For me it was the price comparison with the 14 inch MacBook Pro. After I upgraded the RAM and the SSD of the MacBook Air, I was within a few hundred of the price of the 14 inch MacBook Pro so I went with the Pro because the feature set was worth the extra money over the MacBook Air.
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The 15" MacBook Air is Excellent! Why isn't it more popular?
- Thread starter Adelphos33
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Clarified what I meant now, I first wrote that saying M*Pro/Max/Ultra and then changed it just “MBP” for some reason. There are of course other quality of life stuff with the MBP besides the faster chip.
I honestly would love to buy one. But it's just too expensive with the memory upgrades.
Here in the US the 15 inch Air with 16GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD is $1699.
The MX Pro base model is $1999.
The MX Pro Model ends up being the best for me because it also allows 2 displays out and I have 2 displays for my setup at home already and I don't want to buy a display link adapter.
Plus it has more I/O and a 120Hz display.
I have a M1 Pro base model 14 inch. When I upgrade next if Apple has made the base chip a bit better I'll get a 15 inch Air. Otherwise I'll be sticking with the MBP.
Here in the US the 15 inch Air with 16GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD is $1699.
The MX Pro base model is $1999.
The MX Pro Model ends up being the best for me because it also allows 2 displays out and I have 2 displays for my setup at home already and I don't want to buy a display link adapter.
Plus it has more I/O and a 120Hz display.
I have a M1 Pro base model 14 inch. When I upgrade next if Apple has made the base chip a bit better I'll get a 15 inch Air. Otherwise I'll be sticking with the MBP.
No one expects that. The earnings calls don't call out specific MacBook product models.
I use a 16" Pro machine for work, but for home use I've wanted a 15" Air for a decade. It finally came, but with problems/downsides that made it disappointing. It's no worse than the 13" technically, but the whole range is weak on the base specs. I can't speak for the masses, but for me I wouldn't upgrade from an M1 Air due to a combination of these issues:
I could mitigate the first two problems by throwing £600 extra at it (£200 for RAM, £400 for the SSD), but once you're in that price category it's coming up against an M3 Pro MacBook Pro...
- Too little RAM
- Pathetic tiny SSD
- No USB port on right hand side
- Notch cutting into the screen
- Uglier design than M1 Air
- Can only drive one external monitor and not two, unlike old Intel machines
I could mitigate the first two problems by throwing £600 extra at it (£200 for RAM, £400 for the SSD), but once you're in that price category it's coming up against an M3 Pro MacBook Pro...
The reason 15" laptops in windows-land are popular is because they are cheap to manufacture and sell for bargain prices. People who "just need a computer" end up with a 15". Whether they want that size exactly is a secondary priority. That's why 15" laptops fare well in statistics and seemingly is what people rested upon as a basis for the 15" MBA to become a big hit.
MBA starts at a price premium from the get-go. So the consumer really has to want 15". The 14" Pro doesn't cost much more (and this was true even before the new entry M3 one) and offers a lot of bonuses over the MBA. In this comparison, the 13" MBA still fares well for being cheaper, significantly more compact and light. The 15".. meh?
I think it has its niche that will love it exactly because of that extra inch compared to the 14" MBP. It's just not a big part of the audience hence the reports of it not selling well.
But like someone said, every model can't be the top selling model.
MBA starts at a price premium from the get-go. So the consumer really has to want 15". The 14" Pro doesn't cost much more (and this was true even before the new entry M3 one) and offers a lot of bonuses over the MBA. In this comparison, the 13" MBA still fares well for being cheaper, significantly more compact and light. The 15".. meh?
I think it has its niche that will love it exactly because of that extra inch compared to the 14" MBP. It's just not a big part of the audience hence the reports of it not selling well.
But like someone said, every model can't be the top selling model.
Apple spent too long thinking about releasing the 15" MBA instead of releasing it at the same time as the 13". It's also too late in the M2 lifecycle to have introduced it. Instead, I think a lot of people are going to bide their time for the M3 version of the 13" and 15" MBA. I know I am. It also goes up in price quick once you spec it up in any way and then it's not that much of a stretch to the base 14" MBP. Once the M3 Air is released, sales should pick back up a bit.
The built-in display is smaller, however the higher resolution on the MacBook Pro compensates it factors with the HiDPI scaling.
