Apple M3 chip

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Everything you say makes sense, and I’m a huge Rossman fan (more so of his NYT bike videos), BUT none of this will change the mindset of a trillion dollar company. Even if a 1000 people decide to stop buying MacBooks, it’s not going to a make a dent to the bottom line. This is pure capitalism, and Apple will squeeze every penny as long as the masses agree.
that is my point, I'm not asking a trillion dollar company to change their ways, that's just a fool's errand but rather its customers to finally say foff. Companies only learn when they see a loss in revenue.

And let’s be honest, 99% of those buying a Mac don’t care about what Rossman has to say.
Unless EU comes to rescue - like it’s doing for
iPhone for USB C and side loading - there is no other option if you want a Mac.
That's what I dont get, is owning a mac/IPhone really worth the bullshit that comes with it? And apple has already added caveats with third party USB-C cables and will probably do the same with sideloading too.

I think you are missing the point.
No one is saying that SSDs should come soldered on the board.
In an ideal world, all the parts would have been modular on laptop- at least to the extent they are on a desktop.

But they aren’t. Parts fail and devices sometimes become unusable before the end of their lifecycle.
Phones fail prematurely , so do TVs or anything else for that matter. It’s a calculated risk we all take when we buy anything.
This is my point, why are you excusing something like this and say "hurr durr hur, shit happens lets YOLO". This is just snorting copium.

The SSD is only one amongst several parts that can and eventually will result in failure.
In my (anecodotal) experience, the probability of such failure has been lower for Apple devices largely across the board .. Many people even here will still have decade + old ipads and ipods that still work.
I have also had several devices that have failed prematurely (both apple and other brands) because of random different components . And when it happens, we park it and move on. If it happens enough times with a particular make, we subjectively assess it as a pattern and start avoiding it going forward (e.g. I (subjectively) believe that Mi devices tend to have subpar QC)
Talking about subpar QC, search Mac flexgate which was there for years and Apple couldn't be arsed to fix that despite multiple complaints because well **** you.
And when it happens, we park it and move on. If it happens enough times with a particular make, we subjectively assess it as a pattern and start avoiding it going forward (e.g. I (subjectively) believe that Mi devices tend to have subpar QC)
Absolutely agreed, but when it was something as basic as a soldered ssd or a company skimping out on memory? Yea **** that shit,
PS: As for Louis Rossman, I will just leave you with this screenshot .
YT pundits know their audience and LR knows his target crowd
Yep, keep blowing off a guy who has always fought for consumer rights without any counter arguments for his points while saying hurr durr hurr, he's pandering to his crowd.

P.S. are you really saying you are gonna keep using your mac with an external device if your inbuilt ssd fails? if so then kudos to you my guy.
 
This is my point, why are you excusing something like this and say "hurr durr hur, shit happens lets YOLO". This is just snorting copium.
Look, I get it you don't like a fixed SSD..no one does..
And for you its obviously important enough a consideration to disregard an otherwise great product.. No one is judging you for that.

But judging by your tone, it's fairly clear that you are judging those for whom it's not an important criteria. That part is what is annoying about this whole debate.

Everyone has a different set of criteria and use cases for which they try and buy the most suitable product.
FOr me, the original MBA M1 from 2020 was and continues to remain quite possibly the best VFM laptop I have ever got. Its 3 years old now, runs like a champ and will probably be in use for another few years before I retire it.

Similarly, there are plenty of users with similar requirements who would prefer windows and choose to get say a XPS13 (which IMO is the best thin & light windows machine out there) - Most of the buyers of the xps13 also know that the SSD is soldered yet choose to buy it because it fits their needs. Incidentally the failure rate on the XPS13 is also incredibly low (and I can confirm this ..and not just anecdotally )
In your POV, all xps13 buyers are also snorting copium, right?


