Who's buying the 15" MacBook?

[Requiem.js]

M2 SoC with possible M2 Pro upgrade (could have active cooling design)

I don't think they are going to do this. M2 Pro is for the Pro lineup and in my opinion this should stay like this. Why would you even buy an Air if you want Pro CPUs and a bigger screen? I think it kills the entire purpose of Air. Might as well add some HDMI and SDXC ports

 

[pshufd]

What I'd like is a 13 inch MacBook Air in 15 inch form factor with and a USB-A port and 24 GB of RAM option. I have gotten used to the weight and size of my 16 and I love using it at home but there are times when I'd like something smaller and lighter but with a big screen. I can't justify a 15 as I have the 16 but I would definitely take a look.

One thing that would get me to replace my MacBook Pro would be a 17 inch Air along the lines of the LG Gram 17.

 

[Tagbert]

What I'd like is a 13 inch MacBook Air in 15 inch form factor with and a USB-A port and 24 GB of RAM option. I have gotten used to the weight and size of my 16 and I love using it at home but there are times when I'd like something smaller and lighter but with a big screen. I can't justify a 15 as I have the 16 but I would definitely take a look.

One thing that would get me to replace my MacBook Pro would be a 17 inch Air along the lines of the LG Gram 17.

Since they didn’t include USB-A when they added the ports to the MBPs, I doubt we would see that on a MBA. I have seen some very small A-C dongles and I have one in my bag incase I need to connect to an older thumb drive or such.

 

[NikkoTuason]

I’m kind of satisfied with my 14” MBP M2 Pro. I’ll see if the new 15” is a decent upgrade.

 

[Dhonk]

One thing I’m curious bout is the keyboard. I used a 15” MacBook Pro when I was teaching from home during Covid. I liked the bigger screen but absolutely hated that the keyboard had so much space (and speakers) on the side. I felt like the keyboard should have been slightly stretched more proportionally.

 

[spicynujac]

Since they didn’t include USB-A when they added the ports to the MBPs, I doubt we would see that on a MBA. I have seen some very small A-C dongles and I have one in my bag incase I need to connect to an older thumb drive or such.

Boy would I love to see USB-A back on a Mac. It's one reason I'm still using my 2015 Macbook Pro 15" (the "best laptop ever made" model). But I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Merely including it would be an admission that people still need to plug things into USB-A, which is not something Apple will admit (because, then, where are the USB-A ports on its Pro machines?) [Mac minis and desktops still have USB-A though.]

My question is purely price. Will it be cheaper than a MBP 14" or not? I say it has to be cheaper. But here's the catch. The 14" MBP starting at $1850 includes a higher tier 16GB RAM and 512 GB SSD storage, upgrades that Apple sells for $360.

Subtracting those upgrades gives a price of a (theoretical) 14" MBP with the base 8GB/256GB at $1490. So for me, I'll only buy a 15" MBA if it is priced well below $1500, considering the 14" is "big enough" and has several other features that make it nicer (speakers, screen, etc).

$1400 MBA 15 would make me buy immediately.
Apple is better than perhaps anyone at pricing and marketing. It will be interesting to see what they do here. But honestly they have very little room to maneuver this price, based on the large number of competing models they already sell, just above and just below $1400.

 

[Tagbert]

Boy would I love to see USB-A back on a Mac. It's one reason I'm still using my 2015 Macbook Pro 15" (the "best laptop ever made" model). But I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Merely including it would be an admission that people still need to plug things into USB-A, which is not something Apple will admit (because, then, where are the USB-A ports on its Pro machines?) [Mac minis and desktops still have USB-A though.]

My question is purely price. Will it be cheaper than a MBP 14" or not? I say it has to be cheaper. But here's the catch. The 14" MBP starting at $1850 includes a higher tier 16GB RAM and 512 GB SSD storage, upgrades that Apple sells for $360.

Subtracting those upgrades gives a price of a (theoretical) 14" MBP with the base 8GB/256GB at $1490. So for me, I'll only buy a 15" MBA if it is priced well below $1500, considering the 14" is "big enough" and has several other features that make it nicer (speakers, screen, etc).

