Man every time I want to get a new macbook air they come up with a new macbook pro which means 6 months later they're going to come up with a new generation of airs by which time I think "let me wait a bit and see if people like it", and so here I am with a 2022 M2 that is perfectly fine except for the disk being too small.
I still have the original M1 Pro (thankfully with enough disk space) and I still don't really see a reason to upgrade. Since the M1 all these MacBooks are more than powerful enough for anything I might want to do and the original battery life was so good an upgrade would harldy be worth it.
They are soldered in. Replacement itself can probably be done by a professional repair technician who is equipped with the right tools. But it is not a self-service job that anyone can do.
On top of that, the drives might be somehow paired to the motherboard. And I would imagine that pairing a new one with the existing motherboard may require some proprietary software that only Apple has.
These are only my assumptions though. People e.g. at Louis Rossmann's repair shop might know more.
I'm still on my early 2022 macbook 14" M1, which I was thoughtful enough to get 64gb ram for at the time, and remain still incredibly happy. M6 must be nuts!
Minor rant – why come up with a consistent CPU naming scheme (Mx generation with Pro, Max etc. tiers) but then sell variants of each with different numbers of cores? It tosses the entire convention out of the window.
It is especially annoying during resale or benchmarking, because “M5 Pro” by itself doesn't convey enough information, and you have to count the number of CPU & GPU cores to figure out the actual SKU.
After getting my M1 MBP I mostly stopped paying attention to the new releases until the M4 came out and I decided to see how much "better" it was and was equally completely baffled by the insane number of SKUs and their seeming overlap. Insane product lineup decisions.
Great hardware, but I can't stand MacOS anymore after switching to Linux on home dekstop. KDE is such a breath of fresh air after years of dealing with Apple's idiosyncrasies.
I’m using KDE on the gaming box I recently transitioned away from Windows as well as on a secondary single-use laptop where Linux has been installed for a while.
It’s not bad, but I find it still to be very much an acquired taste. It’s fine for my usage, where the DE has barely any impact but having been using macOS as my main OS for the better part of 30 years, it would probably drive me insane if I had to shift my main body of computer use to it. It’s not any one thing, but dozens of papercuts that can’t be configured away (I’d need to maintain my own fork to fix them) as well as the more Windows-like desktop paradigm.
In theory maybe, but in reality it’s a full-time job keeping up with changes from mainline with big projects like KDE, which isn’t very practical if you need to do other things to keep a paycheck coming in.
Yeah I use KDE as well for my desktop and it’s the perfect environment. (Btw I use Arch)
Still I’m very tempted by the new MacBooks. I don’t know of any laptop that is a tenth as good and I don’t want to sit at my desk all day to use a computer.
Nano-texture upgrade option is coming for the whole line of products.
Edit: the thing I'm confused about is it seems there are at least two but maybe three different things that they are calling "nano-texture". On buying screens, the Studio Display and iPad Mini say "Nano-texture glass" and the new MacBook Pro says "Nano-texture display." But the Duo marketing says "Nano-texture finish."
I get that the internal Duo screen has the film over it and so it says "finish," but is there a difference between "glass" and "display"?
"Nano-texture glass" and "Nano-texture display" should refer to the same: A microscopic etching into the display glass.
"Nano-texture finish" on iPhone Duo refers to an additional layer they put on top of the display panel. It's basically a sticker with a similar (same?) surface structure (they can't put it on the display glass itself because it's too thin)
I get glass vs finish. But there's a third term being used for the new M6 MacBook Pro, which is nano-texture "display." Someone clarified that it's the same as the "glass" so I take this to just be Day 1 marketing confusion that'll hopefully get cleaned up on the buying screen.
Interesting choice of pic...a guy with a military camo hat, laptop propped up on a hardshell field deployment case...but in a crop field. That's quite a departure from Appe's usual creatives sipping soy lattes vibe
I had a similar thought too looking at that photo and then I realized that personally, the only computer I've ever used out 'in the field' for extended durations was a MBP when I was working on an autonomous drone project senior year of undergrad.
