Not sure if you guys like to dock your Macs. But I found the Thunderbolt 3 dock jackpot. You can get liquidation units of a $300 dock for as cheap as $50 if you piecemeal them on ebay. HP Elite Thunderbolt 3 Dock ($15) HP Proprietary Thunderbolt cable (required for charging passthrough) $20 HP 90W Blue Tip Power Adapator ($16) These are haggled prices with many offers and counter offers. It'll probably run you $80 no haggle. Maybe as low as $30 if you don't want/need charging passthrough. The only "bug" with these is that it passes the docks ethernet mac to the router instead of the Mac's mac, so it breaks my mac-address-filtered IP assignment for my Mac. Atleast I don't have to deal with a M1 Max Mac's mac address.
8GB of soldered ram though. I can't imagine buying anything today with less than 32GB if it’s going to be soldered on. My Thinkpad has 64GB, but it actually has upgradeable RAM. The M1 is a great chip, but Apple is being nVidia with VRAM levels of stingy with the RAM with these things.
This guy compares the 8GB to the 16GB M1 Pro. There is almost no difference until he starts editing 8k video. I think for most people that extra $200, or in this case, $350, for 8GB more of ram isn't really worth it.
He conveniently never shows it running Chrome, the most commonly used app people would be running on a laptop. Chrome eats RAM and runs like ass on 8GB. 16GB is a few hundred bucks more and well worth the money IMO. These things really should be shipping with 32 or 64. I want to love Apple. I really do. But they always gotta rape you in the ass on something. RAM is dirt cheap, and for what their notebooks cost they should have more.
I agree with @cmdrmonkey At the end of the day 8GB of ram is 8GB of ram despite what YouTube shills tell you. But it's the 256GB HDD that will bite you in the ass first probably. I feel the sweet spot for the Macbook Air is $1350 at 8cpu/7gpu 16gb Ram 1TB HDD. That looks to stay competitive for the next 5 years, much to my annoyance. As for MaxTech, they are the worst of the YouTube misinformation channels. I initially got the base model for $900 but it had performance issues. Firefox ran badly and Parsec would stutter. All fixed in the 16GB model. But even the 16GB model stutters and lags with 4k video editing. Basically they are all full of shit because they never use computers like real people would.
That's the thing. Real people will use it all sorts of ways. 8GB of ram is fine for a majority of the media consumption only users. My mom is literally still using an Acer laptop i got back in 2009 that has 4GB of ram. I gave my friend my surface book from 2015 to use for work and it has 8GB of ram. my sister just got a surface laptop go with 8gb ram for work that extra chunk of money usage for ram isnt needed in these cases
I tend to shop on value, so 8GB RAM and 256GB HDD at $1,000 is outragous. People who can get by with those specs can get by with a sub $400 laptop. The "value" with the M1 Air is at the middle tier configuration. It actually is cheaper than competitors (Lenovo X1, Razer) at the 16GB/1Tb config. I think the M1 Air gets too much praise as an "entry level" and "affordable" laptop. It only seems that way because it's an Apple product. With an MSRP between $1,000 - $1,800 per configuration, it's a HIGH-END laptop.
Keep in mind that the M1 memory is much faster than typical PC DDR4 memory. DDR4 3200 is 25.6GB/s. The x86 Macbook Pro uses DDR2400 at 19.2GB/s. The M1 on chip memory reaches 60GB/s. So on one hand it might be less memory but on the other hand it's about 3 times as fast as DDR4. Throw in Apple's hardware and software optimizations and in many cases, less can work as well as more. There are of course times when you simply need more memory and no tricks will help.
I have to admit one of the main reasons for the 16GB was to use a Windows VM in a clutch... but I was surprised to find I never needed it lol.
sorry. should have reiterated I was basing this off the discounted price. I wouldn't recommend this laptop for anyone at the original price. but for anyone looking for a basic media consumption device that can double as regular as a work laptop, this is perfect at ~$800 with the battery life and build quality. it'll last many years
OK, you guys win. The Macbook Pro 14 is on sale for $1600... so obvious spec'ing out the Air is now a terrible idea. Only the base model makes sense. Also, it seems like upgrades are a net loss on trade in value
Is that the 14" M1 Pro chip? Then yeah, a 16GB 512GB 13" M1 for $1449 doesn't look so good. These prices are getting weird though. People getting excited about a Mac Pro 13" i5 16GB 512GB for $1100. I guess it's a good deal if memory is more important than the CPU.
Does the watch not bypass Face ID for Apple Pay? I started up with the mask again and either have to pop it off or punch in the pass code. I've also never gotten Apple Pay to work smoothly from the watch. It works perfect on the phone sans mask.
My bad dude.. I didn't see this. It was a targeted best buy CC offer anyway. https://slickdeals.net/f/15489421-select-my-best-buy-credit-card-members-apple-14-macbook-pro-2021-model-1620-free-shipping
No, you still need biometrics for apple pay on the iphone. apple watch to unlock phone is simply that, just to unlock the phone. what's wrong with your apple pay on your watch? it's actually ideal for your situation. remember, apple pay on the watch is separate from apple pay on your phone. you have to set it up separately.
lol I did not know that... looking like a straight dumbass at checkout lanes so I don't fiddle with it too much if it doesn't work quickly.
I got a free upgrade to iPhone 13 just to get off Sprint and on T-Mobile network. Apple has gotten cheaper than I expected. I knew there wasn't going to be a wall charger but no wired headphone caught me by surprise. I finally got this working. I didn't realize it was activated by the button below the circle button. I think I forgot that button even existed lol