My opinion here: apple has ripped off consumers for their own personal greed. Not sure if it’s how the system runs or not, or if it’s something wrong with my setup, but with a few apps open with a few tabs on safari, I’m drawing 6 out of 8 Gb. Migrating my old MB SSD/HDD over, I’m left with less than 80 Gb of storage. And that’s with downsizing. I have completely forgone my iTunes library, and deleted some apps. Not exactly sure what else I’m missing as I was having some trouble migrating both the ssd (250 Gb) and HDD (500 Gb).
I was on 2012 MBA 13 with 500 GB HDD later upgraded to second 250 SSD (as more or less a boot drive) in place of optical drive, and upgraded to 12 GB RAM. To upgrade to a 512 GB drive (which still would require downsizing) and 16 Gb ram (to have some headroom), I might as well just get a 14” M1 pro. Especially considering it would cost me another $100 or more dollars to have a dual screen setup with the M2 air. I really don’t do any heavy lifting with this computer. The fact that apple has made this computer cost nearly as much as the M1 pro, essentially forcing people into the bigger purchase, is pure greed. There is NO reason whatsoever that they shouldn’t have put a 500 Gb SSD in this 2022 machine.
Thanks for this article. I look forward to getting a MB Air with M2.
One quibble: the notch at the top of the screen isn’t a “con” for me. I appreciate that Apple designers found a way to make the screen bigger by positioning the camera in a part of the screen that’s typically unused.
It doesn’t really make sense to say that MBA users generally won’t be using apps that need active cooling and then also complain that the MBA doesn’t support multiple external monitors. Being able to handle a 6K 32 inch external seems fine for something claimed to be for non-demanding apps.
Well the lack of multiple display support is the very reason I bought a 14" MacBook Pro this week instead of a MacBook Air. I like the M2 MacBook Air a lot and its all I need technically as far as how powerful it is, but I like to use multiple displays and it lacks support for that so 14" MacBook Pro it was. I played Apple's game...I don't think there's really any reason why they can't design it to support multiple displays. Maybe not multiple 6K displays, but it should be able to support dual 4K displays at the very least. I think Apple did this on purpose because it will make people like me spend more money and get a MacBook Pro instead.
Most people who need more than one external display will also want the added power of the MBP. The MBA is not meant to be all things; the overwhelming majority of users don't need more than one external display so it makes perfect sense for its intended market.
It makes no sense at all. It's just Apple's way of getting you to spend more money and that's really at it is. There's no reason what so ever that it can't support multiple displays. They're purposely not supporting it. You can't honestly tell me that it will support one 6K display, but not 2 displays at a lower resolution. It's not like the graphics on the M1 or M2 is so shitty it can't possibly support that. Supporting multiple displays is a basic thing nowadays.
Would love to hear your insider engineering knowledge supporting your unfounded claim that it’s a conspiracy. That Apple went to far as to implement code to prevent multiple displays, without any underlying functional or thermal reasoning. Where did you source this key evidence?
It doesn’t really make sense to say that MBA users generally won’t be using apps that need active cooling and then also complain that the MBA doesn’t support multiple external monitors. Being able to handle a 6K 32 inch external seems fine for something claimed to be for non-demanding apps.
Well the lack of multiple display support is the very reason I bought a 14" MacBook Pro this week instead of a MacBook Air. I like the M2 MacBook Air a lot and its all I need technically as far as how powerful it is, but I like to use multiple displays and it lacks support for that so 14" MacBook Pro it was. I played Apple's game...I don't think there's really any reason why they can't design it to support multiple displays. Maybe not multiple 6K displays, but it should be able to support dual 4K displays at the very least. I think Apple did this on purpose because it will make people like me spend more money and get a MacBook Pro instead.
My opinion here: apple has ripped off consumers for their own personal greed. Not sure if it’s how the system runs or not, or if it’s something wrong with my setup, but with a few apps open with a few tabs on safari, I’m drawing 6 out of 8 Gb. Migrating my old MB SSD/HDD over, I’m left with less than 80 Gb of storage. And that’s with downsizing. I have completely forgone my iTunes library, and deleted some apps. Not exactly sure what else I’m missing as I was having some trouble migrating both the ssd (250 Gb) and HDD (500 Gb).
I was on 2012 MBA 13 with 500 GB HDD later upgraded to second 250 SSD (as more or less a boot drive) in place of optical drive, and upgraded to 12 GB RAM. To upgrade to a 512 GB drive (which still would require downsizing) and 16 Gb ram (to have some headroom), I might as well just get a 14” M1 pro. Especially considering it would cost me another $100 or more dollars to have a dual screen setup with the M2 air. I really don’t do any heavy lifting with this computer. The fact that apple has made this computer cost nearly as much as the M1 pro, essentially forcing people into the bigger purchase, is pure greed. There is NO reason whatsoever that they shouldn’t have put a 500 Gb SSD in this 2022 machine.
You say ripped off, I say you’re just pinching pennies. 512GB and above is on offer, you get to choose to pay for it or not. You do not get to tell Apple how they should price their merchandise. Unwilling to fork over the asking price, there are other computer vendors out there.
Or, they're thinking about what a computer's theoretical maximum performance could be in an ideal world where you can ignore friction and fire spherical chickens for the sake of easy math, more than they do actual use-cases.
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Brilliant take on the whole thing. +10