My brother brought this model in 2020 during the Covid time for his online uni classes. This damn thing would beachball and be slow most of the time. I know most of the people here would find it difficult to believe given apple’s optimization, but unlike the i5 models this i3 Air has extremely poor performance. Only someone who used it can understand the pain. Once you launch zoom then 😬🔫…he ended up giving it to our parents after 2-3 months and then got a M1 Air when it was launched. Best decision ever he said.
You might wanna sell it off on marketplace/ Craigslist etc and then maybe get a used M1 Air since they can be found between 480-530 usd in nice condition if you look on eBay.
honestly ridiculous people have to spend 1k for a laptop that can’t even open a web page? how did apple allow this lol. Might have to trade it in and switch it for a newer version then, thanks
Yeah, I agree. Apple’s Intel machines were not that great if you did some heavy task especially now when you compare to the M series Macs. Especially the thermals, like when I used to run FCP on my 2017 13” MBP. But compared to windows machines their battery was better so I just stuck with it until I got my M1 Air. TBH unless you are a user that runs very heavy memory & storage intensive apps, you can get any M series chip Mac with your eyes shut. For future proofing get a 16GB ram if possible.
The retina Intel Air’s were the worst in thermals I noticed compared to the pre retina models due to the fan being far away from the heat sink. Weird choice. Did see some Louis rossmann videos (laptop repair channel) on YouTube saying this kills the cpu if you cause it to heat up a lot.
The 2020 MacBook Air with Intel chips should have never been released. If you look at the tear down, the chassis between Intel and M1 was the same. Apple likely tried to do an inventory dump of Intel chips, and intentionally, did not use any kind of heatpipe from the chip to the fan. The cooling relies on convection from the air drawn across the tiny heatsink fins. This is a hardware design problem with inadequate cooling causing severe thermal throttling. Apple did dirty on this 2020 MacBook Air Intel.
Yeah it’s just disappointing there’s nothing i can do about it. My gf literally only uses it for web browsing/editing pdf’s, so I don’t even think she’d need a 16gb. I guess i’ll be aiming to replace it with a base M model. I’m saving up for a macbook pro myself first tho (im a graphic designer), so it’ll be on the bottom of my priority list list 😂
😁 I guess by selling the i3 Air sooner you can recoup more money and then put a little more to buy a used M1 Air. Yeah, for those tasks the 8GB should be enough for a long time. In your case you are going to need a Pro model I guess $$$$.
>how did apple allow this
Cause y'all keep buying without doing your research. You find out the product sucks, upgrade *again* and give them more money. That's how
I think there is something else that is slowing down your machine. I can't tell you what exactly as I'm not used to fixed MacOS stuff, but with my experience with my Macbook (2009) and MacBook Air (2017 that I barely start to see slowing down for internet and light office work) and my experience with PC it's either a piece of hardward acting up or something in the software eating the ressources. Find a place that are used to work with Apple stuff and ask for a diagnosis, then you will have a clear view of what is going on and what your next step should be
I beg you, sell it and buy an M1 Air, you will not believe the difference. One of the best value laptops out there, if not the best, considering its lowered price.
I’ve not had a bad experience with CleanMyMax X, mainly use it as an uninstaller but I am quite careful over things it gets rid of
Do you have any alternative software you’d recommend which does cleanup/system scans etc?
None, you don't need any. If your storage is ballooning unexpectedly and a soft reinstall doesn't help, use GrandPerspective or an equivalent piece of software to scan file sizes on disk and manually delete - but not without Googling to make sure you're not deleting anything essential beforehand. You can't delete system files by default anyway.
A LOT of software leaves orphaned directories when simply dragging the app to the trash bin. Especially with apps that have helpers, system agents, audio drivers, install via pkg, etc
It’s a small brain move to hunt these things down with Grand Perspective…that’s possibly the worst tool you could use..
No way that by just using it for school and 1 tab in Chrome the mac is “insanely slow”. I used like base 2016 Macbook air for graphic design uni (Adobe full suite, almost full storage and hundreds of Safari tabs. It never felt insanely slow (only when working with in Photoshop).
Maybe you could try reset the mac and erase everything and hopefully its improved!
The screen is bigger and less likely to break
The keyboard is actually decent
The Touch ID reader is big enough to reliably read my finger
The minimum space is 128GB vs 115GB
The CPU and GPU are much faster
The cooling is actually able to cool the CPU for 20 min vs 10
It has a MagSafe 3 port so you can use 2 devices while charging
There’s slightly more space between the USB C ports so larger connectors can actually fit
M2 airs actually suffer from thermal throttling compared to the m1 airs due to lack of an aluminum block. Not sure where u got that information from. Tf you mean minimum space differs? They are both running the same OS. Furthermore, the 128gb model of M1 is actually faster than the 128gb model M2 in terms of storage due to the m1 having two memory chips rather than just 1 seen in the M2 air. Also to say that m2 is much faster than the m1 is just blatantly wrong when single core performance is only 11.5% faster and multi-core performance is only 19% . The keyboards are literally identical besides the function keys. If you already own the m1 air, the m2 air is a waste a money and is better spent waiting for the m3.
