The UK pricing is £1,249, up from £999, so 24% extra for the better CPU, webcam & display[0].

A bit disappointed to see them sticking with 256GB SSD as the base, feel like 512GB should really be the standard nowadays.

[0]https://www.apple.com/uk/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-...

Beyond just the storage constraints, there are performance concerns with the 256GB model [1]. At least with the 13" M2 MBP Apple has switched to using 256GB SSD NAND chips which means that anything less than 512GB has only a single channel of flash to read and write from. It's unclear if the new Air will have this same constraint but it's something to consider.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/07/01/m2-macbook-pro-slower-t...

It's almost half the speed of the old base model. I think most consumers don't understand how much drive speed effects performance. The cpu is waiting around for the drive most of the time. So this feels like a major downgrade for the base model.

You’re taking about the entry-level consumer notebook model.

For entry-level consumers, they don’t need extra storage. So many kids are online-based nowadays. Younger people are routinely using iCloud/One Drive/Google Drive/Box/Dropbox and other services.

But sure, if you’re working with more and larger files, then you aren’t the target for the entry-level model with 256, and spend extra for more storage.

Better webcam? With every model they claim the webcam is better, but once I start Photo Booth I am thoroughly disappointed. In recent years webcam quality has even gone down -- the webcam in the M1 Macbook Air and the M1 Max Macbook Pro from 2020 and 2021 is worse than the webcam from the 2015 Macbook Pro!

I think the camera in my 14" M1 Pro is much, much better than the camera in my 2015 MPB. Also, people on the other end of Zoom etc commented on the improved picture quality.

Have you done side-by-side comparisons? I have compared the picture quality of 2015 MBP vs 2020 MBA vs 2021 MBP (16").

The 2020 MBA and 2021 MBP are pretty similar.

The new cameras have better low light performance and less noise due to pretty agressive smoothing. The consequence is that the picture lacks any detail whatsoever. The image from the 2015 MBP is sharper than the alleged 1080p image from the 2021 MBP.

With the smoothing my girlfriends face looks like she is wearing heavy makeup. My beard looks like it was painted on. In low light there are weird artefacts and glitches (especially in the area around my eyes, probably due to the ML algorithm).

Now maybe on a Zoom call this doesn't matter, if your face is just in a little matchbox-sized box on the screen. But on full screen Facetime calls the lack of detail and low resolution of the MBP webcam is very noticeable.

It's the exchange rate I'd bet. $1 is around 0.98€ right now

It's not just inflation, the Euro has been getting crushed as decades of negligence by the ECB show up. That's not stopping any time soon and the ECB looks like it will be in the position to either destroy the Euro or destroy the bond market.

> It's not just inflation, the Euro has been getting crushed as decades of negligence by the ECB show up.

the stream of anti ECB drones is frankly ridiculous

the price has gone up in pounds as well.

Does the ECB controls them too?

Prices in Europe are taxes included, in US are before taxes.

In Europe you have to add VAT, not only sales taxes, which are much lower in US anyway.

Last but not least, custom duties are a thing.

He might be being hyperbolic, but the euro is definitely not doing too hot right now - it's gone from $1.18 to the euro a year ago to $1.02.

The Air in the UK is £1,249, up from £999 - a 25% increase.

The EU price is €1,500, up from €1,050 - a 43% increase.

At least some of that has to be explained by the euro dropping ~14% against the dollar. Take away 14% from the EU price and you get €1,290 - pretty close to the UK price.

Here is an example of data abuse.

You are comparing 2 different products' prices.

The M2 Air is up £49 compared to its US counterpart. A ~5% increase. And its up €200 compared to its US counterpart. An ~18% increase.

Exchange rates explain this easily.

> The Air in the UK is £1,249, up from £999 - a 25% increase.

> The EU price is €1,500, up from €1,050 - a 43% increase.

where did you get these prices?

From Apple store Italy

  M1
  8 core CPU
  7 Core GPU
  8GB RAM
  € 1.229,00

  ---

  M2
  8 core CPU
  8 Core GPU
  8GB RAM
  € 1.529,00

€ 1.529 from € 1.229 it's a ~25% increase

You just listed a bunch of things which have not changed between the last model and this one, to brush off the new model being much more expensive.