It was November/December in Iowa, so it was freezing and the local R/C club airfield was nestled between an ocean of corn fields and the city dump, so it smelled terrible.
But that 16" MBP was red hot from Android Studio and kept my fingers from freezing, so credit where credit is due. Really fun project too!
To me it looks like farmers or biologists that use a MacBook because it is durable and has excellent battery life (or at least that seems to be the message when you read the rest of the announcement).
I purchase the hardware, I should be able to do what I want with it. I want apple hardware for the good processor specs and battery life and general hardware quality.
Apple should be forced to release the necessary hardware specs to develop drivers so that I can use my hardware I purchased as I want. They should be required to let me own my own signing keys to boot my own software.
Anyway, I'd personally want bootcamp because it's a step closer to being able to install Linux, an operating system that lets me have a good tiling window manager that works.
Why the heck would anyone want to use macOS willingly, where the window manager and file browser are both complete unconfigurable trash.
There's just no getting "then don't buy it" for people who obviously don't agree with Apple's terms and conditions, is there? Not every product sold in the market will be done your way, and you can't act oppressed here because if you don't like Apple computers, you have a ton of other options...
I recently snagged a really good deal on a Macbook (very nice hardware!), but the more I use it, the more I struggle with macOS (even though a few utilities can help bring some of Windows' features).
I used to be able to completely boot into Windows on my Intel mac a few years ago, but Apple no longer supports it for some reason. It's a shame, especially since the ARM64 version of Windows 11 has gotten very good now.
It would also be nice to be able to install Linux too. It's my own hardware, after all!
Are you sure? It is my understanding that Parallels is just a VM, like VMWare Fusion, and that there's no way to natively dual boot Windows on Apple Silicon.
Looks like you're right about Linux though, I didn't know about Asahi Linux. Thank you for sharing.
It achieves the same thing or close enough. Apple isn't going to spend engineering resources (i.e. time and money) to build an easy way to install Windows. There isn't really a point for them to do so. There are other ways around it to be able to actually install Windows 11 specifically but Parallels is going to be your best bet.
Sadly I also can't natively install my Nintendo Switch software on my Xbox.
32GB of RAM only? What? Also weird that they are talking about token speed, but no larger LLMs can fit on this thing.
Also, what happened to the I/O?? I was happy to see on the M4 they had HDMI, an SD card slot, and more. Why are they back to 2 USB-C ports? I only see pictures of one side, but the left side has traditionally had more I/O.
C'mon, Apple, do better. It's a PRO model, not a MacBook Air
Apparently after the memory and storage shortage we are also experiencing a power supply shortage now - if you choose the base 16GB/1TB config you cant even choose any power supply as an option, guess its a use-once device now...
For Apple's laptop range when was the last time you could choose your power supply? Was that ever an option?
Am I missing something?
(since I'm rate limited)....
With the OP's comment "guess its a use-once device now..." I was thinking they meant power supply in the desktop sense, not the power adapter. I have no idea why a power adapter would be the thing that makes a laptop a "use-once" device.
But yes in the configuration options you can choose between two power adapters.
Apple laptops historically included a power supply. Now some models don't, and you have to buy it as a separate item.
I appreciate the frustration, but as a separate item then a user can choose any power supply on the market, rather than being stuck with one that Apple chose.
It seems that you can only get 32GBs of RAM maximum for the new 14" M6 Macbooks? M5 still has 64GB options available. edit: the larger configurations are only available for the Pro and Max chips apparently.
Really just function of mobility? Move a lot? 15-16 is combersome. Stationary often, maybe just roaming from your desk to your couch/bed? 16 is totally fine.
I'm in the 14-15 camp w/ lighter form factors being worth the premium.
I tried below 13 after the trend of smaller laptops from a couple years back - I now don't believe anyone who tells me they're regularly productive on these smaller form factors lol.
16gb for default ram? is this a joke? base level is same for almost 5 years now, crazy level of slow upgrades, basically anyone needs pro device will never purchase the default specs, even air makes more sense.
