60% faster when compared to M1 MBA is very appealing.
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First Benchmark Result Surfaces for MacBook Air With M3 Chip
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It makes no difference in the real world for the target audience of casual users. It makes more sense on the Pro laptops where people who use them for business will take any improvements (10% speed increase means that you can either do 10% more work in a day or complete your task 10% faster and charge a client more for a faster turnaround). This means more income which will pay for the cost of the new machine (and then generate more profits).
That too.
I hear you loud and clear. Apple make BTO upgrades so financially crippling that you'll say to yourself meh I may as well just spend another £200 on the next model up which already comes with the extra storage/memory I've added to this BTO. And this is entirely deliberate.
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I would immediately rule out the 16/256 model. I think 256GB drives have performance issues on the M2 and maybe M3?
You need to decide if it's worth the £185 for the M3. I don't think you'd be missing out on a whole lot by going with M2. It seems the M3 is more of a slight incremental update where as the jump from M1 to M2 was quite significant.
Personally, I'd pay the £185 more for the M3. Not only do you get that extra performance but you'll get a bit longer support out of it. It's going to be a while before M2 devices are dropped by Apple but the M2 is over 2 years old now. M3 is only 6 months. Ultimately it's not a HUGE deal because it's probably only the difference between getting 4 OS updates vs 5 or 6. I guess it does matter if you're going to keep it for 5+ years...?
The 13” 512/16 model is almost 1800€ here in Spain. However, I estimate that it’s just ~1500€ with the student discount, which is a pretty good price for that machine.
I mean, it’s still a bit expensive and I’d ideally get a 24GB machine, which would go over 2.000€, but for the decent specs of 512/16, that price is not too bad.
Indeed my friend, the expensive RAM and storage upgrades are the big problem with macs.
My recommendation if you plan to play games on it, even if it’s your tertiary gaming device, is to get the M3, unless all your gaming is done in streaming.
Also, the M3 SoC has the AV1 decoder, which in the long run will be a much appreciated addition in order to watch video streaming services efficiently (less power consumption, less heat).
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You're the first person in the wild I've seen mention this. Hardware accelerated ray tracing is huge in the graphics and gaming world. Big leap for Apple as a platform.
Because many people still own Intel Macs.
Yeah, I've read that the smaller drive on the M2 MBA has slower speeds, but since neither the 256 nor the 512 drive are really big enough to hold all my files and a game like BG3 I'd probably have to run it from an external NVMe SSD anyway, so I'm not sure how much of an impact that would have.
On the rest, yeah you're probably right about longevity concerns. I had my previous Intel Mac for 8 years until it died with a swollen battery. Unfortunately the M1 just died as well or I wouldn't even be looking at an upgrade.
I think for me it all comes down to how significant the impact of the GPU improvements will actually be for games over the M2, although it equally seems pointless to actually consider gaming performance on the Mac as relevant and I don't have any other use for the power.
BG3 is a big game! I just finished my first playthrough (on PC).
I don't know anything about external SSD performance for gaming on Mac, sorry. I'm going with 512GB because I'm not playing games and all my files are saved on my PC/external HDD. My PC actually has a 512GB boot drive and I still have ~300GB left so that's plenty for me. All I need is space for the apps I want to install. Any files will be stored on iCloud or cut onto the external drive.
If you're wanting to play games then the M3 is probably the best choice. I don't know how much better it is in games but I do know it is faster so... yeah lol.
Sorry I can't really be of any help.
Just out of curiosity, how did your M1 die? My last MacBook (2008 model) died after about 3 and a half years and I remember paying £360 to fix it and it only lasted another 6 months lol. I'm definitely going to be paying for AC+ annually so I can get more than the 3 years cover.
Besides, some of us, like myself, still use an Intel Mac.
So it's relevant information for some.
What happened to Mac15,12? the August 2023 M3 mac miniIdentify your MacBook Pro model
MacBook Pro (14-inch, Nov 2023)
This model has the M3 chip and includes two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports.