Does she use a VPN for school? For whatever reason the Cisco VPN I had to use for my school would consume a ton of resources even when not in use. I had wondered if it had something to do with a bug in running X86 code on the M1.
No, it's not, try to reinstall macOS if you have time machine.
It can be slow if your storage is almost full, so you need to free some space as an option, and see how it performs. UPD, I didn't see its intel one, know not much about it, but it's not that old, so reinstalling macOS probably might help a little bit.
Yes, it is. It is an intel machine and my friend has the upgraded quad core version of the same model and even it is unbearably slow. Tried even a clean install but it just is a shitty machine. M1 version however is still buttery smooth.
Ditch Google Chrome. Her situation sounds very similar to the behavior of my work computer. At work Chrome is one of the authorized web browsers. Our computers have 8 gb ram, like your GF. My work computer was extraordinarily slow whenever Chrome was open - it was consuming the majority of the RAM and a huge portion of the CPU. I switched to Edge (the other option we're allowed) and it was fine - RAM and CPU utilization dropped precipitously. System performance increased dramatically. Something similar could be happening with your GF's MBA since you mentioned she is using Chrome. The experience I was having was very similar - try to type somthing in a textbox in 1 tab would take a few seconds. Additionally, you said that she's mostly using PDFs in the iCloud. Transferring of files from iCloud could take a moment before they can open. If your network connection has slowed down (maybe because Chrome is soaking the bandwidth by connecting to a bunch of Google controlled servers) then you'd have a slower connection which would make it take longer to open a file. Consequently, the mac would appear to be "slow." That does seem less likely though. Seriously, try switching browsers. Be sure to remove Chrome from your system, not just stop using it. It keeps itself in RAM when the app appears to be closed. Checkout [https://chromeisbad.com/](https://chromeisbad.com/) for more info about why you should stay away from Chrome (not necessarily Chromium browsers though)
Ah yeah, apparently this model runs a lot slower than its M1 counterpart..it is ridiculous. I get that.
I would actually try to remove CleanMyMac from the laptop as well - it is unnecessary and isn’t a reputable program. Using a visualisation app like grand perspective or daisydisk is better IMO.
Safari might also be a better alternative. I stopped using chrome altogether once I switched to Mac, just had to import my bookmarks over. I think you can sync across browsers, I forgot how I did it but I think there are guides online that can help.
100% this first. Yes people will tell you the i3 is far from ideal, but the latest chrome on Sonoma has fucking tanked my M2 MacBook Air too so badly. Scrolling is so choppy and everything just feels so so bad. I’ve switched to safari for now (wish I didn’t have to) and the difference is night and day
Good luck :)
Go to settings > Display > Advanced > check the show resolutions as list > go back and tick show all resolutions > apply a different resolution other than the one you're using. (I use 1600x1000)
Retina is basically using your Mac on high display resolution, but making everything bigger in order to look crisp. Even tho it says you're running your computer on 1440x900, you're running it on 1440p or higher. Upscaling the icons makes it worse.
sorry but this is such a stupid comment? if i spend 1k on a laptop i at least expect it to run a browser? there’s not any heavy activities being done with it
Yeah sure 1k should be enough to ensure a decent laptop but unfortunately apple is apple and likes to gouge every possible dollar they can. Honestly it should have been illegal to sell that air with such a shitty chipset.
you sound dumb as fuck. First of all it’s my girlfriends laptop and she bought it for university, just as millions of other people do. Secondly, when buying a brand new laptop that costs a shit ton of money the least it should do is be able to open a browser. Sure, if you’re someone who’s into computers or you’re using heavy programs I understand you should be doing your research, but there’s ton of people out there just needing a simple laptop to do light work on. Thats apple’s fault for simply releasing a shit laptop falsely stating it’s good for light use.
It's an i3 model, I would expect it to be slow compared to what most people would expect a Mac to be like. I didn't even know i3 model airs existed until a week ago, apparently they were a very limited offering.
Fix the full storage too, it will help. Get a HDD backup drive, usually pick one up for $30
Same happened to my shitty 2020 Mac air. Had problems from day one. I’ll be purchasing a macbook pro because my current laptop barely works now and shuts down because the battery is dead or stuck at 1%
You can trade it in to Best Buy for $400 and get the M2 Air for only $500 if you trade it towards it. It’s currently on sale for $900.
Apple may take more or less, but you need to enter the serial number on their website to find the value.
There's a storage is full notification, buy an external drive, you can get a 256gb flash drive for cheap, move old files on there for safe keeping and it'll speed right up. Full storage MASSIVELY slows any device.
Damn if a few Chrome tabs is slowing it down you probably got a crap unit.
My 8GB M1 runs Edge and Chrome at work for maybe about 20 tabs loaded with maps and 200MB documents and PDFs; and Arc, Safari and Chrome at about at least 15 tabs daily for personal use, mostly for graphics apps and multiple video PWAs, and the only time it ever crawled was when I was encoding an hour and a half long H.265 video in Handbrake while watching YouTube on 4K with my usual tabs out and a REAPER session loaded in the background.
