MacBook Air M4
(www.apple.com)
COMMENTS:
And then there is Apple who pack everything I want in a sleek 14" or 15" device, plus a very fast CPU and battery life that is years ahead of anything else ... Why is there no competition here? I'm willing to compromise on battery life, and I don't need the fastest CPU, just a good quality work laptop where I can run `cargo build` / `docker pull` without worrying about filling up the disk, and mostly just a browser aside from that. Why is the gap so large?
Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.
I have an M3 Pro and it blows all my old computers out of the water. Can handle pretty insane dev workflows (massive Docker composed environments) without issue and the battery life feels unfair. I can put in an 8 hour workday without my charging cable, I don't think I have turned it fully off in a few months, it just chugs along. It really embodies the "it just works" mindset.
The amount of cooling and power required for such a PC versus the aluminum slab with small fans that almost never turn on is a testament to the insanely good engineering of the M series chips.
I compile large c++ codebases on a daily basis, but the M3 Max never makes me feel like I can “grab a cup of coffee”.
Nowadays I am looking forward to the Nvidia digits+ MacBook Pro duo.
I honestly looked for alternatives when I bought it last summer but there weren’t any competitive options.
AMD did catch up quickly, it's too bad they had to solder RAM to match but it is what it is...
It is true though that in terms of laptops my only experience to compare it with was with intel chips, but that's because it used to be hard to find an AMD laptop back then.
Also a Windows machine with WSL isn't the worst thing, just treat it well.
The test itself is simple: a Puppeteer script that loads the Reddit front page and scrolls it at 50 px/s for 10 minutes, in a loop until the battery dies. This actually produces a fairly decent load including video decoding (because Reddit autoplays by default, and there are plenty videos in the feed). I also had Thunderbird, Discord, and Telegram running in the background.
On Windows 11, the battery dies in 500 minutes.
On Linux Mint 21.3, it dies in 200 minutes.
Now, this is because Chrome (and Firefox!) disable GPU-accelerated rendering by default on Linux due to "unstable drivers". To be fair, it really is unstable - when I enabled it and watched the test as it was going, I saw the Firefox tab in a crashed state more than once. But even then, with Firefox + GPU acceleration, I got 470 minutes of battery life on Windows vs 340 minutes on Linux.
It’s bigger problem was it was far too eager to trigger the dGPU, especially with accelerated graphics in browsers and the like. So I ended up running it in integrated only mode, unless I wanted to play games.
If I close my lid with 100% battery at the end of the workday, I should be able to open it up the next morning and get at least a few hours of work in before the battery dies.
And this used to work.
But with the same laptop, a certain version of windows has basically eliminated any benefits of shutting the laptop hinge.
Heck the worst part is the same thing happens even if you shut down windows. The only reason it’s now become usable for me is because I learnt if you do shift + power off that does a real shutdown, unlike a regular shutdown.
How on earth are there literally ZERO non Apple laptops with a trackpad as smooth as Apple’s?
This is an old technology. Surely someone must have reverse engineered this by now?
My guess is typical PC manufacturers have not felt it worth the time to invest in getting this aspect right.
Ironically, the best non windows trackpad I ever used was when Vizio tried to make computers. They actually got the trackpad right. In fact, those computers were really cut above everyone else, but my guess is they didn't sell well because they were taken off the market almost as fast as they were introduced
Apple has also learned a ton about how to do this well from the iPhone.
For example, the Precision touchpad, which was the first actual touchpad tech MS created, with Windows previously testing touchpads as mouses, has been released for a little more than a decade.
Touchpads had been around for over 4 decades and have been standard to laptops since the mid to late 90s.
And the worst part is that MS still allows hardware vendors to ship non Precision touchpads today.
MS won’t allow you to run windows 10, but vendors can ship touchpads that only support decades old software.
It’s very hard to get Windows manufacturers to pay attention to the touchpad when MS itself isn’t interested.
Unfortunately, the Windows domination in the non Apple part of the industry means that serious change is only driven by MS.
A lot of advantages we think Apple has due to vertical integration are more because MS is pretty terrible
Microsoft tried to prevent crapware from being installed by OEMs a while back and got blocked.
What you’re describing is the effect of not controlling the stack and the only way to really do that is by doing it yourself.
Plus you get the benefits of loading out your laptop with 64GB RAM etc without paying Apples ridiculous prices
Snapdragon are just getting started. The Snapdragon X2 is coming out later this year with 18 cores
Apple does have some serious competition now
If RAM is all you need on a M_ air type of machine sure, but the selling/buying point of apple silicon's unified memory is mainly around GPU/memory bandwidth at a low energy consumption level, which is yet to be rivaled (maybe AMD recently took steps towards there). If one's workload optimises for CPU-only and very high RAM, apple silicon was and probably will be the worst choice cost-wise.
Also, for me, the no-no reason for snapdragon x elites until now is having to use windows, plus, as it turned out, the early unreliability of the actual products sold by laptop manufacturers.
But the market has opened up, so prob we will see more competition towards there, which is great. Apple's good but not doing anything magic that others cannot eventually do to some extent. Though I am far more optimistic for AMD than Qualcomm tbh.
What brand?
2k buys you a decent thread ripper or 59xx series and as much ram as you can throw at it.
I bought the system mostly to increase the single core performance from the Ryzen 5 3600 I had before. As well as to get rid of all the little 256GB SSD disks I had in the previous one.
Mac laptops feel faster, even if the synthetic benchmarks say otherwise.
That said, I’ve never once felt that the M3 MBPs are sluggish. They are definitely super quick machines. And the fact that I can go a full day without charging even when using moderately heavy workloads is truly jaw droppingly impressive.
I’d definitely take the power performance over that small little extra saved in compile times any day of the week. So Apple have made some really smart judgements there.
My M1 still holds right up! It is the smallest RAM model, and even that is not the end of things.
I’ve gone entire work days with my Pro on battery because I didn’t notice I hadn’t plugged it in. All my docker containers, IDE etc plugged into my external monitor. It was a good 9hrs before I noticed.
Macs are easy to beat depending on what trade offs you want to make though.
I could get 7+ hours from my work Linux laptops battery and I don’t really care for macOS. The OS quality matters more than the touch pad to me. I’ve come the appreciate a Mat screen. But im glad there is choice.
EDIT: Also, I know the code in the link is awful; the point is doing a 1:1 comparison between the architectures.
[0]: https://gist.github.com/stephanGarland/f6b7a13585c0caf9eb64b...
And for data centers, same performance at better power efficiency means hundreds of thousands of dollars saved in power.
But if you don’t want Apple, or you want to be able to upgrade, check out Frameworks. [1]
Really satisfying combination of quality and value for high performance laptops.
Apple is better because of actual superior technology. The chips are custom made and no one can match the technology yet.
Yes and: (as you know) Aggregate volume also benefits Apple's whole product suite.
It's hard for a laptop mfg to justify pushing to next node process for just ~25m units. So competitors have to wait for Qualcomm, Samsung, whomever to transition.
It's easier for Apple with ~250m phones, ~50m tablets, ~25m laptops, etc. per year. (Apple's war chest also enables monosopoly of upcoming node processes.)
Imagine trying to pull off AirPods or Vision without that deep vertical integration. The ridiculously ambitious Vision is just barely feasible, riding on mobile's coattails. A Vision using 3rd party CPUs would be delayed.
--
This all is in addition to the Apple specific optimizations, which you mention.
I'll bow out here because I can just tell this won't be a worthwhile thread.
Back when Apple used Intel processors, they were at the mercy of Intel's roadmap; if Intel missed a deadline for a new chip, Apple had to change plans. Obviously, that's no longer the case.
Back in the Motorola/IBM days, their G5 processor ran so hot that Apple had to create a special case with 7 fans to cool it. It was an amazing engineering feat, but something Apple would never do unless they had no choice. I've used a Power Mac G5—it sounded like a jet taking off, and the fans stayed on. [2]
They get to integrate new technologies quicker than being constrained by the industry.
Apple launched the first 64-bit smartphone, the iPhone 5s, in 2013—at least a year before any Android manufacturer could. And when Qualcomm finally shipped a 64-bit processor, no version of Android supported it. [1]
There are dozens of examples where Apple's vertical integration has allowed them to stay a step ahead of competitors.