Colors: Silver, space gray
Model Identifier: Mac15,3
Identify your MacBook Pro model - Apple Support (AM)
Use this information to find out which MacBook Pro you have, and where it fits in the history of MacBook Pro.support.apple.com
Unless Apple did something odd, I think you might be reporting on the wrong model.
Edit - Looking at the Geekbench result, it's in fact Mac 15,13, which wasn't used before.
The battery was replaced in 2013 because it literally fell out when the Genius was troubleshooting something else. He was shook
No that was quite appreciated, but in any case I have some thinking to do. I might even go for a Mini rather than an MBA because frankly I haven't used my computer away from the desk in a while.
My M1 just wouldn't turn on one day. They suspect it might have been a Logic Board failure and quoted me around £500 for the repair, but luckily Amazon just refunded the entire purchase even though it was over a year ago.
Like yourself, I'm definitely getting AC+ for my next computer. Equally, however, I'm genuinely considering going full external with my data storage going forward. The fact that it's soldered on means you can't really erase anything before sending it off to repair centres, which is a bit icky when places like Amazon employ dodgy third party contractors. I know that technically it should be fine, but still.
With my older computers I would have just removed the drive, but that hasn't been possible for a while now. I'm getting old, but I really miss the days of replaceable components.
I came late to the Apple Silicon party from an entry level 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, and I have to say I'm pleased I waited for the M3 (Pro) chip because the hardware accelerated ray tracing means my rendering and 3D design work all happens blisteringly fast in comparison. It's *at least* 7x faster than the Intel, having done real world side by side testing before selling the old Mac.
If finances can stretch, I would highly recommend the M3 if the above sort of usage applies, because it's amazing. Seriously.
"The results have a "Mac15,13" identifier, which indicates they are for a 15-inch MacBook Air."
My 15" M2 MacBook Air reports itself as a "Mac14,15". Given that, it looks like the benchmarks are from a 13-inch M3 MacBook Air - not a 15".
My 15" M2 MacBook Air reports itself as a "Mac14,15". Given that, it looks like the benchmarks are from a 13-inch M3 MacBook Air - not a 15".
So guys. I will use this MacBook mostly for light work + some movies streaming etc when Im traveling. Might do some Lightroom stuff from time to time, but compared to most of you, very light work. To be honest, the weight and size is what draws me to the 15" MBA. Here in Norway the price would be pretty much the same for:
M2 16/256 and
M3 8/256
What would you consider the best deal?
Thanks!
M2 16/256 and
M3 8/256
What would you consider the best deal?
Thanks!
That's exactly what happened to my old MacBook! At least according to Apple. It wouldn't turn on and they said it was the board. Back then I thought you had to calibrate batteries so I was often running it at 100% battery for hours and letting it drain completely. So maybe I fried something. It was £360 to get a new board fitted and it crapped out again about 6 month later lol.
The MacBook was one you could replace parts yourself. I upgraded the original 250GB HDD to a 256GB SSD and when it died I pulled out the SSD and used it in my new PC. Also, it originally came with 2GB and I upgraded it to 4GB and then 8GB. And the battery was replaceable. It's changed days now with how Apple solders everything together! And it shows you how stubborn Apple are with specs. I bought a MacBook with 2GB and 250GB in 2008 and here we are in 2024 and they have base 8GB and 256GB lol.
M2 16/256 in my option. Doubling the RAM is better value than the SoC upgrade for your uses.
We use maxed out MacBook Pros at work, except for leadership who have Airs.
We are heavy ML and analytics users. For many ML/AI tasks we see almost zero difference between the M2Max/96GB and the M3Max/128GB.
Running workloads on the Apple Neural Engine is still a pain (PyTorch and Candle have Metal backends, but this is GPU only - CoreML conversion is fiddly for anything other than the most basic of models). The CPU and GPU is marginally faster in the newer machine, but the truth is that these machines are so fast already there are few tasks where you'll observe a difference. Of course, the airs are slower, smaller RAM means they struggle with LLMs. And for all general ML/AI tasks, CUDA is still king - so we have a mix of Jetsons/workstations and cloud machines for this.