> With 16GB of unified memory standard, configurable up to 32GB, and higher memory bandwidth up to 170GB/s, MacBook Pro makes multitasking and working with demanding apps and large projects even faster.
So they're basically removing the ability to run local models effectively. I wonder if they'll bifurcate their market to enable those.
> I wonder if they'll bifurcate their market to enable those.
No they won't, the market for "running local models" is approximately 0. There's nothing to bifurcate anyway because once they release the more capable chips they'll be able to be configured with hiring amounts of RAM.
Apple in recent years has been updating their laptop range or specific models (Air or something) with their latest base M series chip (M4, M5, M6, &c.) and then later comes the higher end CPUs. But the base series chips don't have the hardware to it seems support higher RAM loads, or maybe they are artificially restricted in some way.
Apple has moved from a "Big day out" of marketing per year, where all product lineups would be announced, with novelty and conferences, to rolling releases along the year.
Man every time I want to get a new macbook air they come up with a new macbook pro which means 6 months later they're going to come up with a new generation of airs by which time I think "let me wait a bit and see if people like it", and so here I am with a 2022 M2 that is perfectly fine except for the disk being too small.
I still have the original M1 Pro (thankfully with enough disk space) and I still don't really see a reason to upgrade. Since the M1 all these MacBooks are more than powerful enough for anything I might want to do and the original battery life was so good an upgrade would harldy be worth it.
The unbearable burden of consumerism.
"You didn't even finish your M2 yet and already want to refill your plate?"
Genuine question from someone who knows nothing about Apple products... can't you replace/upgrade the drive?
They are soldered in. Replacement itself can probably be done by a professional repair technician who is equipped with the right tools. But it is not a self-service job that anyone can do.
On top of that, the drives might be somehow paired to the motherboard. And I would imagine that pairing a new one with the existing motherboard may require some proprietary software that only Apple has.
These are only my assumptions though. People e.g. at Louis Rossmann's repair shop might know more.
Oh you silly boy, of course you can, it's extremely easy, here is a video showing how to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrg7nPG6_UU
Thanks! I can't believe I didn't know how easy this is!
Heh, no, it's soldered.
If you throw enough money at a sufficiently skilled technician it can be done, but no M.2 slots in sight here.
This is an Apple device, the word upgrade does not exist in their world.
I'm still on my early 2022 macbook 14" M1, which I was thoughtful enough to get 64gb ram for at the time, and remain still incredibly happy. M6 must be nuts!
Exactly the same story here. I'm still very happily using an M2, which is just great.
Just get the Air. Moore's law peaked a long time ago and the differences between the M-generations are too small to be meaningful.
Minor rant – why come up with a consistent CPU naming scheme (Mx generation with Pro, Max etc. tiers) but then sell variants of each with different numbers of cores? It tosses the entire convention out of the window.
It is especially annoying during resale or benchmarking, because “M5 Pro” by itself doesn't convey enough information, and you have to count the number of CPU & GPU cores to figure out the actual SKU.
After getting my M1 MBP I mostly stopped paying attention to the new releases until the M4 came out and I decided to see how much "better" it was and was equally completely baffled by the insane number of SKUs and their seeming overlap. Insane product lineup decisions.
Great hardware, but I can't stand MacOS anymore after switching to Linux on home dekstop. KDE is such a breath of fresh air after years of dealing with Apple's idiosyncrasies.
I think I'll keep my Framework 13 Pro preorder.
I’m using KDE on the gaming box I recently transitioned away from Windows as well as on a secondary single-use laptop where Linux has been installed for a while.
It’s not bad, but I find it still to be very much an acquired taste. It’s fine for my usage, where the DE has barely any impact but having been using macOS as my main OS for the better part of 30 years, it would probably drive me insane if I had to shift my main body of computer use to it. It’s not any one thing, but dozens of papercuts that can’t be configured away (I’d need to maintain my own fork to fix them) as well as the more Windows-like desktop paradigm.