The parsimonious explanation is that the Euro went from 120¢ to 98¢ in the intervening time. I have no opinion on why that happened, I will pretend I don't even know what the ECB is.

> to brush off the new model being much more expensive

I'm never going to buy an Apple M* at actual price points.

I was merely pointing out that ECB has nothing to do with the prices of Apple products, compared to equivalent in the US.

Apple raised the prices outside the USA and kept the same prices in the US.

That's all.

Compared to the M1 Macbook Air, the M2 Macbook Air has: a £50 premium in the UK vs US. A €200 Euro premium in Ireland (for example) vs US.

So, you are right. Apple raised prices. I suspect exchange rates. It is easier to account for unfavorable exchange rates in new products than in raising prices of existing products.

On Apple.co.uk M1 is listed at £999.00 and M2 at £1,249.00 (respectively € 1,168 and € 1,460, not far from the actual prices in Europe)

The same difference exists in European Apple stores (~+25%).

They simply kept lower prices in US in my opinion, but obviously comparing US prices with non-US prices for a US manufacturer it's not going to work in favor of the non-US market.

Look at the EUR-USD chart ser

also look at the export charts from Europe to USA

a strong Euro doesn't automatically makes for a stronger EU economy.

Europe bad. Euro is getting crushed. Europe destroying itself. ECB is enemy of the people. Europe will destroy civilization.

We must destroy Europe before it’s too late!

$1200 * 0.98 EUR/USD * 20% VAT ~= 1411EUR. M1 Air was $1000 * ~0.85 EUR/USD * 20% VAT ~= 1020EUR.

I disagree. The colorful consumer oriented mac ibook clamshell g3 was USD $1,599 when it came out in 1999. That's $2,800 in today's dollars and it was orders of magnitude less powerful than this Macbook Air. The value per dollar you are getting is simply staggering.

Go back twenty more years are computers were even more expensive. I don't think it makes sense to compare to prices that long ago.

The base model Macbook Air in 2010 was $1299 which means that you get compute and product improvements following Moore's law at deflationary prices. Humans have a hard time understanding the value of power laws. What Apple has done has given us something nothing short of superpowers and we've gotten complacent and feeling entitled to these continuous improvements despite the unbelievable amount of human ingenuity required to make it all work out.

The base MacBook Air had its price dropped to $999 in 2013 and battery life improved to 12 hours. That's what got me onto the Apple bandwagon.

After growing up on a Mac SE and going off to college with a Centris 650, I went through a string of windows PCs until the 2013 MacBook Air brought me back into the fold.

I still use the 2013 MBA almost daily—mostly as an external keyboard and screen for my iPhone notes, but it really slowed down with Mojave, so I’m trying to decide whether to pick up a cheap replacement M1 model now, or wait for sales on the M2. I think I can hold out a little, but won’t quite make the 10 year mark.

BTW, the c. 1993 Mac Centris was able to boot up last year (at 28 years old!), and thanks to an Ethernet adapter I dumpster-dived from work in the early 2000s, I was even able to get online with it without any extra configuration. Netscape Navigator doesn’t do too well with modern websites (and probably made for a baffling entry in some server logs), but I could at least load the Dole/Kemp ‘96 site.

I hope this is supposed to be some kind of joke

I'm pretty sure that's EUR/USD exchange rate, not inflation. I bought the first gen when it came out, base model, for $1199. The price today, for 2nd gen base model, is $1199.

Tim Apple isn't going to take a haircut on a weak Euro

Had to check, but one of the top questions on a google search:

“Is Tim Apple a billionaire?”

And you get half the IOPS, because in the base model they ship it with only one NAND chip. (Apple has stopped making the 128 GB chip)

Pretty sure that Apple isn't manufacturing NAND chips. Now it might be hard to procure the 128GB chips, so Apple may be at the mercy of suppliers, or it might just be cheaper to buy a 256GB chip (and suffer slower perf).

Apple may not manufacture them, but they don't look to be off the shelf components either. So maybe I should be writing "Apple has stopped ordering the 128 GB chips and removed them from all current designs".

This has been coming for some time, the refreshed 14" and 16" Pro models already had their base capacity bumped to 512.

> So maybe I should be writing "Apple has stopped ordering the 128 GB chips and removed them from all current designs".

Is there some reason to assume that Apple isn't just facing the supply chain issues that have been plaguing the other laptop makers?