$1400 MBA 15 would make me buy immediately.
Apple is better than perhaps anyone at pricing and marketing. It will be interesting to see what they do here. But honestly they have very little room to maneuver this price, based on the large number of competing models they already sell, just above and just below $1400.

Based on the price difference of 14” and 16” MBPs with matching specs, you see a $200 difference that seems to be a result of the size difference. It’s not certain that that would be the exact price difference in the Air line but it is probably a good approximation. That gives possible prices like below.

MBA 13” 8/256 $1199
MBA 15” 8/256 $1399

MBA 13” 16/512 $1699
MBA 15” 16/512 $1899
MBP 14” 16/512 $1999

BTW I don’t see the MBP 14” price as $1850. That might be a sale price so it would not be useful to predict prices.

 

[VivienM]

I suspect a lot of the No’s are just people who are not in the market for what a 15” MBA would provide.

The 15" MBA is, in many ways, like the iPhone 14 Plus, i.e. a product that would serve a market, but a market that doesn't have pent-up demand.

For example, my parents would be the perfect buyers for the iPhone 14 Plus - they like big smartphones, their needs aren't such that they would spend big $$$ for a Pro Max - but their XRs are still good enough that they're not in the market for a new smartphone this year. If a 15 Plus is around next year, it'd be the obvious choice for them, but the existence of the 14 Plus is not enough to get them buying a new smartphone a year early.

Similarly, I think my mom would love the 15" MacBook Air. She had a base model late-2013 15" retina MBP, but then its SSD died, so... she ended up getting a 2020 4-TB Intel 13.3". Couldn't justify the higher price tag of the Intel 16". Annoying timing, obviously, with Apple Silicon a few months out, but... if your old machine has a hardware failure that's unaffordable to fix especially in a pandemic, you've got to get what's available at the time. If they launch a 15" MBA next month, as perfect as it may be for her, though, she's not going to write off a 2.75 year old Intel. So, realistically, she'll get the ~2025 15" MacBook Air, if they haven't killed it due to underperforming sales by then. And if they do kill it, she'll get a 13"...

Compare this with the more "enthusiast-focused" products like the M1 Pro/Max MBPs, the Pro/Pro Max iPhones, etc where there are many customers who will look at it and say "you know what, this new thing is amazing, I wasn't planning to upgrade this year, but this product is just so much better that I will buy a new one early." And those people will place preorders, line up in front of stores, etc...

 

[VivienM]

Consumers expect a larger notebook to have more power and an M2 Pro option makes sense.

Just want to disagree with that. "Larger notebook has more power" has been Apple's price discrimination strategy since, oh, the launch of the white iBook. There were occasional exceptions (e.g. the late-2013 15.4" retina MBP with 8 gigs of RAM and no discrete GPU was a relatively modest price bump over the 13"), but in Apple land, if you want a big screen, you were buying a big processor, big GPU, often big storage, etc. It's worth noting that Apple has used the same strategy with the iPad too - if you want a big screen, you're paying BIG BUCKS for a 12.9" iPad Pro.

In Windowsland, it has often been the opposite: there have been a lot of cheap, bulky laptops, 15" or 17" with lower-end internals. And they sell, though maybe not as much as a decade ago - certainly the 17" size is not as common as it was. And the priciest Windows consumer laptops, at least on the non-gaming side, tend to be the super-small/slim Mac imitators like Dell's XPS 13.

Often, frankly, the market is people who don't really take their laptops anywhere, don't care about portability, but for whatever reason don't want a desktop (e.g. the perception that desktops are "messy" with all their cables, take up a lot more desk space, etc). They don't do anything particularly demanding, but they'd like a large screen, possibly not even that high resolution, just because.