PS: If the SSD were to fail on the MBA (IF), I have no intent of using it with an external disk. The only reason to share that screenshot was because the LR video you shared leads one to interpret that it's simply not feasible to use these arm machines with an external boot. A lot of Internet Pundits (including LR) tend to do this for clicks from their intended audience - and hence it was worth pointing out
 
We all know Apple just cares about margins. 8gb ram is a way to have a lower priced model that competes with competition on price, gets into people's list of devices to consider, and once the buyer decides to go mac, its quick escalation with insanely priced upgrades. Just look at the price for ram upgrades. If it was not intentional there is no reason they'd price upgrades so high. To say anything to defend apple is just stupidity. Sure it might be enough to do some basic tasks.

I fail to understand why people defend a Trillion dollar company. Or even justify such price gouging.
 
We’re going in circles. No one is defending the trillion dollar company. What people are saying is many of them are OK with smallish SSD sizes or 8gb RAM.
Is everyone happy ? Of course not. Is it a dick move by Apple ? Of course yes. Will anything happen by ranting the same stuff on TE, Reddit etc. Nope. Don’t like it, don’t buy it, and hope enough people vote with their wallets to make Apple realise it. That’s it. Every other discussion is just someone being unhappy that a company is not doing a thing as per their wishes.
They are a trillion dollar company because of these arm squeeze tactics and people willing to pay their price in spite of such practices.
They had explosive Mac sales post Apple silicon launch, and a dip since then. Just proves that M1 is still more than enough for most people’s needs - my better half daily drives an M1 Air for 3 years and it just works like day 1. Apple had to make a dick move since their Mac earnings are down, and this is what they chose to do - raise the price for lowest Pro config (and also ridiculous pricing for M2 Air tbh).
 
We’re going in circles. No one is defending the trillion dollar company. What people are saying is many of them are OK with smallish SSD sizes or 8gb RAM.
Is everyone happy ? Of course not. Is it a dick move by Apple ? Of course yes. Will anything happen by ranting the same stuff on TE, Reddit etc. Nope. Don’t like it, don’t buy it, and hope enough people vote with their wallets to make Apple realise it. That’s it. Every other discussion is just someone being unhappy that a company is not doing a thing as per their wishes.
They are a trillion dollar company because of these arm squeeze tactics and people willing to pay their price in spite of such practices.
They had explosive Mac sales post Apple silicon launch, and a dip since then. Just proves that M1 is still more than enough for most people’s needs - my better half daily drives an M1 Air for 3 years and it just works like day 1. Apple had to make a dick move since their Mac earnings are down, and this is what they chose to do - raise the price for lowest Pro config (and also ridiculous pricing for M2 Air tbh).
this is what i said earlier. dont buy if you cant afford it. automatically apple will stand on knees and cry. but no we dont do it.
 
We will have a lot more options next year - Meteor Lake, Strix Point and Snapdragon X Elite hopefully putting this discussion to a rest once and for all. All of them are a major improvement from the current range of Windows laptops and they will automatically become a better choice due to the Windows ecosystem.
 
I think the kind of people crying about soldered ssd and 8gb ram have not really used any macbook in their real life. Maybe one of those who are still using those 2012/13 dinasour and still living in that era.

Having used 8gb ram in M1 Air for near about 1.5 years, never really felt the need for 16gb in that time. Less ram was least of my concern.
 
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I am gonna shed some more light on this thing with my more than average embedded electronics design background.

In M3 MBP the 16GB RAM upgrade costs $240 compared to the default 8GB RAM. So does it really cost $240 dollar to just add another 8GB? Absolutely not, in reality since the RAM is on the die itself, it probably only cost them extra $10-$12 dollars to enable that extra 8gig in the silicon, over the total BOM cost of the laptop.

Is this a d*ck move by apple?, It is in the eyes of the consumer, because consumer has no idea what goes into manufacturing a product like this at this scale. The consumer will never understand the gravity of this until they do a business themselves and see what it takes to do such a thing. The business people know that the most of that cashflow will go back into the company and will be used for other things, the actual profit is not 240 minus 12.

If any ABC company try to do this nilly-willy, they will fail super hard, because it needs totally different level of appreciation by the people so they let it pass, and that is not easy to earn. The products must speak for themselves and they do in this case. You will often see that people will be okay with paying more when they know that the product is going to be of higher quality.
 