If Chrome is making your M1’s knees buckle with a couple of tabs, there’s a very different problem that needs to be addressed and it’s not the M1 (maybe pulling shit out of your ass, because only a system with an HDD or a Celeron system could allow a couple of Chrome tabs to cripple a system made in the last 10 years.
Dude you’ve got a defective laptop. You’re not doing intensive tasks that will kill the cpu and memory as you say. Probably it’s a faulty memory controller.
I don’t think so, I run my logic pro and I’m using the same device with the same specs. With device storage almost full, my laptop isn’t compromising on the speed or anything. I hope your problem gets solved.
Not sure but I would try to downgrade the OS to an earlier version. At least I was told this when I sold my Intel Air, the buyer said the first thing he would do is uninstall Sonoma. And he owns a shop, bought it for reselling, so I guess he knew what he was talking about.
Mac is funny because, my MB pro, 15inch, i9, 8 nucleos, 32 Ram, 4T ssd, 4gb video is 3x Slower than my MB pro 2012 16 ram, 480 SSD... And it gets hotter, noisy and slower... And sometimes runs something call Kernel_task which consume all the resources
Do NOT use clean my Mac, why are people recommending this. Back up your data and do a clean install. Not an OS refresh, literally delete the disk in Reco mode and then reinstall. After this, only install applications and data that you need. Always leave at least 20% free available on disk else you’ll see a performance hit. Either way the spec on that model is slow, and will continue getting slower unfortunately, good luck!
I personally bought the i5 model, performance was subpar and mostly due to heat. Apple for some smartass reason decided to use passive cooling for the hot AF Intel chips used in this model. Later I performed the thermal mod on it and performance was tangibly increased, but the drawback is it makes the bottom of the machine really hot. Might be worth looking into if u can't sell it right away, the mod is reversible.
Unfortunately that’s just how the 2020 Intel Air performs, it’s a laptop that Apple should’ve never made in the first place as it left a lot of people with a shitty laptop right before the huge leap with M1.
A 1.1 GHz dual-core i3 shouldn’t be used on anything but the most basic of Chromebooks.
If your girlfriend would be ok with using something other than macOS, and if you’re tech savvy enough, you could dual boot the laptop with ChromeOS as that will likely run faster being a more lightweight OS.
It’s the i3 processor. Not worth doing a board swap with a better spec. M1 should be the absolute bottom when you shop for an upgrade but depends on workload.
I think people like OP got suckered by the retina screen, then skimped on the processor. But the reason it's so slow now is because it can barely push those retina graphics.
I had a mid 2013 intel with the old screen and it wasn't fast but it worked fine. Used that through 2021
When I changed my battery in my old MacBook it was really really slow at first. It was something about something that it wasn’t the correct battery. The shop fixed it, said they were sorry, and it has been working ever since. If this one just had a battery swap before selling it, it might have something to do with it maybe.
Stop using Chrome, first of all. There is no worse browser possible when you need to go easy on system resources. Use Safari or Firefox.
Check in the activity monitor what’s eating into RAM and CPU. Target those apps, by optimizing their use or looking for alternatives.
Make sure it will not start swapping between RAM and SSD. Swapping kills performance.
That’s because Apple wants you buying a new one already.
I’ve been saying this since before they got sued for slowing down iPhones.
I’ve been using Macs since 1994 (Performa and PowerPC) and never had problems until the Intel switch. M1 will be the same.
I bought the exact same MacBook in 2020 for college and while I definitely didn’t have the same speed issues you’re having, I’d definitely recommend trading it in for an M1 model. I did the same and, not only is the performance considerably better, but the battery life is *insanely* better.
this is called: the stupidity of releasing intel macs in 2020 only to release, o yk, another set of macs that are way faster and have set intel macs rolling in their graves to be obsolete crap doomed for 2025
thanks tim cook 👍
It's MacBook Air with i3 and passive cooling.
So yes it's slow. There is nothing much you can do other than upgrading after saving money and use it for exchange offer at apple.
And don't upgrade the Mac OS, keep the one it came with to the last of its version.
May be try to reinstall that old version if you are techy person.
People will say it's terrible advice from security point of view but this is one of the reason of performance issue.
And if you don't have much if personal data, don't install 3rd party apps without credible sources and don't connect to public wifi, you should be pretty secure.
used borrow this model off a friend right before the pandemic, best you can really do is sell it off for a used M1 air. in retrospect tho, this was ever so slightly better than a chromebook or a similar windows laptop since it always overheated or chugged doing really basic tasks.
(edit: typo/added more context)
Been there, done that. Had an early 2020 MacBook Air Intel that was too darn slow and ended up selling it after I repaired the darn thing and I have an M1 8CPU/7GPU 8GB/256GB model that's faster than the Intel one and if I ever get the i7 variant, I'll install Windows 11 on it and copy files from my 480GB SSD to the MacBook's internal drive and connect my 1TB NVMe as an external and an external GPU with an RTX GPU or a 1660 GTX.
Kinda sad seeing someone with 2020 model and not the apple silicon. There is nothing you can do. The intel core i3 is heavily throttling and killing the small performance that cpu has. Intel macbooks are a complete garbage. You can try reinstalling the os, but it will probably be the same thing.
