M3 MacBook Air Teardown Shows Apple Fixed Base Model's Biggest Flaw

[hans1972]

And mine is that they thought they could get away with it and that no one would notice... oops.

The M2 MacBook Air 256GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2260 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)
The M2 MacBook Air 512GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2760 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)

So writing 1GB of swap will take 0.44 seconds vs 0.36 seconds.

So how did regular users notice this? They didn't.

 

[visualseed]

If it was a "made up" problem, then why did Apple reverse course to satisfy the 3% of customers?

Some people are basically saying, "it isn't a problem for me, so it can't be problem for anybody else."

It wasn't a problem. It was the effect of a manufacturing decision and there is no evidence that Apple reversed course simply to satisfy those complaining about disk speeds when it could just as equally be the case that suppliers had more 128GB chips available to meet all of Apple's needs this year and they didn't have to resort to using single 256GB chips.

 

[FasterQuieter]

A real "fix" would have been 2 256GB modules in the base model.

 

[nikhsub1]

The M2 MacBook Air 256GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2260 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)
The M2 MacBook Air 512GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2760 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)

So writing 1GB of swap will take 0.44 seconds vs 0.36 seconds.

So how did regular users notice this? They didn't.

Now do read.

 

[Jim Lahey]

I expect this is more about a change in chip availability/cost ratio rather than anything being ‘fixed’. I imagine it’s more likely that on this occasion it was easier/cheaper to build it this way. I certainly find it almost impossible to believe that Cook agreed to spend one cent more than necessary just to appease the 1% who even knew about read/write parallelism.

 

[hans1972]

hans1972 said:
The M2 MacBook Air 256GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2260 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)
The M2 MacBook Air 512GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2760 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)

So writing 1GB of swap will take 0.44 seconds vs 0.36 seconds.

So how did regular users notice this? They didn't.

Now do read.

Reading 1Gb file sequentially would take 0.7 seconds vs 0.35 seconds.

The difference of 0.35 seconds is really hard to notice for regular user's of the MBA since the number of times they're waiting for 1Gb of data in one file to be read into memory doesn't happen often.

For 5Gb it would be 3.25 seconds vs 1.75 seconds.

But let's do it for 10 Mb JPEG image: 0.0065 seconds vs 0.0037 seconds
(assuming the same speed as reading 1Gb which wouldn't be true, but no one is testing reading just one image).

 

[nikhsub1]

Reading 1Gb file sequentially would take 0.7 seconds vs 0.35 seconds.

The difference of 0.35 seconds is really hard to notice for regular user's of the MBA since the number of times they're waiting for 1Gb of data in one file to be read into memory doesn't happen often.

For 5Gb it would be 3.25 seconds vs 1.75 seconds.

But let's do it for 10 Mb JPEG image: 0.0065 seconds vs 0.0037 seconds
(assuming the same speed as reading 1Gb which wouldn't be true, but no one is testing reading just one image).

Right, so just say the difference is 2x. Very significant.

 

[ikramerica]

Right, so just say the difference is 2x. Very significant.

Look up the definition of significant.

If wearing knee socks every day increased your lifespan by 10 seconds but wearing no socks also increased your lifespan, but by only 1 second, is any of that significant? Knee socks increase your lifespan 10x more than no socks at al, and 10x is a lot!

 

[biffuz]

I thought the previous model's biggest flaw was the 8GB of RAM, I can't find anything with that little memory above 300 bucks nowadays...

 

[dgdosen]

Here is a calculation I did back when the M2 MBA came out:

The M2 MacBook Air 256GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2260 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)
The M2 MacBook Air 512GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2760 MB/s when writing 1GB blocks (The Verge)

So writing 1GB of swap will take 0.44 seconds vs 0.36 seconds.

The M2 MacBook Air 256GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 1574 MB/s when writing 5GB blocks (The Verge)
The M2 MacBook Air 512GB SSD had a sequential write speed of 2188 MB/s when writing 5GB blocks (The Verge)

Writing a 5Gb file takes 3.2 seconds vs 2.9 seconds.


Now, tell me, do you really think this is a problem?

This is definitely a principle-of-the-thing issue. Why degrade performance at all? Especially for the savings of pennies. No newer version of the same device should see a degradation in performance.