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Having used 8gb ram in M1 Air for near about 1.5 years, never really felt the need for 16gb in that time. Less ram was least of my concern.
Depends on what you are doing. I had tested a friend's M1 Air 8gb model in 2021 and was not satisfied with the performance.
 
I am gonna shed some more light on this thing with my more than average embedded electronics design background.

In M3 MBP the 16GB RAM upgrade costs $240 compared to the default 8GB RAM. So does it really cost $240 dollar to just add another 8GB? Absolutely not, in reality since the RAM is on the die itself, it probably only cost them extra $10-$12 dollars to enable that extra 8gig in the silicon, over the total BOM cost of the laptop.

Is this a d*ck move by apple?, It is in the eyes of the consumer, because consumer has no idea what goes into manufacturing a product like this at this scale. The consumer will never understand the gravity of this until they do a business themselves and see what it takes to do such a thing. The business people know that the most of that cashflow will go back into the company and will be used for other things, the actual profit is not 240 minus 12.
What are you trying to say here?. All companies need profit. Gucci, addidas, nike, sketchers, mercedes, bmw, etc have exorbitant prices for their products compared to others in their Industry.

Those who feel its required for them for whatever reason they feel, they will buy it. You cant really say the RAM costs is 10-12$ and no one should charge more for it. Calling it dick or **** move is salty at best and a desperate cry.
 
Depends on what you are doing. I had tested a friend's M1 Air 8gb model in 2021 and was not satisfied with the performance.
Back at that time, I also had 2019 MacBook Pro 16 with Core i9 16gb ram and some AMD video card in short the Intel beast of that time. This was given by my workplace and let me tell you it ran so hot with much worse performance then my personal laptop of that time .ie M1 Air with a measly 8gb ram.

Even small task like opening web browser and playing youtube video the fans kicked in. Did I mention that it ran hot?
 
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We’re going in circles. No one is defending the trillion dollar company. What people are saying is many of them are OK with smallish SSD sizes or 8gb RAM.
Is everyone happy ? Of course not. Is it a dick move by Apple ? Of course yes. Will anything happen by ranting the same stuff on TE, Reddit etc. Nope. Don’t like it, don’t buy it, and hope enough people vote with their wallets to make Apple realise it. That’s it. Every other discussion is just someone being unhappy that a company is not doing a thing as per their wishes.
They are a trillion dollar company because of these arm squeeze tactics and people willing to pay their price in spite of such practices.
They had explosive Mac sales post Apple silicon launch, and a dip since then. Just proves that M1 is still more than enough for most people’s needs - my better half daily drives an M1 Air for 3 years and it just works like day 1. Apple had to make a dick move since their Mac earnings are down, and this is what they chose to do - raise the price for lowest Pro config (and also ridiculous pricing for M2 Air tbh).
This..
I dont think anyone here is defending apple… Or Maybe the expectation was that everyone needs to join in a uniform chorus on Apple being the absolute worst and most evil firm of all times…

I don’t have any special love for Apple products.. I dont think any of the so called apple-defenders here either do.
If Windows were to drops its love for legacy code and reduce the overall bugginess, I’d gladly switch OS.

If the upcoming Qualcomm chip based laptops (or maybe next gen AMD/ Intel) systems comeclose, or better still improve upon performance/heat/power draw equation for comparable or lower cost, I will happily switch hardware.

But I am not waiting with bated breath coz I have been down this road many times and returned disappointed after burning hard earned money.
Maybe I am wrong this time (hopefully) and the options available next year will indeed be fab..
But until such time, I will make a concession for soldered SSDs and such.. I just don’t understand why this is so hard to explain
 
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This..
I dont think anyone here is defending apple… Or Maybe the expectation was that everyone needs to join in a uniform chorus on Apple being the absolute worst and most evil firm of all times…

I don’t have any special love for Apple products.. I dont think any of the so called apple-defenders here either do.
If Windows were to drops its love for legacy code and reduce the overall bugginess, I’d gladly switch OS.

If the upcoming Qualcomm chip based laptops (or maybe next gen AMD/ Intel) systems comeclose, or better still improve upon performance/heat/power draw equation for comparable or lower cost, I will happily switch hardware.

