3 ms·

The Air IS entry level; it's slow, low resolution, has meager io, etc. It just happens to be at a price point that is not entry level.

MR4D 6y ago
Depends on how you define “entry level”. The Porsche Cayman is an entry level Porsche, but starts at $60,000. I don’t know anyone who would call that an entry level car, but any Porsche-phile would. The new Air is fast and reasonably high resolution with a ~4K resolution screen. But it is Apple’s entry level laptop.
- cosmotic 6y ago
  I concede the new air is likely faster than the ancient i3 they used to put in them.
theodric 6y ago
> low resolution > 2560 x 1600 Damn, you've got some high standards.
- cosmotic 6y ago
  Competition has 4k displays on their thin and lights. They also don't use macOS which has problems running at resolutions other than native or pixel-doubled. The suggested scalings are 1680 by 1050, 1440 by 900, and 1024 by 640. None of those are even fractions of the native resolution so the interface looks blurry and shimmers. Also, all the suggested scalings are very small so there isn't much screen real-estate.
Klinky 6y ago
No it's not. It was designed to be extremely light with many compromises to make that happen. Yeah it got outdated, but that doesn't mean it was entry level.
Kwpolska 6y ago
Here are all the differences between the M1 Air and M1 Pro, from [1]: Brighter screen (500 nits vs. 400) Bigger battery (58 watt-hours vs. 50) Fan (increasing thermal headroom) Better speakers and microphones Touch Bar 0.2 pounds of weight (3.0 pounds vs. 2.8 — not much) The SoC is the same (although the entry-level Air gets 7-core GPUs, that’s probably chip binning). The screen is the same (Retina, P3 color gamut), both have 2 USB-C ports, both have a fingerprint reader. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_mac...

MR4D 6y ago

Depends on how you define “entry level”. The Porsche Cayman is an entry level Porsche, but starts at $60,000. I don’t know anyone who would call that an entry level car, but any Porsche-phile would. The new Air is fast and reasonably high resolution with a ~4K resolution screen. But it is Apple’s entry level laptop.

cosmotic 6y ago
I concede the new air is likely faster than the ancient i3 they used to put in them.

theodric 6y ago

> low resolution > 2560 x 1600 Damn, you've got some high standards.

cosmotic 6y ago
Competition has 4k displays on their thin and lights. They also don't use macOS which has problems running at resolutions other than native or pixel-doubled. The suggested scalings are 1680 by 1050, 1440 by 900, and 1024 by 640. None of those are even fractions of the native resolution so the interface looks blurry and shimmers. Also, all the suggested scalings are very small so there isn't much screen real-estate.

Klinky 6y ago

No it's not. It was designed to be extremely light with many compromises to make that happen. Yeah it got outdated, but that doesn't mean it was entry level.

Kwpolska 6y ago

Here are all the differences between the M1 Air and M1 Pro, from [1]: Brighter screen (500 nits vs. 400) Bigger battery (58 watt-hours vs. 50) Fan (increasing thermal headroom) Better speakers and microphones Touch Bar 0.2 pounds of weight (3.0 pounds vs. 2.8 — not much) The SoC is the same (although the entry-level Air gets 7-core GPUs, that’s probably chip binning). The screen is the same (Retina, P3 color gamut), both have 2 USB-C ports, both have a fingerprint reader. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_mac...