8 ms·
The pricing outside the US is outrageous though. Those are very expensive laptops. €1520 for the base version with only 8GB lol
by Thaxll 4y ago
The pricing outside the US is outrageous though. Those are very expensive laptops.
€1520 for the base version with only 8GB lol
- waynesonfire 4y agoare you a new mac user or something?
- qwertyuiop12 4y ago2-3 years ago the price was less than 1000€. 1500 for the base model is ridiculous
- marricks 4y agoWhich typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? People complaining about low ram sound like the bros asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Just complain about price, yeah, it is expensive! --- This is coming from someone who does light gaming on an 8gb m1 MacBook Air and has plenty of tabs open. I don't see lag. Then again, I use safari, maybe Chrome it'd be different.
- Nursie 4y ago> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram The developer for whom a macbook air brings a huge amount of power? I mean, they aren't low-end when compared to the general laptop market, they're awesome!
- dewey 4y agoYou responded to a comment about the "typical Air buyer". A developer is really not the typical Air buyer and more the target audience for a Pro line product even if that specific model is plenty fast.
- mrtranscendence 4y agoFor what it's worth, I bought my partner an 8gb Air a couple months ago. I had reservations about that amount of memory but she insisted on not spending more money. As far as she's told me she's experienced no performance issues whatsoever as a non-developer (she uses her laptop for video conferencing, email, and web browsing).
- ratww 4y agoI use my 8GB one for development (mostly web and Cocoa, but also some 3d stuff w/Metal) and the only issues are with things like Microsoft Teams or some other memory hog, but even my co-workers with 32GB machines suffer with those, so I guess it's alright.
- CamelRocketFish 4y agoI switched to running MS teams in safari as the app was terribly resource intensive. Unfortunately it’s only safari that works with voice/video calls.
- ratww 4y agoI might accept your advice and do the same. It's really mind boggling how slow it is for me lately after some upgrades :(
- eropple 4y agoHaving had an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM--under very light use it was great, but under anything a little more taxing (a good number of tabs, having Discord open, a relatively "light" creative app like Logic or Fusion 360) it would very rapidly not just get bad, but get stop-the-world awful. (edit: and as a sibling poster notes, plugging it into an external monitor made things a lot worse!) I don't know if MacOS's low-RAM behavior has anything particular to it that makes it act so erratically, but it's the only time using a Mac in the last ten years where I've gone "oh, this sucks." Going to 16GB of RAM is a way better spot, I think, for folks who want more than strictly web-browser-and-keyboard. (And those folks are probably better off with an iPad in 2022 I think? The current iPads are great.)
- Aperocky 4y agoI have a M1 with 16G ram. I don't think 8GB ram is even feasible - and that's coming from a user whose primary interface is terminal. 16GB is great though, never had a problem with RAM issue.
- throw34 4y agoUsually it’s what’s being run inside the terminal that matters. ssh? no big deal. ffmpeg? can slow a machine down and can have a significant memory footprint. YMMV
- april_22 4y agoWhy is that though? I have a ten year old machine at home with 8gigs of ram and it smoothly runs with alot of chrome tabs open?
- Aperocky 4y agoM1 GPU also lives with the same RAM.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y agoFusion is anything but light, and still not optimized for M1 (still a Rosetta app). Even on a beefy Workstation, it’s no fun. Logic is better but not exactly light if you have multiple track, AU plug-in… So that’s not surprising - heck, with 16gb or ram it’s not a walk in the park. I’ve discussed with owner a Mac studio, and they were not happy for Fusion either, that’s with 64gb of ram so…
- jmyeet 4y agoRemember it's not 8gb of dedicated RAM. It's 8gb shared with the video subsystem. Let's see how far that goes when you plug it into a 4K monitor and/or do anything that requires GPU acceleration (which can include simply decoding video). I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the circumstances. At least this thing has the option for 24gb though. I just wish that was a stocked model so you could just walk into a store and buy one without having to order it.
- eropple 4y agoFor what it's worth--when I had an 8GB Air, decoding video in a browser didn't seem to really impact performance. Plugging in an external monitor, though, was not a fun time.
- rolleiflex 4y agoI have a 32Gb M1 Pro as a work laptop and connecting a retina 4K external display is not a fun experience for me either. It was very surprising to see it fail to maintain 60fps in the OS’ own animations.
- phren0logy 4y agoThat seems like something is wrong - if this is a known issue with such capable hardware I'd find that shocking
- whynaut 4y agoAre you using the built-in HDMI port, or a dongle? I had the same issue before switching off the dongle.