But I am not waiting with bated breath coz I have been down this road many times and returned disappointed after burning hard earned money.
Maybe I am wrong this time (hopefully) and the options available next year will indeed be fab..
But until such time, I will make a concession for soldered SSDs and such.. I just don’t understand why this is so hard to explain

I really hope Windows and Qualcomm/Arm join hands to develop something similar to MacOS on Apple Silicon - I’m so used to windows that I’ll continue without a hitch. But, and that’s a big but - the OS optimisations have to match the silicon for speed and battery longevity + legacy app support needs to be maintained + paid hardware support should match the seamless experience of AppleCare.
I’m not a fan of MacOS- I enjoy Windows, but as an example the recent update ****ed up things so much that even opening file explorer lags. Not sure if MS even wants to continue with local OS because it does seem they want to move everything to the cloud. Now with the OpenAI saga and Sam and others joining MS as a CEO of AI group, this seems all the more likely.
 
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Look, I get it you don't like a fixed SSD..no one does..
And for you its obviously important enough a consideration to disregard an otherwise great product.. No one is judging you for that.

But judging by your tone, it's fairly clear that you are judging those for whom it's not an important criteria. That part is what is annoying about this whole debate.
I'm not, I'm judging those who are excusing this bullshit of a move from Apple, I would have done the same in windows space if any OEM pulled bullshit like this and have done so in the past, this is the main reason why I always say to skip a Dell to anyone who asks me, because its anti-repair and anti-consumer.

I don't even hang out in Apple specific subs because I always get triggered because of Apple's usual bullshit. Like if you want to buy a Mac/iPhone or whatever, do so by all means because nobody gets to dictate what you can buy but at least don't excuse a company's bullshit by saying its fine, its "cashflow" issues, you plebians who cant even afford to rub two pennies together don't know just how much of an impact it'll be on Apple's financials or even worse, yoU hAVeN'T OwNEd a MaC So YoU dONt KnOW WHaT YoU aRE TaLKiNg aBout peeps, like bruh even if Apple has a god tier OS, a program which needs 100mb of ram wont magically take 50mb, I don't need to own a mac to say this with confidence, or the ones saying, I cant notice the bottleneck on my 8GB air/pro. Like good for you that you don't notice it but that doesn't mean it isnt there.

Is this a d*ck move by apple?, It is in the eyes of the consumer, because consumer has no idea what goes into manufacturing a product like this at this scale. The consumer will never understand the gravity of this until they do a business themselves and see what it takes to do such a thing. The business people know that the most of that cashflow will go back into the company and will be used for other things, the actual profit is not 240 minus 12.
This is what I don't get, like c'mon my guy, they are a billion dollar company with a revenue upwards of 70-80 billion dollars, they don't need you to defend their decisions, like this is peak capitalism, **** everything and everyone over in the name of more "cashflow", this is what astounds me, like brother, I or people like Louis Rossman ain't the one getting screwed, its you people who buy apple products and you all are the ones defending it.

Louis has published his own repair presentation with proper explanation and schematics, he has streamed himself repairing mac logic boards live, still answers questions on any repair issues, is the one who has been pushing Right to Repair for years before it picked up steam by others, and the guy who was the main driving force behind US's first right to repair law in New York? Here's Linus covering it in WAN show for a source, like y'all do realize this guy is literally losing business when he's teaching this stuff for free? Yep he's a typical "YT Pundit", this was for you @superczar .