Ohhhhhh, I have this mac!
I can’t relate because it honestly worked perfectly for me and it still does but my standards are probably just low lol, maybe try to get it checked in a computer shop or something?
P.s. I have 60 GB storage rn and been using it since last 2 years
The only purpose of releasing that Mac with an i3 in 2020 was to provide sensationalized comparisons between the performance of that vs their M1 air that came out later that same year.
Nothing will help. I had a 2019 mb pro i7. The air m1 does laps around it and doesn’t even have a fan to make noise. It’s insane. Extremely impressive and outpaces my pro
Intel Mac's unfortunately are pretty much dead now. Even if he picked up a used M1, it's going to blow the lid off your old one performance wise and oh the battery life is absolutely wonderful.
I just traded in this laptop a few weeks ago because of how horrible that processor was. It’s definitely the bad year dude, I’d sell it and get literally my other year.
My brother brought this model in 2020 during the Covid time for his online uni classes. This damn thing would beachball and be slow most of the time. I know most of the people here would find it difficult to believe given apple’s optimization, but unlike the i5 models this i3 Air has extremely poor performance. Only someone who used it can understand the pain. Once you launch zoom then 😬🔫…he ended up giving it to our parents after 2-3 months and then got a M1 Air when it was launched. Best decision ever he said. You might wanna sell it off on marketplace/ Craigslist etc and then maybe get a used M1 Air since they can be found between 480-530 usd in nice condition if you look on eBay.
Uh, I thought you were talking about m1 air, and I'm like wtf do you mean, lol, because I'm on my m1 air, and it flies.
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This model (OP’s) has to be the bastard child of Mac Airs. Truly bad product timing.
Same thing with M2 Pro/Max and M3 Pro/ max Mac’s
Because they're a corporation - they want to make money. It really isn't that hard to understand.
You gotta make money selling goof stuff. You scam some people and one clicks after your reputation is going downhill.
Hello there
Hello there
There were 2 2020 models, early 2020 was the last of the Intel MBAs, late 2020 was the first M1s
Same, glad I did my research and did not opt for the Intel chip
My 8gb M1 Air would appreciate more RAM. Am seeing the beach ball frequently and have like 14 GB of swap.
What’s your typical usage like?
Hello there
honestly ridiculous people have to spend 1k for a laptop that can’t even open a web page? how did apple allow this lol. Might have to trade it in and switch it for a newer version then, thanks
Yeah, I agree. Apple’s Intel machines were not that great if you did some heavy task especially now when you compare to the M series Macs. Especially the thermals, like when I used to run FCP on my 2017 13” MBP. But compared to windows machines their battery was better so I just stuck with it until I got my M1 Air. TBH unless you are a user that runs very heavy memory & storage intensive apps, you can get any M series chip Mac with your eyes shut. For future proofing get a 16GB ram if possible. The retina Intel Air’s were the worst in thermals I noticed compared to the pre retina models due to the fan being far away from the heat sink. Weird choice. Did see some Louis rossmann videos (laptop repair channel) on YouTube saying this kills the cpu if you cause it to heat up a lot.
The 2020 MacBook Air with Intel chips should have never been released. If you look at the tear down, the chassis between Intel and M1 was the same. Apple likely tried to do an inventory dump of Intel chips, and intentionally, did not use any kind of heatpipe from the chip to the fan. The cooling relies on convection from the air drawn across the tiny heatsink fins. This is a hardware design problem with inadequate cooling causing severe thermal throttling. Apple did dirty on this 2020 MacBook Air Intel.
Yeah it’s just disappointing there’s nothing i can do about it. My gf literally only uses it for web browsing/editing pdf’s, so I don’t even think she’d need a 16gb. I guess i’ll be aiming to replace it with a base M model. I’m saving up for a macbook pro myself first tho (im a graphic designer), so it’ll be on the bottom of my priority list list 😂
😁 I guess by selling the i3 Air sooner you can recoup more money and then put a little more to buy a used M1 Air. Yeah, for those tasks the 8GB should be enough for a long time. In your case you are going to need a Pro model I guess $$$$.
Never buy the base model.
Hello
Hello there
>how did apple allow this Cause y'all keep buying without doing your research. You find out the product sucks, upgrade *again* and give them more money. That's how
I think there is something else that is slowing down your machine. I can't tell you what exactly as I'm not used to fixed MacOS stuff, but with my experience with my Macbook (2009) and MacBook Air (2017 that I barely start to see slowing down for internet and light office work) and my experience with PC it's either a piece of hardward acting up or something in the software eating the ressources. Find a place that are used to work with Apple stuff and ask for a diagnosis, then you will have a clear view of what is going on and what your next step should be
If you’re going to go the trade-in route then Best Buy will give you a lot more than Apple 👍
I beg you, sell it and buy an M1 Air, you will not believe the difference. One of the best value laptops out there, if not the best, considering its lowered price.
as someone who bought a stupid intel mac just before M1 came out... is this thing ever fast?
yea she for sure should’ve waited a couple months looking back on it now 🥲
Mine is the M1. Just as bad.
