Poll: *** The official 2020 MacBook Air/13" MacBook Pro thread (it has the M1 chip and everything!) ***

[Jimbeam3678]

So if understand this correctly 2 years are covered by consumer law, accidental damage is covered via house insurance. So am I correct in thinking you are paying £249 for the 3rd year and some convenience ?

Not knocking it, just trying to understand what the benefits are for me and my personal situation.

 

[HACO]

So if understand this correctly 2 years are covered by consumer law, accidental damage is covered via house insurance. So am I correct in thinking you are paying £249 for the 3rd year and some convenience ?

Not knocking it, just trying to understand what the benefits are for me and my personal situation.

Lots of details here:
https://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/uk/

Basically you get 1 year of Apple warranty. This is direct with Apple regardless of where you buy it from.

In addition, UK law allows you to claim against faulty goods for 6 years (5 in Scotland). This is different to warranty and must be submitted to the seller. If you buy direct from Apple, for all intents and purposes Apple does treat this in a similar way to a warranty. But they do have the right to treat it differently, e.g. they can repair instead of replace, or they can refund the pro-rata rate based on the 5-6 year life cycle instead of repair/replacement. This is a benefit of buying directly from Apple rather than other resellers (probably with the exception of Amazon who may even refund you in full), Apple is much more likely to just replace the item without playing games.

AppleCare ups the warranty to 3 years, adds accidental damage insurance (if you get it), adds technical support.

 

[ChrisD.]

I have an impact mark by the MacBook Air logo, together with a cracked screen on my iPad Pro. I've made a Genius Bar reservation with Apple tomorrow, will they be able to provide me with a repair quote for both devices in the store there and then? A local authorised Apple repairer wanted both devices for 5-7 days just for the quote! I need the quote for the insurance claim.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

I have an impact mark by the MacBook Air logo, together with a cracked screen on my iPad Pro. I've made a Genius Bar reservation with Apple tomorrow, will they be able to provide me with a repair quote for both devices in the store there and then? A local authorised Apple repairer wanted both devices for 5-7 days just for the quote! I need the quote for the insurance claim.

In my experience yes and for what its worth avoid the authorised repair places. Only had bad experiences with them.

 

[ChrisD.]

In my experience yes and for what its worth avoid the authorised repair places. Only had bad experiences with them.

The authorised one is 8 miles away, Apple are 35! I just wanted a quick repair quote to provide to my insurance company. Apple quote iPad screen replacements online, but not for MacBooks from what I can work out which is super annoying. I'm booked in at the Genius Bar at the actual Apple store tomorrow, so I'm hoping they can give me a quote there and then for both repairs and email or print them out for me, so I can send to my insurance company.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

I did exactly the same thing for the same reason. As always, after my visit I checked the online reviews of said authorised reseller, all complaints of a similar nature.

 

[squerble]

Put in my order for the base Air this afternoon. Going picking up from Apple in 40 mins. Definitely loved my 10% edu discount too! Replacing a late-2013 MBP and also a desktop PC, which I need to sell

 

[squerble]

Jesus, this thing is responsive!

 

[LiE]

Jesus, this thing is responsive!

Yep it's a solid machine that excels and standard web and office based tasks. It can even handle casual photo and video editing.

 

[Feek]

It can even handle casual photo and video editing.

It can handle a lot more than 'casual photo and video editing'. I've been editing 4K video on mine without any issues whatsoever, apart from squinting at the screen.

 

[LiE]

It can handle a lot more than 'casual photo and video editing'. I've been editing 4K video on mine without any issues whatsoever, apart from squinting at the screen.

No doubt, but I’ve found memory gets hit hard and has a noticeable effect on general smoothness. 8GB is good but does have its limits.

 

[HACO]

It can handle a lot more than 'casual photo and video editing'. I've been editing 4K video on mine without any issues whatsoever, apart from squinting at the screen.

It really punches way above its weight/size/class. 18 months later we haven't seen anything even remotely competitive to it in its category. Quite excited to see the next gen MacBook Air (hopefully they'll release a larger one too).

 

[squerble]

Yep it's a solid machine that excels and standard web and office based tasks. It can even handle casual photo and video editing.

