7 ms·

Apple seem to have completely stopped carrying anything but the base models of the Macbook Air 11" and 13" in their stores, which may at least partially explain

by sinak 13y ago

Apple seem to have completely stopped carrying anything but the base models of the Macbook Air 11" and 13" in their stores, which may at least partially explain his pushing you to downgrade your choice. Use the "check availability" sidebar link here to see what I mean: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD712LL/A http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD712LL/A? I remember picking up my fully-loaded 13" from the store a couple of generations ago, so this is likely a new decision (or temporary while they figure out supply and demand). I strongly recommend the 8GB RAM upgrade, RAM gets eaten up really easily and is definitely worth the extra $100. Ideally, he would have told you that the extra RAM might be useful, and also let you know that any upgrades would require delivery to the store or to you directly.

batiudrami 13y ago
When I worked in telco, if a customer came in knowing what they wanted I would not offer alternatives unless we did not have stock of what they were after. If you do, the moment something goes wrong, the salesperson is immediately the person to blame (in the same way that if you help someone who is computer-illiterate with their PC, everything that goes wrong in the future is because you touched it). Customers will come back, sometimes multiple times a day, to harass you because you 'made them buy this damn phone'. It never happened to me, but I saw it happen to many of my coworkers (especially the few who were happy to talk customers out of an iPhone purchase for an Android one, back in the 2.x days of Android). He may have been trying to be helpful, but like you said, I suspect it was because they didn't have stock and he wanted to make a sale for his KPIs.
rz2k 13y ago
Unless it has changed, the really crazy thing is that you can't upgrade the RAM later. (Though, surprisingly, you can upgrade the SSD, even though it comes in an unconventional form factor)
- mxxx 13y ago
  yeah it's soldered to the board. and i'll guarantee you're gonna regret going for 4gb.
- sinak 13y ago
  Yep, I think that still is the case. Generally Apple products are terrible for repair and upgradeability. Somewhat tangentially, iFixit's self-repair manifesto is great: http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto If only Apple realized that allowing people to repair and upgrade their devices is worthwhile. If they really cared about their customer's best interests, they'd publish detailed repair manuals and make their devices user-repairable and upgradeable. And the "making our stuff beautiful/sleek adds difficult design constraints" doesn't cut it: they could at least make an effort. There are many, many ways they could make their devices more user-repairable without compromising on the aesthetics.
  - rz2k 13y ago
    It definitely varies, with glue holding some products together, while others are extremely elegant inside and easy to upgrade.
    - Domenic_S 13y ago
      Yup. I just ordered a 512GB ssd + 1TB spinning disk + 8GB ram for my 2009 MBP to try and squeak some more life out of it. Like 12 screws and it's done.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Not just Apple, but most UltraBooks suffer from not being upgradeable these days.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      That's not surprising, since the whole concept of an UltraBook is to replicate a MacBook but with Windows.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        My old Sony VAIO 505g claims otherwise.
  - 13y ago
ghshephard 13y ago
" I strongly recommend the 8GB RAM upgrade, RAM gets eaten up really easily and is definitely worth the extra $100." While I absolutely and totally agree with you that the 8GB of ram for $100 is a good deal - OS X (at least in 10.7.5) is astonishingly good at making use of shared libraries. I have 30 applications running right now on my 4 GB 2010 MacBook Air, Including VMware running Windows 7, and Aperture (two hogs) - and the laptop runs really well - even though I do have about 14 GB of pageouts. I think the SSD/Flash Drives finally makes virtual memory useable again. I'm looking SO forward to upgrading to the 13" Macbook Air (12+ Hour Battery, Insanely fast SSD compared to the 2010 (already pretty fast SSD) - and obviously I'll get the 8GB (I run a lot of VMware instances - and, after about three or four client OS's running - Aperture starts to have trouble cacheing) - but for 90%+ of the population, 4 GB is probably more than enough.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Well, 8GB of RAM also future-proofs you a little bit, and 4GB is starting to reach the cusp... 6GB would probably hold you over for the foreseeable future, but convention dictates 2GB => 4GB => 8GB.
  - miahi 13y ago
    It's also about dual channel configurations. You get better performance out of two identical memory sticks.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      The effect is minimal though, 2-3% improvement if I recall.
- wyclif 13y ago
  Off-topic, but I'm curious about why you use VMWare instead of VirtualBox.
  - vosper 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Moto7451 13y ago
I think this might just be the fact it's a new release (unless they just don't sell that many maxed out Airs). My work just got me a maxed out MBPr on Thursday. Was in/out in 10 minutes without reserving it online or whatnot (we're three doors down from our local Apple store.
- FireBeyond 13y ago
  Maybe that's a bigger store. Tacoma WA, my 15" RMBP was only available in-store in the absolute base, no customization models on the online store. Anything else had to be ordered in.
subsystem 13y ago
Yes. Not to disappoint anyone, but several of my friends actually had problems buying higher spec machines in Europe. To the point where they had to either convince the sales guy or go trough corporate sales to and often wait several weeks to get it. And as you say, you do want the ram upgrade because not having it will decrease the lifetime of the product and you can't updrade later.