 

[Falhófnir]

Just want to disagree with that. "Larger notebook has more power" has been Apple's price discrimination strategy since, oh, the launch of the white iBook. There were occasional exceptions (e.g. the late-2013 15.4" retina MBP with 8 gigs of RAM and no discrete GPU was a relatively modest price bump over the 13"), but in Apple land, if you want a big screen, you were buying a big processor, big GPU, often big storage, etc. It's worth noting that Apple has used the same strategy with the iPad too - if you want a big screen, you're paying BIG BUCKS for a 12.9" iPad Pro.

In Windowsland, it has often been the opposite: there have been a lot of cheap, bulky laptops, 15" or 17" with lower-end internals. And they sell, though maybe not as much as a decade ago - certainly the 17" size is not as common as it was. And the priciest Windows consumer laptops, at least on the non-gaming side, tend to be the super-small/slim Mac imitators like Dell's XPS 13.

Often, frankly, the market is people who don't really take their laptops anywhere, don't care about portability, but for whatever reason don't want a desktop (e.g. the perception that desktops are "messy" with all their cables, take up a lot more desk space, etc). They don't do anything particularly demanding, but they'd like a large screen, possibly not even that high resolution, just because.

17"ers did nearly go extinct, but they've had a real renaissance over the last 2-3 years. It had dwindled down to a handful of bulky power-focused gaming laptops, but now you have the likes of the 17" XPS and LG Gram for example. Indeed a slew of 18 inch laptops has just launched this year. The trend to bigger screens has been ongoing for years with smartphones and TVs, but I think it's popular across the board. iPads have only been getting bigger, the 13/15 inch MBP grew to 14/16, and now we've finally got solid rumours of the long overdue full-size consumer laptop!

 

[VivienM]

17"ers did nearly go extinct, but they've had a real renaissance over the last 2-3 years. It had dwindled down to a handful of bulky power-focused gaming laptops, but now you have the likes of the 17" XPS and LG Gram for example.

There also continued to be a few low-end 17"s Windows laptops, and when I say low-end, I mean... bulky cheap plastic cases, DVD drives, lousy wifi, no USB-C, giant bezels, slow SMR hard drives as the rest of the world has gone SSD, etc.

I actually have a Dell Inspiron 3780 that's a good example of this. The thing even has an Ethernet port... that is 10/100, not gigabit. Moody switchable graphics - why they put a (lousy) discrete GPU on that thing bewilders me. A weird BIOS bug that caused it not to crash if the screen turned off. Total garbage laptop, which is why I wasn't amused when it turned out to be the only Windows machine I had which met Microsoft's "performance and reliability expectations" and therefore was allowed to officially run Windows 11. (And if anyone asks why I bought this, I wanted a 17" Windows laptop with a 1920x1080 screen and the ability to be upgraded to a LOT of RAM for use at home. And there weren't a ton of options at the time...)

But yes, on the higher-quality non-gaming Windows laptops, 17" largely vanished. Dell had a Sandy Bridge XPS 17 (L702x... which I also have one of), then I think the XPSes were all 15" and smaller for about a decade.

Interestingly, of course, that coincides with Apple getting rid of the 17" MacBook Pro, though my view is that the 17" MacBook Pro died for a different reason - I don't think, with display interfaces as they existed at the time, they could do a 3840x2400 retina display.

 

[MayaUser]

So its real....15" Mba with M2 is coming to WWDC
The "3nm tech" will appear first into the A17

 

[senttoschool]

The 15" MBA is, in many ways, like the iPhone 14 Plus, i.e. a product that would serve a market, but a market that doesn't have pent-up demand.

FYI, the non-high-end 15" is the biggest laptop market.

 

[VivienM]

FYI, the non-high-end 15" is the biggest laptop market.

In Windows consumerland, at least, that would make sense to me. In businessland, I would expect 14.1"s to massively outsell them.

But that makes one question the wisdom of the Steve Jobs price discrimination strategy, doesn't it? Apple does not have a "non-high-end 15"" machine. A 13" MacBook Air is the only thing remotely comparable price-wise...

 

[senttoschool]

In Windows consumerland, at least, that would make sense to me. In businessland, I would expect 14.1"s to massively outsell them.