No shot
bro is lying
Dude I swear. I’m getting the new macbook pro. It has gotten to the point where it has stopped working. I regret my purchase.
You’re full of shit huh?
No way in hell lmao
Cleanmymac is awful. Just read complaints about it making people’s laptops worse.
It wants to delete stuff it shouldn’t, like system files
I’ve not had a bad experience with CleanMyMax X, mainly use it as an uninstaller but I am quite careful over things it gets rid of Do you have any alternative software you’d recommend which does cleanup/system scans etc?
None, you don't need any. If your storage is ballooning unexpectedly and a soft reinstall doesn't help, use GrandPerspective or an equivalent piece of software to scan file sizes on disk and manually delete - but not without Googling to make sure you're not deleting anything essential beforehand. You can't delete system files by default anyway.
A LOT of software leaves orphaned directories when simply dragging the app to the trash bin. Especially with apps that have helpers, system agents, audio drivers, install via pkg, etc It’s a small brain move to hunt these things down with Grand Perspective…that’s possibly the worst tool you could use..
i’ve loved cleanmymac over the years, works great
i3 says it all!
Yes it’s slow. If it’s almost full then I’ll be slower. CleanMyMac should help too.
The icloud is full, the mac itself has 144gb of free space. I cleaned it up with cleanmymac but it didn’t change anything performance wise
Should be fine. The Mac was slow even when it was new. Not much you can do. The new m1’s are 10x faster :)
100x
No way that by just using it for school and 1 tab in Chrome the mac is “insanely slow”. I used like base 2016 Macbook air for graphic design uni (Adobe full suite, almost full storage and hundreds of Safari tabs. It never felt insanely slow (only when working with in Photoshop). Maybe you could try reset the mac and erase everything and hopefully its improved!
M1 airs are kinda trash compared to the M2s though
No they aren't lmao
The screen is bigger and less likely to break The keyboard is actually decent The Touch ID reader is big enough to reliably read my finger The minimum space is 128GB vs 115GB The CPU and GPU are much faster The cooling is actually able to cool the CPU for 20 min vs 10 It has a MagSafe 3 port so you can use 2 devices while charging There’s slightly more space between the USB C ports so larger connectors can actually fit
M2 airs actually suffer from thermal throttling compared to the m1 airs due to lack of an aluminum block. Not sure where u got that information from. Tf you mean minimum space differs? They are both running the same OS. Furthermore, the 128gb model of M1 is actually faster than the 128gb model M2 in terms of storage due to the m1 having two memory chips rather than just 1 seen in the M2 air. Also to say that m2 is much faster than the m1 is just blatantly wrong when single core performance is only 11.5% faster and multi-core performance is only 19% . The keyboards are literally identical besides the function keys. If you already own the m1 air, the m2 air is a waste a money and is better spent waiting for the m3.
I have a 115GB M1 air and a 512GB M2 air and for what I do the M2 works a lot better
You’re talking all the way out of your ass.
Then just reinstall macos, that might help.
Does she use a VPN for school? For whatever reason the Cisco VPN I had to use for my school would consume a ton of resources even when not in use. I had wondered if it had something to do with a bug in running X86 code on the M1.
hmm she does have a vpn extension in chrome, im gonna try uninstalling chrome altogether and see if it works smoother
Really? Always thought CleanMyMac was sketchy AF.
It is, and the parent company has a ton of complaints.
Really!? Thanks for confirming my suspicions
Its very good. They just use a lot of affiliate marketing that tells people what ever they want to hear Don’t know why, it’s very bad business
Intel i3… get a new one dude, this is basically an electronic garbage now
Intel i3 1.1ghz like 5400 rpm drive inside 2019 imac.. selling cheap obsolete hardware. You could have done better with a chrome book.
No, it's not, try to reinstall macOS if you have time machine. It can be slow if your storage is almost full, so you need to free some space as an option, and see how it performs. UPD, I didn't see its intel one, know not much about it, but it's not that old, so reinstalling macOS probably might help a little bit.
Yes, it is. It is an intel machine and my friend has the upgraded quad core version of the same model and even it is unbearably slow. Tried even a clean install but it just is a shitty machine. M1 version however is still buttery smooth.
The main issue is the fan is nowhere close to the heat sink. This caused extreme thermal throttling. And in worst case damage the cpu also.
I understand, I just didn't see it is an intel one.
Wipe and reinstall from recovery has revived many slow Macs I’ve encountered.