The latest is the C1 modem that shipped in the iPhone 16e. Because the C1 is much more efficient than Qualcomm's modem, the 16e gets better battery life than the more expensive iPhone 16 with Qualcomm's modem. [3]
And because Qualcomm's licensing fees are a percentage of the cost of the device it's in, shipping the C1 enables them to put modems in laptops. The Qualcomm fee is significant: an iPad Air starts at $599; the same iPad Air model with one of Qualcomm's modems costs $749.
Customers have wanted MacBooks with cellular modems forever; now they'll be able to do that, since the modem will become part of Apple's SoC in the near future.
That's what you can do when you're not constrained by off-the-shelf components.
[1]: "First 64-bit Android phone has no 64-bit software"—https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/first-64-bit-android...
[2]: https://thehouseofmoth.com/a-little-known-fact-about-the-pow...
[3]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/02/27/apples-c1-modem-b...
- The integrated on-chip RAM dramatically speeds up memory access. Your full 16 GB of RAM on an M1 functions at cache speeds; meanwhile, the L3 cache on an Intel processor is 1-8M, more than 3 orders of magnitude smaller.
- Apple takes full advantage of this with their software stack. Objective C and Swift use reference counting. The advantage of refcounting is that it doesn't have slow GC pauses, but the disadvantage is that it has terrible locality properties (requiring that you update refcounts on all sorts of different cache lines when you assign a variable) which often make it significantly slower on real-world Intel hardware. But if your entire RAM operates at cache speeds, this disadvantage goes away.
- Refcounting is usually significantly more memory-efficient than GC, because with the latter you need to set aside empty space to copy objects into, and as that space fills up your GC becomes significantly less efficient. This lets Apple apps get more out of smaller overall RAM sizes. The 16GB on an M1 would feel very constraining on most modern Wintel computers, but it's plenty for Apple software.
- The OS is aware of the overall system load, and can use it to determine whether to use the performance or efficiency cores, and to allocate workloads across cores. The efficiency cores are very battery-efficient; that's why Macbooks often have multiple times the battery life of Windows laptops.
- The stock apps are all designed to take advantage of efficiencies in the OS and not do work that they don't need to, which again makes them faster and more battery efficient.
I don't see the current US leadership wanting to put that in jeopardy.
We get what we pay for.
Most people buying an entry level computer these days should at least consider stretching to get a MBA than the $300-400 shovelware, they’ll get so much use out of it.
My wife is still using her 2020 M1 Air and it’s still as snappy as the day we got it, still works for all her use cases.
Incredible value.
Ah! my early 2015 13" Macbook pro died only few weeks back. I don't think any other laptop will last nearly 10 years (TBF I did replace the battery and speakers for $280 in 2020 though)
and a pleasure to work with
I am sad that the resale value didn't hold as much as people claim Apple products do, but that’s because of the overpriced storage mostly
Looks like I can get $2500 vs the $7600 I paid for it
So rolling over into a newer maxed out model isnt so easily rationalized
I’d be tempted to buy a used machine with more RAM because I’ve had really good experiences with used electronics like laptops or phones.
BTW I have Apple Intelligence turned off but I’m not prepared to say it won’t ever be useful for anybody.
I don't think that expecting everyone to waste 3x the money to scratch the same itch is an informed take, specially when the $300 shovelware has far better specs in terms of RAM and by far HD.
Nowadays you can even get better performing miniPCs for half the price than your MacBook Air M3, such as any of the systems packing a AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS.
I think some people look at the shiny computers and don't look past that.
This is a stupid comparison: even a Mac mini pretty much fulfills this, since the M4 is a step up from the M3 and the actively-cooled mini can sustain higher performance than the passively-cooled MacBook Air, and at about half the price of an M3 MacBook Air.
What do you think it is then?
It isn't, and it's amusing how people get riled with a simple request to justify why dismissed someone else's opinion without presenting a single argument.
> I think you and most people would agree on the immense utility of Apple products.
They are consumer electronics, and laptop manufacturers are a dime a dozen. Why do you believe they are special in that regard? I mean, until recently they even shipped with a below-standard amount of RAM.
> There’s also no evidence that demand increases with price in MacBooks.
That's the definition of a Veblen good, something that is not known for being useful beyond serving as a status symbol.
I don't think you understood the Veblen good definition. And MacBooks do not fit the definition. The parent comment explained it well.
I love it though and I believe there is no better alternative. Everything else is just the shit without the nice package.
That's orthogonal to the concept of a Veblen good. A Veblen good can very much be shit wrapped in cellophane.
The core trait of a Veblen good is that customers buy it as a status symbol. Also, being overpriced contributes to reduce the number of those who can afford to buy one.
One could easily put together a significantly more powerful Linux desktop for a lower price. This has always been the case, but Apple's marketing tries to convince you otherwise. Honestly, I've always been surprised by how effectively their marketing has misled the tech-savvy crowd on HN.
Maybe check out the Framework laptops? For example the Framework 13's new screen is 2.8k @ 256PPI apparently [1], which has slightly more pixels than the Macbook Air M4[2] (obviously pixels isn't everything), but you can get up to 8TB NVMe storage + an extra storage expansion cards if you're happy to sacrifice ports and up to 96GB RAM. [3]
[1] https://community.frame.work/t/framework-laptop-13-deep-dive...
[2] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/
[3] https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/conf...
EDIT: typo + formatting
Battery life is the main downside, although it doesn't bother me too much — running manufacturer-supported Linux is very nice and worth having to charge more frequently. It uses USB-C anyway, so it's just one cable for all my devices — doesn't feel like that big of a deal.
Which to be honest, is fine -- plenty of people want something different from a MacBook Air, whether it is the ability to run Windows or Linux without compromises (tho VMs on Apple silicon are pretty good, it's not going to be ideal for everyone), the ability to upgrade storage, or just wanting repairability.
But the battery life on a MBA is not something Framework or any of the Windows laptops can compete with right now. I thought we might get there with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips last year -- and maybe the next iteration will (and ARM64 chips have their own trade-offs for Windows and Linux (whereas if you're committed to Mac, those trade-offs don't exist anymore)) -- but right now, unfortunately, Mac is where it is at for the true all-day performance and battery place.
Even there, however, I would specify that it is the MacBook Airs that have the best battery life. My 16" M4 Pro with 48GB of RAM has great battery too -- don't get me wrong. But my original 14" M1 Max and the 14" M3 Max I replaced it with both have exceptional battery life for what they can do, but I can definitely drain that battery in under 5 hours if I'm working on it hard enough. Whereas the Air just lasts and lasts and lasts.
If I usually worked from cafes, or spent many hours a day working on planes or trains, all-day battery life would be at the top of my list. But I usually work in workspaces that have power, so... It would definitely be nice to have better battery life, but other features are higher priority for me.
The chips may not have the lanes, but they have the bandwidth if only 10GbE / 4xm.2 / storage controllers could plug in. I wonder if power is an issue.
I've heard Windows defaults or more advanced Linux games can do better, but at this stage I don't feel the need.
- Longer cycles means cycle count accruement and thus degradation is slower (sometimes dramatically so)
- For longer trips, charging can be done overnight with a tiny trickle-charging phone brick, which is also better for battery health
- No need to bring a brick, cable, or power bank for shorter trips
- Impact of phantom drain during standby is greatly mitigated
- Laptop will more often than not have enough charge to be used whenever you pick it up, without having to leave it plugged in all the time
- Bluetooth and wifi can be used liberally without fear of chewing through battery too quickly
- You as a user spend a lot less time thinking about your laptop’s battery
There’s also secondary effects, like a machine being efficient enough to have long battery life generally also reducing its heat output and making it more practical to keep cool with a slow fan or passive heatsink.
My Framework and my HP Spectre (that I bought last year) both perform differently if they aren't plugged in and both make more noise than a MacBook Air. Whereas my MacBook Pros are usually silent (tho they can def turn the fan on if I'm pushing them a lot) and I can definitely run the battery down, but I never have to worry about having to have it plugged in just so I can do what I want without worries.
And on Windows anyway (Linux power management is its own nightmare), having to triage to figure out "how much time do I have before I have to move to a different seat in an airport lounge or find a plug at a coffee shop or snoop around at an office if I'm not at a set desk" to make sure I have enough time left to make that video call is like not a small thing.