As a matter of principle, they should let users know if any performance degrades, just as they eagerly do for performance improvements. Even if Apple (nor you) doesn't think it's important to a user.

The same can be said for things like:
- decreasing the number of screens supported for a device
- slowing any speeds of the device
- decreasing estimated battery life
- etc

You get the idea. if Apple is just up front about it, it probably won't matter, and if it does, customers will choose accordingly. Apple should think of their customers as stakeholders not cash flow maximizers.

 

[ZipZap]

iFixIt was not first to report this with a teardown

 

[Fuzzball84]

Agreed but imagine if the wifi got slower, or the screen got dimmer, or whatever else, on a newer model versus the previous. Even on the little stuff, as a buyer you want to know everything is at least the same if not better than the older model. If the M1 hadn't set a higher bar, sure, this would have never been an issue. It's the same as the M3 Pro chip losing performance cores. I have one and it's amazing, but the optics of Apple "nerfing" it to upsell more Max chips is unavoidable (and not completely undeserved).

Yeah, but al sorts of products and services companies provide have faired worse... machines not designed to last as long as previous generations, services that are poorer than in the past. The SSD situation on the Air was never going to be anything that would affect their target consumer. Benchmarks and teardowns were needed to find it.

 

[visualseed]

Right, so just say the difference is 2x. Very significant.

It’s only significant if your primary computing use is disk I/O. It’s like basing the overall performance of a car based on its 0-60 times alone.

 

[Fuzzball84]

My sinister interpretation is that they intentionally installed a single chip SSD in the previous version- knowing full well that it was slower, so that the next version (today’s M3) could be “upgraded” to a faster dual chip drive — to encourage upgrades

If you buy the new M3 because the M2 SSD you have is too slow.... you just outright bought the wrong Mac in the first place.

I sense many that complain just have a bad case of FOMO... it's the fear of missing out, of having a machine thats not as fast as another, or the next version. When in reality it makes no difference to the majority target audience for MacBook Air.

 

[JPack]

It wasn't a problem. It was the effect of a manufacturing decision and there is no evidence that Apple reversed course simply to satisfy those complaining about disk speeds when it could just as equally be the case that suppliers had more 128GB chips available to meet all of Apple's needs this year and they didn't have to resort to using single 256GB chips.

NAND prices were at an all-time low in 2022/2023 due to low demand. Fabs expecting WFH to last for years faced the reality of companies ordering workers back to the office.

Apple continued to use 128GB chips in iPhone, iPad Pro, Apple TV, iMac, MacBook Air M1.

So the "manufacturing" or "supply" reason makes zero sense.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

The real crime here is that they don't start the capacity at 512GB (and also memory at 16GB).

Flash memory and DRAM are both cheap enough now that it's about time they bump the base configuration up to 512GB/16GB.

Currently taking an absolute eternity to ship anything other than the base models of these machines also. Ordered the m2 for my gf and been given an estimated delivery date of 5th April!

 

[Darth Tulhu]

I can objectively say that this change is a good thing.

Everything else seems neither here nor there.

 

[HVDynamo]

From my experience, not much! I have a 2018 i5 Mini with a 256GB SSD that was supposedly much faster than the base model M2 Mini SSD.

My base M2 Mini, is twice as fast at everything vs my 2018 Mini. It takes close to 30 secs to cold boot the 2018 Mini and it takes the M2 Mini with the supposedly slow SSD around 9 secs to cold boot.

That's not really an apt comparison for this though. Sure it's faster than your old 2018 intel mac, but it could be even faster than it is now if it had the dual chip storage. The CPU is what's holding you back in the old intel mac, not the storage.

 

[hans1972]

This is definitely a principle-of-the-thing issue. Why degrade performance at all? Especially for the savings of pennies. No newer version of the same device should see a degradation in performance.

As a matter of principle, they should let users know if any performance degrades, just as they eagerly do for performance improvements. Even if Apple (nor you) doesn't think it's important to a user.

The same can be said for things like:
- decreasing the number of screens supported for a device
- slowing any speeds of the device
- decreasing estimated battery life
- etc

You get the idea. if Apple is just up front about it, it probably won't matter, and if it does, customers will choose accordingly. Apple should think of their customers as stakeholders not cash flow maximizers.

