Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

I believe Walmart has a deal[1] with Apple to sell[2] M1 MacBook Airs. This has been the case for a year or so, so I don't think it's old stock. They have been in stock for since that date, and slowly getting cheaper.

[1]https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/16/walmart-m1-macbook-air-launch...

[2]https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-3-inch-Lapto...

Oh interesting! I for some reason thought Apple devices can only every be purchased from Apple (maybe that was only during the Steve Jobs era)

But 8GB of RAM.. that's unfortunately completely unusable by most developers. (Panfrost drivers you can at least use on RPi-like devices)

Maybe in another 5 years it'll work on the M3/4 and I'll revisit this. Good to know the devices are still being built so long after release

They’ve always been available at Best Buy, BH Photo, and other authorized partners in the US.

The Walmart deal is a total mystery. It started, seemingly, as dumping new old stock without selling it on Apple.com, but they’ve even updated the machine I think so clearly it’s an ongoing concern.

Nothing like it I know of for Apple, ever. I’d love to know the story.

I would guess Apple’s goal is increasing the number of people buying recurring Apple services, such as icloud and tv+.

It has been a long time since people have needed cutting edge laptops, so an M1 bought today will still work for 90% of people for the next 5+ years. Even if Apple doesn’t earn a large profit margin on the sale of the laptop, they could earn a decent amount on monthly services revenue, plus increased odds of that person buying a watch/airpods/phone/etc.

I would agree except the machines are so low spec I don’t think they’re a good experience.

An M1 is great. But RAM and storage won’t hold up as long.

I suspect they can sell them at that price and still make a killing, and all the equipment to make chassis/etc is already paid off.

For what purposes will the RAM and storage not hold up?

I see most people around me watching media, using a web browser to shop, maps, look at photos/videos (small storage is great for Apple, then more people buy icloud), fill out pdfs, and maybe some email or light excel.

Presumably, those are the people likely to buy a laptop at Walmart.

Storage can at least be expanded externally, if at a cost of speed, reliability, and convenience.

For the RAM, 8GB is not enough, but in fairness, when the system can page out at 200GB/s, paging out doesn't hurt nearly as bad. Its only when things have to thrash the page file that it becomes readily apparent on these (say, an application needs to have more than a few GB of stuff resident in memory all the time).

8 Gigs of RAM still give you a great experience if you don’t do everything at once like I do.

It’s not high spec for sure, but with M1 RAM counting double (they swap very efficiently up to a certain point) it’s still plenty for casual use.

I agree. If you’re using a lot of cloud services (Google Docs, iCloud Drive, Spotify, etc) you can get by without a lot of storage these days.

But even if 8 GB of RAM holds you today, will it hold you five years from now?

Or are you going to have to get rid of the computer much faster and buy another one by then.

Whereas simply doubling the RAM would likely extend the life a significant amount.