You're highlighting Apple's strategy very well, with one omission: the M1 Macbook Air at Wal-Mart was US only. Even next door in Canada with the same retailer, Wal-Mart didn't have that deal.
This is the M1 Macbook Air deal for the rest of the world as well as the US. This is huge, it's the cheapest Mac laptop of all time. Apple Silicon is paying dividends!
My first Mac was a Mac - ie the first Mac. 128k of memory and $1000 (with the student discount!) in 1994.
I've had every architecture of Mac since then - except for M.
This one might just have inspired me to try a Mac again - if it had an M.
I didn't realize that. I thought it was a different architecture - or different enough that the two couldn't run the same binaries. Are they indeed binary compatible?
Yeah theres very little difference at this point between the A and M lines, think of the M as just being the more powerful line, but that doesnt make the A line weak, not by any stretch. Both are completely binary compatible at this point.
The A18 Pro single core performance is on-par with the M4 (a smidge lower but barely anything in it), and outperforms the M3.
This is the M1 Macbook Air deal for the rest of the world as well as the US. This is huge, it's the cheapest Mac laptop of all time. Apple Silicon is paying dividends!