> I’d need to maintain my own fork to fix them
At least this is an option with Linux
In theory maybe, but in reality it’s a full-time job keeping up with changes from mainline with big projects like KDE, which isn’t very practical if you need to do other things to keep a paycheck coming in.
"Claude, update my project to be compatible with the latest KDE changelog"
I'm a habitual device-swapper and I'm staggered by how... satisfied I am with my 8 year old Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Fedora KDE on it.
Yeah I use KDE as well for my desktop and it’s the perfect environment. (Btw I use Arch)
Still I’m very tempted by the new MacBooks. I don’t know of any laptop that is a tenth as good and I don’t want to sit at my desk all day to use a computer.
Nano-texture upgrade option is coming for the whole line of products.
Edit: the thing I'm confused about is it seems there are at least two but maybe three different things that they are calling "nano-texture". On buying screens, the Studio Display and iPad Mini say "Nano-texture glass" and the new MacBook Pro says "Nano-texture display." But the Duo marketing says "Nano-texture finish."
I get that the internal Duo screen has the film over it and so it says "finish," but is there a difference between "glass" and "display"?
"Nano-texture glass" and "Nano-texture display" should refer to the same: A microscopic etching into the display glass.
"Nano-texture finish" on iPhone Duo refers to an additional layer they put on top of the display panel. It's basically a sticker with a similar (same?) surface structure (they can't put it on the display glass itself because it's too thin)
It's preparation for the inevitable nano-texture cloth you need to buy from Apple to wipe the screen with.
Maybe Apple is shifting the terminology from display to glass as an homage to fine watch terminology.
I could be wrong, but I think glass=hard, while finish=soft. The inside Duo screen is not hard like the outer glass.
I get glass vs finish. But there's a third term being used for the new M6 MacBook Pro, which is nano-texture "display." Someone clarified that it's the same as the "glass" so I take this to just be Day 1 marketing confusion that'll hopefully get cleaned up on the buying screen.
You mean even for the air?
Interesting choice of pic...a guy with a military camo hat, laptop propped up on a hardshell field deployment case...but in a crop field. That's quite a departure from Appe's usual creatives sipping soy lattes vibe
I had a similar thought too looking at that photo and then I realized that personally, the only computer I've ever used out 'in the field' for extended durations was a MBP when I was working on an autonomous drone project senior year of undergrad.
It was November/December in Iowa, so it was freezing and the local R/C club airfield was nestled between an ocean of corn fields and the city dump, so it smelled terrible.
But that 16" MBP was red hot from Android Studio and kept my fingers from freezing, so credit where credit is due. Really fun project too!
They are just trying to portray "working in the field" creative types/students and alluding to all day battery life.
It looks more like students to me.
The alt-text was "Two people perform fieldwork using MacBook Pro outdoors on a sunny day", apparently.
Lmao so some human/AI was told to show "fieldwork" and decided it meant people standing in the middle of a field.
Some fieldwork does happen in a field. They look like perhaps botany or biology students.
Nothing about that picture looks military
Especially seeing is the things break if you fart near them too loudly.
Not all camo is military. That to me looks more like the camo that you find at bass pro shop
To me it looks like farmers or biologists that use a MacBook because it is durable and has excellent battery life (or at least that seems to be the message when you read the rest of the announcement).
Bring back Boot Camp and let us install Windows 11 on these, you cowards!
Why the heck would one want to do that???
I purchase the hardware, I should be able to do what I want with it. I want apple hardware for the good processor specs and battery life and general hardware quality.
Apple should be forced to release the necessary hardware specs to develop drivers so that I can use my hardware I purchased as I want. They should be required to let me own my own signing keys to boot my own software.
Anyway, I'd personally want bootcamp because it's a step closer to being able to install Linux, an operating system that lets me have a good tiling window manager that works.
Why the heck would anyone want to use macOS willingly, where the window manager and file browser are both complete unconfigurable trash.
> Why the heck would anyone want to use macOS willingly, where the window manager and file browser are both complete unconfigurable trash.