Adding more RAM and a larger hard drive pushes the UK price almost upto MBP M3 money which has more RAM, more power and arguably a better display and speakers. As I cannot use the Mini LED displays I'm left with the 15" as the only option but feel like I'm being stung hard in the wallet with the upgrades so I dont make the purchase 🤷♂️. The 15" is also just a bit too big for carting around the home for casual use. I might just wait it out until the M3 13" Air, the problem I have is I'm always waiting.....
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My son recently bought a Pro because (he said) the Air doesn't have a fan (or has whimpy fans?) so after prolonged high performance use the CPU us clocked down to reduce the heat. The pro has either 1) a fan or 2) more fans so it can sustain the high performance use longer. I'm not sure is the standard benchmarking program look at sustained performances opposed to sustainable high prformance.
On paper the MBA 15" makes no sense, but in real life it's just a phenomenal "medium-grade office/programming work" portable machine. It has more than enough horsepower for everything except lengthy (10+ minutes, I would guess) continuous full-bore number crunching (even then I think it just gets hotter and throttles to 80%). The display tech of the MBP yields no benefits for office work (promotion is pretty but distracting, miniLED is a nightmare in low light), whereas the larger display of the MBA yields substantial benefits for spreadsheets, side by side editing, etc. I don't really know who XDR on the MBP is for -- I don't like consuming media on laptops anyway as I find a keyboard distracting, I have iPads and a television for that. And the .3 pound weight difference with the MBP 14 *is* noticeable, especially with the weight distributed over a larger area -- the MBA 15 is as easy to grab one handed and sling under my arm as the MBA 13. Aside from missing a thunderbolt port on the right, the machine is just eminently practical.
Why can't you use the Mini-LED displays? What causes the problem? I'm curious as I've had headaches from certain screens over the years and not others.
Makes sense. That picture looks horrible! I've never investigated/noticed the ability of my work MacBook Pro "16 in a darkened room. I always use it it bright light 😅
PWM / flashing displays are used to regulate brightness and dithering (to fake additional colours). These are present on all the OLED iPhones, Pro iPads and MBP's sadly for me. This causes me eye strain which leads to migraines, this is why I use (am stuck with) an iPhone 11 and a desktop. Apparently the MBA 15" doesn't have PWM and the jury is out on dithering.
Yep, cosigning all of that. Unless you’re doing very heavy photo/video editing or 3D modeling, the difference between the 15” MBA and 14” MBP screen is irrelevant. And besides, if you do such heavy work, you’re probably using an external monitor anyway so the native screen is again irrelevant.
For me, I do word processing and research with minimal photo/video editing so the difference between the two screens is not very noticeable. If anything I find the extra real estate of the 15” mre useful.
As to the chipset, for my purposes there’s no real advantage in the M3 over the M2. And again, if you do very heavy processing, you’ll probably have to go for the MAX (if not a desktop altogether!) and you’re in a completely different ballpark price wise and the MBA is not even in the running.
If we’re talking about the standard 15” and base 14” M3 MBP, I honestly don’t see any advantage for the MBP. The slightly better speakers and mic don’t move the needle for me - if I’m watching yt videos it’s not at any serious volume and for casual streaming I actually prefer the larger 15” screen and use a blutooth speaker anyway.
In this scenario, I find the lighter MBA much preferable, but obviously everyone is different.
Bottom line, the base 14” M3 MBP doesn’t have enough advantages for me in any respect to offset its inherent chunkiness compared to the 15” M2 MBA.
I agree. For on the road purposes for me, about 13 to 14 in the form factor that Apple currently has it is fine. I suppose if the bezel were further reduced or even eliminated, the screen size could increase but the form factor should remain the same as the 14", otherwise it gets rather bulky or odd to use on the go.
you had me right up to where you said there was no meaningful difference between the MB 15 and 13. There is a huge difference and it's in the name, the extra two inches of screen real estate. May not sound like much, but for those of us who had multiple documents at a time it really makes the 15 so much better to work with. In fact, I traded in my 13 for a 15 and have zero regrets, only positives.
I said “aside from the slightly larger display”. I also work with lots of documents, but I don’t think an extra couple of inches would be that helpful there. It’s not so much bigger that I would benefit from a 2x2 grid rather than just having two docs side by side and switching between spaces. I’ve found a good window manager is much more helpful in this regard, and when I do need more space for multi-doc stuff I plug into a much larger external display.
Where the extra space would be more useful (to me) is working on single-window applications that need a larger canvas and have a lot of toolbars and timelines (photo and video editing tools, Ableton, that sort of thing).
You can not dismiss the size , it is relevant. He also said there was no reason to get the MB 15. I disagreed.