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Deals: M1 MacBook Air Drops to $899.99 on Amazon ($99 Off)

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Apple's 2020 M1 MacBook Air (256GB) has hit $899.99 on Amazon this week, down from $999.00. This deal is available in both Silver and Gold color options, and both are sold directly by Amazon.

macbook-air-m1-unboxing-feature.jpg
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We've seen this computer drop down to a lower price in past sales, but this is still a solid second-best price on the MacBook Air. The Silver color option has faster shipping estimates, targeted for around May 30 for most places in the United States.



Keep up with all of this week's best discounts on Apple products and related accessories in our dedicated Apple Deals roundup.

Article Link: Deals: M1 MacBook Air Drops to $899.99 on Amazon ($99 Off)
 
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https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/25/deals-m1-macbook-air-drops/
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That spec seems like it would only work for a narrow band of users that basically don’t store data locally. 256GB is not much.
 
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planteater said:
That spec seems like it would only work for a narrow band of users that basically don’t store data locally. 256GB is not much.
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I have several 256GB MacBooks, and my wife uses one daily.

With iCloud and/or OneDrive, etc., it's not an issue. I don't edit videos, it's hard to accumulate >100GB of office docs and similar. Even if I had >200GB of photos videos, the average user doesn't need all of them available all the time.

In other words, if you give most (not narrow band) users (who are looking at computers in this price point), they'd have to work fairly hard to fill up 200GB. Unless they were morally opposed to cloud and/or external backups.
 
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reyesmac said:
It would totally be worth it if it was the 16gb ram 512gb model. But then Apple couldnt make an extra $400 off you if they did that. I wonder when 16gb will be the minimum ram size for systems under $1,000? 5 years from now, 10?
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If/when we get to 16GB RAM minimum, it probably won't give you any more 'breathing room" than 8GB does, today. It's like having 4GB, 15 years ago. The OS, workflows and associated hardware meant 4GB was fine for most people back then.
 
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yabeweb said:
If you know what you are buying why not?
Sure there will be an M2 coming, we do not know when and at what price. so if you need a computer now, this is a pretty useful computer (huge battery life) and you can have a deal on it.

So unless you MUST have the latest and can wait, it the price fits the bill..
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It's an okay price, but the reality is that this is almost two year old tech. I'd want to be saving considerably more than 10% to make it a worthwhile purchase.
 
The specs are fine for the money and target user but I’m still waiting for the redesigned screen.
 
yabeweb said:
If you know what you are buying why not?
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I took "Don't do it!" as it's not that great of a deal.

MicroCenter (if you have one near you) currently has it for $879.99. Maybe get Best Buy (currently $899.99) to price match them?

Costco routinely sells it for $849.99, though it's not on sale right now.

Then there's the fact that Apple may likely launch their Back-to-School promo around mid June (2020's promo was announced on June 15; 2021's promo was announced on June 17).

So if you can wait...
 
This 'sale' is at same price as 1.5 years ago. How's this a deal? I love my M1 MBA, but it's not a good deal.
 
Not a bad price, though my Intel based MB Pro is running like a champ. Could be a great fit for a college student.
 
Tempted. I think I will hold out, though, as I still think 16GB is worth the extra cost. Also, we’re so close to WWDC that if Apple does introduce an M2 Air the prices may go even lower.
 
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M1 Air is still amazing, even with 8gb, I'm doing web development just fine with it and I also have several Adobe and Affinity apps installed along with everything that I need to work with and I still have 70gb free, anything too big I store on my external drive or iCloud Drive.

People expecting a new MacBook model at WWDC are up to disappointment. Apple may reveal the M2 processor but that still unlikely, I don't think the new MacBook Air will be revealed until November. I doubt Apple will release any new Mac running Monterey at this point. The M2 MacBooks will run on the next macOS version only.
 
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BeatCrazy said:
I have several 256GB MacBooks, and my wife uses one daily.

With iCloud and/or OneDrive, etc., it's not an issue. I don't edit videos, it's hard to accumulate >100GB of office docs and similar. Even if I had >200GB of photos videos, the average user doesn't need all of them available all the time.

In other words, if you give most (not narrow band) users (who are looking at computers in this price point), they'd have to work fairly hard to fill up 200GB. Unless they were morally opposed to cloud and/or external backups.
Click to expand...
me and my wife don't edit videos, but one backup from iphone basically filled up her storage, using cloud to do a large backup takes half a day, when you're in a pinch, local storage is always the best, although icloud is an option, its not the best option. i bet alot of folks would prefer local storage vs cloud. point being, 256 and 8gb ram is a joke in 2022, its almost a crime to match this amazing m1 to such limited resource in the base mba. but ofcourse this is apple, they are always behind the curve when comes to increase base storage and ram.
 
evertjr said:
People expecting a new MacBook model at WWDC are up to disappointment. Apple may reveal the M2 processor but that still unlikely, I don't think the new MacBook Air will be revealed until November. I doubt Apple will release any new Mac running Monterey at this point. The M2 MacBooks will run on the next macOS version only.
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I tend to think this as well. However, if Apple were to introduce the M2, I would expect them to do so at WWDC, their tech heavy event. My bet would be next year to let the current M1 have a year on its own. But the noise surrounding M2 is quite high, so its possible we’ll see it this year. I also think a new Air is possible, and that a new Air on M1 could be in the works.
 