People shouldn't have principles when it comes to hardware specifications at all.
I disagree very much with people who has this notion that a new model should be the same or better in every way as the previous model. It also goes against everything Jobs stood for.

You should buy a Mac based on the value it gives you compared to the price Apple charges for it. If Apple makes changes to the hardware which doesn't affect the value you get of it, it's something you should just ignore.

The only one who cares are people to hung up on specifications who gets mad when they see a YouTube video about it or a website referring to those videos.

People who buy the base model of the MBA simply don't care.

Also if these people are so technical and now how a computer works, why aren't their focusing on random reads and writes which are much more important to how you perceive performance most of the time for regular users?

 

[dgdosen]

People shouldn't have principles when it comes to hardware specifications at all.
I disagree very much with people who has this notion that a new model should be the same or better in every way as the previous model. It also goes against everything Jobs stood for.

You should buy a Mac based on the value it gives you compared to the price Apple charges for it. If Apple makes changes to the hardware which doesn't affect the value you get of it, it's something you should just ignore.

The only one who cares are people to hung up on specifications who gets mad when they see a YouTube video about it or a website referring to those videos.

People who buy the base model of the MBA simply don't care.

Also if these people are so technical and now how a computer works, why aren't their focusing on random reads and writes which are much more important to how you perceive performance most of the time for regular users?

You lost me at "People shouldn't have principles..."

And I said I was fine with Apple 'lowering' specs - they should just make sure they tell their customers these details, and let them make an informed decision.

 

[AlexJaye]

The biggest flaw is still introducing base models with 256gb of storage and 8gb RAM. Fix THAT.

 

[hans1972]

Right, so just say the difference is 2x. Very significant.

Sometimes absolute values are important.

People using a base MBA aren't reading and writing huge sequential files into memory while at the same time waiting for the Mac to be done, very often. If the few times a year has to wait 0.35 seconds for it to load, it doesn't matter.

You do know how short a timeframe 0.35 seconds are? it's a blink of an eye.

"Human adults blink approximately 12 times per minute and one blink lasts about 1/3 s."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4043155/

 

[visualseed]

NAND prices were at an all-time low in 2022/2023 due to low demand. Fabs expecting WFH to last for years faced the reality of companies ordering workers back to the office.

Apple continued to use 128GB chips in iPhone, iPad Pro, Apple TV, iMac, MacBook Air M1.

So the "manufacturing" or "supply" reason makes zero sense.

NAND prices were low but the availability of single 128gb chips was constrained by Apple’s needs. Starting with the 14, all iPhones now start at 128gb instead of 64gb. They even skipped a 128gb option for iPads presumably to save chips.

 

[hans1972]

You lost me at "People shouldn't have principles..."

And I said I was fine with Apple 'lowering' specs - they should just make sure they tell their customers these details, and let them make an informed decision.

You're misquoting me.

"People shouldn't have principles when it comes to hardware specifications at all," is what I wrote.

Hardware specifications isn't important enough to be guided by principles when when you buy a computer.

Apple doesn't provide speed of their SSDs and they haven't done that for a long time. If these details were important for customers, they wouldn't buy MacBooks.

So, why focus on this change when it is a specification which Apple doesn't provide at all.

 

[JPack]

NAND prices were low but the availability of single 128gb chips was constrained by Apple’s needs. Starting with the 14, all iPhones now start at 128gb instead of 64gb. They even skipped a 128gb option for iPads presumably to save chips.

The entire PC industry uses 128GB chips to make 256GB SSDs. There was no sudden shortage of 128GB chips at any time. MacBook Air M1 continued to ship with 128GB chips.

Manufacturers like Kioxia, Samsung, Micron were desperate for orders.

Micron Expects Worst Downturn Since the Financial Crisis | The Motley Fool

It's been over a decade since the memory chip industry has been in such dire straits.

www.fool.com

Global 3D NAND Market Shrinks by 24.3 Percent in Q3 2022

Market downturn collapses 3D NAND shipments in the third quarter.

www.tomshardware.com

It doesn't explain how every other product on the market, including the largest PC manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell, and HP were able to ship 128GB chips. iPhone, iPad Pro, Apple TV, iMac, MacBook Air M1 continue to use 128GB chips today.

The idea there was some shortage flies in the face of reality, especially for anyone working in the industry and could perform supply chain checks.