But that makes one question the wisdom of the Steve Jobs price discrimination strategy, doesn't it? Apple does not have a "non-high-end 15"" machine. A 13" MacBook Air is the only thing remotely comparable price-wise...

I would expect the 15" MBA to vastly outsell the 14" MBP in business.

The M2/M3 is already significantly overpowered for most office workers. The MBP only makes sense for creator types.

 

[VivienM]

I would expect the 15" MBA to vastly outsell the 14" MBP in business.

The M2/M3 is already significantly overpowered for most office workers. The MBP only makes sense for creator types.

Sorry, I meant Windows businessland... that's 14.1 country.

I would have loved a 15" MBA with 24GB of RAM. Getting a big-screened Mac laptop with more than 16GB of RAM cost me dearly...

 

[senttoschool]

Sorry, I meant Windows businessland... that's 14.1 country.

I would have loved a 15" MBA with 24GB of RAM. Getting a big-screened Mac laptop with more than 16GB of RAM cost me dearly...

I'm pretty sure that 15" laptops vastly outsell 14" ones in the Windows business world. How do I know this? Because 14" laptops are quite rare and 15" laptops are the highest selling laptops.

 

[VivienM]

I'm pretty sure that 15" laptops vastly outsell 14" ones in the Windows business world. How do I know this? Because 14" laptops are quite rare and 15" laptops are the highest selling laptops.

That cannot be right, at least if we are talking about the same Windows business world (ThinkPad T series, Latitudes, etc - the serious, dockable-until-the-last-generation-or-two, etc Windows business laptops):
1. If you look at sellers of refurbished off-lease laptops, most of what they have is the 14.1" models
2. If you look at inventory at resellers like CDW that target the business/corporate market, they have way more stock of the equivalent 14.1" models than the 15.6" models
3. Lenovo, for example, has always offered two models of 14.1" T series - the 'normal' one and a 's' slim one that's a few years ahead of the normal ones in terms of Apple-style pursuit of slimness, e.g. dropping hard drives, Ethernet jacks, etc. In 15.6" and 12.5", they only offer one model.
4. This is just anecdotal, but every business/government agency/etc that I have ever heard of that issues those kinds of laptops is issuing the 14.1" models.

 

[senttoschool]

That cannot be right, at least if we are talking about the same Windows business world (ThinkPad T series, Latitudes, etc - the serious, dockable-until-the-last-generation-or-two, etc Windows business laptops):
1. If you look at sellers of refurbished off-lease laptops, most of what they have is the 14.1" models
2. If you look at inventory at resellers like CDW that target the business/corporate market, they have way more stock of the equivalent 14.1" models than the 15.6" models
3. Lenovo, for example, has always offered two models of 14.1" T series - the 'normal' one and a 's' slim one that's a few years ahead of the normal ones in terms of Apple-style pursuit of slimness, e.g. dropping hard drives, Ethernet jacks, etc. In 15.6" and 12.5", they only offer one model.
4. This is just anecdotal, but every business/government agency/etc that I have ever heard of that issues those kinds of laptops is issuing the 14.1" models.

Yea, you're probably right. In the Windows business world, thin and light 14" laptops seem to dominate. In the non-business world, 15" tend to dominate.

 

[VivienM]

Yea, you're probably right. In the Windows business world, thin and light 14" laptops seem to dominate. In the non-business world, 15" tend to dominate.

I would say "mainstream 14" business laptops" tend to dominate. They've gotten thinner and lighter, but they're not really what anyone would describe as 'thin and light'. The 'thin and light' laptops would be something more like Lenovo's X1 laptops, which no corporate IT department would get... that being said, compared to contemporaneous junk 15.6/17.3 low-end consumer Windows laptops, yes, they are thin and light.

e.g. if you are a Lenovo person, you can go all the way back to the T400, at least, then T410, T420, T430, T440, T450, T460, T470, T480, T490, T14 G1, T14 G2, T14 G3. They would have gotten slimmer as Lenovo got rid of the optical drive bay, switched to slimmer keyboards, got rid of the hard drive bay in favour of M.2 SSDs, switched to built-in Apple-style batteries, etc. If you put a T14 G3 next to a T400, then, sure, the T14 G3 will feel like a 'thin and light'. But if you put any of these machines against contemporaneous 'thin and light' Windows laptop, they're not thin and light.

