Recently, I've had a couple of friends reach out to me to have me shop for MacBook Airs from the M3 and M4 eras. At first their preferences of 15-inch vs. 13-inch were ambivalent, though leaning 13-inch. This had me looking for each, albeit separately. Long story short, I've noticed a trend and I'm curious if others have noticed it as well and/or if there is a likely corollary or explanation for it.
The trend:
There are more 15-inch MacBook Air configurations than 13-inch MacBook Air configurations available at any one time on Apple's "Apple Certified Refurbished Mac" section of their online store. There are also more 15-inch MacBook Airs (than 13-inch MacBook Airs) with higher-end storage and RAM configurations and configurations, let alone CTO/BTO models in general.
My theories:
Best I can think of is that, on average, those buying the 13-inch MacBook Air generally don't care about custom configuring it for higher-end RAM and/or storage and are plenty fine with standard configurations (for whatever reasons) and that those buying the 15-inch MacBook Air are more deliberately looking to spec it out.
I'm also basing a lot of that on the theory that availability of Apple Certified Refurbished MacBook Airs in a given configuration would preclude that a certain number of those configurations were made and/or sold new at some point as well as a similar "they have to have been purchased new to appear used on eBay unless having fallen off a truck" theory.
While, I'm guessing that most of the folks that buy 13-inch MacBook Airs are also the same folks that have been buying 13-inch MacBook Airs for the last 15 years. Maybe you have folks lured in by the M1 MacBook Air. Either way, they are the same class/type of user that has generally been buying 13-inch MacBook Airs. I'm not entirely sure which crowd is buying the 15-inch MacBook Air and what their priorities are (on average).
Anyone else have any insight on what's causing this trend or any of the other nuances therein that I may have missed? I find it sort of fascinating!
The trend:
There are more 15-inch MacBook Air configurations than 13-inch MacBook Air configurations available at any one time on Apple's "Apple Certified Refurbished Mac" section of their online store. There are also more 15-inch MacBook Airs (than 13-inch MacBook Airs) with higher-end storage and RAM configurations and configurations, let alone CTO/BTO models in general.
My theories:
Best I can think of is that, on average, those buying the 13-inch MacBook Air generally don't care about custom configuring it for higher-end RAM and/or storage and are plenty fine with standard configurations (for whatever reasons) and that those buying the 15-inch MacBook Air are more deliberately looking to spec it out.
I'm also basing a lot of that on the theory that availability of Apple Certified Refurbished MacBook Airs in a given configuration would preclude that a certain number of those configurations were made and/or sold new at some point as well as a similar "they have to have been purchased new to appear used on eBay unless having fallen off a truck" theory.
While, I'm guessing that most of the folks that buy 13-inch MacBook Airs are also the same folks that have been buying 13-inch MacBook Airs for the last 15 years. Maybe you have folks lured in by the M1 MacBook Air. Either way, they are the same class/type of user that has generally been buying 13-inch MacBook Airs. I'm not entirely sure which crowd is buying the 15-inch MacBook Air and what their priorities are (on average).
Anyone else have any insight on what's causing this trend or any of the other nuances therein that I may have missed? I find it sort of fascinating!
