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MacBook Air Teardown Reveals M2 Chip and Single Storage Chip for 256GB Model

pippox0 said:
One consideration:
Less SSD speed , less heat inside , longer battery time.
May be this is the Apple thought ...
and more money ... for sure
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Thats Not How It Works GIFs | Tenor
 
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tobybrut said:
The thing is that we simply don’t know why Apple used only a single chip instead of two. People make the assumption that it’s due to nefarious reasons, no matter that we’re all suffering from a parts shortage worldwide. Apple uses tremendous volumes compared to most vendors, except maybe HP and Dell. The easiest explanation is the simplest. They couldn’t get their hands on enough 128GB chips. The disaster in February where Western Digital lost 6.5 billion gigabytes worth of flash storage due to factory contamination makes me think it’s a simple parts shortage. I haven’t looked, but does Apple use those same chips for their iPhones? If they do, they’re probably hoarding what they can get for their iPhones where they sell five times more phones than Macs each year. Most of the iPhones they sell each year are 128GB and 256GB phones.

If they can’t get the parts, what do you expect them to do? Postpone release for six months to a year until the flash storage market is able to recover from the huge loss?

As others have argued, Apple could have short-changed things in a lot of places. Why flash? There are a lot of things they could have cut corners on that wouldn’t have affected performance. It’s not just the cable and headphone jack. There are a lot of internal or external parts they could have cut. They could have saved a huge amount, far more than the flash, just by using a lesser screen and a smaller screen that couldn’t have done 500 nits, leaving it at last year’s 400 nits. Why a 13.6” screen when they could have used a crap 720p webcam and cut out the notch, leaving the screen at 13.3”? No one would have had an issue with those, since we would have just thought that they were keeping things the same for an entry-level model. The MBP didn’t get a 1080p webcam. So why expect the MBA to have one?

See how they could have left things all the same as last year’s and saved a lot more than they would have on a small 128GB flash chip? Those are big ticket items I mentioned, not the penny ante headphone jack. It’s much easier to see it was a simple parts shortage. If they can’t get the parts, there’s not much to be done about it. They’re not going to push storage to 512GB because a lot of people would complain. Most people don’t need 512GB. People who are demanding 512GB be the new base just want their 1-2TB for cheaper since the upgrade would be less, not because the average person needs 512GB. They don’t. Three out of four people in my family could get by with 128GB. I’d love to see base storage go up because I’m the type who needs more, but I understand most people are not like me. Even as a power user, my Mac has about 550GB of stuff on it with half of it taken up by my iCloud Photo Library. I typically get the 1TB versions.

Here’s an amusing story (well, at least to me). I gave my wife my 1TB 2018 iPad Pro a while back, but the port broke and she gave it back to me. When I looked at it, I noticed she was using less than 40GB out of that 1TB. That bar that showed how much was being used looked funny with a tiny little blue sliver in a huge white bar. That struck me that most people are not power users and just don’t need much. She had no music, no movies, hardly any documents. That’s also why most people consider this issue a non-issue. Those who are concerned about it aren’t base unit buyers anyway. The first thought that occurred to me was, “what a waste”. 512GB would be like that for most people. My wife is now using a 64GB iPad Air 5, btw, and she notices absolutely no difference between that and her iPad Pro, not even the lack of ProMotion, except the fingerprint sensor versus Face ID.
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What Apple could have done is made the base model 512GB.

They already raised the price by $200 in the US and almost €500 in the EU for the base model, so it's not like they couldn't afford it.

But no, they chose to give you 50% slower storage to protect their sweet, sweet profits.
 
curnalpanic said:
Wasn’t the 512 shown to be equally slow? Thought I saw that in one of these threads.
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No, it was only the 256GB because it is made out of 1 module. The others use 2 modules, like they used to do on all storage capacity models on the M1.
 
IsaacM said:
It's so funny seeing the fanboys defend Apple like this trillion dollar CORPORATION is their family member. ⚰️

The fact is MOST people get base model Macbooks and the new "supercharged" base model should NOT have slower speeds in any aspect than the 2 year old model, especially considering they bumped up the price by $200.

Stop sucking up to a corporation. They care about their shareholders and not you.
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even considering increased costs for components, etc. etc, a new model product should not be slower than a previous model, it should be at least as fast if not faster than a previous model.

I have been a fanboy since 1982 and a shareholder, but this is not a good move going forward. the battery is bigger, the case is "larger", I find it hard to believe this is a cost move, tell me it was a space tradeoff, but don't let it slide with no rational that it is slower than its predecessor.
 
IsaacM said:
It's so funny seeing the fanboys defend Apple like this trillion dollar CORPORATION is their family member. ⚰️

The fact is MOST people get base model Macbooks and the new "supercharged" base model should NOT have slower speeds in any aspect than the 2 year old model, especially considering they bumped up the price by $200.

Stop sucking up to a corporation. They care about their shareholders and not you.
Click to expand...
And you treat apple like a teenager treats their parents.
 
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bayportbob said:
even considering increased costs for components, etc. etc, a new model product should not be slower than a previous model, it should be at least as fast if not faster than a previous model.

I have been a fanboy since 1982 and a shareholder, but this is not a good move going forward. the battery is bigger, the case is "larger", I find it hard to believe this is a cost move, tell me it was a space tradeoff, but don't let it slide with no rational that it is slower than its predecessor.
Click to expand...
Except it isn’t slower overall in normal use per benchmarks. Focusing on one component ignores how well they work together. The focus on SSD speed is like saying a car is slower because it has less HP even as it is faster in say 0 - 60 or has a higher top speed. What counts is how well an item performs overall, not any one spec.
 
