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

[theluggage]

Two year old tech that just went into the current Mac Studio a couple of months ago.

True, they're based on the same underlying 2-year-old tech (Although I think the Pro/Max use a newer RAM tech...?), but in the case of the actual products - the M1 Pro and Max were only launched last October, with the new MacBook Pros, and the M1 Ultra was "new" for the Mac Studio.

It would be a bit surprising if we saw new 14/16" MBPs with M2 Pro/Max until the exiting MacBook Pros are 12-18 months old. I'm guessing that the M2 "family" will roll out on the same sort of time scale - the base M2 for the Air and Mini first, with the Pro and Max following anything from 6-10 months later.

I don't think the M1 Max and Ultra machines will lose their crown for a while, but the base M2 might make the M1 Pro - especially the cheaper 8 core version - look a bit weak. Which might be why there's currently a M1 Pro shaped hole in the Mini/Studio price range.

The only time I (subjectively) notice a performance difference is when doing long-running video/photo tasks.

Welcome to Apple Silicon - the only reasons to go for Pro, Max or Ultra models are if you want (a) better multicore performance, (b) better GPU performance or (c) more I/O capability (displays, TB4 ports, USB 3 ports). Don't forget the last one - the Mac Studio has a massive (by Mac standards) number of ports.

This isn't a new thing - look at the Intel Mac Pros: the $12k 28 core only has a slightly faster single-core performance than the $6k 8-core (and the M1 Air beats them both!) but a task that uses all 28 cores can be 3 times faster. If the tasks you run don't use all the cores then you're wasting your money. It's just that Intel had lots of different tiers of power ratings, clock speeds, cache sizes and other specs for ultraportables, laptops, desktops, workstations etc. With Apple silicon it looks like the range is going to stay much simpler.

 

[ilikewhey]

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.

depends, speaking for myself i can always plug in my external and call it a day, but my wife on the other hand she prefers everything internal cause our son just love unplugging everything.

the 256/8 is a joke when you compare to its competitors, and even if the competition comes with 8gig, the ram is upgradable. it's even a bigger joke considering how cheap ddr4 ram is now since ddr5 came out. but making 16gig standard would mean apple wouldn't be able to milk the customer.

 

[ilikewhey]

True, they're based on the same underlying 2-year-old tech (Although I think the Pro/Max use a newer RAM tech...?), but in the case of the actual products - the M1 Pro and Max were only launched last October, with the new MacBook Pros, and the M1 Ultra was "new" for the Mac Studio.

It would be a bit surprising if we saw new 14/16" MBPs with M2 Pro/Max until the exiting MacBook Pros are 12-18 months old. I'm guessing that the M2 "family" will roll out on the same sort of time scale - the base M2 for the Air and Mini first, with the Pro and Max following anything from 6-10 months later.

I don't think the M1 Max and Ultra machines will lose their crown for a while, but the base M2 might make the M1 Pro - especially the cheaper 8 core version - look a bit weak. Which might be why there's currently a M1 Pro shaped hole in the Mini/Studio price range.


Welcome to Apple Silicon - the only reasons to go for Pro, Max or Ultra models are if you want (a) better multicore performance, (b) better GPU performance or (c) more I/O capability (displays, TB4 ports, USB 3 ports). Don't forget the last one - the Mac Studio has a massive (by Mac standards) number of ports.

This isn't a new thing - look at the Intel Mac Pros: the $12k 28 core only has a slightly faster single-core performance than the $6k 8-core (and the M1 Air beats them both!) but a task that uses all 28 cores can be 3 times faster. If the tasks you run don't use all the cores then you're wasting your money. It's just that Intel had lots of different tiers of power ratings, clock speeds, cache sizes and other specs for ultraportables, laptops, desktops, workstations etc. With Apple silicon it looks like the range is going to stay much simpler.

or more ram, i need at least 32gb at this point for my workflow and i'm barely taxing the base m1 cpu.

 

[Lerloons]

hey so how does this happen ? is it legit apple seller ? I don't get how they can be cheaper from amazon ?

 

[theluggage]

or more ram, i need at least 32gb at this point for my workflow and i'm barely taxing the base m1 cpu.

That's one of the things that might change with the M2 - the M1 supports 2 LPDDR4 chips which top out at 8GB each while I think the newer LPDDR spec supports larger capacity chips. If Apple decides to offer that.

 

[ilikewhey]

That's one of the things that might change with the M2 - the M1 supports 2 LPDDR4 chips which top out at 8GB each while I think the newer LPDDR spec supports larger capacity chips. If Apple decides to offer that.

i highly doubt it since that would be walking into the 14 inch territory.

 

[yabeweb]

hey so how does this happen ? is it legit apple seller ? I don't get how they can be cheaper from amazon ?

They shave the cost from their margin, better sell and lose some margin than have in house a product that will be hard to sell if a new one comes out.

If a M2 MacBook Air is to be released at WWDC, vendors with bigger stock will have to lower prices even more, so, better do it now and maybe still make some money out of it

 

[svish]

M1 Air is a good computer. The discount is good too. But it might not be a good idea to buy one right now. Better to wait for the updated Air with M2.

 

[sigsegv]

True, they're based on the same underlying 2-year-old tech (Although I think the Pro/Max use a newer RAM tech...?), but in the case of the actual products - the M1 Pro and Max were only launched last October, with the new MacBook Pros, and the M1 Ultra was "new" for the Mac Studio.

[...]

My point was (although I didn't spell it out) that the M1 Air is still a good buy today and has years of useful life. I'd not hesitate to buy it again, especially now after a couple of months of Mac Studio ownership. It's my favorite travel machine ever, and I've been a repeat MacBook Pro user since the first model back in 2006.

 

[yuripaz]

How long will this promotion last?