Hands-On With the New 15-Inch MacBook Air

[Apple_Robert]

Still can’t run 2 displays. 🤦🏼‍♂️

That is a niche need / want by the minority.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Nice. If it doesnt have problems within the next weeks, i'll get one...

Why would it have problems? It's basically just a bigger Air with a few minor tweaks.

 

[Tagbert]

Why would it have problems? It's basically just a bigger Air with a few minor tweaks.

Other than those reports about the lasers that shoot beams into your eyes but I'm sure that was just the first ones off of the line. I'm sure that DarthDon will be fine... mostly.

 

[darngooddesign]

Yeah I should have thought of that, especially since that was my own conclusion when testing thermal throttling clamshell vs open (I dock mine usually) and finding a measurable difference when having it closed vs open.

Thermal pad + vertical clamshell (in a stand) seems to be the best thing, though! If one dares doing the procedure..

You could have a small quiet fan blowing air across the bottom of it.

 

[camelphat2019]

saw this in the wild today at the Apple Store. LOOKS and FEELS INCREDIBLE. IMO looks nicer than the 16 inch macbook pro. I prefer the AIR's keyboard (without the black outline) and also i'm a huge fan of the dark blue color. Can't wait to buy soon

 

[kakaluma83]

So I have both the 15" and the 13" - I just took a picture of both, with the same firewall interface setup that I manage. The layout is supposed to be 4 modules across. The 13" can't do it and it truncates the interface, which is useable but annoying. The 15" displays it exactly as it should be.

View attachment 2217739

Wow cool and practical UI. what do you use to simulate a ms windows lower bar on the Mac?

 

[michaelsviews]

So I have both the 15" and the 13" - I just took a picture of both, with the same firewall interface setup that I manage. The layout is supposed to be 4 modules across. The 13" can't do it and it truncates the interface, which is useable but annoying. The 15" displays it exactly as it should be.

View attachment 2217739

Looks great. Those are the base models in the black color?

 

[Fingernail]

Could someone please take the time to explain why I would benefit from one of these. I would love one of these machines but I'm just an average consumer and I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), 2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3. It works perfectly and seems to me as good/quick as the day I bought it nearly 10 years ago..
Why should I get this 15 MBA?

The answer may be - you wouldn't. If you're happy with the laptop you have, and don't feel constrained by it, then upgrading might not be worth it.

 

[zonai]

That is a niche need / want by the minority.

Not exactly. I use my work laptop closed and connected to 2 monitors. Helpful to have 1 monitor for email/Slack and another one for whatever tasks I'm working on. I would say 3 or more monitors is a niche/minority thing. If you work with a closed laptop screen then having 2 monitors is like having 1 monitor with the laptop screen open. But the MBA doesn't support that scenario.

 

[nikhsub1]

Wow cool and practical UI. what do you use to simulate a ms windows lower bar on the Mac?

It’s called uBar

Looks great. Those are the base models in the black color?

They are the midnight color and no they are both 16/512.

 

[zapmymac]

Did anyone notice that despite the fact that it's a fanless laptop, it does have air vents?
You can see them here, at the 6 minute mark:

The vents still move/remove heat from the laptop, I believe it conduction. If it had a fan, then it’s convection. Somebody will correct me if I’m mistaken. 😁😎

 

[Tech_Mac_Man]

Just wait for the M3 this fall or early next year if you can. No need to get this if you have the M1 or M2 already. Don't fall to be a Apple fan boy by purchasing every NEW mac that comes out.

 

[zapmymac]

Any thoughts on which power supply to get (35W dual USB-C or 70W USB-C)?

No doubt, the 70 (fast charge) it and other items. Zero price difference as well. I have a usb-c Anker 35w and it honestly has made a huge difference with my household. 2 iPad pros, ip13pm and ip14pro are quickly topped off. I’ve got older wall worts if we aren’t in a hurry. 👍👍

 

[zapmymac]

Very impressed. My decade old Macbook Retina 15" was reaching EOL and while fine for general browsing and light photo-retouching, doing anything AI (eg sharpening with Topaz or De-noise with Lightroom) would take minutes, not seconds, or just crash. Astonished by the speed difference with the MB Air 15, OK so that's not a surprise with a machine that is a decade more advanced, but was it worth it? Hell yes. Some image processing that took 5 mins on the old laptop now takes less than 3 seconds and the whole workflow of taking a Lightroom image and then editing in Photoshop is now fluid and fast whereas before it felt the older laptop was about to crash at any second (and often did on larger files).