BeatCrazy said:
I have several 256GB MacBooks, and my wife uses one daily.

With iCloud and/or OneDrive, etc., it's not an issue. I don't edit videos, it's hard to accumulate >100GB of office docs and similar. Even if I had >200GB of photos videos, the average user doesn't need all of them available all the time.

In other words, if you give most (not narrow band) users (who are looking at computers in this price point), they'd have to work fairly hard to fill up 200GB. Unless they were morally opposed to cloud and/or external backups.
Click to expand...

I generally agree but Apple still has a model where the cloud is just a copy of stuff on a device somewhere. It seems at least one device has to have your entire iCloud Photo library. Apple makes too much premium from storage. It seems like macOS generally requires less storage than Windows due to more efficient design, but it's also easy to accidentally use a lot of local storage.
 
BeatCrazy said:
I have several 256GB MacBooks, and my wife uses one daily.

With iCloud and/or OneDrive, etc., it's not an issue. I don't edit videos, it's hard to accumulate >100GB of office docs and similar. Even if I had >200GB of photos videos, the average user doesn't need all of them available all the time.

In other words, if you give most (not narrow band) users (who are looking at computers in this price point), they'd have to work fairly hard to fill up 200GB. Unless they were morally opposed to cloud and/or external backups.
Click to expand...
Agreed. My middle schooler has 512GB MacBook Air and with iCloud, he's using only about 128GB storage.

If your workflow calls for more storage, such as creative work, software development, Windows or Linux virtualization, need to install many large apps, and/or want to store all your photos, video, or music locally, you should get 512GB or larger storage.

But if you rely on cloud storage and streaming services, 256GB could be enough.

Having said that, I still personally prefer to get 512GB or larger storage.
 
My M1 MBA is my favorite Apple computer that I've owned but no way would I get the base model. The pure minimum anyone should be looking for in an Air should be 512/16 and those can be had for a good price if you know where to look.
 
evertjr said:
People expecting a new MacBook model at WWDC are up to disappointment. Apple may reveal the M2 processor but that still unlikely, I don't think the new MacBook Air will be revealed until November. I doubt Apple will release any new Mac running Monterey at this point. The M2 MacBooks will run on the next macOS version only.
Click to expand...

Maybe. If I were going to place a bet I'd say that we'll get a pre-announcement of the new Mac Pro (but no release until Q4) and nothing else - nobody here knows - and the rumors for the last event were all over the place showing that even the analysts were guessing...

Bottom line is that the MBA is now 18 months old and we're only 2 weeks away from a major annual Apple media event at which Apple has been known to launch hardware (and remember the WWDC keynote speech has always been primarily a media event - whoever the rest of the conference may be for).

So, no, unless you have an urgent need and can't wait two weeks, now is not the optimum time to buy a MBA, mini or 13" MBP if you're at all concerned about having the very latest kit.

Of course, the flip side of that is that these models are now tried and tested - so if you're not worried about getting sand kicked in your face because you don't have the latest model in 3 months time, by all means take advantage of the discounts. A little bird tells me that Apple probably won't be lowering prices at WWDC.
 
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miq said:
It's an okay price, but the reality is that this is almost two year old tech.
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Two year old tech that just went into the current Mac Studio a couple of months ago.

My M1 MacBook Air (1.5 years old) and Mac Studio (2 months old) both have exactly the same single-core performance. The only time I (subjectively) notice a performance difference is when doing long-running video/photo tasks.
 
CarAnalogy said:
I generally agree but Apple still has a model where the cloud is just a copy of stuff on a device somewhere. It seems at least one device has to have your entire iCloud Photo library. Apple makes too much premium from storage. It seems like macOS generally requires less storage than Windows due to more efficient design, but it's also easy to accidentally use a lot of local storage.
Click to expand...
"Store in iCloud" is a feature on every iCloud-enabled Mac, where you don't have to have your entire photo library on a single device in order to offload it to the cloud.
 
ilikewhey said:
me and my wife don't edit videos, but one backup from iphone basically filled up her storage, using cloud to do a large backup takes half a day, when you're in a pinch, local storage is always the best, although icloud is an option, its not the best option. i bet alot of folks would prefer local storage vs cloud. point being, 256 and 8gb ram is a joke in 2022, its almost a crime to match this amazing m1 to such limited resource in the base mba. but ofcourse this is apple, they are always behind the curve when comes to increase base storage and ram.
Click to expand...
Why does it matter if a restore-from-backup (cloud) takes half a day? How often do you do this?

As the "chief data officer" for my immediate family, having them rely on local storage is exposing everyone to headache. Sure, I keep local and offsite copies of important data, but not necessarily "on device".

The chances of losing or having a device (iPhone or Mac) destroyed or stolen is a higher than Apple's redundant backups going belly-up.

Also, 256GB/8GB is not a joke at $800-$1000. That's an amazing value for the price point, and Apple is not preventing anyone from make a buying decision to select more RAM or storage. It's like the 80/20 rule... except I have a feeling it's more like 95/5 when it comes to people needing more than the base model.
 
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