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torontotim

macrumors 6502
Jul 29, 2019
259
453
Lots of pretty dumb comments about this being a 'meh' update, no difference from the M2 (except of course all the differences), complaints about comparisons to the Intel generation (which will be their prime source of upgrade customers)...

WTF got up everybody's backsides today? Do you expect monumental changes every 12 months? Do you not read the specs before complaining about the specs?

Most buyers of the M3 Air are going to be Intel MacBook owners - not M1 or M2 Air owners. I don't know who people thinks is out there buying a new laptop every 2-3 years, but it's not 90% of Apple's laptop customers.
 

JiggyJaggy

macrumors 6502
Sep 17, 2020
361
298
Lots of pretty dumb comments about this being a 'meh' update, no difference from the M2 (except of course all the differences), complaints about comparisons to the Intel generation (which will be their prime source of upgrade customers)...

WTF got up everybody's backsides today? Do you expect monumental changes every 12 months? Do you not read the specs before complaining about the specs?

Most buyers of the M3 Air are going to be Intel MacBook owners - not M1 or M2 Air owners. I don't know who people thinks is out there buying a new laptop every 2-3 years, but it's not 90% of Apple's laptop customers.
How so... many of the "Upgraders would her already upgraded from Intel to M1 / M2 anyway, especially when they saw how much of a jump it was from Intel to M1 when the M1's are such fantastic value for the punch power.

South they would have waited 3/4 years to switch.
 
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Tuck_

macrumors member
Sep 25, 2023
59
227
Still can’t be leave 8/256 is still the base model, I mean 8 GM of memory and that shared with the graphics. Well I can believe it but I’ll pass again.

Bravo on the multi monitors tho.
I had hoped they'd follow the base m3 with 512 GB of storage but guess not. I like the form factor but unfortunately with the upgrade pricing, doesn't make sense to get this model.
 

soyazul

macrumors 6502
May 18, 2015
297
325
Argentina
They need to stop comparing to Intel laptops.

The MacBook Air never ran well on Intel. I have the "fastest Intel MacBook Air" they're talking about, and it's barely usable in Sonoma.
The transition started just 4 years ago, and there is still a lot of Intel Mac out there. So It is relevant to compare against M1 and Intel like they are doing. Criticizing this is just a will for criticism.
 

Tuck_

macrumors member
Sep 25, 2023
59
227
When the MacBook is closed....😂
While I still think the limitation is ridiculous and designed specifically to sell higher priced laptops, this isn't actually a terrible compromise. At least for me - I'd always have the lid closed when working with external displays.

Only weird thing is that this doesn't apply to the base M3 MacBook pro.
 
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CarAnalogy

macrumors 601
Jun 9, 2021
4,256
7,856
The transition started just 4 years ago, and there is still a lot of Intel Mac out there. So It is relevant to compare against M1 and Intel like they are doing. Criticizing this is just a will for criticism.

Mmmmmmmmm nope. Do you have that Intel MacBook Air?

Comparing to Intel is just cherry picking stats.

Yeah, go ahead and downvote logic. Why not compare it to M1? Because then they don't get to say things like 13x faster.

When Intel releases a new processor, do they compare it to the model three generations prior? Does anyone else do this for any reason other than cherry picking stats?

And how long do they keep doing this? Until every Intel Mac is officially called obsolete? In five years are they still going to be saying "50x faster than the fastest Intel Mac!"

If they're going to compare it to an Intel Mac from four years ago, why not compare it to an Intel processor of today? Even when they ostensibly try that, they cherry pick stats. Yes it has faster single threaded CPU performance than "the (unspecified) 'competition!'" But uh don't look at GPU or multicore or absolute processing power. Just look at the performance per watt!
 
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Fuzzball84

macrumors 68020
Apr 19, 2015
2,134
4,807
Great news for my M2 macbook air… its still current and being sold… which means my windows for repairs, service and updates might be alot longer than i thought it would be had it been discontinued today. Plus the new base M3 air still has 8 GB RAM so my unit with 8GB will likely handle future updates of MacOS just fine on the memory side. (If they had bumped the base memory config to 12 or 16 GB, id have thought they would use the memory spec in a future Mac OS update to draw a line on which Macs get dropped support on MacOS)…

A decent upgrade for those still on intel with regards to M3 macbook air, if they are due an upgrade.

Good news all round 😀
 

Fuzzball84

macrumors 68020
Apr 19, 2015
2,134
4,807
I will be curious about tear downs to know if the cooling solution has changed at all.. my M2 runs super cool… even when pushed bit so will be interesting to see if anything has changed on the thermals front (considering the cooling solution was already minimal compared to M1… and M3 might need a bit more depending on what you are running).
 
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