Some organizations will get the slim versions, e.g. T460s, but I think the larger IT departments typically don't. Some of the lower cost options, e.g. hard drives, 1366x768 screens, etc are only available on the non-slim model... and I think a lot of organizations, particularly those that just issue laptop + docking station + external monitor/keyboard/mouse to all employees, including people who rarely/never leave their desk, didn't want to spend the extra money on nicer screens and SSDs.

Look at what's out there from the off-lease refurbishers. Lots and lots of low-end configurations of those T series or equivalent Dell 14.1" mainstream businessy laptops.

 

[MrGunny94]

Maybe if I didn't replaced my M1 Pro with the M2 Pro I would go for it. But my problem right now is that I can't go back after having the ProMotion on the Macbook.

Plus this MiniLED screen is a really good screen to have on the go to see TV Shows and Movies, I'm sure they will go for LCD.

 

[maflynn]

While I feel my 14" MBP is a bit too small for my eyes, I think at this point, there's no need to either replace what I have or get another Mac for the household. I'm content with my MBP

 

[Falhófnir]

There also continued to be a few low-end 17"s Windows laptops, and when I say low-end, I mean... bulky cheap plastic cases, DVD drives, lousy wifi, no USB-C, giant bezels, slow SMR hard drives as the rest of the world has gone SSD, etc.

I actually have a Dell Inspiron 3780 that's a good example of this. The thing even has an Ethernet port... that is 10/100, not gigabit. Moody switchable graphics - why they put a (lousy) discrete GPU on that thing bewilders me. A weird BIOS bug that caused it not to crash if the screen turned off. Total garbage laptop, which is why I wasn't amused when it turned out to be the only Windows machine I had which met Microsoft's "performance and reliability expectations" and therefore was allowed to officially run Windows 11. (And if anyone asks why I bought this, I wanted a 17" Windows laptop with a 1920x1080 screen and the ability to be upgraded to a LOT of RAM for use at home. And there weren't a ton of options at the time...)

But yes, on the higher-quality non-gaming Windows laptops, 17" largely vanished. Dell had a Sandy Bridge XPS 17 (L702x... which I also have one of), then I think the XPSes were all 15" and smaller for about a decade.

Interestingly, of course, that coincides with Apple getting rid of the 17" MacBook Pro, though my view is that the 17" MacBook Pro died for a different reason - I don't think, with display interfaces as they existed at the time, they could do a 3840x2400 retina display.

Yeah I think it would have been difficult to drive a 4K+ display in 2012, it's still entails a performance tradeoff today, 11 years later! Apple also manoeuvred the 17" into a really unfavourable position, it was a lot more expensive than the 15" for equivalent specs, the only benefit other than the display itself was the express card slot, and idk how much use that even really was. Maybe more useful back in 2010 or so.

 

[assquatch]

I'm very interested in the "15 screen in the Air's form factor.

I got the 14" pro and it's been great. I'd trade a bit of the power, and some of the thickness (though I do love the design) for a thinner machine with more screen. I think there is enough bezel still there that they will do it without increasing the footprint much. To me, that would be the ideal all-purpose travel-ready machine.

 

[dmccloud]

Yeah I think it would have been difficult to drive a 4K+ display in 2012, it's still entails a performance tradeoff today, 11 years later! Apple also manoeuvred the 17" into a really unfavourable position, it was a lot more expensive than the 15" for equivalent specs, the only benefit other than the display itself was the express card slot, and idk how much use that even really was. Maybe more useful back in 2010 or so.

ExpressCard wasn't even significant on the Windows side of things. It basically had a 2-3 year run, then faded away as more components moved to being integrated on the motherboards/logic boards. Even a cheaper USB-C or Thunderbolt dock has far more expandability in 2023 than ExpressCard ever did.