New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip

I was recently buying a Dell laptop for my sister and it boggles my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework is an except) still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for consumer laptops. I didn&#x27;t enjoy the process of looking through dozens of various lines that Dell has and then other companies like Lenovo and HP earlier in the process, just to find a &quot;mid-range usable computer with a decent screen&quot;.<p>If you didn&#x27;t know anything about laptops and wanted to buy your first one, it would be a nightmare to figure out what all those seemingly random numbers mean on most non-Apple laptops.<p>Apple continues to simplify the laptop naming scheme, we&#x27;re at a point where it&#x27;s simply:<p>Air OR Pro<p>Small screen OR big screen<p>All other details can be configured in the buying flow but there&#x27;s not much to think about if you just want a simple laptop.

I&#x27;m still very bummed with Apple&#x27;s strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops.<p>I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14&quot; because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don&#x27;t need the extra horsepower.<p>And now the base M3 Air&#x27;s support 2 displays? This is wild

The degree to which Apple has kinda just “won” laptops is nuts to me.<p>$999 for an 13-inch M2 Air is just bonkers. You can easily pay $1500, even $2000 for Windows laptops that are hotter, heavier, AND slower.

Fun fact, the M3 Air is exactly the weight of one m3 air at room temperature; at 15C, one m3 of air at 1ATM is 1.23kg, which is the exact same weight as the M3 Air.

I can&#x27;t tell the difference between my new M1 Max MacBook Pro and the new M3 Max Macbook Pro. Corporations have become pros at exploiting our human psychology. Their ads can make you believe that the smallest bump in improvements will make your older computer appear useless in comparison. That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s for the best if you avoid ads as much as possible.

I really wanted to love the 13&quot; Air but two things made me switch to the Pro after trying it for a few weeks. One is that the internal speakers suck in comparison to the Pro. I &#x27;m not looking for audiophile quality from laptop speakers, but the Pro speakers are good enough for casually watching youtube videos, TV shows, podcasts, etc, whereas the Air speakers are harsh and tinny. The second is that the default resolution isn&#x27;t .5x the native resolution, as it is for most Apple desktop&#x2F;laptop displays. It&#x27;s some weird in-between resolution that creates aliasing on text and such. If you bump it down to a true .5x, it&#x27;s 1280x~800, which is borderline unusable for desktop browsing these days.

Going on a tangent here but it&#x27;s interesting seeing the love for Apple in this thread right vs the (well deserved) hate in the thread about Apple being fined for 1B in EU [0]<p>Apple has a serious anti consumer practices and we should not be supporting this company. The EU fine is just a start and hopefully there is a serious crack down to force them to open their hardware and software. Cheers to EU and its wonderful policies, let&#x27;s hope the rest of the world follows through!<p>In any case, encouraging their behavior by constantly purchasing their services and computers should be discouraged.<p>Their hardware maybe good but we should cease to support this company until their attitude changes.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39589483">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39589483</a>

Most interesting change:<p>&gt; Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3 now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed …

M3 MBP will also get 2 display support when the lid is closed in a macOS update.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5mac.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-display-support&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5mac.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-...</a>

Since October, I&#x27;ve replaced my M-series 14&quot; Macbook Pro for a M-series Macbook Air and I&#x27;m pretty glad with it. I can do almost anything I could have done with my Pro (Figma, coding, Docker) with so much less weight on my shoulders (commuting to work, working in cafes, etc).

£1,699 for 13&quot; Air with M3 (8&#x2F;10&#x2F;16), 24GB RAM, 512GB<p>vs £2,299 (from Costco) for 14&quot; MBP M3 Pro (11&#x2F;14&#x2F;16), 36GB RAM, 512GB<p>I&#x27;m unsure if £600 extra is worth it for average dev use? The main points I know are: better screen, speakers, fans, 12GB extra ram. But not sure about valuing those at £600. Hm<p>(I&#x27;m making this specific comparison because I&#x27;ve just ordered the MBP, but could return it, and get the MBA :D)

Looking at this list comparing the M3 with M1 doesn&#x27;t motivate me to want the M3. It seems most gains are GPU related. The M2 was underwhelming, and it seems the M3 isn&#x27;t much better than the M2 so comparing against M1.<p>&gt; <i>M3 takes MacBook Air performance even further:</i><p>&gt; <i>Game titles like No Man’s Sky run up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip.</i><p>&gt; <i>Enhancing an image with AI using Photomator’s Super Resolution feature is up to 40 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 15x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.</i><p>&gt; <i>Working in Excel spreadsheets is up to 35 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 3x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.</i><p>&gt; <i>Video editing in Final Cut Pro is up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 13x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.</i><p>&gt; <i>Compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor, MacBook Air delivers up to 2x faster performance, up to 50 percent faster web browsing, and up to 40 percent longer battery life.</i><p>Combining the two datapoints 15x faster than Mac with non-Apple-silicon and 2x faster than PC with i7 makes it seem like Intel parts have improved a lot since Apple stopped using them.

