Based on some benchmarks, it looks like the updated mid-2014 MacBook Air’s use slower flash. And they’re about $100 cheaper. Interesting because, Apple in the past, has always been about premium quality at a premium price. This is a substantial change (lower quality / price). Still above broader market averages, but it just feels ‘different’

Copying 6GB of files and folders took 28 seconds on last year’s 11-inch MacBook Air, but took nearly twice as long (54 seconds) on this year’s 11-inch model. With solid-state storage, lower capacity drives are often slower performers, and last year’s 11-inch had the higher capacity 256GB of flash. However, the new 11-inch model was also slower than last year’s 13-inch model with 128GB of flash storage.

Is this tantamount to an admission from Apple that they have a pricing problem in the MacBook range?

SSD replaced, is the CPU next?

If Apple perceives a pricing problem, this gives more credence to my idea that Apple could switch out of $INTC chips from the Air.

It’s clearly no secret that MacBook sales are not growing as fast as expected; sales seem to be stalling. … (4.13M units sold versus 4.07M units in 2Q last year)

Perhaps this is just confirmation bias and I’m reading more than I should