Macbook Air upgradability?

[Dedayog]

My niece is graduating high school next month, and as is my trend I will be buying her a laptop as a graduation present, one stout enough to handle college in the fall.

 

I do not know yet her full use case, or course load.  The larger issue is that she wants a Mac.  A MacBook Air specifically.  I am ignorant about most Apple products from an upgradability standpoint.  Am I able to upgrade the memory or storage after the fact?  Because these prices are fucking insane!!!  $400 for a 1TB SSD?   $200 for another 8GB RAM?!  

 

[Dr. Will0hlep]

5 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

My niece is graduating high school next month, and as is my trend I will be buying her a laptop as a graduation present, one stout enough to handle college in the fall.

 

I do not know yet her full use case, or course load.  The larger issue is that she wants a Mac.  A MacBook Air specifically.  I am ignorant about most Apple products from an upgradability standpoint.  Am I able to upgrade the memory or storage after the fact?  Because these prices are fucking insane!!!  $400 for a 1TB SSD?   $200 for another 8GB RAM?!  

 

No,

https://www.xda-developers.com/upgrade-ram-storage-macbook-air-2022/

If you could, Apple wouldn't be able to charge almost 10 times the reasonable price of a TB of NVMe storage or of 8GB of Ram.

[filpo]

3 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

My niece is graduating high school next month, and as is my trend I will be buying her a laptop as a graduation present, one stout enough to handle college in the fall.

 

I do not know yet her full use case, or course load.  The larger issue is that she wants a Mac.  A MacBook Air specifically.  I am ignorant about most Apple products from an upgradability standpoint.  Am I able to upgrade the memory or storage after the fact?  Because these prices are fucking insane!!!  $400 for a 1TB SSD?   $200 for another 8GB RAM?!  

 

welcome to the apple ecosystem, where they expect you have no technological knowledge and will pay 400 bucks for a 1tb ssd when a 980 pro is only about 90 bucks for the same storage

 

excuse my french but f*ck apple

[Needfuldoer]

Everything is soldered to the motherboard on those. You have to buy the options you want up front.

 

The last upgradeable MacBook Air was the 2017 model. They're not completely unsupported yet, but I wouldn't recommend buying something that old. There's still a group of fanatics out there desperately clinging onto their 2012 MacBooks, but it's only a matter of time before Apple discontinues support for Intel Macs.

 

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Early+2017+SSD+Upgrade+to+NVMe/121102

 

[Dr. Will0hlep]

2 minutes ago, filpo said:

excuse my french but f*ck apple

This

[Dedayog]

5 minutes ago, filpo said:

welcome to the apple ecosystem, where they expect you have no technological knowledge and will pay 400 bucks for a 1tb ssd when a 980 pro is only about 90 bucks for the same storage

 

excuse my french but f*ck apple

Cant say I don't disagree.  But as with al gifts, you give what the person wants, not what you want to give... so I gotta do the nasty here.

 

Thanks all, appreciate it.

[DEADPOOLSMOM]

I bought an M1 Macbook Air on release. It's been the best laptop I have ever had by far. Worth every penny. I just have the base model with 8gb ram and 256gig SSD. MacOS is optimized very well so the storage hasn't been an issue yet. I refuse to pay the huge upcharges for memory so I usually roll with the base model. I won't upgrade this mac until the base models get 16gb memory and at least 512gb ssd.

[filpo]

4 minutes ago, ShawtyT30beTHICCC said:

I bought an M1 Macbook Air on release. It's been the best laptop I have ever had by far. Worth every penny. I just have the base model with 8gb ram and 256gig SSD. MacOS is optimized very well so the storage hasn't been an issue yet. I refuse to pay the huge upcharges for memory so I usually roll with the base model. I won't upgrade this mac until the base models get 16gb memory and at least 512gb ssd.

i agree that the base is a well priced computer. The upgrades tho... 

Don't think any tech savvy person agrees with those

[DrMacintosh]

21 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

do not know yet her full use case, or course load.

Even with this in mind, I would not consider a 1TB internal drive for a MacBook Air. At most I would get 512GB and utilize external storage and cloud services. Most colleges will give students either Google Drive or OneDrive to store all their school work in a safe and accessible location. It's really nice. 

 

I'd got with 16GB of memory if you are going to do any upgrades. This will increase the machines usable life more than a bigger internal drive. Apple Silicon is really good at memory management, but having more memory will make it that much better.

 

The best thing about that MacBook Air is that it will last literally all day while they take notes and sitting through lectures. 

[Dedayog]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Even with this in mind, I would not consider a 1TB internal drive for a MacBook Air. At most I would get 512GB and utilize external storage and cloud services. I'd got with 16GB of memory to increase the machines usable life. Apple Silicon is really good at memory management, but having more memory will make it that much better. Most colleges will give students either Google Drive or OneDrive to store all their school work in a safe and accessible location. It's really nice. 

 

The best thing about that MacBook Air is that it will last literally all day while they take notes and sit through lecture. 

Thanks, makes sense.  Is the 256GB drive to small then?

 

What's the difference between the Air and the Pro?

