M3 MacBook Air Teardown Shows Apple Fixed Base Model's Biggest Flaw

[theluggage]

Obviously for the price of these machines you don't want any compromises and I get that. But realistically...I didn't buy into the SSD speed boogeyman.

I think that's the whole point - it may not have been a deal breaker, but nothing in the Mac line up is cheap enough to warrant that kind of corner-cutting. Apple don't make cheap laptops for doing email and updating your Facebook page. You can do that with a $200 Chromebook, or a low-end iPad - even a MBA is potentially capable of a lot more, and that's reflected in the price.

The machine was designed to have a dual-channel SSD, previous incarnations did have a dual-channel SSD - we're not talking about a 'future expansion' slot here – and the M2 Air wasn't even launched as the "entry level" MBA - that was the $999 M1 MBA. Anyway, we're talking about the cost price difference between 1x256 GB chip plus. 2x128 GB chips plus the marginal cost of soldering 1 more chip during a highly automated construction process. This really was penny pinching.

Why they did this in the first place is unknown - possibly the 128GB chips were affected by the great chip famine of '22, and/or maybe 2 x 128GB ended up costing more than 1x256 because the demand for such small chips was falling & production was ramping down... Of course, that is partly because 256GB is becoming increasingly small beer, and we're long past the point where 512GB should have become the minimum on a $1200 premium laptop.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

No, it didn't.

The M2 MacBook Air 256GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2260 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)
The M2 MacBook Air 512GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2760 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)

So writing 1GB of swap would take 0.44 seconds vs 0.36 seconds.

And plummets to roughly 1500 MB/s read AND write with 5GB blocks. Any way you look at it, the SSD is a dog in a modern computer that should be in the 5000 MB/s range compared to almost any Windows PC today.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Or maybe its biggest flaw was everything being soldered?

"Everything"? Most things on a laptop system board are soldered. The only component you can argue about is the SSD and it's been that way since, what -- 2015 was the last MBP with a SSD slot.

 

[masotime]

I'm not sure if 'fix' is the right term here.

The decision to switch to a single module, just like removing HDMI, SD card ports, and MagSafe from notebooks, was unwarranted to begin with.

They've reversed course and we shouldn't be praising this as an upgrade, but a return to the standard.

Isn't that why the term "fix" is used instead of "upgrade"?

 

[Analog Kid]

You mean except those who actually care what they are (over)paying for.

I think you mean except those who fetishize what they are paying for-- people more worried about what they imagine it does than they are about what it actually does.

Apple bets that most people won't notice.

Apple knows most people can't notice because it doesn't actually have an impact on most people.

If it was any other product in the world, everyone would be calling foul, but Apple people will look the other way whenever Apple is screwing someone.

I know you're not new here, so you know this is absolutely wrong.

Reminds me of something else that comes to mind that I can't speak of because this isn't the proper forum.

Then why add these extra words? I mean, I had an excellent meal last night that I won't tell you about because this isn't the proper forum-- is there a reason to have made you read that sentence?

 

[newmacxc]

If your argument is supposed to be that a difference cannot be seen, then why make it faster? Max Tech channel on YouTube has demonstrated before how the lower SSD on M2 did cause slowdowns in normal productivity. You can go back and watch his videos.

No. You got me wrong here.

The user to whom I replied mentioned that if there is a performance difference in real world between both the SSD which is a very pointless argument.

As they won't be able to tell the difference between M2 and M3 in real world doing basic stuff.

I don't get the argument of Apple apologist who defend Apple saying there's no real world difference when Apple tries to cheap out on components.

 

[jimbobb24]

And by significantly faster we mean only noticeable to machines and almost no humans.

 

[biffuz]

"Everything"? Most things on a laptop system board are soldered. The only component you can argue about is the SSD and it's been that way since, what -- 2015 was the last MBP with a SSD slot.

Still a flaw.

 

[applepotato666]

I know it's been beaten to death in the year or so since the M2 came out. But I question just how much this means in the real world. Obviously for the price of these machines you don't want any compromises and I get that. But realistically...I didn't buy into the SSD speed boogeyman.

Means quite a bit. Personally I found the base M1 performs better than an M2 when both have 8GB of RAM. The M2 may launch apps faster, but it's worse at multitasking if you rely on swap more, and at 8GB you most certainly do if you open more than 3 tabs in the browser plus an app or two. It just takes longer to bring back up something you were looking at if you're doing more than listening to music and typing up a document. Both are obviously great machines and super fast but M2 is a downgrade in these aspects. Whether it's something you'll notice depends on what you do. A lot of the youtubers do video work so they'll notice it, but we know their opinion can be skewed. Most MacBook Air buyers benefit more from the faster CPU than have an issue with a slower SSD. Still, if there are cases where it's slower, it's subjective whether it's a better computer and it shouldn't be when the M2 was sold as a definite upgrade over the M1. It's just something Apple should've warned customers about.

 

[profcutter]

Still a flaw.

I mean, yeah, it’s true. We’ve taken for granted that “everything is soldered down” but that wasn’t the case as recently as 2012, when you could replace RAM and SSD, and 2017 when you could still replace the SSD on the bottom of the line MBP, if I’m not mistaken. There are numerous explanations why the SSDs are soldered down, but the fact is it was a design choice, not an absolute requirement. Note that the storage isn’t soldered on the MacPro or the Studio but they use the same chip family.

 

[BrightDarkSky]

No one could argue this is fraud 😂

If you dislike the company so much, take your custom elswhere. Its as simple as that…

If you dislike his opinion so much why don't you keep it to yourself

That comment speaks truth.

And nobody asked for your advice anyway so... Tim Cook that 😂😬

 

[ric22]

Apparently it's quite a slow SSD compared to 2024 spec SSD's... 🤦‍♂️