Yeah, you can often find a plug -- but a) sometimes those plugs don't work. and b) sometimes the effort to find and look for one really interrupts your flow, versus just being able to to trust that my laptop has enough power to operate.
Carrying around a charging brick sucks. Now you have to get a table at the cafe by the wall. Or hope the airplane power is functional.
I want to bring my laptop to work, not think about charging it, and not worry about what I'm doing on the laptop throughout the day (video calls, compiling, etc.)
I think it appears large for a couple of reasons. First is that Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. Second is that many companies try to limit SKUs for their off-the-shelf products and 2TB or 4TB apparently aren't moving units. People who really want that model can just go buy a bigger drive to drop into it.
That said, one last thing to consider is that while 14" Macbooks are very capable for their footprint, they are heavier and thicker than some other options. If weight is the concern there are 16" laptops that are thinner and lighter than the 14" macbook. The LG Gram Pro 16 2-in-1 weighs 0.5lbs less and is 0.10" thinner than an MBP14 and has two ssd slots.
You are discounting the quality of a Macbook screen without understanding how it differs from competitors. A Macbook is the only laptop on the market that accurately reproduces colors out of the box to an extent that is sufficient for color grading photographs or video. I'm a hobbyist photographer and primarily do editing on a desktop where I have LG and Ezio displays that are color accurate, but when I'm out and about there is no alternative on the market I can buy other than a Macbook, because while on paper the "resolution" of other laptops may be similar or even superior, in actuality they are somewhat between shit-tier and D tier in actual color reproduction and quality. Macbook displays are MASSIVELY better than anything any other laptop offers at any price point non-Apple.
I previously used a mixture of different laptops and have over the course of time shifted to using Macbooks for everything because the performance, battery life, power efficiency, display quality, software availability, and annoyance minimization advantages are so large for Apple that it makes no sense to use anything else, except perhaps Linux just to use Linux (which I do on a Framework 13 for personal tinkering projects). I don't see how anyone can honestly recommend that anybody purchase a non-Apple laptop in 2025 for any purpose other than tinkering with Linux, in which case the Frameworks are great.
There's obviously a cost to that superiority and not everyone can afford it, but that doesn't mean alternatives are /preferable/. They clearly are not, they are a trade-off in every single aspect. Even in the case of weight that you mentioned, that trade-off is in durability, the Macbook weighs more because it has an entirely metal chassis and most non-Apple laptops are cheap plastic monstrosities.
I got one from Lenovo with OLED, came pre-calibrated, running X-Rite calibration gave minimal gains.
* sRGB < AdobeRGB ~= DCI-P3 < Rec.2020Software availability is worse for me, as ARM still causes problems. The AMD CPU are pretty nice.
The ThinkPad still have some advantages to me. There are some design choices I much prefer. Granted, when recommending to other people, they likely wouldn't value those same things.
I bought a ThinkPad recently, just as I have done for 15+ years now. At the same price point I would say its at least competitive.
But yeah, if Linux on M-Series continues to make progress, maybe I would would consider it. I'm not using MacOS as I daily driver.
I held out on Mac for 20 yrs, no idea what I was thinking.
I spent weeks last year trying to decide what to get to replace a MBP M2, and while Lenovo's offering was good for enterprise consumers, there was very few laptops with decent perfs and HiDPI screen in a practical form factor.
I think for anyone not caring about gaming perf, the Microsoft Surface line is way ahead of anything Lenovo has to offer.
For better perf Asus had a better lineup, and we get form factors like the X13 or Z13 which are just excelent in day to day use (now if only they made 32 or 64G a standard option for all their "gaming" machines I'd have no notes).
I kept a mac for backup, but am seriously waiting for Apple to make more drastic moves (finally a real iPad computer ?) before ever going back.
I say 2012 is the dividing line because that's when they released the Yoga, which was a big step in a new direction. I actually owned multiple Yogas, and didn't hate some of them, but they had nothing in common with Thinkpads. In 2012 they also released the X230, which was more locked down than the X220, which the enthusiast community hated. The decline after 2012 was sort of slow - I bought a T440p (released 2014) after my X230 got stolen and I found it was pretty decent, certainly pretty durable - but Lenovo's main focus had clearly shifted towards the new and shiny.
These days they're just another Windows laptop OEM, which is to say: built and engineered like crap, weirdly expensive for what you get, horribly ugly, software full of ads and spyware and AI bullshit, disposable after a few years. The M1 Air was released 5 years ago this year and I still use two on a daily basis for serious tasks; I'll probably be using them years into the future too. They're not really repairable, but they do last. Any five year old Windows laptop is slow as a dog, has small plastic parts breaking off of it, looks somehow even shittier than it did originally, and of course is full of adware and garbage.
Anyway, that's all to say: yes, in 2025 Lenovo is overhyped, but that's just reputational inertia from many years where they were genuinely good.
Thanks!
Look the modularity and repairability is nice, and I like how it addresses e-waste. However regarding modularity, I would rather have more fixed ports than a choice of changeable ones.
My biggest gripe is battery life, in Linux I can only seem to get 4 hours of usage and that's if I'm lucky. More like 2.5 to 3 hours, and that's usually minimal usage.
My second biggest gripe is the hinges in the laptop. WHen I pick up the laptop with the screen erect at the 90 degree position, it usually falls flat 180 degrees. How this even got past QA annoys me, and the fix is to buy a new hinge kit, but that costs $30 AUD plus $40 AUD shipping, so basically a ripoff.
The keyboard is actually quite decent, but I would've preferred Macbook layout with the fn on the left and half-size inverted T arrow keys. I was hoping a 3rd party would make the keyboard, but the reality is not many 3rd parties are making FW stuff.
The modular ports can be erratic when powering on the laptop, sometimes a usb port doesn't register and I have to eject and reinsert the modular ports, which is annoying.
The display is fine, except mine developed a thin grey line that's noticeable when the pixels aren't lit up. I take care of my laptop carefully, but I feel like this display is weaker than most. Thankfully it's not noticeable when the screen is bright. I also find the screen overly glossy that I had to buy a matte screen protector and apply it, but I believe in newer models you can get a matte display.
The webcam is fine. The speakers are trash. The mic is okay. The trackpad is okayish (for what you can get out of Linux anyways).
Just feels mediocre all around.
> everything I want in a sleek 14" or 15" device
The X1 carbon we have in our house has a 13” 16:9 screen, which I hate.
Or pick up a Framework 13 which has a 13.5" 2880x1800 16:10 screen: https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configurat...
It feels plasticky (magnesium chassis T/P-series belong to the ages) but it's a damn sight more computer than I could get from Apple for that money. Well, apart from the battery life, RAM bandwidth, OS-hardware integration, and build quality. It's more RAM than I could get from Apple for that money, for sure.
The battery live is the Macs killer feature. Not sure if it would be ass good with Asahi. I'm not using MacOS.
The Apple build quality is good, but I honestly do not like to handle to cold slippy smooth aluminum body.
I shall take a good lesson from your case and keep my ThinkPad in its Pelican case whenever I'm not using it. Can't afford to be laptopless for months!
Ah, that is an excellent improvement!
The worst problem is they are Intel-only so I moved to T14s which is not as polished (their premium AMD option is too MacBook-like with sharp edges and worse keyboard in Z13 or something), yet AMD is much closer to Macs on thermals, battery life and performance.
OTOH Macbook Air not only runs cool even when you build stuff on it, but somehow manages to do so without any fans.
The ThinkPad X1 and Framework 13 have a much lower resolution display. Also, I appreciate Framework’s mission, but it’s not the build quality that I’m looking for.
If you choose the custom build route some even can ship with Fedora or Ubuntu, so presumably Linux support is reasonable.
This is a thing right? You come back to your computer, and it’s exactly as you left it. It didn’t try to magically reboot because of overnight updates, it didn’t prevent you from starting a program because it phoned home to the mothership and it told them that particular dev hasn’t forked over their $100 yet. It’ll tell you there are updates and ask if you want to install them.
It’s such a relief to work on something not windows or mac in so many ways.
There are also plenty of other P-series thinkpads that you can get with 2 TB or more storage: P14s, P16, P16v
Used to be primarily a Linux on the desktop user, but have been on macOS since the M1 air, and now typing this from a 14" M4 Pro MBP that will probably last me the next 5+ years easily.
