I’ll jump on the wish wagon with USB-A and Firewire connections.
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Review: Two Weeks With the M3 MacBook Air
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I’ll jump on the wish wagon with USB-A and Firewire connections.
People seem really frustrated by the M3 and the gains over the M2, but does everyone seem to forget this is how Apple has always been? They'd release a new Intel chip in the same design and it would only provide 10-20% performance gains. This isn't something that is new to Tim Cook.
Or
Apple Silicon is so good that even the previous generation or two Airs will be more than good enough as a general purpose MacBook. And instead of sticking the M3 in the 13” M1/M2 MBP body, you can get the benefits of the 14” body (MagSafe, screen, speakers, battery, etc.) for only $100 more than the same spec 13” M2 MBP.
Nice work Tim.
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Are people frustrated by the processor gains? Or are they disappointed that nothing else improves from generation to generation with M series Macs?
I don’t get this at all. MBA is typically 4-5 years between redesign. In between, you get incremental spec bumps. It has been that way since introduction of the 2010 model, which was the first MBA intended for the everyday computer market.
Most don't take into account the design process and what it takes to commercialize a design. On one hand they will be the first to complain about cost and quality issues but then casually say, add this port or add that port, as if it should be easy and cheap. It's not. For one, there just isn't a lot of free space to slap in additional circuity, necessitating new board design. Not cheap. For another, chopping additional holes in a case will change its stress points and structural rigidity necessitating rigorous testing. Not cheap. Then there is it will change how the thermals will work. another thing to test. Not cheap. Not to mention once all the redesign, the testing, they changing of supply lines, you have to change the assembly line. Not cheap.
But sure. change it every year. Why not? /s
Most industries, like the car, contains costs and quality by making one design last for several years with only well defined changes with minimum impact on all of the above.
You can be disappointed by Apple's choices, that it doesn't match what YOU want, but to expect it to change soon is a prescription for frustration.
I take a more pragmatic approach. This is what the design is, can I make it work for me? And if that means I have a dongle permanently in my travel bag for those rare occasions I need Ethernet, USB A or HDMI, oh well, no big deal.
98% of the time what I connect to my MBA is power, or a monitor, or an external SSD, and the included USB C does that. I rather have a design optimized for what I do the most, than a large expensive Swiss army knife.
It really depends on what you want to do?
Are you prioritizing portability over performance? Then you might want the Air?
If performance is important to you, then the M1 Pro will probably still perform better for tasks that require performance. The M3 core is moderately faster than the M1 core, but the M1 Pro has more cores.
If you are not doing tasks that take much performance then you might not notice much difference between them.
It’s not just Tim Cook. That is how chip upgrades work and have worked for decades. The year over year performance improvements are incremental and moderate. It’s only if you wait for a few years that you see a big performance bump. The M1 felt like such a huge jump because the preceding Macbooks had been saddled by Intel chips that had minimal upgrades and put out more heat than planned for. When the M1 came out it ran cool and fast and everyone assumed that each generation of M-chips would offer such a jump. that was never realistic but people continue to complain.
I think the early phone upgrade cycle trained people to expect that the launch of a new model was some kind of bell to trade in the old model on a new one. That is no longer true of phones (by any maker) and certainly not true of computers.
I don't know about Firewire but I still use USB-A mice and keyboards. I wouldn't mind.
I don't think so... The new M3 compared to the M1 is actually more powerful under every aspect! The benchmarks results are pretty clear. Then with the new M3 MBA you have a better camera ( much more better respect to the Studio Display too ), a better audio system and a large improved battery autonomy.
? M3 and M2 Air sound worse than M1 Air. Try it. Also no battery life improvement, according to testing or to official Apple stats.
I'll give you the improved benchmarks, but that's certainly not enough for 99% of people to consider an upgrade. The person that compared an M1 Pro to an M3 Air would get a generally poorer device, even if the processor is quicker.
Edit: Definitely better camera M1 Air vs M2or3 Air, but M3 Air vs M1 Pro? Mmmm...
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Improved performance can give better battery life by finishing the task sooner. Battery rundown tests are not real time bound tasks, they just run mindlessly until the battery runs down. In that regard they don't reflect real work tasks. Apple's official stats are often unchanged even when we can see that there are changes. It's like the 18 hour battery life rating of the Apple Watch. Actual users typically get 30 hours or more these days but Apple sticks with the original rating.
Still, it is true that there isn't a large reason for someone with an M1, let alone an M2, to upgrade to an M3 yet. Those machines will still be good fro several more years. That is why, when Apple announces the new models, they generally compare to the older Intel models as those are the customers who should be upgrading.
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Let's talk about the 8GB default memory - it's not enough.
I got my team at work the M2 15" and Outlook, Teams, and Word, and few websites open makes the thing crawl slow as a snail and constantly freeze on all of them. The lack of fan and software throttling probably play a role in this too - but upgrade the memory if you're buying for sure - forget future proofing as the article states.
What I don't get is why no reviewers ever mention how bad the Air is with base memory if you're attempting any level of multitasking - which irks me because it was company money buying them - had that been covered I'd have ponied up for the upgrade. My team are teachers - they aren't doing much. It cripples what is otherwise an awesome machine.
I got my team at work the M2 15" and Outlook, Teams, and Word, and few websites open makes the thing crawl slow as a snail and constantly freeze on all of them. The lack of fan and software throttling probably play a role in this too - but upgrade the memory if you're buying for sure - forget future proofing as the article states.
What I don't get is why no reviewers ever mention how bad the Air is with base memory if you're attempting any level of multitasking - which irks me because it was company money buying them - had that been covered I'd have ponied up for the upgrade. My team are teachers - they aren't doing much. It cripples what is otherwise an awesome machine.
Exactly these apps I use for my daily work with my G3 HP from 2016? with 8GM RAM and I never had RAM problems. That means that you better use a windows Notebook for microsoft apps. And/or Sonoma is really really inefficient with RAM.
I don't disagree with any of that. 👍🏼 However my own experience with my M1 Air and an M2 Air I used for a month suggested the extra little bit of processor gain did not do anything for battery life. But that's light use. I have a work Pro for anything demanding.
Not everyone can handle 8Gb of RAM.
I have run Safari (JIRA, Confluence, SharePoint, regular websites), Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, OneNote, Teams, Photos, Microsoft Remote Desktop, OneDrive, Mail, Calendar and Parallels with a Windows 11 virtual machine on a M1 MBA with 8Gb without any performance problem.
Exactly. I don’t want Apple to redesign the MBA every year. It’s just too expensive constantly changing production tooling and supply chain. Much better to improve the existing design with better specs. Then, the retail price can slowly drift down from $1,200+/- at release to the magical $999 at maturity. Then, wash...rinse...repeat. This seems to be the best way for Apple to make a great portable everyday computer affordable to a large market.
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What exactly are you looking for from generation to generation? And yes there seems to be plenty of griping that the differences between the M2 and M3 are only marginal gains.
Sorry, I should have been more clear, but I wanted to know where to find the version of this that is animated. It's not the still picture I want but the animated version that shows up in the video at 4:55 and on the Apple website when you navigate to the Macs section.
Second this. 15” is great laptop. Questions, why Apple discontinued M2 version (probably it’s just marketing purpose).
Not at all. I just want one nice feature which you can get on a sub-$200 phone or sub-$800 laptop. Why does 120hz need to be a pro feature — because Apple decided to call it ProMotion?
The fact that the base M3 MBP with 8gb of RAM and 120hz exists, is a joke. What “pro” is buying that?