Over time I would expect better support for using the ANE and better support for making use of the raytracing on the M3. The new MacBooks are thus likely to have better longevity. However, for those coming from m2 or m1 these will just be incremental upgrades. Frankly I'm surprised that anyone expects anything else.
As a personal project I've been trying to build a low power, high performance portable ARM machine. It isn't easy. The edge that Apple has over alternatives is enormous. We'll see whether the new Qualcomm chips can compete (X Elite), but given power management in their existing offerings I doubt this will be the case.
We are heavy ML and analytics users. For many ML/AI tasks we see almost zero difference between the M2Max/96GB and the M3Max/128GB.
Running workloads on the Apple Neural Engine is still a pain (PyTorch and Candle have Metal backends, but this is GPU only - CoreML conversion is fiddly for anything other than the most basic of models). The CPU and GPU is marginally faster in the newer machine, but the truth is that these machines are so fast already there are few tasks where you'll observe a difference. Of course, the airs are slower, smaller RAM means they struggle with LLMs. And for all general ML/AI tasks, CUDA is still king - so we have a mix of Jetsons/workstations and cloud machines for this.
Over time I would expect better support for using the ANE and better support for making use of the raytracing on the M3. The new MacBooks are thus likely to have better longevity. However, for those coming from m2 or m1 these will just be incremental upgrades. Frankly I'm surprised that anyone expects anything else.
As a personal project I've been trying to build a low power, high performance portable ARM machine. It isn't easy. The edge that Apple has over alternatives is enormous. We'll see whether the new Qualcomm chips can compete (X Elite), but given power management in their existing offerings I doubt this will be the case.
I would go with the M3 due to the AV1 hardware decoder (much more efficient video content streaming, longer battery life), the WiFi 6E and BT 5.3 upgrades (better long term performance and support for wireless devices and networking), and the improved gpu and cpu which will help with lightroom perf.
I don’t think 8GB vs 16GB would be that noticeable comparatively in your scenario.
I second @Apple Knowledge Navigator and recommend the M2 16/256.
Yes, the 256GB model has (probably still has on the M3) slower speeds but you're not really going to notice unless you're doing a lot of data transfers. I believe it runs at 1.5GB/s which is more than enough for most people. Compared to the latest SSDs it's quite slow (my PC ssds have up to 7.6GB/s and you can buy SSDs with 10-12GB/s now) but if you're not transfering a lot of stuff/big files then you'll probably never notice. The 512GB model runs at 3GB/s.
8GB RAM is almost criminal for such an expensive device and again if you're just doing light tasks/watching movies it will probably be enough. I don't use Lightroom but you might run into issues with 8GB on that. 16GB is by far the better option.
The M2 is still a great chip of course and more than powerful enough for your needs. I don't think you'd be missing out much.
The most important specs when buying a Mac are (in order of importance):
1. RAM
2. SSD
3. Processor
Go for 16GB. 256GB is OK if you don't need the capacity/speeds. M2 is more than enough for you. Yes M3 is newer, faster, better but... more expensive.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
M2 16/256.
You can't buy for the "now" (needs/uses). You have to think about the future. Right now, either can do the things you list but do you have confidence that 3 years from now... 5 years from now... 7 years from now... those are still the kinds of things you want to do on your Mac? As soon as you have to step up with any more demanding app(s), you'll likely discover you wish you would have gone with the added RAM.
Unlike the "good old days," you can't alter this product to fit future needs. You have to best guess them now and buy accordingly. Else, you will be replacing this Mac with another one should/when needs evolve... even if that is only a year from now.
You might also want to read up on the "half speed" issue at 256 and consider going 512 for the SAME reasoning. People will argue that no one can notice the half speed effect even if it is real... but then who wants downgrades to computing speeds?
If it's impossible to step up both, I'd prioritize the RAM (there's always external storage). But if it IS possible, I'd always suggest at least one hop up on both RAM and SSD.
If you don't have the money today, consider delaying the purchase to save up the extra money or wait a few months to get a discount in the refurb store to make both more affordable.
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