I don't love macOS but it's usable, I pretty much live in the terminal anyway, and the ecosystem features are nice - I make heavy use of clipboard sharing between my laptop and phone, iMessage, and universal control with my iPad that's on my desk.
There's just no other laptop on the market that has this combination of aesthetics, performance, thermals (this thing is cool and silent), screen quality, top notch speakers and microphone for a laptop, and unmatched trackpad. Let alone anything that'll run Linux without some headaches.
I had hopes for the Snapdragon X elite laptops, but no Linux still, and they still don't hold a candle to the Macbooks.
It says a lot that probably the best in the space is the humble Raspberry Pi.
Pi laptop with the most cursory audio I/O? I'm there. Not to live, but to support as a first class production option. There's something very 'sailboat with solar panel' about 'em.
Sacrificing some of the Blade aesthetics for better thermals with Asus laptops was a game changer for me.
For competitors, spending a huge amount of money in R&D to try to compete with Apple, will be most likely at a loss. At least until some chip manufacturer (read: Intel) doesn't step up their game.
As a consequence, competition has moved to the middle-low quality segment, one in which they can still compete because of 2 main factors: Apple is not interested in that segment and most companies won't move away from Windows (even if they probably should).
I guess a hurdle smartphones didn't have as they were breaking into a new market is compatibility; outside of the tech world, virtually all of corporate and personal environment is dependent on Windows and Windows-only software. Steam has shown it can work with SteamOS and Proton, making gaming on Linux a reality for a wide audience. What's missing is a major OEM to build a high-spec laptop with a custom Linux build to optimize performance and battery life, with a decent Windows compatibility layer and that would provide software companies an incentive to sell native Linux versions and support. Is Samsung really going to keep their laptop line depend on Windows, and leave it on the side-line as they will never be able to really optimize battery life and performance and compare to the MacBooks?
The performance/power gains come from the own ARM-chips and a OS/build system/framework fine tuned to make use of that
Plastic case?
You've got my curiosity..
> Oh, and battery life is 14-16 hours of use.
Oh. Now you've got my attention!
My coworker has one. It will probably be my next portable workstation.
Or the Intel Lunar Lake processor.
Both have extremely good laptop options - the Lenovo Yoga Aura edition is pretty much macbook quality.
And runs LLMs (https://github.com/intel/ipex-llm/blob/main/docs/mddocs/Over...)
People spent a decade upgrading laptops for a mere 5-10% increase in performance (sometimes less). I can't see someone giving up that much of a performance jump unless Windows is absolutely the only option.
> I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs
- Time your purchase
- get coupons
- get a corporate discount if you can
to get them at a sane price
The 14.5 inch version is 1.6kg, 2TB, 2.9k resolution, also great design and build quality. $1700
https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pr...
https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pr...
Give it a read and do a simulation of how much it would cost you to replace the part that forced you to buy a new laptop.
all these are likely cheaper per GB RAM and per TB SSD
Later I bought a new Malibal laptop, but mostly for the screen, usb-c ports and lower weight,but had to compromise on getting an unnecessary nVidia GPU that I just blacklist right away because the right laptop just didn't exist. I like the laptop, but I can't recommend Malibal laptops though, they are a weird company and getting things to work alright took way more effort than on my old XPS.
Apple Retina screens are all 1000cd/m2.
Good question and probably worth an article or two. My thinking is that Apple is designing silicon that makes for great laptops (M4 in this case) and then building around that. You will be hard pressed to find an x86-64 chipset that does what the Apple chipset does, and without that no matter what laptop you build around it is not going to be competitive. Nimbler companies like Framework are working with more speculative silicon (like the AMD Ryzen AI Max) which people like Dell and Lenovo won't do (yet?) But even there you get closer but not really close to something like the compute complex in the Macbook Air.
Mobile. A lot of games I played as a kid have mobile apps, and in some cases, I don't know if its the case for all of them, the userbase is mostly on their phones. I can only imagine this is the case for a lot of things.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the thinkpad x1 extreme laptop. It was basically the lenovo/thinkpad response to the xps 15. It's way thinner than the ThinkPad T16/P15 lines.
they claim it's a 16" laptop but only because they made the bezel smaller enough to fit a larger display in the same space.
it's usually mostly on par with the dell xps but i'm not sure about the specs though... my personal laptop is a rusty thinkpad x270 (i'm torn between the newly announced m4 macbook air or the upcoming framework 12) and i've been issued a m3 macbook pro for work.
I just checked https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... and it says the laptop has two ddr5 slots, i guess you could load up to 128gb in there using the newest 64gb sticks.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/scr/laptops/appref=xps-p... ?
Sure doesn't seem to be discontinued at all?
And just checking the XPS 14 it has both 2tb and 4tb storage options, and the 3.2k OLED screen is higher resolution than what Apple's 14" offering contains and it's 120hz.
Current models at the time of the announcement may still be produced and then inventories depleted, but those will be the last of them.
Here is what I am using right now from my fastfetch:
Display (SDC4193): 2880x1800 @ 90Hz [Built-in]
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U w/ Radeon 780M Graphics (16) @ 5.13 GHz'
GPU: AMD Device 15BF (VGA compatible) @ 0.80 GHz [Integrated]
Memory: ---- GiB / 58.51 GiB
Disk (/): ---- TiB / 1.82 TiB
You can even go cheaper and get a slower CPU as far as I know. And for that price apple doesn't give out that much RAM.
What requirement you have is not meet here?
I'm not a fan of OS X but seriously considering one of these just for the battery life and it-just-works portable computing.
Why get the lesser copy, when I can get the original at better price?
I believe all brands offer some laptops with hidpi screens.
The only part where Apple is unmatched is in battery life but you mention it is not a strong requirement.
Panasonic Let's Note. Your welcome.
It's repairable, upgradable, and has a *removable battery* (unheard of in 2025).
Frankly, I'm not sure why people think that laptops with CNCed aluminium chassis are the pinnacle of build quality.
P1, P16s, T16, P14s
Most of which support:
- Up to 96 GB RAM
- 8 TB SSD (Dual slots)
- Upgradable memory and storage
- 4K OLED displays
- Excellent build quality
What more is needed?
There is a lot more to a good laptop than specs, and so far only Apple seems to really get that.
I am currently using a P16s with an Intel's meteor lake CPU and an RTX 500 Ada dGPU. I would say it is not that bad. Linux Mint worked OOB perfectly. I get 5-6 hrs of battery life which is fine for me (considering it has a 4K OLED display). The dGPU is mostly idle and the machine is mostly silent unless I am gaming.
The only times I hear the fans going are when using it on my lap or playing games. I do run Windows VM for a big .NET Framework project (coding on JetBrains Rider) and at the same time some coding on Linux. The CPU handles those fine.
These are my personal experiences though. The only issue I can pick is sometimes Chrome shows some artifacts (I think, related the iGPU driver)
(Intel has to have some sketchy deals with manufacturers, otherwise why design a product like the Thinkpad X1 Carbon line only to put these Intel energy hogs in there?)
Makes zero sense to get a P series when you could get a Macbook
In the US at least, they usually go on sale. If you can manage to get a corporate discount, you can get them at a sane price.
At December, for example, I got a latest P14s at around $1,100 which is OK price for the machine you get.
My hunch is that relaxing this seemingly arbitrary requirement will result in many suitable notebooks
I had an XPS 15 with 4k display in 2016, yet in 2025 it’s somehow difficult to find a laptop with that pixel density?
I wonder the same with phones actually, my Nexus 6P from 2015 (10 years ago!) had an amazing 518 ppi display. When the modem died I got a Pixel 2 which had only 441 ppi, and the display was a really noticeable downgrade, text looked significantly uglier, I could see the pixels and hinting artifacts again. I expected high pixel densities to become mainstream to the point where every screen has a density at the limit of what the human eye can perceive, yet here we are 10 years later, and Google’s flagship phones have only 495/486 ppi, worse than the Nexus 6P!
I'm holding my phone as close as I can to my face and I can't see a pixel if I want to
You do realize we had 1440p phones in 2015-2016 right?
HiDPI is not new, and it's clarity amazing. Stop buying huge low res screens for ripoff prices in 2025
Laptops have had 120hz screens since 2011. Stop limiting yourself to 60hz in 2025
(See how that sounds?)