Yea, I got Lightroom Classic installed last night and moved my catalog over - had a quick shufty around some photos and everything was nice and fast, even when reading the RAW files from a 5400rpm external (soon to be replaced with an SSD!). Very pleased so far.

 

[Cromulent]

It really punches way above its weight/size/class. 18 months later we haven't seen anything even remotely competitive to it in its category. Quite excited to see the next gen MacBook Air (hopefully they'll release a larger one too).

I need a laptop and that was the one I was waiting for. £1k and a speed increase would be nice. What are the chances the new one will be released at some point this year?

 

[HACO]

I need a laptop and that was the one I was waiting for. £1k and a speed increase would be nice. What are the chances the new one will be released at some point this year?

I'd be really surprised if they didn't release a new version this fall. It's almost 18 months old and it's due for an upgrade. Could just be a spec bump to M2 or a more major redesign. We shall see.

 

[Cromulent]

I'd be really surprised if they didn't release a new version this fall. It's almost 18 months old and it's due for an upgrade. Could just be a spec bump to M2 or a more major redesign. We shall see.

That sounds good. I'd love to see what the next architecture for Apple Silicon will look like. I get the feeling that the M1 based line was kind of an experiment to get some early adopters so that they could refine things for the second release. Plus by that point, the vast majority of things will be Apple Silicon native.

 

[HACO]

That sounds good. I'd love to see what the next architecture for Apple Silicon will look like. I get the feeling that the M1 based line was kind of an experiment to get some early adopters so that they could refine things for the second release. Plus by that point, the vast majority of things will be Apple Silicon native.

Apple is a company of patterns, they stay on the same node for 2 generations, the first gen delivers on performance and has big chips (10nm -> A10X, 7nm -> A12X/A12Z, 5nm -> M1-series), and second gen is about microarchitecture cleanup and efficiency gains, also improving E cores and upgrading GPU IPC, but only has small iPhone chips (10nm -> A11, 7nm -> A13, 5nm -> A15).

So I expect the same thing here. M1 was based on A14, we had A15 last year with no M2 and this fall we'll see A16 for iPhones and M2 for laptops, based on the same microarchitecture.

Despite being a modest upgrade, A15 delivered significantly on some fronts compared to A14: The P cores were about 10% faster and 15% more efficient without adding more die space, the E cores became about 30% faster, and the GPU cores got about 25% faster. So M2/A16 will likely use those efficiency gains and add performance, and if TSMC delivers mass produced 3nm for this fall (still unclear) then we may see Apple pushing things ahead even faster.

 

[squerble]

I seem to be getting really poor charging speed on my iPhone when I plug it into a USB3 port on a 14-in-1 USB-C hub plugged into my M1 MBA. The MBA has the 30W charger plugged into one USB-C port, and the hub is in the other. Phone plugged in with a USB-A to Lightning cable. Charge seems very, very slow despite the hub's spec sheet saying it'll put out 0.9A at 5V (4.5W) - so slow I'd say it seems less than half as fast as plugging it straight into a standard USB wall charger (1A at 5V - 5W) which doesn't seem to match the numbers.

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[HACO]

I seem to be getting really poor charging speed on my iPhone when I plug it into a USB3 port on a 14-in-1 USB-C hub plugged into my M1 MBA. The MBA has the 30W charger plugged into one USB-C port, and the hub is in the other. Phone plugged in with a USB-A to Lightning cable. Charge seems very, very slow despite the hub's spec sheet saying it'll put out 0.9A at 5V (4.5W) - so slow I'd say it seems less than half as fast as plugging it straight into a standard USB wall charger (1A at 5V - 5W) which doesn't seem to match the numbers.

Am I doing something wrong?

Does the hub also has a power input? It's possible that the rated output is only for when it's used with its own power supply and it can't pass through USB power at that rate. This is common with hubs.

 

[squerble]

Does the hub also has a power input? It's possible that the rated output is only for when it's used with its own power supply and it can't pass through USB power at that rate. This is common with hubs.

Not a specific input but it has a "USB C PD 3.0 Charging Port". I guess the idea is the hub is plugged directly to mains power, then plug the laptop into the hub via that port? Not sure if this would only do power and not data as it also has a USB-C data port. It's a Zmuipng ZM1822 with the expected smattering of Engrish in the little booklet with it.