Outside of pricing, why would one buy Air vs Pro these days? I&#x27;ve had OG Air back in the day and tapered form factor was great. I recently was in an Apple store and looked at pro and airs.. they felt same, and also air seemed heavy (compared to ye olde tapered one). Now with Pro at 14&quot; and Air pushing to 15&quot;.. why?

It’s good but they should’ve upped the memory from 24G to 32G. In my opinion a new Macbook Air only makes sense when you can get more memory. And I still think it’s the best laptop.

So, the cheapest configuration with 16 GB of RAM (and still with a measly 256GB of SSD) begins at €1479 (previously incorrectly stated as €1700) in the EU with VAT and that&#x27;s with the older M2 chip. As for the external display thing, you basically have to &quot;sacrifice&quot; the laptop&#x27;s screen and built in keyboard and trackpad in order to use a 2nd display. Jesus wept. CORRECTION: The price for 16&#x2F;256 is at €1479.

You know, I really wish I could add a few things to the macBook. A number pad for example, since VoiceOver can use them for quick and simple navigation and item selection. I mean, I also wish VoiceOver was even half as good as NVDA, a free and open source Windows screen reader, but that&#x27;s for another day.<p>Also, make the modifier keys symmetrical. Add a control key to the right side of the keyboard! Yeah, the keyboard is a big deal for blind people like me. I do know a few blind people that use Macs sometimes, but I don&#x27;t know if they just hook up an external keyboard as much as possible like I do, or just use the built in one without a nampad and such.

Will these, like previous models, have varying SSD performance depending upon how many chips are populated resulting in varying parallelization of SSD operations?<p>If so, knowing those configurations would be useful. I have a friend I recently told to wait for the M3 models (and for reviews of same and for the initial bugs, etc. shakeout to subside).<p>I&#x27;m also wondering about the reported&#x2F;speculated internal bus width and bandwidth differences between the M2 and M3. Supposedly, the M3 is&#x2F;would be a bit narrower, hopefully making up the resulting impact upon performance through other improvements.

I own a fully maxed-out MacBook Air M2. I suppose, there&#x27;s no point in upgrading, from the point of view of a developer?<p>I&#x27;m not quite sure why the comparisons on the marketing page are against the M1 Air.<p>For a desktop (which does the Docker things) I use a maxed out Mac Mini M2 Pro. Still, it&#x27;s painful to see an upgraded Air which I do not own, but also a little bit warming that they don&#x27;t seem to pushing a comparison with the M2 equivalent. Crazy times.

I wish they will bring back a smaller form factor.<p>12&quot; MacBook despiste its CPU flaws was the perfect size.

I&#x27;m always a bit irritated when editors still use inch measurements exclusively, when it&#x27;s only used in 3 countries officially still.<p>Not talking about screen sizes obviously, but I really don&#x27;t have an intuition for what &#x27;less than half an inch&#x27; thickness is and I&#x27;m sure there are a _lot_ of people who use English as their interface language outside of the US.

my biggest regret of 2023 is buying the MBA with M2 chip. it is so underpowered compared to the MBP - no right hand ports, lower memory, no support for 2 monitors - that it was not worth the few hundred dollars saved and lighter weight which was something i thought I valued.<p>so just a word of advice to fellow devs - go for the MBP. if you&#x27;re on here you need it.

M1 Max 64Gb here. It’s like 2-3 year olds now? It’s still miles ahead of any other laptop I’ve tried since.<p>Everything just loads instantly. Like literally instantly, and I can easily work a whole workday on it with some battery to spare.

&gt; Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3 now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed

Finding a laptop that runs Linux natively and acceptably is always a challenge. My Dell XPS 9315 touts linux support, but only with an older version of Ubuntu using custom drivers (as I discovered after purchasing it). So I&#x27;ve got manjaro running that took quite a bit of coaxing - though the built-in webcam has never, and probably will never work with any linux other than Ubuntu 20.04, and the APM has always been extremely wonky (also, much BIOS and config tweaking to get it to work acceptably).<p>In any case, if these ARM-based macbook pros can run linux native with minimal fuss, I&#x27;d buy one -- but AFAIK, they&#x27;re not there yet.

