Deals: Amazon Takes Up to $150 Off M2 MacBook Air Models in Latest Sales

[DidAppleGetLucky]

These are all points and well taken. I agree that more RAM and more SSD space for that matter can help you run a machine for many years if you can tolerate the fact that the machine will age out with it's CPU. I would never discourage anyone from buying a higher spec machine if their budget permitted.

I used to do the same upgrades back in the day. I always bought today's RAM and HDD, knowing that I could upgrade for tomorrow's needs later on. But the fact is that for me, more RAM never really felt like an upgrade for a 5+ year old machine. It just went from slow to kind of slow i.e. it ran better, but not really faster.

I suppose I've gotten fatigued with all the negativity around "the base M2 Air" with it's "lack of RAM" and "Slow SSD". It's a great laptop. It holds it's own against my M1 Pro, so it irks me when folks that don't have one, talk about it's poor performance. My experience is just the opposite.

I have to respectfully disagree. I've had lots of Macs through the years. And I have many friends with them who don't use their Macs for anything particularly tough. Myself and others I know don't change up their computers very often. The need to upgrade is often driven by the Mac "running slow" as opposed to either some other part failing or some use case that only a more modern computer will solve. In the past, I would often tell friends to upgrade their RAM. Sometimes I'd do it for them. And I've also upgraded the RAM on my own Macs through the years (including recently on my 2018 mini, which I took from 8gb to 32gb). This invariably got the Mac to run faster to the point where it was acceptable and then happily used for several additional years.

This issue isn't about running today's software, it is running Apple's Mac OS that comes out four, five or even six years after the Mac in question was introduced. But since we can't do RAM upgrades, the advice I give and which I think is the right advice is to buy upgraded/more RAM now. The result will likely be several additional years of use out of the Mac. Alternatively it may be significantly better resale value as the person buying it at that time will pay more for those expected serval additional years of use. Looking at all of Apples M laptops, my advice is to spend the $200 and get it with the RAM at 16gb. I think that will result in slightly better performance now for most users from time to time and, much more importantly, dramatically better performance at some point several years from now. If the future of Mac OS and other software is like the last ten years, there will be a point in time in the future where the 8gb M1 and M2 Macs are basically unusable (or slow the point of being unpleasant to use), but the 16gb M1 and M2 Macs are still fully functional for many day to day uses.

Isn't it so that future macOS releases only work based on the model year? Apple needs to support a future macOS based on the CPU and RAM of the base model they sold in 20xx regardless of how much users upgraded it with options ...

 

[TallManNY]

These are all good points and well taken. I agree that more RAM and more SSD space for that matter can help you run a machine for many years if you can tolerate the fact that the machine will age out with it's CPU. I would never discourage anyone from buying a higher spec machine if their budget permitted.

I used to do the same upgrades back in the day. I always bought today's RAM and HDD, knowing that I could upgrade for tomorrow's needs later on. But the fact is that for me, more RAM never really felt like an upgrade for a 5+ year old machine. It just went from slow to kind of slow i.e. it ran better, but not really faster.

I suppose I've gotten fatigued with all the negativity around "the base M2 Air" with it's "lack of RAM" and "Slow SSD". It's a great laptop. It holds it's own against my M1 Pro, so it irks me when folks that don't have one, talk about it's poor performance. My experience is just the opposite.

Oh, I’m with you on the frustration with the attack on M2 Air. I’d recommend the M2 Air to nearly anyone but with the 16gb of RAM. The slow SSD is a nearly made up issue but could come into play if you don’t have the RAM and you are doing a lot of disk swapping. Which brings one back to recommending the 16gb of RAM.

 

[TallManNY]

Isn't it so that future macOS releases only work based on the model year? Apple needs to support a future macOS based on the CPU and RAM of the base model they sold in 20xx regardless of how much users upgraded it with options ...

No, future Mac OS work on very old Macs. And Apple will not spend efforts optimizing for very old Macs on base level specs to use current software. So what has happened is eventually the user uploads an OS update and it tanks the performance of their machine. And the reason is usually lack of RAM.

 

[DSTOFEL]

Amazon would be the last place I’d buy a Mac from.

Why? If you buy from Amazon as the “seller” they are an Apple authorized dealer. What’s the problem?

 

[DSTOFEL]

…..Right now the only way to get higher RAM amounts is through build-to-order from Apple directly; if you'd rather buy from a place like Amazon, Best Buy, or another third party (and take advantage sale savings or use an existing store financing promotion) then you're stuck with the base RAM configuration.

There is one place I’ve found “MicroCenter” (an Apple authorized dealer) that sells the M2 16GB configurations….but, I haven’t seen that config. on sale. Maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas deals we’ll see a discount. I agree with what many are saying on this thread that 8GB ram is fine for anyone doing general computing stuff…..probably a large majority of people. Still, I‘d prefer to buy 16gb….less potential hiccups with future OS and apps and better resale. But man….with no discounts, it’s tough to make a value proposition for the higher spec’d M2’s unless someone really values the design of the M2 (thinness, weight, etc..).