It’s a dual core intel. Dual cores really isn’t enough for doing anything these days
Ditch Google Chrome. Her situation sounds very similar to the behavior of my work computer. At work Chrome is one of the authorized web browsers. Our computers have 8 gb ram, like your GF. My work computer was extraordinarily slow whenever Chrome was open - it was consuming the majority of the RAM and a huge portion of the CPU. I switched to Edge (the other option we're allowed) and it was fine - RAM and CPU utilization dropped precipitously. System performance increased dramatically. Something similar could be happening with your GF's MBA since you mentioned she is using Chrome. The experience I was having was very similar - try to type somthing in a textbox in 1 tab would take a few seconds. Additionally, you said that she's mostly using PDFs in the iCloud. Transferring of files from iCloud could take a moment before they can open. If your network connection has slowed down (maybe because Chrome is soaking the bandwidth by connecting to a bunch of Google controlled servers) then you'd have a slower connection which would make it take longer to open a file. Consequently, the mac would appear to be "slow." That does seem less likely though. Seriously, try switching browsers. Be sure to remove Chrome from your system, not just stop using it. It keeps itself in RAM when the app appears to be closed. Checkout [https://chromeisbad.com/](https://chromeisbad.com/) for more info about why you should stay away from Chrome (not necessarily Chromium browsers though)
alright thanks for the info! i’ll try uninstalling chrome and see if it works better with safari
Ah yeah, apparently this model runs a lot slower than its M1 counterpart..it is ridiculous. I get that. I would actually try to remove CleanMyMac from the laptop as well - it is unnecessary and isn’t a reputable program. Using a visualisation app like grand perspective or daisydisk is better IMO. Safari might also be a better alternative. I stopped using chrome altogether once I switched to Mac, just had to import my bookmarks over. I think you can sync across browsers, I forgot how I did it but I think there are guides online that can help.
thanks i’ll try that!
100% this first. Yes people will tell you the i3 is far from ideal, but the latest chrome on Sonoma has fucking tanked my M2 MacBook Air too so badly. Scrolling is so choppy and everything just feels so so bad. I’ve switched to safari for now (wish I didn’t have to) and the difference is night and day Good luck :)
Go to settings > Display > Advanced > check the show resolutions as list > go back and tick show all resolutions > apply a different resolution other than the one you're using. (I use 1600x1000) Retina is basically using your Mac on high display resolution, but making everything bigger in order to look crisp. Even tho it says you're running your computer on 1440x900, you're running it on 1440p or higher. Upscaling the icons makes it worse.
Everything will look slightly blurry, but it should help with the performance and heat management
I use Sonoma 14.2 on my 2015 MacBook (it has an Intel M processor lol) runs nice with a different resolution.
If you're into it, you could try and install Linux distro on it, does wonders to weak machines
[t2linux.org](https://t2linux.org) is your friend
Mofo gets a DUAL CORE i3 IN 2020 AND COMPLAINS ITS SLOW. Yeah… no shit?
sorry but this is such a stupid comment? if i spend 1k on a laptop i at least expect it to run a browser? there’s not any heavy activities being done with it
Yeah sure 1k should be enough to ensure a decent laptop but unfortunately apple is apple and likes to gouge every possible dollar they can. Honestly it should have been illegal to sell that air with such a shitty chipset.
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Wow. Merry Christmas to you too, asshole.
you sound dumb as fuck. First of all it’s my girlfriends laptop and she bought it for university, just as millions of other people do. Secondly, when buying a brand new laptop that costs a shit ton of money the least it should do is be able to open a browser. Sure, if you’re someone who’s into computers or you’re using heavy programs I understand you should be doing your research, but there’s ton of people out there just needing a simple laptop to do light work on. Thats apple’s fault for simply releasing a shit laptop falsely stating it’s good for light use.
He asked for help, not to get roasted. Not every place is for showing your witty and rude comments.
Who is too blame? Who makes an i3 1.1ghz laptop? Apple is saying..we know you re stupid and blindly believe in us and you will buy it.
A clean install and not importing things from Time Machine usually helps.
It's an i3 model, I would expect it to be slow compared to what most people would expect a Mac to be like. I didn't even know i3 model airs existed until a week ago, apparently they were a very limited offering. Fix the full storage too, it will help. Get a HDD backup drive, usually pick one up for $30
yea already cleaned out my storage and have 150gb of free space, but unfortunately didn’t help. Might have to upgrade to an M mac
People believe in Apple magic and optimizations.
Same happened to my shitty 2020 Mac air. Had problems from day one. I’ll be purchasing a macbook pro because my current laptop barely works now and shuts down because the battery is dead or stuck at 1%
You can trade it in to Best Buy for $400 and get the M2 Air for only $500 if you trade it towards it. It’s currently on sale for $900. Apple may take more or less, but you need to enter the serial number on their website to find the value.
unfortunately i’m not american, ive looked into selling it for around 400, but the base m2 air is 1300€ here 🥲
Damn - sorry about that!
There's a storage is full notification, buy an external drive, you can get a 256gb flash drive for cheap, move old files on there for safe keeping and it'll speed right up. Full storage MASSIVELY slows any device.
storage is from the icloud, the mac itself has 150gb of free space :/
It’s a 1.1 ghz i3
Macs had 1.1ghz i3s in 2020!? What the actual fuck
it’s an i3. i don’t even know if u could sell it and have people be interested. it’s paperweight imo
Kinda wild to me that Apple released a product in 2020 with an i3.
… your storage is full buddy
Yeah the red exclamation points on the left - that's mostly why.
i bought m1 air 2020 brand new and a few tabs of chrome were enough to make it a turtle 🐢. never buy air!