I know this isn't your point but this is exactly why I don't use docker--but I'm a bit surprised to hear you mention `cargo build` as something that might fill up the disk. I've been a vocal critic of Rust on Hacker News in the past, but the one thing I always thought they did very, very well, was Cargo and the tight executables it produced for me.
I buy gaming laptops because they're the only powerful laptops and their size has never bothered me when traveling
Just how heavy is your laptop?
You need a better backpack I think? I regularly carry 10kg of groceries in my backpack over two kilometers. It never gave me any back pain.
Carrying a heavy backpack can be practiced. It does not hurt your back.
People complain they can't lift shit but don't do anything besides taking anti pain pill.
The secret to growing well is avoiding processed food, cardio 30 min per day minimum and weight lifting.
I do use an Osprey 22L hiking backpack for my daily driver, it's got a waist belt to transfer weight to my hips, a chest strap to keep the shoulder straps together, and internal semi-rigid frame... but that's more for all my other stuff, and for activities I do in the woods far from stuff like 'laptop computers'. Even if it's just in a handheld briefcase, 3 kg is not a lot. That's about as much as a water bottle - which I also have in the backpack, as well as a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that also weighs a few kg.
I herniated a disk a couple years ago due to a waterskiing accident, but I've fully recovered and even while dealing with that injury, walking around airports and so forth with any laptop is not not strenuous.
In hindsight, I wish I'd gone for the big P73, I miss the giant 17" screen of my old 40mm thick, 3.5 kg Dell Precision... but the OLED on the P53 is beautiful. 17" UHD OLED when, Lenovo?
I can do the same work on a MacBook Air when I'm away, and it's basically just a desktop when I'm home. To me it would make way more sense to have a desktop at home and a 12 - 14" laptop, if it wasn't for the cost of having both.
I have a gaming laptop, even 14", and I can't stand the boot up time and needing a thick power brick cable to get things going. I barely use it as a result and use my Steam Deck more.
Most of my friends assume the default mode of transport globally is a car. Even to get to a cafe or library.
Pretty funny when you think about it.
Even an Air is too heavy IMO compared to say an LG Gram. But, I need the specs and the screen so I lug around a MacBook Pro 16" at 4.6lbs - often I have to lug around 2, my corp one and my personal one.
Given an iPad Pro 13" is 1.3lbs they "could" (for some definition of "could") make a 16" device with keyboard closer to 2 lbs.
This is disingenuous. It's not a problem, just less desirable.
1) Is 99% of the time actually on my lap when I'm using it. It's (usually) the one I take with me when I leave the house. I care very, very much about its size and weight. It's an M1 Air and I wouldn't mind if it was a bit smaller/lighter.
2) Is 99% of the time sitting on my desk, plugged into my KVM. It almost never leaves my house. I don't care how bulky it is. However, I prefer medium-ish form factors in case I do need to travel with it.
Any laptops I have over 2 will usually be in the 2nd bin, but sometimes the 1st.
I'd usually unplug it if I had to move to another room and only bring the laptop itself.
Still MacBook is a better product for most use cases.
Happy with the build quality.
I know many people still love MacOS, but it lost me a few years ago. I've also, frankly, had much better milage out of Dell machines than Apple ones over the last ten years.
Dell XPS 13 isn't discontinued, its rebranding will be fully rolled out later this year
In the meantime Dell XPS 13s are currently available with 2TB and 64GB RAM (with a better screen than this Air I might add) and with a Snapdragon X Elite chip (which there are very few compatibility issues with in March 2025 even with gaming)
If its a 14 inch laptop you want XPS 14s are currently available with upto 4TB. They will also be rebranded later this year. They're on Intel chips and I'm hoping they will switch to Snapdragon on the rebrand to get the Apple like battery life
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/microsoft-surfac...
Wtf is with the downvotes? It literally hits every requirement he had, and the surface laptops are some of the best windows/nix laptops on the market.
If you want a nix experience, Linux support is still a WIP and progress is quite slow because of a lack of help from Snapdragon and OEMs. I expect that it might take a generation or two to get it to the point where it was with the x86 SLs.
However, at this stage, I'm tired of the quirks of Windows so the lack of nix support pushed me to get the Macbook Air for myself.
I am between Lenovo X1 Aura, MSI Prestige 13, and this. All have Lunar Lake so battery life should be exceptional, except of course if there are any issues with battery drain during sleep on Linux. Definitely spoiled by Apple not having battery drain issues, but would love pointers on how to solve it.
I also run a custom Windows desktop and a synology NAS, so I like to consider myself mostly agnostic.
And yes, the screen is slightly lower DPI (201 VS 226) but you do get a better aspect ratio in return.
The iPad Pro proves that weight and battery life is no excuse here for the lack of state-of-the-art display tech in the MacBook Air. And as for cost — the base 14” MacBook Pro M4 (at $1600) isn’t significantly more expensive than the 15” MacBook Air M4 configured with same CPU/RAM/SSD (at $1400).
It’s really quite a shame that the iPad Pro hardware is in many way a better MacBook Air than the MacBook Air, crippled primarily by iOS rather than hardware.
Actual reputational damage is going on because of these poor decisions, I’m not surprised iPhones are struggling to obtain new market share. They just look like old and slow phones to most normal people now, “look how nice and smooth it looks” is such an easy selling point compared to trying to pretend people care about whatever Apple Intelligence is.
Are they? I'm a tech person and I can barely notice it at all. And I don't think I have a single non-tech friend who is even aware of the concept of video refresh rate.
Whenever there's something that doesn't feel smooth about an interface, it's because the app/CPU isn't keeping up.
I've honestly never understood why anyone cares about more than 60hZ for screens, for general interfaces/scrolling.
(Unless it's about video game response time, but that's not about "running smoother".)
So you could make the same argument against high DPI displays, superior peak screen brightness, enormously better contrast ratio, color gamut, etc. Also speaker quality, keyboard quality, trackpad quality, etc.
Where does this argument end? Do you propose we regress to 60hz 1080p displays with brightness, contrast, and viewing angles that are abysmal by modern standards? Or is the claim that the MacBook Air’s current screen is the perfect “sweet spot” beyond which >99% of people can’t tell the difference?
I think the market data alone disproves this pretty conclusively. Clearly a significant enough percentage of the population cares enough about image quality to vote with their wallets so much so that enormous hardware industries continue to invest billions towards make any incremental progress in advancing the technology here.
To be fair, I think there’s strong data to support that modern “retina”-grade DPI is good enough for >99% of people. And you can argue that XDR/HDR is not applicable/useful for coding or other tasks outside of photo/video viewing/editing (though for the latter it is enormously noticeable and not even remotely approaching human visual limits yet). But there’s plenty of people who find refresh rate differences extremely noticeable (usually up to at least 120hz), and I think almost anyone can easily notice moderate differences in contrast ratio and max brightness in a brightly lit room.
See this is what confuses me.
If the UI jitter on their phone was "so jarring", it's not because it's 60 Hz. It's because the phone's CPU isn't keeping up.
Like, nobody watches a video filmed at 60 fps and then watches their favorite TV show or a motion picture at 24 fps and says "the jitter was so jarring". And that's at less than half the rate we're even talking about! Similarly, even if you can tell the difference between 60 and 120 Hz, it's not jarring. It's not jittery. It's pretty subtle, honestly. You can notice it if you're paying attention, but you'd never in a million years call it "jarring".
I think a lot of people might be confusing 60 Hz with jittery UX that has nothing to do with the display refresh rate. Just because the display operates at a higher refresh rate doesn't mean the CPU is actually refreshing the interface at that rate. And with certain apps or with whatever happening in the background, it isn't.
Those have motion blur.
> Similarly, even if you can tell the difference between 60 and 120 Hz
I don't know why you're phrasing this so oddly doubtful? Being able to tell the difference between 60hz and 120hz is hardly uncommon. It's quite a large difference, and this is quite well studied.
No, it's not. This isn't about dropped frames or micro-stutters caused by the CPU. It's about _motion clarity_.
You can follow the objects moving around on the screen much better, and the perceived motion is much smoother because there is literally twice the information hitting your eyes.
You can make a simple experiment — just change your current monitor to 30hz and move the mouse around.
Does it _feel_ different? Is the motion less smooth?