Price Ladder<p>Apple has some of the most amazing Price Laddering I&#x27;ve ever seen.<p>Folks complain about only 1 external monitor support, etc.<p>This is all part of Apple&#x27;s price laddering strategy.<p>MKBHD does a good job describing it.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=XeDPwpIFs-I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=XeDPwpIFs-I</a><p>Here it&#x27;s visualized (for iPad)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;photos5.appleinsider.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;50966-100692-nov-2022-ipad-price-range-overall-xl.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;photos5.appleinsider.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;50966-100692-nov-20...</a>

My kids both needed computers and when the MacBook Air M1 came out I bought a couple for $1200 each (I normally spend $2000 on a new laptop). I wanted decent performance, compatibility, and battery life, and ideally something that would survive a typical teenager&#x27;s treatment. I&#x27;m not a mac person- I would be happier with a Windows or Linux PC or laptop.<p>It looks like they have had the laptops for 3.5 years now, and I&#x27;ve never heard a single complaint about performance or compatibility. One reports the battery life has dropped tremendously. But frankly, these things are basically reliable appliances. I was expecting both to be completely broken by now and have been very pleased.

For anyone having issues with only one external display at once, DisplayLink adapters work very well, allowing you to connect much more displays if you need them.

Am I the only one who is bothered by the cut-out for the webcam and the rounded corners of the screen? Fortunately, laptops are just toys for me, and I save a lot of money by not buying one from Apple anymore.

Great news and another reason to upgrade to the M3 series if you&#x27;re using an M1 and like to use local LLMs or anything AI.<p>This time, it supports for up to two external displays with the lid closed.<p>The Macbook Air with M1 is already discontinued. [0].<p>Can&#x27;t wait for the Mac mini with M3 Max or Mac Studio with M3 Ultra.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;apple-discontinues-m1-macbook-air&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;apple-discontinues-m1-m...</a>

I am most interested to see if the M4 chip will dramatically improve performance of local LLMs.<p>I like M1 Pro so far with models up to 30-70b parameters, but the memory bandwidth is my current limit.<p>With a large jump in unified memory and bandwidth we could see 120b parameter models running on a laptop.<p>As a side note, why does Apple continue to reference the Intel MacBook Air... It&#x27;s over 6 years old now, no shit this new CPU is 16x faster...

Lots of worthless criticism. If you want the latest and greatest buy it. If you are upgrading from an Intel macbook air than get the m3 - who wants to buy last years version

I&#x27;ve been streaming and recording locally with OBS in 2K (1440p) with an M3 Max MacBook Pro and it works like a charm—with a Sony ZV-E10 being capture by Elgato HD60X.<p>I can even develop and run Apple MLX code while I&#x27;m streaming. (I lose a few frames when generating images with Stable Diffusion or load big LLMs like Gemma 7B.)<p>My MacBook Pro M1 wasn&#x27;t there for streaming and recording at the same time. But even an M1 Max could do the job as well.

A great laptop but also a bit of a heartbreaker for me.<p>The quality of the 16&quot; MacBook Pro (Liquid Retina XDR?) is way ahead of the MacBook Air... which is a shame, because my dream form factor is the 15&quot; MacBook Air. The 16&quot; is so bulky and heavy.<p>(On the other hand, most of the time I hook my 16 up to Apple&#x27;s Studio Display, which is definitely not ProMotion or anything exceptional!)

These will push the price of &lt; $500 windows laptops closer to $100 and the price of $1000 windows laptops to $300. No comparison.

I currently have a 16&quot; M1 Max and thinking about picking up a 15&quot; M3 Air. My understanding is the M3 is faster in single core performance but the M1 Max is faster in multi-core because of obviously more cores. Am I really going to see a performance difference switching from M1 Max to M3 or should I splurge and go for M3 Pro or M3 Max?

2 screens, but with the lid shut!? So you need a separate mouse and keyboard to use 2 screens. That&#x27;s weird..

Still locking 16GB behind the top tier option. Seems like the only way they keep MBP sales from cratering.

&gt;Working in Excel spreadsheets is up to 35 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 3x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.<p>Is this really a benchmark someone would diffrenatiate buying options?

I can appreciate the aesthetics of the “air” line but have been burned in the past due to poor heat dissipation. Hope apple has improved over the number of years, especially with “apple silicon”

It&#x27;s fascinating they used Excel in the product photos instead of Numbers. I wonder who actually uses Numbers these days? Or any of the Apple &quot;productivity&quot; apps for that matter.

I just had a MacBook Air M1 die suddenly, perhaps because the case has no heat venting.<p>All data was lost because the storage is not removable.<p>Replaced it with a Framework which will more repairable and has removable storage.<p>Basics matter.

