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14" MBP will be the better buy, IMO

Current pricing...

- 13" MBA with M2 8-core/8-core and 16GB / 512GB is $1599
- 13" MBA with M2 8-core/10-core and 16GB / 512GB is $1699
- Base 14" MBP with M2 Pro 10-core/16-core and 16GB / 512GB is $1999 but often goes on sale for $1799

No way a 15" MBA with M2 8-core/10-core and 16GB / 512GB will be less than $1799
Of course 14" MBP it will be a better because it will be more expensive than the 15" Air.

When choosing the option with a lower price, Apple always gives you terrible value/$ by comparison to the options that have a higher price.

This is how they get you spend a larger amount.

This is true across all of Apple products.
 
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If this new 15 inch Macbook Air has an M2 chip inside it. Then why would they need to announce this at WWDC? I don't get this?

A 15" MBA product announcement does not have to be part of the WWDC keynote video. It could be announced immediately after the keynote video via a Press Release and they could make it available for the press to demo in the Hands-On area of the Steve Jobs theater.
 
Nope. A base M3 will still exist. A weaker A16 doesn’t. You do not sit on a high-volume chip that is ready to ship while working out a more complex chip.
Apple is not sitting on their M2 chips. And they will produce more for the upcoming 15“ MBA. But the next generation MBP with M3 will be out at some point while the MBA update with M3 will follow later.
 
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Of course everyone knows it was Kuo who said the newly redesigned MacBook Air would ship with the M1 not the M2. He was wrong. Perhaps he has the same source as last time. Apple could introduce M3 Airs and keep the M2 in the line up.
 
Why not wait for M3 unless you’re desperately in need for an upgrade? The 3nm processor is going to dramatically improve performance and battery life—we may see up to 24 hours of battery in the 15” Air.
 
And to those who believe Apple has a massive stockpile of M2 SoCs lying around, Apple doesn't work that way. They are all about Just-in-Time inventory and that is why they are rumored to have temporarily halted production - so they would NOT have a huge stockpile of unsold SoCs lying around.

While it's true they focus on JIT, CPUs/SOCs are basically impossible to produce on a just-in-time basis. Orders to the Fab have to be made months in advance of when the SOC actually ships in a product. And because it's the slowest item to produce in the supply chain, Apple has to maintain a buffer of SOCs to be able to ramp up production quickly if demand outstrips their projections.

So combine all that with Mac sales that came in well below projections, and it's quite possible they have (or at least had) a significantly larger than normal number of M2 chips in inventory. The rumored pause in production probably helped rightsize CPU inventories, so it may no longer be a "huge stockpile," but of course there's no way to know without being an insider.
 
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They criticized Intel when they released Macs with with a one-year-old Intel processors and now they do the same with a one-year-old M2 processor?!
The Intel processors were coming more than a year after promised and Apple didn’t have the same insight into needed to manage production They were also getting any updates at the same time as competitors.

Another major problem was the power consumption which Intel still doesn’t compete with.
 
When choosing the option with a lower price, Apple always gives you terrible value/$ by comparison to the options that have a higher price.

This is how they get you spend a larger amount.

This is true across all of Apple products.
I am pretty sure this is how most successful businesses are run
 
Remind me, what are the specs considerations of the revised-design MacBook Air? You have to upgrade the something to avoid getting the slow something-else?

Will this situation be the same, if the only difference is the screen size?
 
Just outside the walled garden, one can find an endlessly configurable pool of laptops that address up to ALL of that (and more), typically for meaningfully lower cost. They generally come with the added benefit of flexibility to expand RAM and SSD when (and if) needed too. And their focus is typically on computing POWER vs. PPW, which translates into getting computer processing done FASTER. They have over 90% of the whole market and thus much more focus by anyone creating software applications. If you like games (too), they generally have the superior games and a much broader mix of games.

Yes, these do NOT run macOS but one could consider what kind of things they do on laptops vs. their main machine... and perhaps realize they can do up to all of that on that other platform. Bonus: should one ever need "bootcamp," the very best way to 100% Windows compatibility & capability is old fashioned bootcamp (a separate PC).

Only by voting with wallets can an Apple Inc. notice that people want more value for their money. Whining about it on an online forum but then paying up anyway simply rewards such corporate choices. Apple can't possibly notice if everyone simply pays up. From their perspective, all such decisions were the right ones because buyers demonstrated acceptance in the most tangible way.

My main computer is Mac Studio. However, I need full Windows too, so I purchased my first PC in over a decade. No jet engine noise. No personal nuclear reactor requirements to power it. No third degree burns on my lap. Apps that don't exist for Mac do exist for PC and it's been fun rediscovering the flexibility in the much bigger world outside the wall. 8TB of SSD for about $1000 instead of a $2200 upgrade. RAM upgrades at competitive market prices instead of market + FAT margin. Should that SSD or RAM conk, it can be replaced vs. the "throw baby out with the bathwater" scenario we Silicon Mac people now face. Etc.

Doing some typical laptop work tasks on the PC will generally easily transfer over to Mac and back again. While I still want to do everything possible on my Mac (only by personal preference), it's not some kind of end of the world scenario to own a PC too. Windows 11 is quite good... even macOS-like in some ways. Overall value, raw power & user flexibility are all fundamental to PC.
You answer your own non-question yourself. If you want to use macOS, you has to pay the Apple Tax.
 
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