by sinak 13y ago

batiudrami 13y ago

When I worked in telco, if a customer came in knowing what they wanted I would not offer alternatives unless we did not have stock of what they were after. If you do, the moment something goes wrong, the salesperson is immediately the person to blame (in the same way that if you help someone who is computer-illiterate with their PC, everything that goes wrong in the future is because you touched it). Customers will come back, sometimes multiple times a day, to harass you because you 'made them buy this damn phone'. It never happened to me, but I saw it happen to many of my coworkers (especially the few who were happy to talk customers out of an iPhone purchase for an Android one, back in the 2.x days of Android). He may have been trying to be helpful, but like you said, I suspect it was because they didn't have stock and he wanted to make a sale for his KPIs.

rz2k 13y ago

Unless it has changed, the really crazy thing is that you can't upgrade the RAM later. (Though, surprisingly, you can upgrade the SSD, even though it comes in an unconventional form factor)

mxxx 13y ago
yeah it's soldered to the board. and i'll guarantee you're gonna regret going for 4gb.
sinak 13y ago
Yep, I think that still is the case. Generally Apple products are terrible for repair and upgradeability. Somewhat tangentially, iFixit's self-repair manifesto is great: http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto If only Apple realized that allowing people to repair and upgrade their devices is worthwhile. If they really cared about their customer's best interests, they'd publish detailed repair manuals and make their devices user-repairable and upgradeable. And the "making our stuff beautiful/sleek adds difficult design constraints" doesn't cut it: they could at least make an effort. There are many, many ways they could make their devices more user-repairable without compromising on the aesthetics.
- rz2k 13y ago
  It definitely varies, with glue holding some products together, while others are extremely elegant inside and easy to upgrade.
  - Domenic_S 13y ago
    Yup. I just ordered a 512GB ssd + 1TB spinning disk + 8GB ram for my 2009 MBP to try and squeak some more life out of it. Like 12 screws and it's done.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Not just Apple, but most UltraBooks suffer from not being upgradeable these days.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    That's not surprising, since the whole concept of an UltraBook is to replicate a MacBook but with Windows.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      My old Sony VAIO 505g claims otherwise.
- 13y ago

ghshephard 13y ago

" I strongly recommend the 8GB RAM upgrade, RAM gets eaten up really easily and is definitely worth the extra $100." While I absolutely and totally agree with you that the 8GB of ram for $100 is a good deal - OS X (at least in 10.7.5) is astonishingly good at making use of shared libraries. I have 30 applications running right now on my 4 GB 2010 MacBook Air, Including VMware running Windows 7, and Aperture (two hogs) - and the laptop runs really well - even though I do have about 14 GB of pageouts. I think the SSD/Flash Drives finally makes virtual memory useable again. I'm looking SO forward to upgrading to the 13" Macbook Air (12+ Hour Battery, Insanely fast SSD compared to the 2010 (already pretty fast SSD) - and obviously I'll get the 8GB (I run a lot of VMware instances - and, after about three or four client OS's running - Aperture starts to have trouble cacheing) - but for 90%+ of the population, 4 GB is probably more than enough.

sliverstorm 13y ago
Well, 8GB of RAM also future-proofs you a little bit, and 4GB is starting to reach the cusp... 6GB would probably hold you over for the foreseeable future, but convention dictates 2GB => 4GB => 8GB.
- miahi 13y ago
  It's also about dual channel configurations. You get better performance out of two identical memory sticks.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    The effect is minimal though, 2-3% improvement if I recall.
wyclif 13y ago
Off-topic, but I'm curious about why you use VMWare instead of VirtualBox.
- vosper 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Moto7451 13y ago

I think this might just be the fact it's a new release (unless they just don't sell that many maxed out Airs). My work just got me a maxed out MBPr on Thursday. Was in/out in 10 minutes without reserving it online or whatnot (we're three doors down from our local Apple store.

FireBeyond 13y ago
Maybe that's a bigger store. Tacoma WA, my 15" RMBP was only available in-store in the absolute base, no customization models on the online store. Anything else had to be ordered in.

subsystem 13y ago

Yes. Not to disappoint anyone, but several of my friends actually had problems buying higher spec machines in Europe. To the point where they had to either convince the sales guy or go trough corporate sales to and often wait several weeks to get it. And as you say, you do want the ram upgrade because not having it will decrease the lifetime of the product and you can't updrade later.