Is M3 the same single core speed on all platforms (e.g. air vs pro vs mini, etc)? In other words, would m3 mbpro single core benchmarks be basically the same as this new air?

The hardware is so great but mac os is so far from my liking. It&#x27;s such a shame that the OS options are so limited on these machines. (I&#x27;m aware of asahi)

This Laptop has two USB-C&#x2F;Thunderbolt ports. So how do I connect two external monitors + e.g. a USB Hub to this laptop WITHOUT buying an expensive Thunderbolt Dock??? Are there adapters available?<p>Is it only this one with HDMI from Apple? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;shop&#x2F;product&#x2F;MUF82AM&#x2F;A&#x2F;usb-c-digital-av-multiport-adapter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;shop&#x2F;product&#x2F;MUF82AM&#x2F;A&#x2F;usb-c-digital-a...</a><p>are there others with USB-A with Displayport or USB-C Display connection?

Hilariously, if you compare the new model to BOTH the 2017 Intel model and the 2020 Intel model the performance comparison is the same.

I am wondering at this point if Apple is going to make it a full decade without upgrading the base memory capacity.

I love my m2 mbp 14&quot;<p>Frankly, Apple is an amazing organization and I am extremely thankful that they&#x27;ve empowered product designers to bring us these amazing creations.<p>Apple is one reason that I love existing in this era. Sure, there are others. But having Apple... enables me to bring a laptop + a backup battery (anker 737) practically anywhere and work all day without needing a direct electricity connection.<p>Laptop + Phone + external battery packs = work all day<p>The light weight, stay-cool-ness ... makes it so easy to work from.<p>I love you Apple. So glad to not have to use Windows. Sure, Linux desktops distros are decent (despite bugs), but Apple &quot;just works&quot;.

&gt; all in its strikingly thin and light<p>how about we make them thicker, so there&#x27;s enough room to keep the screen from eventually touching the keys when closed and permanently marring it after a few years. I guess, its only been happening since 2007, probably not enough time to come up with a solution.<p>&#x2F;rant

I remain a little disappointed they didn&#x27;t hold onto the wedge form-factor. The MacBook Air in the most recently form-factor is very thin, very light, but not to me what the definitive aspect of the MBA is, and why it&#x27;s not a MacBook Pro. Being mildly thinner and supporting only one monitor feels like an intentional design handicap because... well we have to.

it&#x27;s so clear that they limit it to 24GB to prevent cannibalization of the macbook pro. I personally could go for a M3 base chip with 64GB or 128GB of memory.

They are good but still blurry on most external monitors.

Does this have 120hz promotion yet ??

Only caveat is the 60hz display imho.

Kind of disappointing that they seem to have discontinued the 11” model. I bought one 5 or 6 years ago and it’s still working fine. Compared to the 13” and 15” models, it feels so much more portable and lightweight.

&quot;MacBook Air can also run optimized AI models, including large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models for image generation locally with great performance.&quot;

Here is a question for all you Mac experts:<p>I purchased an M1 Mac Mini and I regret it, I should have gotten a laptop because I often find myself wanting to use my computer outside of my office. I am not doing anything crazy with this thing, just photo editing and light coding.<p>Is there any reason why I should choose a Pro over an Air at this point?

I strongly recommend using KDE for your laptop and desktop

How is Apple able to use the MagSafe connector in the EU?

I&#x27;m still very happy with my M1 Air.<p>But I also rarely do much on it aside from web browse and write small Flutter and Golang apps.<p>I&#x27;m disappointed with the low ram and storage specs, but you also get a laptop that&#x27;ll last until the unreplaceable battery dies.

Still no internal fan though?

Is anyone else annoyed that Apple are extra shifty with performance comparisons these days, comparing to M1 and not to M2 MB Airs?<p>I opted for a M2 Air in October seeing small differences in M2 pro vs M3 pro, so I guess I was right - the difference must be so small that Apple can&#x27;t stomach the difference.<p>I&#x27;d rant about how they try to market new models with more and more stupid marketing when they don&#x27;t have anything to show, but I guess this only means I don&#x27;t need to upgrade for a while since they are all out of proper innovation...<p>Imagine being a fanboy for Apple this days. Nothing to look for. They are so blatant in extracting value and not bringing anything new to the table, probably best compared to Nokia in it&#x27;s heyday.

The 24GB memory limit is pathetic in 2024.

More unrepairable e-waste in the making. Gross.

Prices in Europe still very bloated compared with US.

MBA needs to go back to previous design with keyboard from MBP.