It's not because your computer is suddenly struggling to hit half of the frames it was hitting before; it's because you have less _motion information_ hitting your eyes (and the increased input lag; but that's a separate conversation).
60->120fps is less noticeable than 30->60fps; but for many, many people it is absolutely very clearly noticable.
> Like, nobody watches a video filmed at 60 fps and then watches their favorite TV show or a motion picture at 24 fps and says "the jitter was so jarring".
People absolutely complain about jitter in 24fps content on high-end displays with fast response times; it is especially noticeable in slow panning shots.
Google "oled 24fps stutter" to see people complaining about this.
It's literally why motion smoothing exists on TVs.
30hz is still perfectly usable, but you constantly feel as if something is off. Like maybe you have a process running in the background eating all your CPU.
I imagine going from 120hz to 60hz is the same thing. It should be theoretically indistinguishable, but it’s noticeable.
That's bs. You will immediately notice the difference when going from let's say 120 hz down to 60 hz on a fast gaming pc even if you're just dragging windows around. Everything feels jarring to say the least compared to higher refresh rates and it has absolutely nothing to do with the CPU. It's because of the refresh rate.
It's same thing going from 120 hz to 60 hz on a phone while scrolling and swiping.
It's quite interesting though that there are people out there who won't notice the huge difference. But hey, at least they don't have to pay premium for the increase performance of the screen.
There is a well-understood science to both auditory and visual perception, even more concretely so for the visual side. The scientific literature on human perception in both categories is actively used in the engineering of almost every modern (audible/visual) device you use every day (both in hardware design, and software such as the design of lossy compression algorithms). We have very precise scientific understanding of the limits (and individual variation) of human visual and (to a slightly lesser extent) auditory perception and preferences.
Screen refresh rate arguments are starting to have hints of audiophile discussions.
120 Hz won’t make a difference on a TV box, imo, as abysmal state of their UI is far greater of a problem. High refresh rate is nothing when a transition takes seconds and when scroll is jittery even by 60 Hz standards. :(
A computer UI is basically a movie with 0 shutter angle, which looks super jerky at low framerates.
Going 120hz → 60hz: "WTF? Why is it so choppy? Am I accidentally in low battery mode?"
It's similar to going back to non-retina displays after getting used to retina resolution.
From this you may reach enlightenment.
I switch between various refresh rates daily, it’s barely noticeable.
Certainly if they had both side by side they may be able to notice a difference, but in everyday use it makes no real difference to the vast majority of people. Anecdotally even though I do use Android myself, everyone around me still think iPhones look the smoothest (albeit most of them have never even touched a quality phone running android)
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/10skjxm/promotion_d...
But I am quite confident I'd be able to tell 60/120hz with a 100% accuracy within 5s of being able to interact with the device.
Probably under a second on an iPhone, ~2s on a Mac with a built-in display and slightly longer on iPads and bigger displays. Add ~2 extra second if I'm using a mouse instead of a trackpad.
It is _that_ noticeable to me.
On the other hand, my MacBook has a 120 Hz display and both my iPad Mini and iPhone Mini are 60 Hz, and even though the difference is night and day, I don’t really MIND using them. It’s just not that cool.
no, he didn't say that. he said they comment on the difference between apple and android (their perception). you have to take that as a given.
that "it's because refresh rate" is his hypothesis, so yes argue that, but not by changing his evidence.
For me 120Hz is noticeable immediately when scrolling, though I also don’t find it important enough to warrant a higher price aside from gaming.
What I find more important is a high pixel density, though on phones that’s less of an issue as with PC screens - I have yet to find one comparable to the ones in current iMacs.
Its the same thing about retina vs. the previous resolutions we had put up with. Yes, you don't need them for text, but once you get used to it for text you don't want to go back.
Still a nice to have, which Apple recognizes.
I will give you that most people outside of this websites audience will not be able to _tell_ it's because of the refresh rate.
But I am quite confident if you take most of 120hz iPhone users phones out of their hand, turn on low battery mode, most will be immediately able to tell that something _feels_ off.
I actually call BS on your BS.
I don't believe that people are standing with two phones in their hand - an Android and an iPhone - and comparing them the way that people here are suggesting. I don't think I have ever seen anyone do that IRL, and I don't believe anyone actually does it.
People go to the Apple Store to get their iPhone or to some other store to get their Android phone, because they are interested in either platform, and absolutely not thinking about hopping from one to the other based on some imperceptible screen-refresh 'smoothness'.
The only claim I made is that if you toggle between 60/120hz on people's devices, they will be able to tell the difference.
i think once you get used to 90 or 120 fps, then 60fps will just feel choppy. no need to compare them side by side.
This is a feature that really only matters to the Hacker News crowd, and Apple is very aware of that. They invest their BOM into things the majority of people care about. And they do have the Pro Motion screens for the few that do.
Even I — an engineer - regularly move between my Pro Motion enabled iPhone and my regular 60Hz iPad and while I notice it a little, I really just don’t see why this is the one hill people choose to die on.
It would be no different than arguing about whether we need all three primary colors (red, green, blue) with someone who is colorblind (and unaware of this). Or like arguing whether speakers benefit from being able to reproduce a certain frequency, with someone who is partially or fully deaf at that frequency. And I truly mean no disrespect to anyone with different perception abilities in these or any other domains.
Recognizing that large differences exist here is essential to make sense of the reality - that something that seems completely unimportant or barely noticeable to you, could actually be a hugely obvious and important difference to many others (whether it’s a certain screen refresh rate, the presence of a primary color you cannot perceive but others can, an audio frequency you cannot hear but others can, or otherwise).
> Have never heard anyone in my life that isn’t an engineer comment on Pro Motion. Not even in an accidental sort of “hmmm why does my phone just feel faster” kind of way.
I would also argue the crowd that insists everyone needs Pro Motion is doing exactly what you accuse me of -- assuming their needs and perception must also be everyone else's. When clearly the market has said otherwise, given Apple's success for many, many years with 60Hz screens.
I am not seeing this alleged crowd of people insisting that everyone needs 120hz/ProMotion. This seems to be a red herring.
I am seeing a crowd of people (including myself) saying that we experience 120hz/ProMotion as a huge improvement over 60hz, so much so that we will never buy a product without this ever again (so long as we have the choice).
I furthermore claim that while not everyone is a member of this crowd (obviously), it represents a sufficiently large share of the device-buying population to justify steering billions of dollars of hardware and software industry to support this, which evidently has happened and increasingly continues to happen.
If this crowd were an insignificant minority as you seem to imply, then 120hz displays would be a fad that fades away in all but the most niche markets (e.g. pro gaming), and yet we’re seeing precisely the opposite happen — 120hz displays are growing in popularity by expanding broadly into increasingly non-niche consumer device products everywhere, from laptops to tablets to phones.
> When clearly the market has said otherwise, given Apple's success for many, many years with 60Hz screens.
Arguing that the market doesn’t want/need it now because Apple succeeded without it in the past, is completely absurd — just as nonsensical as trying to argue that computers don’t ever need any more memory because they sold just fine with less in the past.
Apple sells Pro Motion displays. If it matters to you, you can buy them. They aren’t refusing to serve this market, they just don’t prioritize it with their lower cost products.
I only ever used Pixels as android phones, so my experience is limited to that.
I'm back to iPhone now tho, so I get a full-day-ish with pro-motion under a normal usage.
Apple has >80% of the total operating profit in the smartphone market. The new entry level phone went up in price $200. Why do you think they do/should care about market share?
They're fixing it on the iPhone 17 because of the above reasons, but it shows how badly their market research teams are doing that they even remotely thought it was acceptable on the 15, let alone the 16.
ah yes, a country famous for capitalist competition
Things that never happened.
Lot of reasons to dislike. iPhone but this story isn’t true in the least.
https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/iphone-17-just-tipp...
Would be nice if the laptops followed suit
Literally the only people I know with non-iPhones are:
* People who can't afford one
* People who want a folding screen
* People who are conceptually anti-Apple
Apple have over 50% market share in the US, talking about "struggling to obtain new market share" seems bizarre.
It's my impression that Apple really tried to service this market - that last model was probably the iPhone 13 mini. I assume that there just isn't enough demand for smaller phones to justify the effort to develop them.
I was honestly hoping that we'd get a small phone as the iPhone SE 4. But it seems like that's not to be. At least, if the 16e is the closest we'll get to an SE in the near term.
