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What to Expect From the 'Scary Fast' October 30 Apple Event
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I built a 44" high standup desk with three 4K Viewsonic displays on VESA mounts above the MBP which is open under the middle external display. I mostly use an external keyboard and magic trackpad, but if either temporarily fails (battery or whatever) the MBP's keyboard/trackpad is useable. So 4 displays total with the MBP display open and visible but minimally used.
IMO most folks will do best with one large (minimum 32") external display VESA mounted above the internal MBP display. I use more displays mostly because it evolved that way, and because 4 different displays can each be set to different resolutions for different apps.
Haha, don't be silly.
But I do have to tell you something: In a few weeks you're going to be asked by a friend to pick up something at the store. Don't do it. That's all I'm at liberty to say.
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Laptop batteries can easily last 4 to 5 years now. They have certainly improved power management and battery chemistry considerably in the past decade.
I have a Samsung ultrabook from 2012 thats still going strong on Windows 10. Battery at 85 percent health 10 years later and can easily last most the day.
I dont know which laptops your student friends have but high quality laptops can also go amazingly long on battery and come with great longevity. Before the samsung i used thinkpads and those also lasted much longer than most other laptops on battery. Built like tanks too (they also came with a service manual!)
History says otherwise. Properly sized SSDs (~2x necessary capacity) seldom wear out in 4 years as long as RAM remains adequate and the OS is not constantly paging to SSD.
RAM demands OTOH always inexorably increase as OS and apps start asking for more. My past experience puts that point where max-originally-available MBP RAM becomes limiting at about 3-4 years.
Note also that I do not identify RAM as becoming "obsolete," rather it becomes more and more limiting as the OS is forced to swap to SSD, slowing operation and dramatically accelerating SSD wear.
Some buyers, perhaps most, cheap out and install the RAM they need today, which IMO is flat dumb. Smart buyers buy for expected RAM needs toward the end of whatever life cycle they plan, not for the beginning.
Note that buying less RAM may force your statement "MBP will die of SSD wear faster than 96Gb RAM (even 64Gb) will become obsolete" to become true, especially if both RAM and SSD are undersized. Personally I consider the headaches of dealing with worn SSD and later-life-cycle performance limitation of less RAM far more significant than the cost of initially oversizing both RAM/SSD.
This is why I hope for more moderate upgrade pricing and higher standard configuration.
I expect a lot of hyperbolic exclamations inducing euphoria and “can you believe they did that!” and “who saw that coming!” followed a day or two later by a reality check as reviews and independent benchmarks are published. I was ready to pull the trigger on the m2 max studio over the summer but got so ticked at the shameless price gauging on ram, upgrades and everything studio display (yes I want it to go up and down -$400) I said I’m done. I bought this and a 32” 4k 144htz ips w/kvm instead which will destroy any Mac in existence And costs a fraction of Mac performance. I’m assembling with my son on 11/1:
Ive never ever seen a Macbook suffer from a worn out ssd. I think its a non issue, even if your system was swapping heavily. SSD are way more robust for multiple writes than they used to be. Unless Apple cheaps out on the NAND they put in their macbooks.
While it’s a small sample size (3), the people I know don’t care about what processor that in their MBA. Size (portability), screen size and battery life matter. While the people (2) I know that have MBP are about which processor, how many cores, how much RAM.
“And it was such a great idea, the EU is making everyone else do it too”
It makes total sense not to put M3 in MBA yet, because whenever MBA does get M3 it will not be more powerful than what M2 has now - - because MBA is positioned as the lower end. Top end M2 MBPs will always outperform any M3 MBA. That said, I totally agree that "M3 seems like a good point to do it," especially if M3 allows more MBA RAM than the RAM-limited M2 MBAs. And if M3 does not make more MBA RAM available just take advantage of M2 MBA price reductions when M3 MBAs are announced.
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Exactly. Despite Apple's self-obsession (& highly orverrated spin), the rest of the industry does not stay still either & there is much on the near horizon: Intel 14th gen Meteor Lake; killer new chips from Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, AMD's next ARM & other ARM ventures in general. Shall be interesting to see how 2024 progresses on this front, & especially in terms on next gen touch screen convertibles /detachables with a now very mature Win 11 /touch OS.
ie, Why on earth would I want to cough up silly prices for both an Apple laptop AND and iPad when there are already many Win variables that do both right now, let alone these next gen models, like from the biggest selling laptop manufacturers in the world including Lenove & Dell.
In real world there are no "fair" or "silly" prices. They set price at a point where offer is as close as possible to demand, so everything they produce sells and there's no shortage at the same time. If it's expensive _for you_ - well, that's unlucky. Buy Dell.
The vast majority of higher-end PC OEM laptop sales are to enterprise customers, who buy on annual cycles as they replace older machines or purchase for new employees. So those OEMs refresh every year for that market and at the end of the year deeply discount their prior models remaining stock to clear it out (and take the revenue and profit hit for doing so).
Apple sells mostly to consumers, who do not replace their machines every year. They also do not "fire sale" their older models, instead cycling them down-market to entice new customers to enter the ecosystem (while still making plenty of revenue and profit on each one). So Apple only regularly refreshes the MacBook Air because that model makes up the majority of their sales (on a single-model basis).
Apple could change their marketing approach. Right now they have been playing this game of limiting what has the latest M SoC's to select models, but say they do it differently per this paragraph from a MacWorld article.
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If Apple does unveil the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips on Monday, it’s also previewing the next generation of all Mac hardware. If the Apple Silicon era has taught us anything, it’s that a chip is a chip is a chip. In other words, if there’s an iMac with an M3 chip in it, you can bet that the M3 MacBook Air and M3 Mac miniwill perform more or less identically. If there’s a MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip in it, you can bet that the M3 Pro Mac mini will match it.
In the Apple silicon era, Apple didn’t design a bunch of different chip variations around each of its computers. Instead, it designs a base set of chips and then creates Macs to fit around them. The shapes and forms change, but the chips tell the story. For example, if the M3 iMac supports two external displays, the M3 MacBook Air probably will too. (And if it doesn’t, then that’s pretty much it for your hopes for that feature on the MacBook Air.)
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2023 has been a kinda crazy release schedule for Apple with new updated Macs in January and June at WWDC, nothing in between or after until Halloween. Other companies seems to update several products at a time.
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COVID and TSMC's teething issues moving to 3nm have messed-up Apple's release cadence for the M family. Now that both are behind us, Monday is hopefully a sign that Apple will be able to release all three variants (base/PRO/MAX) of each generation at the same time going forward (with then the ULTRA coming out around 6-8 months later).
Yeah, Airs are just too good and probably cannibalizing on Pro sales. So they might start getting M<one-two generations behind> SoCs, to get them back into entry segment.
It shouldn't be lower end or higher end… its just a different category for people doing different work. Someone wanting a thin and light laptop for office productivity, videoconferencing and web browsing isnt going to buy a Macbook Pro over a MBA anyday. Its a waste of money and youd be better off spending it on something else useful.