 

Or the M1 vs M2 versions of the Air?

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Is the 256GB drive to small then?

Not at all, if you use cloud services and are doing basic course work. I use a 256GB drive on my personal 16" MacBook Pro (it's actually a 512GB drive cut in half). Getting a 512GB drive will make life conformable, but the 256GB should not be holding a college student back (unless they are a film/engineering major). 

[Zando_]

31 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

What's the difference between the Air and the Pro?

A fan. So the Pro is better for sustained loads. I think the screen may be slightly nicer as well, and the battery is a tad larger. 

32 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Or the M1 vs M2 versions of the Air?

The M2 Air has an M2 chip (slightly faster, slightly more efficient than the M1), an updated design with an even larger trackpad and slightly larger screen, that's about it. I see no point in getting an M2 Air over the M1 unless the aesthetic matters that much, or you need 24GB RAM (as the max for the M1 is only 16GB). But macOS is very good at memory management so you'd need an actual workload that will use that much RAM as just "a lot of multitasking" won't, and at that point you wouldn't be using an Air anyways. 

22 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Not at all, if you use cloud services and are doing basic course work. I use a 256GB drive on my personal 16" MacBook Pro (it's actually a 512GB drive cut in half). Getting a 512GB drive will make life conformable, but the 256GB should not be holding a college student back (unless they are a film/engineering major). 

^^^ we use mostly Macs at work, 256GB is fine for everything but video editing... where we just use an external drive or NAS because we didn't want those files on the internal storage anyways (every current Mac comes with Thunderbolt/USB 4 so wickedly fast external SSDs is no biggie, and cheaper than internal storage). 

[saintlouisbagels]

If you're going to upgrade the M2 Air in any way beyond the base specs, it is very much worth looking around for MacBook M1 Pro 14" deals if you don't find getting a used/refurbished unit. They fall down to around $1400-$1500 and by default start off with 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage. The Air models don't come anywhere close to the 14/16 lineup in terms of speaker, microphone, I/O and especially the the gorgeous mini-LED screen. Also the Air models can only output 1 display instead of 2, which is a big deal if she keeps her laptop for a long time uses it as a sort of battlestation in a future setup.

[DEADPOOLSMOM]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

Thanks, makes sense.  Is the 256GB drive to small then?

 

What's the difference between the Air and the Pro?

 

Or the M1 vs M2 versions of the Air?

The M2 isn't worth it. I would just grab one of the 16gb M1's that go on sale at BH Photo from time to time. I'd personally much rather have more memory than SSD space.

 

Also, just so you are aware, there are new Macbook Air's coming out during WWDC 2023 in June. 15 inch screens and completely redesigned chassis etc.

[Darkseth]

47 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

The M2 Air has an M2 chip (slightly faster, slightly less efficient than the M1)

fixed. Source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M2-SoC-Analysis-Worse-CPU-efficiency-compared-to-the-M1.637834.0.html

Batterylife is slightly down according to Notebookcheck, but still very good.

But makes sense, M2 is same Node just more powered up in Clock speeds.

 

 

@Dedayog

The main reason to get M2 Air over M1 Air is the newer Design, MagSafe charging, slightly better Webcam. That price difference could very well go into more Ram/Storage too.

For most people i recommend the M1 Air, as it can get much cheaper nowadays, especially the Base model.

 

Upgradability: I too hate the fact, you can't upgrade the SSD. They could just put a M.2 Slot inside, and one could just put a secondary storage inside.

 

But Ram is absolutely fine this way, beause there are huge technical benefits from this way. it's much faster, more responsive (very low latency because it's soldered directly on the Chip, not somewhere on the Motherboard), and the "Unified memory" functionality, where every Part of the SoC can access the Data at the same time. You don't need to copy data into the GPU-Vram Part, it's all a shared Pool.

 

All that helps with Ram managements. When M1 first launched, people were surprised how good the Ram Management is, and how far you can get with x GB of Ram, compared to what we were used to from x86 Macs and Windows machines.

 

For just everyday basic computing needs, the base model is just fine.

If you pay for the Upgrade, RAM > SSD. You can't upgrade the Ram. But you can at least plug in an external Drive.

 

If you get M2 Air, and upgrade SSD to 512gb & Ram to 16gb, it gets pricy. So much, that you might as well just get the Macbook Pro 14,2", which is the best choice once you reach that pricerange. i've seen 1499 USD Deals already.

 

So rather save Money with the still very good M1 Air Model, go up to M1 Pro Macbook Pro 14", or wait for the M3 models coming out in a few Months (probably announced at WWDC in June).

 

Oh yea, in my Opinion, no upgradability is a bummer, but still a small Downside considering these Machines are really fast, Battery last forever, and they produce almost zero heat and Fan noise for everyday Stuff. And also offering superb Build quality, the best Trackpad, one of the best Speakers and Displays on the Market. No Upgrades is almost the only big downside.

 

I rather pay these "upgrade-prices" than have to deal with Fan Noise and bad Batterylife on Windows Machines. Or Bluescreens. Or bad Standby Times.