I loved my iPhone 13 mini for the 3-years it was my daily driver. But yeah, the mini line is probably dead.
I have my 12 mini still but it’s showing its age. Probably have to suck it up and get a big phone next upgrade.
This may be partly because I'm not in the US; my impression is that "people who can afford iPhones buy iPhones so if you don't you're impoverished or weird" is much more a thing in the US than in Europe.)
(I also thought "struggling to obtain new market share" was a weird take, and ditto "just look like old and slow phones". I am not disagreeing with that part of what you posted.)
* People who think a phone is a boring generic device, and it doesn't make sense to prefer any particular brand or pay more than $X.
* People who are used to Android and have better things to do than migrating to another ecosystem.
In the past, the lack of proper dual-SIM iPhones was a common enough reason to prefer Android. But it's less of an issue today, as eSIMs have become mainstream.
A huge factor in this: 87% of US teenagers have iPhones [1] and that's not going to change anytime soon.
[1]: https://www.barrons.com/articles/apple-stock-teens-iphone-e5...
I think it's sad that something kids can't control becomes such a social anxiety inducing thing forcing parents into buying something they might not be able to afford.
Luckily where I'm from we don't use the "sms app" to communicate
>The screen quality is the only reason I currently use the Pro
Well why should they, you already bought the more expensive one.
(1) Windows these days feels like a constant battle against forcibly installed adware / malware.
(2) Linux would be great, but getting basic laptop essentials like reliable sleep/wake and power management to work even remotely well in Linux continues to be a painful losing battle.
(3) Apple’s M series chips’ performance and efficiency is still generations ahead of anyone else in the context of portable battery-powered fanless work; nobody else has yet come close to matching apple here, though there is hope Qualcomm will deliver more competition soon (if the silicon’s raw potential is not squandered by Microsoft).
Just because Apple’s competition has been complacent and lagging for many years, doesn’t render irrelevant any feedback to Apple regarding what professional laptop users would like.
This comment shows up in every single thread about Linux laptops, but my Thinkpd X1 Nano gen 1 with an intel i5 running arch Linux KDE Plasma had this issue solved out of the box when I purchased it in 2021. The only thing that didn’t work was the 5G modem, but I believe that has been implemented now. Surely 4 years later we can agree that the complaint is outdated right?
Also, Apple's power management isn't flawless either. It used to be fantastic, but I've never, ever seen a laptop that has to charge for 15 minutes before you can even boot it from a flat battery. This seems to happen if I leave my laptop powered off for more than a few days. Like, turned completely off, not sleeping with the lid shut.
Because:
(1) Laptop models designed to run Linux out of the box are very scarce, with very few options to choose from.
(2) Of the few that do exist, I’ve never seen any even remotely close to being competitive with Apple’s laptops (in terms of hardware quality, and good performance with excellent power efficiency / fanless / thermals / battery life).
Part of that is due to Apple’s monopoly on the superiority of their M series chips. But the rest I assume comes from less R&D investment generally in the Linux laptop space due to it being such a small niche, unfortunately.
Like how the MacBook Air was originally a premium-priced product instead of an entry-level product in Apple's lineup.
The demand has to be there. And MacBook Pros are not that bulky.
Apple seems quite content with making 120hz a feature of "Pro" models across the line (iPads, iPhones, Macs).
The truth of the matter is that Apple does not currently sell a single premium device. Every single one requires serious compromises.
It's frustrating because I'd prefer a lighter device. In fact, even the Air isn't that light compared to its competition.
I'd happily pay +$500 ($5300) for Macbook Air PRO if it was effectively the same specs as Macbook Pro but 1.5lbs lighter.
The MacBook Pro has an amazing screen, which is why I bought the MBP. But the MBP compromises increased weight (which I don’t want) in exchange for more performance (that I simply don’t need). And we know this compromise is not needed to host a better display, as evidenced by the existence of the iPad Pro.
Don’t get me wrong, the MacBook Pro is a fantastic product and I don’t regret buying it. It just feels like a huge missed opportunity on Apple’s part that their only ultra-lightweight laptop is so far behind in display tech vs their other non-laptop products (like the iPad Pro which is lighter still, just crippled due to iOS limitations).
I would gladly pay even more than the price of my MacBook Pro for a MacBook Air with a screen on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro. Or even for an iPad Pro that runs OSX!
> I'd happily pay +$500 ($5300) for Macbook Air PRO if it was effectively the same specs as Macbook Pro but 1.5lbs lighter.
You basically want a macbook pro. I don't think it could be that thin with active cooling that such a configuration would require.
Wonder if we are going to see some changes here with the upcoming M5 models.
The second option is to bring back the MacBook brand for entry level devices and use the Air brand for "Pro" devices that don't require active cooling.
Considering the powerful hardware, the form factor and the good keyboard (I have a used Apple Magic Keyboard paired with our iPad Air M2), if I could virtualize an actual Linux distro to get some job done in the iPad it would be great. But no, you are restricted to a cripped version of UTM that can't even run JIT and because of that is really slow because of that.
Double the ram
And yet a complaining comment makes its way to the top. This blows my mind! People will literally complain no matter what
The current Air is great as an entry level device, but there is an underserved segment here.
Edit: to go to 32GB RAM is $400. To go to 1TB SSD is another $400. That is essentially doubling the $999 cost. $400 buys me between 4 and 6 1TB M.2 drives or 2-3 2TB M.2 drives.
> storage premium
DDR5 RAM (Single Stick)
Memory Apple Desktop Laptop Server
16 - ~$40 ~$40 ~$60
24 +$200 ~$200 ~$50 ~$100
32 +$400 ~$80 ~$80 ~$100-$200
2 Sticks
64 - ~$200 ~$170 ~$150
128 - ~$115 ~$310 ~$250
Storage Apple NVME (Gen 5) NVME (Gen 4) SSD HDD
256GB - - ~$50 ~$20 ~$20
512GB +$200 - ~$60 ~$30 ~$40
1T +$400 ~$150 ~$80 ~$60 ~$50
2T +$800 ~$200 ~$150 ~$100 ~$60
4T - ~$400 ~$280 ~$200 ~$80
You can AT WORST buy the storage OUTRIGHT for cheaper than it is to UPGRADE. But in most cases you can buy more than double what Apple is offering for cheaper than it is to UPGRADE.
I boycotted Apple for years because of these issues, but unfortunately I think this battle is lost. I gave up. I have a macbook Air. It is nice, but it is a glorified SSH machine. They must know this, because I'd prefer to get an iPad pro with a keyboard but run an actual fucking desktop OS. But then again, the fucking iPad isn't even good at the one thing it is supposed to be good at: writing... The 3rd party apps are leagues ahead of Apple Notes.
What I can't figure out is:
- Why are there no good competitors?
- Why are there no good linux laptops with good battery life?I do something similar with my personal laptops/PCs too — any actual files are in cloud storage[1], and mounted[2] so that they don't actually sync to the device, therefore not taking up space...
Honestly it feels very freeing having your data just be in server(s) somewhere, not having to worry about moving it between devices, or having to copy it over if you need to format/get rid of the device, or forgetting to copy over a file you need to your phone when going out, etc...
[1] Nextcloud rented from Hetzner https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/
[2] Nextcloud client has a feature called Virtual Files on Windows, and on Linux I just use the Nextcloud integration which uses WebDAV under the hood
browser-bases apps are notoriously memory hogs, your point doesn't make much sense.
the truth is that apple get away with cheating a lot on their OS as they swap aggressively and do very aggressive swap compression.
the part about swapping aggressively is essentially overlooked by the entire industry: swapping to flash storage will wear it out faster, which is a huge issue when the flash chip is soldered and not replaceable. this will essentially create more e-waste (but they get to (happily) sell you a new laptop). so long for being green.
Google hangouts / gmail works fine on iOS and android. Same for whatsapp, zoom, signal, etc. Heck, even microsoft teams.
Apple has more money than any of those companies, and yet also has the wildly most anti-competitive restrictive software, ensuring almost all of its services (apple music/books/iMessage/facetime/etc etc) more or less require all your devices to be apple devices.
I don't know if it's abusive, but it's certainly putting more chains on the user than any of the other similar ecosystems.
I'm running Windows laptops / desktops these days, and drive an iPhone and the sun hasn't exploded.