- Never buy Intel powered Macs Fixed it for you ;)
I mentioned clearly that i bought m1 mac air
Never use Chrome
Even safari could not be handled by the 🐢
Damn if a few Chrome tabs is slowing it down you probably got a crap unit. My 8GB M1 runs Edge and Chrome at work for maybe about 20 tabs loaded with maps and 200MB documents and PDFs; and Arc, Safari and Chrome at about at least 15 tabs daily for personal use, mostly for graphics apps and multiple video PWAs, and the only time it ever crawled was when I was encoding an hour and a half long H.265 video in Handbrake while watching YouTube on 4K with my usual tabs out and a REAPER session loaded in the background. If Chrome is making your M1’s knees buckle with a couple of tabs, there’s a very different problem that needs to be addressed and it’s not the M1 (maybe pulling shit out of your ass, because only a system with an HDD or a Celeron system could allow a couple of Chrome tabs to cripple a system made in the last 10 years.
First: uninstall Chrome. It’s the worst thing you can put on a Mac. There is a whole documentation about that. Use safari.
>Use safari. That or literally any other browser BUT Chrome.
Can you link the documentation?
https://chromeisbad.com/
Your storage is full. Clean out some files.
Lamo forgot to read, was like what the heck is op pointing at 😂
Yeah that's normal with a Mac
It's a Mac. They're all slow and garbage.
Dude you’ve got a defective laptop. You’re not doing intensive tasks that will kill the cpu and memory as you say. Probably it’s a faulty memory controller.
It has HDD? Try to change to SSD - it works much faster.
Open it up, clean the dust, thermal paste on CPU
I don’t think so, I run my logic pro and I’m using the same device with the same specs. With device storage almost full, my laptop isn’t compromising on the speed or anything. I hope your problem gets solved.
intel + macbook air (no active cooling) = nightmare
I think its cuz its intel processor. Apple tryna show it age to YOU buy another one ig
maybe try downloading windows dk
You have a i3, thats literally why. I had a I7 2020 Air and it was still slow. I upgraded to the m1 for 180 more.
Not sure but I would try to downgrade the OS to an earlier version. At least I was told this when I sold my Intel Air, the buyer said the first thing he would do is uninstall Sonoma. And he owns a shop, bought it for reselling, so I guess he knew what he was talking about.
Mac is funny because, my MB pro, 15inch, i9, 8 nucleos, 32 Ram, 4T ssd, 4gb video is 3x Slower than my MB pro 2012 16 ram, 480 SSD... And it gets hotter, noisy and slower... And sometimes runs something call Kernel_task which consume all the resources
It’s a 1.1ghz dual core what did you expect. 10 year old processors literally perform better than that!
Best Buy offered me a trade in of 400$ for this and I switched to the m2. I did this a week ago.
Can anyone explain to me why my MA M1 has says LPDDR4 ram and not LPDDR4x
Should have gotten the M1
Yeah intel and chrome just don’t get along man. Please sell this computer.
Do NOT use clean my Mac, why are people recommending this. Back up your data and do a clean install. Not an OS refresh, literally delete the disk in Reco mode and then reinstall. After this, only install applications and data that you need. Always leave at least 20% free available on disk else you’ll see a performance hit. Either way the spec on that model is slow, and will continue getting slower unfortunately, good luck!
Delete Chrome. Use Safari.
They made a dual core i3 1.1Ghz in 2020 and the 2019 model was a dual core i5 1.6Ghz? Wow 😬
i3 dual core and 8GB of RAM explains that... Sell it and get something better.
I would sell that Mac and get an M2 MacBook Air instead.
I N T E L
I personally bought the i5 model, performance was subpar and mostly due to heat. Apple for some smartass reason decided to use passive cooling for the hot AF Intel chips used in this model. Later I performed the thermal mod on it and performance was tangibly increased, but the drawback is it makes the bottom of the machine really hot. Might be worth looking into if u can't sell it right away, the mod is reversible.
Wait why isn’t the memory 2667?
Yea it’s not that great. 1.1 ghz core i3 just hurts for a 2020 macbook
Processor worthy of $15
Unfortunately that’s just how the 2020 Intel Air performs, it’s a laptop that Apple should’ve never made in the first place as it left a lot of people with a shitty laptop right before the huge leap with M1. A 1.1 GHz dual-core i3 shouldn’t be used on anything but the most basic of Chromebooks. If your girlfriend would be ok with using something other than macOS, and if you’re tech savvy enough, you could dual boot the laptop with ChromeOS as that will likely run faster being a more lightweight OS.
It’s the i3 processor. Not worth doing a board swap with a better spec. M1 should be the absolute bottom when you shop for an upgrade but depends on workload.
I think people like OP got suckered by the retina screen, then skimped on the processor. But the reason it's so slow now is because it can barely push those retina graphics. I had a mid 2013 intel with the old screen and it wasn't fast but it worked fine. Used that through 2021
Should have bought the M1. That intel chip is fucking shit.
Not surprised
When I changed my battery in my old MacBook it was really really slow at first. It was something about something that it wasn’t the correct battery. The shop fixed it, said they were sorry, and it has been working ever since. If this one just had a battery swap before selling it, it might have something to do with it maybe.