PS: If the SSD were to fail on the MBA (IF), I have no intent of using it with an external disk. The only reason to share that screenshot was because the LR video you shared leads one to interpret that it's simply not feasible to use these arm machines with an external boot. A lot of Internet Pundits (including LR) tend to do this for clicks from their intended audience - and hence it was worth pointing out
P.P.S did you check for how buried in the settings it is? and just how many people would have enabled it? this comes as OOTB functionality in any windows/linux laptop, so many people would never even imagine apple restricting something like this.
I really hope Windows and Qualcomm/Arm join hands to develop something similar to MacOS on Apple Silicon - I’m so used to windows that I’ll continue without a hitch. But, and that’s a big but - the OS optimisations have to match the silicon for speed and battery longevity + legacy app support needs to be maintained + paid hardware support should match the seamless experience of AppleCare.
I’m not a fan of MacOS- I enjoy Windows, but as an example the recent update ****ed up things so much that even opening file explorer lags. Not sure if MS even wants to continue with local OS because it does seem they want to move everything to the cloud. Now with the OpenAI saga and Sam and others joining MS as a CEO of AI group, this seems all the more likely.
I am more hopeful for AMD/Nvidia, AMD has the patents for x86_64 arch, has experience in designing performant APUs (series X/S, PS5), and with reports of Nvidia powering the next gen switch, these companies have a lot of potential in this space. the main issue is backwards compatibility, Apple is at an advantage since they can just deprecate stuff easily without issues but windows needs to support programs/software written decades ago which is the main issue, I think AMD really can pull off a proper translation layer if Apple can with Rosetta.

Windows is gonna be dead in the water as you said but with stuff like Asahi Linux (for apple silicon), I am way more hopeful for Linux on Arm than windows and Microsoft will eventually wake up once they see the potential in ARM market/loss in revenue, Architecture like RISC-V or MCM in GPUs is the future since we have pretty much hit the limits of hardware optimization (this is pretty fascinating thread discussing this topic) and we need more optimized architecture unless we achieve a breakthrough with hardware.
 
P.P.S did you check for how buried in the settings it is? and just how many people would have enabled it? this comes as OOTB functionality in any windows/linux laptop, so many people would never even imagine apple restricting something like this.
So from quoting Rossmann to purportedly demonstrate that it isn't possible to-> Oh no, this is buried deep within settings..
Great argument indeed.

Anyway, as mentioned before, the screenshot was solely to demonstrate why one shouldn't trust YTers blindly. Am sure he knows about where exactly this setting is but deliberately disregarded it
but at least don't excuse a company's bullshit by saying its fine, its "cashflow" issues, you plebians who cant even afford to rub two pennies together don't know just how much of an impact it'll be on Apple's financials
Not quite sure where you saw me saying this.
As mentioned by others, no one here is saying that 8GB ram is fine on a 1.5L laptop (although another story for say the 70K model) .
No one is saying yay, soldered SSDs.. just what the doctor ordered either :tearsofjoy:

As pointed out earlier, If there were viable options, pretty much all these folks who you think are defending Apple would gladly opt for better alternates from say Asus or Acer - if they were available
 
So from quoting Rossmann to purportedly demonstrate that it isn't possible to-> Oh no, this is buried deep within settings..
Great argument indeed.
yeaah ok as long as you fine with assuming that the average windows/mac user is technically sound enough to look for this setting and more to the point is aware enough to consider its implications instead of just saying what mumbo jumbo it is, I'mma ignore that and then cri when they realize that they can't potentially even boot their macs because they ignored this.
Anyway, as mentioned before, the screenshot was solely to demonstrate why one shouldn't trust YTers blindly. Am sure he knows about where exactly this setting is but deliberately disregarded it
yep, keep cherry picking all arguments.
Not quite sure where you saw me saying this.
read the comment above yours and never said it was for you.
As mentioned by others, no one here is saying that 8GB ram is fine on a 1.5L laptop (although another story for say the 70K model) .
No one is saying yay, soldered SSDs.. just what the doctor ordered either :tearsofjoy:

As pointed out earlier, If there were viable options, pretty much all these folks who you think are defending Apple would gladly opt for better alternates from say Asus or Acer - if they were available
there are as long as y'all bother to lift your heads up from macs, case in point a legion slim 7i, weighs the same as a 16inch mac, has a full powered mobile GPU and not those scam GPUs which are gimped by their TDP, has all the relevant ports you'll need and lasts for a long while, though if battery backup is a priority get last year's slim 7i which had some phenomenal battery backup, Link for the product and review.
 
Get a m1 Mac mini with 16 gb ram or get the cheapest Mac with 16gb/516 gb. Any 27 inch 1440 monitor works well with mac mini. Apple has designed everything to lure people in with a reasonable price in various segments. And then confuse tf out of us into milking more paise. Any 16gb/516 m series setup will be enough for literally everyone.
 
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