The M2, the war, the pandemic, the disruption of supply lines, , ...

"The new M2 Model (with 8GB RAM and 256GB of SSD storage) hits the shelves today for $1,199 (an inexplicable £1,249 for UK punters)."

It's basically an entry level (very low end) laptop at 1.2 K, right ? With a wonderful 13 inches screen, aka stamp sized ?

And it can't run any video games without an eye watering upgrade on top (RAM, likely 500 more, etc ...).

It's telling they even bother, in 2022, to offer 8GB of RAM at all, given the prices of RAM !

My macBook pro from 2012 is 8GB as well ! WTF ?

No, it's not worth it at all, even for fans. The Apple bubble will burst soon, and soon, they won't sell a single unit if they keep raising prices to this level of insanity.

People won't simply be able to cope with it.

Linux will be on the desktop before Apple runs out of fanbois to bilk.

There are some other issues that should be considered in the article, such as the fact that only one SSD chip is used in the 256GB version (as opposed to 2 in the M1), which creates some serious bottlenecks. Also, for whatever architectural decision, going from 8GB to 16GB of RAM also seems to have a higher than expected effect on performance.

This article is a nice summary of testing done by Max Tech on the topic (original video linked in the article):

https://hothardware.com/news/apple-base-m2-macbook-pro-starved-bandwidth-workloads

TL;DR rather than a marginal upgrade, at least the base M2 model seems to be a downgrade due to the mismatch between the memory required by the chip and the one offered in the laptop. Whether that is intentional or a very poor design decisions... the issues remain.

Also note the update at the end of the article:

"Update: Clarification added regarding the next SKU up in the M2 MacBook Pro lineup—it still has 8GB of RAM, but a 522GB SSD with dual NAND chips instead of a single NAND chip"

Still, benchmarks with some of the competition do not indicate that the M2 models are particularly shabby (at what they are good at, which is not gaming). As to whether an M1 is still the better option... the main article addresses the conundrum...

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-13-with-M2-takes-Dell-XPS-13-Plus-with-i7-1260P-to-pieces-in-benchmark-onslaught-but-at-least-the-x86-laptop-looks-cooler-while-getting-hotter.633246.0.html

Apple will keep the prices for the M1 to rundown inventory. After that it will be M2's only and these devices are aimed at those of us still on Intel hardware until we're confident that Apple has ironed out most of the bugs related to changing CPU architectures.

For most people who buy an Air, weight and battery life are more important than oomph. And even those who like oomph are, generally, not transcoding video or compiling all the time. Mag-safe will tempt more over, because it's basically a great idea to have a physical connection that will not be damaged when the power cable is jerked, which happens far more often than it should because most people don't know how to route power cables.

If similar restrictions exist on the M2 MacBook Pros then I'd expect greater hesistancy. As it is, I'm not planning to move from Mac on Intel for at least another year, not least because my spare (2016 MBP with new battery) loses OS support this year.

I think the most important factor is lack of fans in the Air model (oh the irony).

Some users will miss this feature, when you could start a transcoding task and then use the laptop to dry your hair.

Ironed out M1 issues....

Yeah, at some point I'll figure out how to get our java Web application to build/run on M1 without absolute fits of borkage because of trying to get Rosetta to play nice enough for long enough to keep stuff going (right now I've got most of it, bar our authentication so mostly borked rather than fully).

On my old Intel mac... Yeah that's now developing issues of its own by slowing to a crawl then refusing to start various services after a restart (now with more random security restrictions that killed nginx etc etc).

So it's either using a spoon or a fork to gouge my own eyes out (yes I know there's windows and Linux, but windows Corp machines are crippled and Linux has no VPN application that security are happy with so we can't access code repositories so no cutlery available use your hands instead).

Anon because who wants to admit to building Java apps on a mac?

The new M2 Model (with 8GB RAM and 256GB of SSD storage) hits the shelves today for $1,199 (an inexplicable £1,249 for UK punters).

The cost in dollars is $1,199 + 20% VAT = $1,462 or £1262 using today's exchange rate.

Frankly, it's amazing that journalists still appear unaware that price tags in the US are without tax (since it's state-dependent), while it's included in the UK and much of the world.

I can explain it - it's editorial. How else would El Reg trot out it's trite witicisms...

@big_D "The M1 Model (with 8GB RAM and 256GB of SSD storage) goes for $999 (£999 in the UK store). The new M2 Model (with 8GB RAM and 256GB of SSD storage) hits the shelves today for $1,199 (an inexplicable £1,249 for UK punters)."

The UK price with Vat 20% has increased by 25% while the US price without sales tax has increased 20%. That extra 5% increase has nothing to do with Vat being added. Take the Vat off both UK prices there is still a 25% increase.

So it is inexplicable that Apple have increased the UK price before local tax (Vat) is added by 25% but have only increased the US price before local tax (sales tax) is added by 20%.

"(an inexplicable £1,249 for UK punters)."

A mystery! I like mysteries!

The trail led to apple.co.uk, where a small-fonted, grey-hued line says: "Total Payments for your device include VAT of approx. £209.00.*"

So the price that can be compared to USD1199 is actually GBP1040.

Converting that amount to USD using xe.com gave a rounded value of 1246, so a difference of less than GBP40.

The working hypothesis at this point is that a price tag of 1209 would just not look good in Apple's rigidly fashionable world.

Apple does not show the final price, because the Sales Tax is different depending on the state. For instance, if you are in Alabama then you have to add $119.90 of tax to the $1199.

I wish they made 32GB model. 16GB is too small and 24GB triggers my OCD.

Preliminary results from the M2 MacBook Pro 13, where the chassis hasn't been redesigned, suggest the M2 runs hotter than the M1 and is encountering thermal throttling. Now the MacBook Air has been redesigned and may have better thermal design, but it still doesn't have a fan so it's an open question as to whether it can sustain the performance before throttling occurs.