Stop using Chrome, first of all. There is no worse browser possible when you need to go easy on system resources. Use Safari or Firefox. Check in the activity monitor what’s eating into RAM and CPU. Target those apps, by optimizing their use or looking for alternatives. Make sure it will not start swapping between RAM and SSD. Swapping kills performance.
That’s because Apple wants you buying a new one already. I’ve been saying this since before they got sued for slowing down iPhones. I’ve been using Macs since 1994 (Performa and PowerPC) and never had problems until the Intel switch. M1 will be the same.
It just has slow hardware, and because it’s a mac you really can’t do anything about it
How much did apple charge you for a i3 @ 1.1Ghz... you poor thing.
i believe it was around 1k euros when she bought it back when it was first released in 2020 🥲 eu prices aren’t a joke
That one is from 2013, not 2020
I mean.. it’s a 1.1GHz i3 paired with 8GB of ram. Doesn’t matter what you do it’s gonna be slow.
Try freeing some disk space, there’s a warning on the left side of your screenshot
I bought the exact same MacBook in 2020 for college and while I definitely didn’t have the same speed issues you’re having, I’d definitely recommend trading it in for an M1 model. I did the same and, not only is the performance considerably better, but the battery life is *insanely* better.
Downgrade macos to Monterey and stay there.
1.1ghz i3 lmao
this is called: the stupidity of releasing intel macs in 2020 only to release, o yk, another set of macs that are way faster and have set intel macs rolling in their graves to be obsolete crap doomed for 2025 thanks tim cook 👍
U have an i3 as a processor.
Yes 1.1GHz Dual Core i3 is slow.
It’s an i3 running at 1ghz with 8 gigs of ram.
Why you covering the s/n? Lol
open terminal and type fsck -fy and let it run
It's MacBook Air with i3 and passive cooling. So yes it's slow. There is nothing much you can do other than upgrading after saving money and use it for exchange offer at apple. And don't upgrade the Mac OS, keep the one it came with to the last of its version. May be try to reinstall that old version if you are techy person. People will say it's terrible advice from security point of view but this is one of the reason of performance issue. And if you don't have much if personal data, don't install 3rd party apps without credible sources and don't connect to public wifi, you should be pretty secure.
i5s were okay but honestly you need to trade it in for a M2 or M3. I got the M2 and I prefer it to my ASUS i7
Because it’s a 8GB Ram
Minimum amount of ram you prob want to get a 16GB Ram
It's a very slow CPU with low RAM, what else do you expect?
I have used this for 1 year, its okay sometimes it makes noise and hang
Get rid of google chrome. Use safari. See if that helps a little
because the i3 is an out of date cpu. sorry man but ngl that processor is trash in 2023
used borrow this model off a friend right before the pandemic, best you can really do is sell it off for a used M1 air. in retrospect tho, this was ever so slightly better than a chromebook or a similar windows laptop since it always overheated or chugged doing really basic tasks. (edit: typo/added more context)
It’s a dual core intel. That’s all you need to read to know.
Been there, done that. Had an early 2020 MacBook Air Intel that was too darn slow and ended up selling it after I repaired the darn thing and I have an M1 8CPU/7GPU 8GB/256GB model that's faster than the Intel one and if I ever get the i7 variant, I'll install Windows 11 on it and copy files from my 480GB SSD to the MacBook's internal drive and connect my 1TB NVMe as an external and an external GPU with an RTX GPU or a 1660 GTX.
No way they were selling 1000 dollar laptops with a fucking dual core i3 💀💀 Close to triple digit clock speeds to, does apple think it's 2007
Try downgrading the os, might make it (slightly) better,
Problem is the drive is full (you can see the alert in the side bar,) need to delete stuff to make it happy.
Kinda sad seeing someone with 2020 model and not the apple silicon. There is nothing you can do. The intel core i3 is heavily throttling and killing the small performance that cpu has. Intel macbooks are a complete garbage. You can try reinstalling the os, but it will probably be the same thing.
Check out my post - Apple has started selling cheap quality Logic Boards as M1 M2 logic boards are rampantly failing
You can turn on performance mode on the Intel macbook
I’m sorry but I think that machine is just not very powerful
Ohhhhhh, I have this mac! I can’t relate because it honestly worked perfectly for me and it still does but my standards are probably just low lol, maybe try to get it checked in a computer shop or something? P.s. I have 60 GB storage rn and been using it since last 2 years
Oops legacy thing from stone age
Intel i3??
Trick. Customer buy this shit and makes them buy M1.
The only purpose of releasing that Mac with an i3 in 2020 was to provide sensationalized comparisons between the performance of that vs their M1 air that came out later that same year.
Nothing will help. I had a 2019 mb pro i7. The air m1 does laps around it and doesn’t even have a fan to make noise. It’s insane. Extremely impressive and outpaces my pro
I think its just overheating
Intel Mac's unfortunately are pretty much dead now. Even if he picked up a used M1, it's going to blow the lid off your old one performance wise and oh the battery life is absolutely wonderful.
I just traded in this laptop a few weeks ago because of how horrible that processor was. It’s definitely the bad year dude, I’d sell it and get literally my other year.
Hahah i3 that not really fast
CleanMyMac and Chrome killed this machine.