Can’t wait to get my base model midnight! For my usage no need for extra RAM. Don’t do videos or photo editing either.

Hopefully we get it almost as soon as USA. Fingers crossed.

I don't think they were lazy. I think they put it there so we can justify the increased MBA m2 price by comparing to the MBP 13 m2

If it didn't exist, we will be focused on saying the MBA m2 increased in price - by right it should be $999, replacing the M1 MBA. But instead, they kept the pricing across the board and increased their profit margin.

And you can see it is working, nobody said MBA m2 is expensive lol, when it actually is. MBA has always had an entry price of $999 until now.

You look at iPhone product pricing
when new one come out, it will take the original price, and the old one take a price cut.

Anyway this is genius of Apple. And given the chip shortage, I guess they have no reason to price it cheap!

After watching the #ssdgate issues with the MBP M2, as well as the increased power usage of the M2 chip over the M1, most likely going to buy MBA M1 instead.

https://youtu.be/IASBmKPixt8

I wanted to buy the MBA M2 on launch day — always buy Apple stuff on launch day. But this time around Apple really screw us over. The base model is basically a lemon and Apple did it on purpose.

Guess I’ll be ordering the MBA M1 base model instead.

For those who will upgrade the SSD and/or RAM, its a good machine, but with that kind of money why not buy the MBP 14.

And because for base model with only 8GB RAM, the SSD is used as swap memory.

When multitasking - multiple tabs open in browser, Spotify, WhatsApp, outlook all running at the same time… I *believe* the base MBA M2 will be slower than the base MBA M1 in actual real world use, not just benchmark.

https://youtu.be/I82gF_YAljU
https://youtu.be/H6Olqv5ChlQ

I would go for 8GB + 512GB if I were buying. So that I have more storage. But you can see head to head comparison and draw your own conclusion.

I placed order for MBA M1 instead. Don’t feel this time MBA M2 is worth the price increase asked by Apple.

Simple answer for you, I don't know how YOU use chrome. I love to open ~30 tabs on my laptop, not only that, I use BOTH Safari & Chrome. Safari for personal, Chrome for work accessing Google Drive, Docs etc. I got 60 tabs on my iPhone now. Don't listen to idiots who tell you there's folders and what not. How they use their computer is none of your business. Ask YOURSELF how YOU USE YOUR COMPUTER. At the same time I have WhatsApp, Slack, Outlook, Calendar open.

It is not heavy load, but it uses a lot of memory.

For MY USAGE, confirm I need to rely on swap even if its 16GB RAM. My 5600x + 32GB RAM uses swap too with my usage pattern. The MBA M2 base model, that slower SSD will definitely affect the performance. I was so ready to buy the MBA M2 in midnight base model, but the price hike AND the slower base model SSD basically turned me away from it completely. So now I am just waiting for my MBA M1 base model to arrive.

You do you, but facts remain as facts, that base SSD is slow and if you ever use swap memory, it'll slow the machine down.

From personal experience, Yes, Safari seems to work better than Chrome on MacOS. I use both for reasons outlined above.

Base spec. Best bang for bucks. Multitasking with many apps open != multicore. A faster CPU won't help WITHOUT the memory & swap keeping up.
The things I do are not heavy load, but uses a lot of memory to keep them "open".

For people who are heavy users, I recommend just get the MBP 14, you get the better screen, 2x external output.. rather than upgrading the MBA M2.

I've used the first unibody MacBook back in 2008, and after that I had the MBA 11, MBA 13, MBP 13 2015, MBP 13 2017, MBP 13 M1. MBA 11 was awesome for the portability, I used that laptop the most (now using iPad base spec).

This post has been edited by Jason: Jul 19 2022, 03:57 PM

Can. Even the new M2 can. Just when swap is used, it will be a bit slower - in terms of responsiveness.

You can watch the video I shared earlier and see.

This post has been edited by Jason: Jul 19 2022, 04:09 PM