- rolleiflex 4y agoThis is through USBC which also charges the laptop.
- 4y ago
- nightski 4y agoSounds like Apple. For a premium price they give you only bare minimum and if you want anything more you can pay thousands of dollars in pure premium and profit for Apple. Of course sheep will keep buying these things.
- ajuc 4y ago> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram Typical Air user would be fine performance-wise with any laptop made in last 10 years TBH. It's a premium product that is priced accordingly, so it's fine to complain about substandard specs.
- pivo 4y agoWe had to replace my wife’s intel MBP with 8G of memory because it was just not sufficient. She just does simple stuff with her laptop, web browsing, occasional videos, google spreadsheets and email. The thing would just grind to a halt. We bought a 16G MBP and she’s been fine. I’m sure the ARM laptops are better with only 8G but I’m not going to test that idea. 16G is the bottom line for us from now on.
- pen2l 4y agoMy super light and thin [1] Carbon X1 Thinkpad from about 5 years ago has 16gb ram, half TB SSD and still runs like a champ with 200 tabs open. It's just strange to see a premium brand product not being able to compete with same-category class products from a half-decade ago. [1]: Lighter, in fact, than this MB Air M2
- boardwaalk 4y agoYou can spec it with or 16 or 24 GB and the CPU is going to be miles faster than your Thinkpad. Sometimes I think people just want to feel good about their purchases… It’s 5 years old, it’s okay if it’s not top of the line anymore.
- pletnes 4y agoI disagree, RAM is super important. But I went from win10 with 32 GB + dedicated nvidia with 4 GB to M1 on a mbp with just 16 GB. The M1 is still so much faster it’s like swapping a forklift with a fighter jet. I don’t think the numbers are comparable without more analysis of the workload and OS. FWIW I’m doing coding and data analysis with python and 99 tabs in 3 different browsers on both machines.
- haliskerbas 4y agoYes. In college I had many tabs and many word documents open, a few IDEs, horribly inefficient LMS or video sharing sites, and massive lecture videos. Maybe a few chat apps to keep in touch with classmates. If you’ve used google chrome with messenger dot com, that’s already eating into the ram budget a good amount.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? If we're going to play that game, which college student requires a new MacBook Air at all? I'm an industry professional and do my development on used ThinkPads. Sure there are are some people out there who need more processing power than I do, but not many, and certainly not in college.
- 2143 4y ago> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? How about a college student who contributes to large open source projects? (eg. Chromium or Firefox — I don't know if their memory footprint situation improved so these examples might not be valid today, but they definitely were back in the day). Don't underestimate college students ;) People who complain about 8 GB being too low probably have a good reason. I know I needed more than 8 GB because my 8 GB memory laptop always had it full (and was using swap) whenever I was using it for software development (and this laptop was already an upgrade from 4 GB). However, I also know that I don't need more than 24 GB, because my utilization never reach anywhere close to that in practice. The problem is more pronounced on computers with memory that cannot be upgraded. > asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Where I'm at, the F10 BMW 525d used to come with a creamy smooth 6 cylinder straight six motor. Made a little over 200 hp and 460 Nm of torque. Later, they changed the engine to a highly tuned 4 cylinder with nearly identical power and torque (still called "525d"). Infact, the 4 cyl motor has a little over 10 horses more than the 6 cyl, but it came at a higher rpm. The driving experience was noticeably different. The 6 cylinder engine just felt effortless; in-gear acceleration (which matters during overtakes) was simply better. The 4 cyl motor felt strained. Also, there's the other point that you'd know if you're into engines — straight 6 engines are inherently balanced and yadda yadda (=> no engine vibrations => very smooth), while other configurations need balancer shafts (which can't really be perfected), so the straight 6 engines are slightly more "clean" from an engineering perspective. Sure, 120 km/h is 120 km/h regardless of cylinder count, but that's not the point. Environmental considerations are also a different matter.
- jandrese 4y agoMy feeling is that 8GB is barely adequate in 2020 for light or medium-light usage, a couple of MacOS updates and a few more apps switching to Electron and you're going to be chugging hard. This wouldn't be a problem except that the RAM can't be upgraded so you have a laptop that would probably last 6-8 years easy likely being kneecapped in 2-4 years instead.
- donny2018 4y agoAs an owner of an 8gb M1 Air, I now think that a machine for “light usage” that can barely handle a half dozen of open tabs and 1 Docker container shouldn’t cost even half as much. I bought it for about $1700 with 512Gb SSD. In fact, Apple should stop offering 8GB versions at this point as MacOS is very memory hungry compared to Windows. That yellow “memory pressure” graph is irritating.
