Deals: Apple's 15-Inch MacBook Air Hits New Record Low Prices at $200 Off, Available From $1,099

[Aston441]

I mean, I guess I'm glad they're not charging for updates in the sense that I don't have to pay every year for them. I probably would update much less frequently if they did. But if it were for extended support, it would make sense. I think a lot of people would prefer that over having to use OpenCore to get it working.

Oh definitely, I would ProMaxUltra prefer an official, paid upgrade path. That's what I used to do. I gladly paid Apple for system upgrades, as was normal then. It's great that OCLP exists, it allowed me to save my old MBA. But it still has a few unresolvable glitches that I'd immediately, like right this second, pay Apple to officially resolve.

 

[shamino]

8GB of Ram should be useable just like the day you bought it. If you like how it performs today, then it is going to perform the same way going forward if you stay on the MacOS shipped. The fact that banking, YouTube will stop working without software update is a little bit another side of the story, which one needs to account for when wanting the 10 year span.

That last set of caveats is critical. If I could run my life using the same software I was running 10 years ago, that would be great. And I could definitely do so for my personal documents.

But I want to browse web sites and run other Internet-enabled software (including key parts of macOS itself), which needs to be kept up to date for security reasons. And these upgrades often increase the system requirements. If I buy an over-speced system today, then I can get more years out of the computer as these upgrades happen. If I buy the minimum system today, then those mandatory upgrades are going to kill my system performance in a few years and I'll need to buy a new computer sooner than otherwise necessary.

Spending an extra $200 now in order to defer a future $1000+ purchase by a few years makes a lot of sense to me.

Who should spring for 16 GB? Those who want more "future proofing", being able to run bigger/more things at once, and heavier video gamers?

See above. This future proofing is real. As is gaming. Most popular titles these days require some pretty hefty amounts of RAM and GPU capabilities.

Since I can't swap a GPU or add RAM the way I can on a desktop PC, if I want to have a good gaming experience for more than 1-2 years, I need to max-out the RAM and number of CPU/GPU cores up front.

 

[allseeingi’s]

That last set of caveats is critical. If I could run my life using the same software I was running 10 years ago, that would be great. And I could definitely do so for my personal documents.

But I want to browse web sites and run other Internet-enabled software (including key parts of macOS itself), which needs to be kept up to date for security reasons. And these upgrades often increase the system requirements. If I buy an over-speced system today, then I can get more years out of the computer as these upgrades happen. If I buy the minimum system today, then those mandatory upgrades are going to kill my system performance in a few years and I'll need to buy a new computer sooner than otherwise necessary.

Spending an extra $200 now in order to defer a future $1000+ purchase by a few years makes a lot of sense to me.



See above. This future proofing is real. As is gaming. Most popular titles these days require some pretty hefty amounts of RAM and GPU capabilities.

Since I can't swap a GPU or add RAM the way I can on a desktop PC, if I want to have a good gaming experience for more than 1-2 years, I need to max-out the RAM and number of CPU/GPU cores up front.

I’d certainly rather spend more for longevity .