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I am thinking that most of the people who buy the base model won't notice the slower SSD speed as it's still pretty fast. Having said that, I do think that using a slower SSD (in what's supposed to be the new faster MacBook) is pretty F'd up.

I would like to think that this was a chip/supply issue and this was a decision Apple had to make to in order to ramp up units in time for launch. Than again, with the increased starting price, if this was the case, perhaps the solve should've been using a 512MB SSD in the base model.

I have a 2TB on order... I wonder how that will compare (in terms of speed) to my 1TB M1 Air.

Also, looking at this video, I am confused about the heatsink... Didn't the M1 Air have a thick metal plate to pull heat away from the chip? It looks like this model just has a thin shield, or am I not fully understanding what I am seeing?
If memory serves, the M1 MBA used a heat pipe to pull heat away from the SoC. There doesn’t seem to be a heat pipe in the M2 MBA but rather a large heat sink across the entire motherboard. The M1 design was very much like the old Intel MBA while the M2 design seems new to me.
 
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What’s notable is Apple stuck on thermal insulation (thick black adhesive foil) to the M2 heat spreader.

This reduces the amount of heat that will transfer convectively to the notebook bottom cover. It suggests they didn’t want the exterior chassis to get too hot.
Hmmm... You’re going to have to do more to support the idea this is “insulation” [emphasis yours].

If they wanted to limit heat transfer, wouldn’t this thick black foil be thin, white and plastic instead?

Or, I dunno, maybe just an air gap? Or smaller heat spreader?

And if the goal was to keep the surface temp down, wouldn’t it be smarter to just throttle at a lower temp?

Seems like they really screwed up their “insulator” design…
 
Hmmm... You’re going to have to do more to support the idea this is “insulation” [emphasis yours].

If they wanted to limit heat transfer, wouldn’t this thick black foil be thin, white and plastic instead?

Or, I dunno, maybe just an air gap? Or smaller heat spreader?

And if the goal was to keep the surface temp down, wouldn’t it be smarter to just throttle at a lower temp?

Seems like they really screwed up their “insulator” design…

Apple isn't about to use white plastic when they've spent so much to make the PCB and everything else black.
 
And if the goal was to keep the surface temp down, wouldn’t it be smarter to just throttle at a lower temp?
And this here is the key. In doing something like this - these forums would melt like they always do. But, like everything, it would be a design choice, and a perfectly acceptable solution for a powerful chip to be doing in a base model system.
 
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Your whole argument is that it’s somehow easier to quit an app on windows. I think it’s you distorting reality tbh.

Yes, you're right. Using a single mouse click is much more difficult than a two-finger keyboard shortcut or navigating a menu.

Come on.
 
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Just the SSD situation, which Apple has now confirmed in a statement, so it's not even a surprise anymore. This video provides a decent teardown of the MacBook Air so it's honestly unfortunate that YouTubers resort to such clickbait thumbnails. It makes me wish I could avoid embedding the video, but I like to give fair credit.
Uhhhh, I enjoy Max Techs videos. You saying that it is “honestly unfortunate” that you had to embed it..is kind of annoying. Of course you’re entitled to your views
 
Max Tech tweeted the following:

"UPDATE: There's a chance that this could just be a regular WiFi module, since if uses the same USI name on the chip. Can't confirm that it's Ultrawideband or not."

I'm not sure what the chip is, so I didn't mention it.
it’s just the normal USI wifi chip. that channel is nothing but clickbait
 
Obviously, Apple isn't going to leave out the comparably inexpensive and immediately noticeable features, like braided cables and a better headphone jack.

There's a lot to save by switching SSDs and next to nobody is opening up their MacBooks to check the parts.

The harddrive is hidden, all the exterior aesthetics, keyboard, display, color options, cables and ports are not.
My point was that they literally didn’t have to do any of those things.
None of the previous MacBook airs came with color matched braided cables. Even the 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro I don’t believe comes with a braided cable.
They could have easily stuck with white rubber, and no one would have noticed.
None of the previous Airs have the high impedance headphone jack. that’s a feature they brought to the pro. They could have easily restricted it to the pro, and no one would have said anything.
These are two decisions they made specifically for the new air, with absolutely no prior precedent, that cost apple more money.
If the SSD was purely a cost cutting measure, why didn’t they cheap out on other stuff they easily could have?
 