- hajile 4y ago8GB results in lots of swapping with the SSD which greatly shortens SSD lifespan. That alone was reason enough to have 16GB. I have an air for work with 16GB and frequently bump up against the amount of memory. I'm currently just waiting on reviews to decide between a 24GB Air and a 32GB Pro.
- MilaM 4y agoConsidering the shared GPU memory, 8 GB is going to be very limiting going forward. Also, this Mac is very likely going to have the same slower SSD like the recently released 13 inch M2 MBP. This means you have to upgrade the SSD as well, if you care about performance. I would not recommend buying an MBA with base specs.
- Joeri 4y agoAnd once you spec it up to the 16 / 512 that it minimally needs to be for any serious work, you are close to the (now discounted) price for the base 14 inch macbook pro at third party resellers. This air is currently way overpriced. At the price it was released it should have had 512 gb storage, which also would have avoided the performance issues. It is still going to sell really well though, so maybe the previous model was just underpriced.
- alxlu 4y agothe air is thinner and lighter though. i think a lot of people (including myself) would consider that tradeoff worth it.
- MilaM 4y agoI agree. I'm torn between the already discounted 14" Pro model and the new MBA. The weight difference is quite considerable, so it's a tough choice if you value portability. I'll have to compare them in the store before I decide.
- tfehring 4y agoFor reference, the slower speed seems to be around 1500 MB/s read and write, compared to 3000 MB/s read speeds for the M1 MBP [0]. While there are definitely applications that would benefit from the extra speed, I wouldn't call 1500 MB/s - ~2.5x the speed of the fastest SATA SSDs - a "performance issue." [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/26/base-m2-13-inch-macbook-pro-slower-ssd-speeds/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/26/base-m2-13-inch-macbook...
- 4y ago
- PKop 4y agoBecause the $ is currently so strong against Euro, and others.
- girishso 4y agoIs that going to change anytime soon? Genuinely interested because all currencies, other than USD are depreciating.
- PKop 4y agoUnless Western leaders or US particularly, want a severe global recession to persist, I think they will eventually pursue whatever means necessary to weaken $ and help Europe, rest of world, perhaps with a new "Plaza Accord" type arrangement[0]. This is if one believes they actually care about stabilizing European industry and economy and not rather that they are keen on seeing global chaos for a period of time and a weaker Europe dependent on US instead of having close trade relations with Russia and a thriving domestic industrial sector (which they have with cheap Russian energy, which they don't with sanction and less supplied more expensive substitutes), in service to US's own relative position becoming stronger and maintenance of global hegemony. Many analysts, particularly leaders form China, have opined on the nature of US periodic "harvesting" through dollar strengthening policy which crushes developing (and now even developed) countries so as to maintain their reserve currency status and relative global strength (even conceding that in short term everyone experiences pain as result). Great speech from Qiao Liang, a Chinese PLA Major-General articulating the nature of the reserve $ and the way US uses it as financial weapon particularly when they strengthen it to temporarily crush world economy [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord [1] http://chinascope.org/archives/6458 http://chinascope.org/archives/6458 ^From link General Qio Lian quote: "Not many people had a clear understanding of this at the time. People, including economists and financial experts, didn’t realize that the most important thing in the 20th century was not World War I, World War II, or the disintegration of the USSR, but rather the August 15, 1971, disconnection between the U.S. dollar and gold." Precient insight into developing Ukraine crises, (speech made in 2015): "Where else did [US] target? Ukraine, the connection between the EU and Russia. Of course there were some problems under Ukraine President Yanukovych’s administration, but the reason that the Americans picked it was not simply because of his problem. They had three goals: teach a lesson to Yanukovych who didn’t listen to the U.S., prevent the EU from getting too close to Russia, and create a bad investment environment in Europe." ^In the context of recent financial sanctions against Russian trade and currency, this is exactly what is happening across Europe right now.
- uneventual 4y agoIt’s basically the exact same pricing as the US. $1 ≈ €1 today and $1200 * 1.25 for VAT equals $1500.
- rayiner 4y agoAnd the US price is also only $100 more than the nominal price of the base model of the original MacBook in early 2008, and $300 less adjusted for inflation.
- _ea1k 4y agoI think those had 4GB and complaints about not enough memory. 14 years later, we have 8 GB and complaints about not enough memory.
- thenthenthen 4y agoThe previous M1 base model was (still is) 899€ I believe?
- april_22 4y agoI think you can get it a lot cheaper at a lot of retailers now