13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air refreshed with Apple M3 chip

[Redaktion]

Apple slyly announced two new MacBook Air variants. The evergreen 13-inch version and the more recent 15-inch variant now come with Apple's newest M3 chip sans a price increase. Both laptops are up for pre-order now on Apple's website.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/13-inch-and-15-inch-MacBook-Air-refreshed-with-Apple-M3-chip.809833.0.html

[lmao]

air lineup is so good apple doesn't even have to update much, just cram in a better cpu and done

[davidm]

Apple likes to stage manage rather than fact manage its lineup. $1000 for a TB of storage. Which is great for lifestyle consumers, very predictable upgrade cadence, until that is a significant change happens, then last year's very expensive item becomes obsolete.

Now they have promised to make AI a focus, but AI requires RAM. If their AI is useful and comprehensive, which it should be, it will make computers that can't run AI well look like dumb terminals, considering how it can securely contextualize the user's entire information space and relate it to the world. You can do neat things with small models that run in 2GB, but more RAM will be needed to not have their AI look foolish. If the AI is running all the time, a real sidekick, 8GB is not enough.  All these shortsighted low memory, profit centre upgrade computers will drop in value like the Intel - Apple silicon days.

[lmao]

$1000 for a TB of storage.

where did you get that number, it's just 600 for unbinned cpu + 16gb ram + 1 tb

8GB is not enough

buy more ram

[davidm]

$1000 for a TB of storage.

where did you get that number, it's just 600 for unbinned cpu + 16gb ram + 1 tb

8GB is not enough

buy more ram

The cost/TB or GB depends on the base model and country, but it's many times higher than a street cost. Nobody expects a direct relation but it's infamously out of whack.

As for "buy more RAM," did you understand my comment wasn't about my next computer, but about entire swaths of consumer products?

[lmao]

The cost/TB or GB depends on the base model and country

everything over 600 is going to your country, not apple. that's a matter of discussion about unreasonably high VAT with your country officials or about their inability to produce a similar product and charge for it less, excl. VAT
MSRP is 600, fly to dubai and get one if your country could never

but about entire swaths of consumer products

yes, it's 'about entire swaths of consumer products' - if you need more ram buy more ram.

[davidm]

After this obtuseness, I hope some people at least see why it would be nice to have artificial intelligence, or any form of intelligence really.

[lmao]

After this obtuseness, I hope some people at least see why it would be nice to have artificial intelligence, or any form of intelligence really.

do you think you're the first here to just throw an insult and run away when out of arguments?
at least i have enough intelligence to differentiate msrp from msrp+vat

[expert opinion]

@davidm: I was with you until you brought up Ai. Why mention that scam?

How much does an actual decent generative Ai LLM require again such as Falcon-180B? was it something like 120GB-180GB and that's with quantization?

And sure, yeah, you can get slow chatbot models that simply regurgitate Wikipedia entries that run on 8GB -- nobody gives a sheet about those.

People can't even afford 16GB dGPU's to run slightly higher textures in games, good luck getting them to afford something that requires 10x that amount.

Just something for the top 2% of the population, that's all. Irrelevant for the rest.

[lmao]

Falcon-180B

you don't even need models that big, microsoft leaked current 'free tier' gpt-3.5turbo is just 30billion params llm, you could run that on 32Gb mac quantized if it was open-source.
it's all about proper training

you can get slow chatbot models that simply regurgitate Wikipedia entries that run on 8GB

lmao ok now i see a real 'expert', now go google 'mistral 7b'

[AB]

So glad air is joining to the rest of mobile world and will be able to use 160MHz channels on WiFi. Better late than never. The most of users didn't even noticed the problem as apple gave them wifi 6... not sure why apple says WiFi 6e is twice faster than wifi6. I understand marketing buy this is too much.
I wonder how updated air is going to work with passive (?) cooling as basic M3 has 2 fans. That may be interesting- may even get score 105% one reviewed.

[lmao]

The most of users didn't even noticed the problem

i think this precisely describes the 'problem' of lack of 6e in previous airs, because avg worldwide home internet speed is 250mbps

wonder how updated air is going to work with passive (?) cooling as basic M3 has 2 fans

brilliantly

as basic M3 has 2 fans

one fan*
www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/f/e/csm_IMG_1161_fad2d5882f.jpg

[George]

IE: 13" MacBook Air with M3...

I'm sorry but - who actually CARES!?!?!?!?

Disclaimer: This is being typed on a 2013 MBP (8GB memory, Dual core Intel i5 CPU, 128GB storage).

Apple it seems is not keeping track of the pricing of USBC 'thumb drives'. :)