How about suffer a lightly deoptimized workflow on one platform for the interoperability of the ecosystem…?
There's just no getting "then don't buy it" for people who obviously don't agree with Apple's terms and conditions, is there? Not every product sold in the market will be done your way, and you can't act oppressed here because if you don't like Apple computers, you have a ton of other options...
I recently snagged a really good deal on a Macbook (very nice hardware!), but the more I use it, the more I struggle with macOS (even though a few utilities can help bring some of Windows' features).
I used to be able to completely boot into Windows on my Intel mac a few years ago, but Apple no longer supports it for some reason. It's a shame, especially since the ARM64 version of Windows 11 has gotten very good now.
It would also be nice to be able to install Linux too. It's my own hardware, after all!
Windows for ARM requires specific support for each device. They don’t have it for arm macs - Windows 11 simply will not boot.
As for linux, https://asahilinux.org/ currently supports M1/M2 quite well, and is approaching ready on M3+
> It would also be nice to be able to install Linux too. It's my own hardware, after all!
You can install both Windows and Linux on MacBooks. For Windows you may need to buy Parallels[1] or something but you can do it.
[1] https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/
Are you sure? It is my understanding that Parallels is just a VM, like VMWare Fusion, and that there's no way to natively dual boot Windows on Apple Silicon.
Looks like you're right about Linux though, I didn't know about Asahi Linux. Thank you for sharing.
It achieves the same thing or close enough. Apple isn't going to spend engineering resources (i.e. time and money) to build an easy way to install Windows. There isn't really a point for them to do so. There are other ways around it to be able to actually install Windows 11 specifically but Parallels is going to be your best bet.
Sadly I also can't natively install my Nintendo Switch software on my Xbox.
Choice and freedom?
Yeah, I don't get it.
If you could install linux, however, then I would buy one yesterday.
you can!
https://asahilinux.org/
Asahi linux only supports older M series processors still, and there's a lot of caveats with it.
Run software without crossover/parallels/wine/GPTK
Windows 11 is missing devicetree support for arm macs. It won’t boot.
You might be better off waiting for an Asahi linux update.
Do you want AIshitification on your mac?
No, I just want to be able to boot into Windows 11. It worked really well on Intel macs.
You can with Parallels.
32GB of RAM only? What? Also weird that they are talking about token speed, but no larger LLMs can fit on this thing.
Also, what happened to the I/O?? I was happy to see on the M4 they had HDMI, an SD card slot, and more. Why are they back to 2 USB-C ports? I only see pictures of one side, but the left side has traditionally had more I/O.
C'mon, Apple, do better. It's a PRO model, not a MacBook Air
And it's still $1999. That's impressive. I paid the same for the M1 Pro in 2021.
And it’s still working amazing. Other than trying to run an agent locally I haven’t ran into any limiting bottlenecks
Mine has a broken fan so I have to run it in slow mode and it's still working fine.
A bit less impressive considering that it's the M6 and not the M6 Pro.
They have huge margins and can absorb price increases of some of the components.
I thought Apple "Pro & Tell" day is tomorrow.
Makes me now wonder what's in store for tomorrow's pro launch.
Touchscreens, supposedly.
Apparently after the memory and storage shortage we are also experiencing a power supply shortage now - if you choose the base 16GB/1TB config you cant even choose any power supply as an option, guess its a use-once device now...
There's a "Select your adapter" option right below the memory and storage options that lets you select between the 70 W and 96 W options.
For Apple's laptop range when was the last time you could choose your power supply? Was that ever an option?
Am I missing something?
(since I'm rate limited)....
With the OP's comment "guess its a use-once device now..." I was thinking they meant power supply in the desktop sense, not the power adapter. I have no idea why a power adapter would be the thing that makes a laptop a "use-once" device.
But yes in the configuration options you can choose between two power adapters.
I think the M2 Macbook Air was the first time I remember seeing an option, choosing between a 2 port charger or a single port one.
Edit: Even today if you go to the Macbook Pro config tool you get to choose between the standard 70 W or upgraded 96 W.
