.
I’ve personally never used internal storage for anything other than the OS and apps/programs. Everything else is stored externally.
 
I have no idea how in 2022 people can only need 256 GB storage. I get not everyone is me, but I've got well over 2TB and that doesn't include any movies.

Sure you can use the cloud, but that can be unrealiable, slow and/or just a PITA, so I'd at least need a NAS and then I'd rather have stuff on my actual laptop. I'd probably want 256 GB or more on my next phone, and that's just a phone! If I'm not using a laptop for more than just a bit of basic web browsing and the like then I wouldn't bother buying a high performance laptop.
Most of the people I know (and people that I know come to me for tech advice) - use free OneDrive/Google Drive storage and they're good. It's usually us techies that have terabytes of storage that we need to save/keep.

And those on the high end of storage requirements (but not techie level) usually have most of their storage in a photo storage app like Google or iCloud. (I know several couples where their iCloud Storage is 1-1.5TB of iCloud photos of their kids/etc) - optimized storage locally.

Work wise, everything is cloud storage now (O365). IMO we're heading back to thin clients again.
 
For most people, they will make this transaction and not even know any of this nor will they care. Am I surprised Apple is making decisions to make itself money? No.

If I remember looking at the quarterly earnings, Apple doesn’t make a ton from their Macs unlike the iPhone and services.

Those of us who do our homework are not really surprised. As an owner of an M1 Max - I still recommend the M1/M2 Airs to family because for what they do that’s all they’ll need/want for a very long time.

Apple does a lot of things right and that’s why a lot of people buy its hardware. Is it a perfect company that puts the customer first? I don’t know of any company that does this anymore.
Why would you recommend a base model M2 Air over the base model M1 Air? Seems like a waste of $200.

M1 Air + 512 GB SSD or 16 GB RAM for the same price as the M2. Way better value.
 
Why would you recommend a base model M2 Air over the base model M1 Air? Seems like a waste of $200.

M1 Air + 512 GB SSD or 16 GB RAM fur the same price as the M2. Way better value.
Definitely wouldn't recommend a Base M2 Air over an M1 Air. Agreed.

To answer your specific question, it wasn't a base M2 air. If someone asked me if they wanted a base M2 Air, I'd recommend the M1 Air. (The family member in question got a near loaded M2 Air (education discount/etc)).
 
Is anyone making software that will monitor a person’s usage from “normal” to “extreme” over the life of a machine and then provide reports and recommend specs when upgrading based on real world usage data..?

I have always over spec’d my machines hoping that they would last longer.., but now they seem to become obsolete before they become cumbersome. I suppose that would indicate that I no longer benefit from higher spec machines.

My point is that it may be nice to collect some statistics to base purchase decisions on for people who consistently replace their machines every few years.., and aren’t rendering Toy Story 10.
 
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I have no idea how in 2022 people can only need 256 GB storage. I get not everyone is me, but I've got well over 2TB and that doesn't include any movies.

Sure you can use the cloud, but that can be unrealiable, slow and/or just a PITA, so I'd at least need a NAS and then I'd rather have stuff on my actual laptop. I'd probably want 256 GB or more on my next phone, and that's just a phone! If I'm not using a laptop for more than just a bit of basic web browsing and the like then I wouldn't bother buying a high performance laptop.
Honestly? It's an air. (my opinion only) The laptop isnt meant to be a high performance laptop. Its a mobile "task" machine that looks nice and is light. If you are running your video editing business off the back of a base model Air, you chose poorly. If you run your SaaS supported business (O365/web based apps) off this laptop and do some light personal work like tweaking a photo or a short video for your family, you chose well. It is perfectly reasonable to say the machine is not for your use case. In this use case, which it feels like they are selling this to, 256/512 storage is more than enough.
 
Is anyone making software that will monitor a person’s usage from “normal” to “extreme” over the life of a machine and then provide reports and recommend specs when upgrading based on real world usage data..?

I have always over spec’d my machines hoping that they would last longer.., but now they seem to become obsolete before they become cumbersome. I suppose that would indicate that I no longer benefit from higher spec machines.

My point is that it may be nice to collect some statistics to base purchase decisions on for people who consistently replace their machines every few years.., and aren’t rendering Toy Story 10.
Yeah, I would love to see whether it's better to buy close-to-base models every 2-3 years or future-proof for the next 10 years.
 
Still waiting for the day Apple makes 512GB/16GB standard.
256 8 has been the starting config for like a decade now.
Far from a decade.

MB Air had 128/8 as base config as recently as 2019, and only the last Intel model released in March 2020 (so only 2 years and 4 months ago) got 8/256 as base config. RAM for base model was bumped from 4 to 8 only in 2016.

Even 13" MB Pro base model was bumped from 128/8 to 256/8 only in late 2016, so less than 6 years ago.
 
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