> Yes.. so hypothetically if not for Safari/Chrome not being updatable for MacOS High Sierra, she would still be using the same laptop.

If she'd preferred not to spend money on the laptop, or is just angry about Apple's planned obsolescence, you can always install another OS on the machine for her. I'm running Win10 on a 2013 Macbook Pro, and it supports Chrome just fine.

I don’t work for Apple or have any stake in the company. I don’t know why or how Apple chooses specs for their products. I don’t know if some conspiracy of planned obsolescence underpins Apple’s long-term plans.

I use Apple products. I upgrade every two or three years (taking advantage of the generally excellent resale value) because I use my laptop all day long for work (web development). Right now I have a 2022 M2 MacBook Air with 8gb RAM. I have never experienced any memory exhaustion or performance problems.

It’s possible your mother needs an M3 or 16gb RAM, I can’t say for sure, but I doubt it unless she has an intense workload like video editing, in which case the Macbook Pro will work better.

If you don’t like Apple’s specs, pricing, upgrade options, or think they engage in conspiracies against their customers you can find lots of alternatives. Chromebooks offer great value, for example, with lower prices and better upgrade options. I wonder if Google will still support ChromeOS in a decade, whereas I have more confidence in MacOS.

My parents struggled with Windows laptops for years. I switched them to iPads, which they have successfully used for more than four years now, including mobile banking and web browsing. Maybe look into that.

I'm not interested in any of those issues. I only raise them as counterexamples to the answers given previously.

What I am interested in is whether the M3 or M2 is better future-proofing option even for casual usage, on a 5+ year timescale. Imagine using a 2011 MBA today, is the kind of scenario I have in actual practice. Apple is known for making computers that last.

It also turns out that Ars Technica suggests an answer to the above, they recommend the M3 because it offers 2 extra years of future-proofing over the M2 due to Apple's OS update practices. It was in their Friday's review article. That's an acceptable enough answer for me for now.

I am secondarily actually curious as to the performance of an M2+16GB option over the M3. That, I don't have an answer to. But it also happens to be a good example to work over for anyone who asserts Macs have better memory management than Windows, since that depth of understanding implies - to me - the ability to explain the role of an extra 8 GB of M2 apparently being more valueable than an M3. It's a technical question but an interesting one purely for understanding purposes.

“Performance” depends on what you measure. The M3 benchmarks faster than the M2. More RAM may or may not matter, depends on the workload. Less RAM means the OS may have to unload resources, but since a normal user only works on one app at a time that doesn’t necessarily mean you experience worse performance.

You can go to an Apple store and run benchmarks yourself. They only put base models on the floor, though.

I use an M2 8gb Macbook Air all day long for work. I have yet to run out of memory or experience any performance issues. It’s way faster than I can type or switch applications, the only performance that matters in actual usage. If I did video editing for example I would want more memory.

> I wonder if Google will still support ChromeOS in a decade, whereas I have more confidence in MacOS.

No need to wonder, Chromebooks get a decade of updates nowadays (previously Google delivered on 8 years of updates). And Chromebooks are used in plenty of companies too, so they won't backpedal on that. Plus they heavily use them internally.