It's basically the same size as the original 15" Retina (give or take), weighs less, sounds better and my geekbench scores are now 2629/9942 (GB6) compared to 796/3100 (GB5) which doesn't really do justice to how much faster this new M2 really is.

Glad I waited for the 15". Perfect for photo work.

This was a perfect real world review I am waiting for! I’m in the same boat, thanks!

 

[lambertjohn]

Cue in the comments of wanting a 11" & 12" MBA... in 3... 2... 1....

Then get an iPad.

 

[cgs1xx]

I bought the 2023 13.6 inch Air last year and I don’t think switching to the 15inch is an “upgrade” but I’ve been waiting for a 15 inch Air since the original was launched so I kind of feel obliged to get it 😂

 

[AlexJaye]

8GB of RAM is a joke in 2023.

 

[playtech1]

It looks like the consensus is that the 15 inch MacBook Air is exactly what you would expect without any surprises (nasty or nice): identical to the 13 inch save for screen size.

And that's fine, as the M2 Air is an excellent laptop.

Still plenty of room for improvement (meagre display support and base RAM/SSD are my main gripes), but I think this will sell very well as the 'desktop replacement' laptop for the average Joe.

 

[Shasterball]

I completely forgot these computers have that ridiculous notch...

 

[0x3333]

So I have both the 15" and the 13" - I just took a picture of both, with the same firewall interface setup that I manage. The layout is supposed to be 4 modules across. The 13" can't do it and it truncates the interface, which is useable but annoying. The 15" displays it exactly as it should be.

View attachment 2217739

What kind of taskbar is that??????? 🧐

Ps.: Taskbar because this is not a dock 😂

 

[Ho Tai]

I wish this had been available when I got my 16" M1 Pro MBP in 2021! Hopefully something like it will be available when it's time to buy again, which I hope will be many years.

 

[darngooddesign]

Just wait for the M3 this fall or early next year if you can. No need to get this if you have the M1 or M2 already. Don't fall to be an Apple fan boy by purchasing every NEW mac that comes out.

I predict M3 MBPs mid 2024, 18 months after the M2s, and the M3 MBAs after that so late 2024. Moving forward, both Airs will be updated together and Apple doesn’t want the backlash from upgrading the 15” Air less than a year after the M2 release. This is a change from their releasing the regular chips before the Pro/Max chips.

 

[compwiz1202]

Chuckled over your reply — and appreciated the clarification. I'd blame it on Apple's poor auto-correct system! If we're not careful, all sorts of things slip through.

I wish it would properly handle apostrophes (e.g., it insists on it's rather than it), inadvertent commas, missing spaces, and mistaken letters instead of spaces between words (often, c, b, n, m for me). Hope that the upcoming AI language-smart AC fixes that, but I’m not ho,ding my breath! (Left that comma error in there as an example of something Apple's AC doesn't know to fix!)

In any case, Imwonder if forensics can lift fingerprints more easily off midnight than starlight! (Left “Imwonder” in there as another instance of auto-correct‘s lack of smarts.)

Apostrophe words and correcting actual words are the worst. It wanted to change eight to right once. Eight is a word!

 

[Eric_WVGG]

You aren't going to get promotion on an Air. Just like the phones, it always going to be reserved for the Pro models.

on an infinite timeline, high-refresh will come to all displays.

but in the next say four years, pretty unlikely

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Just wait for the M3 this fall or early next year if you can. No need to get this if you have the M1 or M2 already. Don't fall to be a Apple fan boy by purchasing every NEW mac that comes out.

Why not?

If one can afford to do this, I'd say go for it.

Whatever makes people happy (whilst not hurting others) is acceptable.