By absolutely no noticeable metric for such a use. Stop spreading fud.
Would be nice for people with different combos of RAM/SSD to do that same Video Task someone mentioned in one of the forums that took five days on his old macbook but 15h on the base M2 Air. Then would know if either a bump to 16GB or 512GB would help more. I'd rather do the 16/256 since I don't need that much storage if the extra RAM would cushion the slower SSD considerably.
Alt-F4 is more intuitive? Seriously, people have been using Cmd-Q forever. It’s not that hard. It’s Q for quit. Very easy to remember. Alt-F4, not so much. I know that more from muscle memory and had to think about it a second to remember it was Alt-F4.

Closing an app depends on what your habits are. If your hand is always on the mouse like with a web browser, you’ll choose quit from the menu most of the time. If your hand is on the keyboard, like with Pages, you’ll have Cmd-Q ingrained just as my fingers know Alt-F4 by heart.
Cmd Q is so easy for me with one hand. Alt-F4 I need to stretch a bit, but I would rather have quitting an app be a little bit of a pain to hit. CTRL W in Windows needs to die. Don't even understand why that also closes a Window when Alt-F4 exists.
 
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I have not noticed any throttling on my 2021 M1 16/1TB.

To go to a 2TB internal SSD was a $400 up-charge.

I acquired a 4TB pocket sized SanDisk SSD for under $400 plus tax with case and USB-C interface cable. Seems a better use of $400 as the external drive can be used on any of my other computers as well. Might get another $50 in trade for the 2TB drive option.

There is plenty of fast swap room on the 1TB SSD in addition to having my Dropbox stuff local.
 
If memory serves, the M1 MBA used a heat pipe to pull heat away from the SoC. There doesn’t seem to be a heat pipe in the M2 MBA but rather a large heat sink across the entire motherboard. The M1 design was very much like the old Intel MBA while the M2 design seems new to me.
M1 mba had a solid (i think aluminum block) in the position of the fan in intel mba. The recent gen mba never had heat pipes.

And there is no heat sink, only shielding with wasted space. They increased the tdp of the chip but reduced size of heat sink from something to none, no wonder it throttles
 
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My point was that they literally didn’t have to do any of those things.
None of the previous MacBook airs came with color matched braided cables. Even the 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro I don’t believe comes with a braided cable.
They could have easily stuck with white rubber, and no one would have noticed.
None of the previous Airs have the high impedance headphone jack. that’s a feature they brought to the pro. They could have easily restricted it to the pro, and no one would have said anything.
These are two decisions they made specifically for the new air, with absolutely no prior precedent, that cost apple more money.
If the SSD was purely a cost cutting measure, why didn’t they cheap out on other stuff they easily could have?
My guess for the headphone jack, because only macs have headphones jack, it might be cheaper for apple to use the same unit to cut cost.
The cable is a selling point with minimal cost impact.
Using fewer specifications of nand chips also helps save cost.

The thing is Apple was one of the first companies to integrate high speed ssds (800mbps) back when ppl were using hdds and SATA ssds. Staying at 1500 where the cutting edge is around 6000-7000 can only be considered as cost cutting.
 
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You conveniently ignored the question and added another unsupportable assertion in this odd retort.

Throttling at a lower temp wouldn't reduce the chassis temp. To properly do that, Apple would need a chassis skin temperature sensor.

We've seen this same heat shield on the iPhone 13, so it isn't something new.
 
Yes, you're right. Using a single mouse click is much more difficult than a two-finger keyboard shortcut or navigating a menu.

Come on.
Horses for courses then I suppose. I’m pretty sure holding a mouse with one hand and NOT needing to navigate to a particular click point rather just use cmd q with the other hand is easier, but then macos is ingrained for me. Ymmv as is clear. Then you can do the same with windows too, so I suspect you’re flogging a dead horse at this point.
 
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I've been living with a completely "basic" M1 MBA 8G RAM user the last year and she runs into the swap slowdown quite a bit and doesn't like it... and that's with an SSD that isn't "50% as fast" now. (M2 base models)
Honest question. Not dismissing your experience.

What's the differential between the speed of the M1's LPDDR4X SDRAM, and the M1's SSD?
 
The only “shocking” thing about this clickbait is that the Russian disinformation specialist didn’t even bother with the most basic of ESD precautions.
 
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