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Mr. Dee said:
I know and they don’t care, like I said, the channel is likely extremely profitable to need to wear the velvet Apple
handcuffs just to be able to get a review unit for a week or travel to an Apple event at your own expense.
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At least when they’re buying the Apple products on their own, they’re far more likely to give honest reviews. I just don’t care for the clickbait messaging that isn’t indicative of performance for the average user. For a person buying it for sustained SSD speeds, they’re not going 256GB model if they’re going MBA and not MacBook Pro 14/16” at all.
 
IsaacM said:
What Apple could have done is made the base model 512GB.

They already raised the price by $200 in the US and almost €500 in the EU for the base model, so it's not like they couldn't afford it.

But no, they chose to give you 50% slower storage to protect their sweet, sweet profits.
Click to expand...
I think what isn't being said is that you would like to have 512gb of storage at the price of the current 256gb base model.

Would you have been happier if the 256 gb base model literally did not exist, and the cheapest model Apple offered was a 8gb ram / 512 gb SSD model at the higher price?
 
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ThailandToo said:
At least when they’re buying the Apple products on their own, they’re far more likely to give honest reviews. I just don’t care for the clickbait messaging that isn’t indicative of performance for the average user. For a person buying it for sustained SSD speeds, they’re not going 256GB model if they’re going MBA and not MacBook Pro 14/16” at all.
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Well their sensationalism and lack of honesty is as a result of the channels success. They know making one of these clickbait videos is gonna cause a stir. But what are you gonna do? Besides, the average user don’t care anyway. It’s just that there are a lot of enthusiast who get riled up easily.
 
CarAnalogy said:
Uh what? Command+Q. Or, right click dock icon -> quit. If that doesn’t work, Apple menu -> Force quit… -> choose application and hit force quit.

How is that any more difficult than Windows?
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Most Windows apps have an 'X' in the top-right corner that will exit the program. On macOS, hitting the analogous 'X' often just closes all windows, leaving the app running in the background (default behavior). Granted, macOS has done this forever, and it makes subsequent launches much faster, so it is a better experience for the user. Exiting often takes an extra step (right-click dock icon, keyboard chord, etc....) :)

Rich S.
 
CarAnalogy said:
<snip>....

Besides all that, it’s not universally true that hitting the X quits an app on Windows. Many applications use a notification area icon to stay running. Granted, most Windows users don’t know that either. Also, File->Quit is remarkably similar to Application Name -> Quit.

It’s always hard to say what “users know” because they’re all different.

My only point is that it’s not actually any harder, just different. </snip>
Click to expand...
To put this in perspective, applications that minimize to the task tray are few and tend to be programs that need to do things in the background. In earlier versions of Windows, some apps would do this for similar reasons to why macOS still does this today. In Windows, these apps would pre-load portions, to enable a "quick start," but this technique is not used by most commercial apps these days. Incidentally, for these apps clicking File --> Quit, often still leaves the task-tray program running. To stop the Task Tray program from running, you can either use Task Manager or find the setting in the main app to turn that feature off. However, all macOS apps have the close windows, but stay running behavior. :)

Rich S.
 
jlc1978 said:
Except it isn’t slower overall in normal use per benchmarks. Focusing on one component ignores how well they work together. The focus on SSD speed is like saying a car is slower because it has less HP even as it is faster in say 0 - 60 or has a higher top speed. What counts is how well an item performs overall, not any one spec.
Click to expand...
Yeah people don't realize that peak SSD speeds are rarely ever reached unless you are sending a large amount of files continuously. Depending on the workload being transferred, it might not been seen as a performance impact. It's a just a number which they perceive as better value and used as comparisons.

I understand the negativity, people are paying their hard earn money and they want to get value for their product - Seeing a number that is lower than a model earlier would annoy any person, but this is more psychological. Anyone doing large file transfers continuous should be moving to a higher memory configuration to start with. Simply because as you fill up your SSD, your performance can drop.

It really depends on the users workload.

This seems like also a smart ploy to use YouTube to force consumers to upgrade to 512Gb, since this goes viral - the only person that wins here is the manufacturer.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
One big caveat there..

If they buy a base model with only 8GB ram, it's absolutely easy for them to load it up and the swap comes into play...and that 50% slower than M1 SSD speed will be a bottleneck.

My wife has a base M1, and it's even been an occasional issue for her.
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Yep. Same with my base M1 Air and my base M1 mini. It is so bad I replaced the M1 mini with a base studio. Stalls and beachballs are gone.
 
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Dammit Cubs said:
Yeah people don't realize that peak SSD speeds are rarely ever reached unless you are sending a large amount of files continuously. Depending on the workload being transferred, it might not been seen as a performance impact. It's a just a number which they perceive as better value and used as comparisons.

I understand the negativity, people are paying their hard earn money and they want to get value for their product - Seeing a number that is lower than a model earlier would annoy any person, but this is more psychological. Anyone doing large file transfers continuous should be moving to a higher memory configuration to start with. Simply because as you fill up your SSD, your performance can drop.

It really depends on the users workload.

This seems like also a smart ploy to use YouTube to force consumers to upgrade to 512Gb, since this goes viral - the only person that wins here is the manufacturer.
Click to expand...
What is much more likely, is that many here and elsewhere on the internet have blindly attached their faith and trust in clickbait artists on YouTube, believing without any corroborating evidence whatsoever, that what rte clickbait artists have said is true. The only people profiting from this circus are the clickbait artists.

It really is a sad state of affairs when YouTubers suddenly become the experts wielding power given to them by people who are supposed to know better; the tech heads.
 
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