Apple laptops historically included a power supply. Now some models don't, and you have to buy it as a separate item.
I appreciate the frustration, but as a separate item then a user can choose any power supply on the market, rather than being stuck with one that Apple chose.
All models of Apple laptops still include a power supply, scroll down to the "What’s in the Box" section.
It seems that you can only get 32GBs of RAM maximum for the new 14" M6 Macbooks? M5 still has 64GB options available. edit: the larger configurations are only available for the Pro and Max chips apparently.
I think the M5 Pro can be configured with the 64 gb option, not the regular m5 chip.
I'm running an M5 max with 128Gb of RAM right now on a 14" macbook pro
Don't think it's worth moving from previous max products yet to be honest. My M3 MAX still does a hell of a job whenever I need it.
Agree. I'm still on my M1 Max w/ 32g, and I can't really find a reason to upgrade.
I got the 14” M5 with 24GB RAM and love it. Better screen than an Air; more portable than the Pro. Great middle machine.
Nice, but in the long term, Apple is going to need to bring memory in-house.
Wasn't this rumored to have OLED or am I confusing it with something else?
I believe Apple is expected to announce MacBook Pro 16” with OLED on Nov 6th (macrumors.com)
Touch OLED laptops expected at tomorrow's event.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/10/25/macbook-pro-with-touchs...
Any possibility that these will also support the Apple Pencil?
Looking forward to the Apple Pink Pencil Cap Eraser
Product ReD in cahoots with U2 and U3.
After using a 16" laptop it would be hard for me to go back
I feel like I am about to go the opposite way lol. Love the 16" screen...hate lugging it around
Really just function of mobility? Move a lot? 15-16 is combersome. Stationary often, maybe just roaming from your desk to your couch/bed? 16 is totally fine.
I'm in the 14-15 camp w/ lighter form factors being worth the premium.
I tried below 13 after the trend of smaller laptops from a couple years back - I now don't believe anyone who tells me they're regularly productive on these smaller form factors lol.
Yeah. I love my 16" almost max specced out, but for travel I wanted something lighter and compact so I got a 13" m5 mba.
Love both.
Same. I had a 14" M1 Pro and found it the screen too small for my aging eyes.
The good news is bigger laptops coming tomorrow in the phased release.
I ended up doing the opposite! After being on the go with 15, 16, and 17 inch laptops I've finally moved to smaller 13 and 14 inch screens.
It's much, much easier to transport even though I do miss the screen real estate.
I travel a lot with my 13" MacBook Air and can't imagine wanting to deal with anything bigger and heavier.
Yeah 14" pro is the best thing I have ever moved around with. I have a studio display at my desk though.
16gb for default ram? is this a joke? base level is same for almost 5 years now, crazy level of slow upgrades, basically anyone needs pro device will never purchase the default specs, even air makes more sense.
Am I reading this correct? Max of 32Gb of RAM?
> With 16GB of unified memory standard, configurable up to 32GB, and higher memory bandwidth up to 170GB/s, MacBook Pro makes multitasking and working with demanding apps and large projects even faster.
So they're basically removing the ability to run local models effectively. I wonder if they'll bifurcate their market to enable those.
> I wonder if they'll bifurcate their market to enable those.
No they won't, the market for "running local models" is approximately 0. There's nothing to bifurcate anyway because once they release the more capable chips they'll be able to be configured with hiring amounts of RAM.
Apple in recent years has been updating their laptop range or specific models (Air or something) with their latest base M series chip (M4, M5, M6, &c.) and then later comes the higher end CPUs. But the base series chips don't have the hardware to it seems support higher RAM loads, or maybe they are artificially restricted in some way.
Apple has moved from a "Big day out" of marketing per year, where all product lineups would be announced, with novelty and conferences, to rolling releases along the year.
Do they get the same marketing impact?
Apple has had release-weeks in spring and fall, with some variance, for a while now:
https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#mac https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#ipad
Post-COVID Apple releases have been totally different than the Jobs era.