I know people who have been victims of actual abuse; it's not remotely the same thing as paying too much for a laptop.
It's not just paying too much, it's one of the world's most valuable mega-corporations asking you to pay too much. If it were a boutique shop I wouldn't call it abusive. It's a combination of the bad behavior and the exercise of raw power that makes it so.
Sure, your iPhone doesn't connect as seamlessly to your Windows computer as it would a Mac, but those aren't network effects, thats vertical integration.
Nobody is forcing you to buy a Mac, and Apple themselves are intentionally overcharging for upgrades on the basis that: "If you really need it, you'll pay for it". Most people don't need it but will buy the upgrades anyway then complain that they're too expensive.
I'm aware that it limits the longevity of the devices, but that might also be intentional here, not abusive though. Just a bit bare-faced profit seeking. Which seems to be working because, as you point out, it's one of the worlds most valuable mega-corporations.
If someone else comes out with good premium laptops I'll move over happily, but for now the best laptop you can buy is unfortunately a macbook, and they've decided that upgrades are worth this money, if you don't agree then the answer is to simply not upgrade, or avoid the devices entirely.
Microsoft is also a deeply abusive corporation. The discussion was not about them, though.
The same word we use for raping kids?
Give off.
> If it were a boutique shop I wouldn't call it abusive. It's a combination of the bad behavior and the exercise of raw power that makes it so.
I was raped as a kid, friend. Many times.
and many of my friends were, which is why I would prefer we keep words with strong meaning quite strong.
A company operating as a company, not even unethically in this case is too far away.
By and large, the people who buy these products are freely choosing to do so. To claim that, for those people, the price is "too high" is equivalent to telling them "you shouldn't be willing to pay that much for that product".
I think it's perfectly fine for me or any other individual to hold the opinion that their products are overpriced, but I think it would be at best borderline presumptuous for me to attempt to tell someone else what they should or should not value.
Not to mention that design decisions have surely been made to ensure this segmentation works that destroy repairability - so much for environmental friendliness. It is difficult not to feel Apple's contempt for its customers when it has been actively crippling the usefulness of its devices to squeeze some more profits.
To Apple's credit, it has established an effective monopoly over the market of _decent_ laptops fair and square and OS X seems to be less of a malware than whatever is Windows 10/11. I am not _that_ salty to pay the premium.
I'm far more interested in improving our lot by altering the environment (e.g. by promoting memory-safe programming languages, or by pressuring corporations to not be abusive) than in appealing to notions like choice.
I feel cornered when my social circle all use iPhones and then they want to Airdrop me something and I just can't receive it. I'm an Android man, I cannot stand the blue pill Apple feels to me.
Peer pressure is a serious threat, presented in the form of... abusive behaviour indeed.
I actually wanted to get the notch back so I could have as much vertical screen real estate as possible and was disappointed to find that there doesn't appear to be any reliable way of doing this.
The notch is definitely still there by default.
Currently it's set to 1710 x 1107, which is labeled "Default", and no notch. When I look closely at the right angle I can clearly see the notch dipping into the screen, but the OS does not use any of the area to either side of the notch--it's completely dark there.
Just now I ticked "Show all resolutions" and tried at least a dozen other available resolutions and none of them use the screen above the notch bottom. Sonoma 14.6.1, 15" M3 Air.
One thing that did occur to me though is that it was a 'refurbished' MacBook. Bought it from Apple, and it looked brand new, but it does seem possible that someone could have done who-knows-what to it before I got it. Or perhaps there is some defect in the display near the top and Apple did this intentionally to conceal it.
This review says it beats M3 by 2 hours: https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/dell-xps-13-9350-review
A true portable laptop, one that can be used not just at home where lighting could perhaps be controlled, needs to by lightweight and have a non-reflective screen.
I just buy lots of storage on my desktop and access it remotely. Tailscale makes it easy to do so.
Utterly garbage speakers, poor microphones, inferior screen hinges, coil whine, structural flex, light leak from the keyboard backlights, poor keyboard PWM dimming, poor keyboard switches (admittedly, butterfly keyboards were a bad era for Apple), slow or missing sleep management, terrible idle power usage, slow wake time, poor weight distribution, more ports but they're stupidly placed or don't work as you'd expect or want, uneven heat distribution, strange aesthetic choices (like fake vents) and dumb case designs that snags when slipping it into a bag.
In my experience with PC laptops for every hardware spec benchmark that exceeds something Apple does, you'll lose out on three other aspects of the laptop that aren't commonly discussed in reviews. The most frustrating part is that besides buying from Apple, money cannot solve this problem. There just isn't a PC maker that gives a shit.
Kinda, the SSD controller is integrated into the M-series SoC so even if the storage were slotted (as it is in the Macs mini, Studio, and Pro) you wouldn’t be able to use an off-the-shelf M.2 SSD since the storage is little more than raw flash on a card for those models.
As for the laptops, probably not feasible.
I will say that unlike laptops/desktops I used to buy before I went Apple, I use them for a really long time. When I ran Windows, I'd upgrade every few years. I had my Mac Pro 2012 for 9 years before upgrading to a Studio. Yes, I maxed out the storage, and it was annoying how expensive, but amortized over 9 years? Not as bad.
EDIT: if I was purchasing a Studio now, I'd likely do the 3rd party upgrade to 8TB (what I saw in a YT video). That's double what my M1 Studio maxed out at.
So far I've decided that going forward I'll likely be getting a cheap baseline laptop (curretly eyeing a 16gb/512gb macbook air m4 or the upcoming framework 12) and then get some beefier desktop to remote into. i don't even need a gpu, the heavy stuff i do largely revolves around running virtual machines.
I did most of my work in a screen session running emacs on a 48cpu/192gb ram machine in a previous job, and I did some tests and remote desktop nowadays is pretty good (way above the "usable" threshold).
> That is essentially doubling the $999 cost.
yeah, it sucks.
Apple sells computers in the premium/professional market segment. They're not going to change that. If you're not making money from the equipment or if you can't afford it for consumer use, there's probably nothing that they will do for you, you're not in the intended customer segment.
And if you're buying a computer as a consumer because it is a premium machine, well then you eat the price if you really want the machine, or you have to go for non-premium competitors.
You're comparing McDonalds to a nice steak in a good restaurant. The good restaurant will charge dearly for a bottle of water while McDonalds gives you free refills, and so on. The business models are different and the market segments are different.
I'm not comparing a hamburger from my local go-to to a steak from a steakhouse. I'm comparing the cost of the mash potatoes that comes with my hamburger ($5) and what they cost at a non-Apple steakhouse ($15). I don't go to the Apple steakhouse not because I find their steak unreasonably priced (it is a great value, actually), but because I refuse to pay $60 for mash potatoes, and if I don't get the mash potatoes, the steak has no value to me.
A steak in a nice restaurant and its accessories will always be more expensive than a burger meal at McDonalds.
Apple has invested enormous effort into making high quality software. They offer the only operating system on the market which is any good at all. But their business model is selling hardware, so that's where they have to bake in all their costs. And their hardware is top notch as well. They could change their offerings to charge a high basic price on all their devices and then offer RAM and SSD upgrades for the low prices you are mentioning. But they choose instead to have a lower base price, knowing that the only people who need more RAM or storage (need, not want), are professionals who can pay for it.
It's the same in a nice restaurant. You're not paying for the ingredients, but everything around it including staff, the environment and so on. That's why a beer is so god damned expensive when you go out.
[4] against, 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air
> Up to 23x faster than fastest Intel‑based MacBook Air
And right next to it:
> Up to 2x faster than MacBook Air (M1)
The footnotes are there to expand on the conditions of the measurements.
So not exactly misleading. On the contrary, it seems to me they’re quite clearly saying “if you have an Intel or M1 MacBook Air you have reason to upgrade. Otherwise, don’t”.
I'm reminded of 90s advertisements in which the new G3 processor was supposed to be so many times faster than the Pentium or even Pentium II. Their chosen benchmark: how long it takes to run a Photoshop plugin. On Mac OS pre-X, a Photoshop plugin got 100% of the CPU because there was no preemptive multitasking. Windows 9x versions of Photoshop had to share the CPU with whatever else was running.
If they'd just give me onboard mobile connectivity, I'd upgrade to the next Air sooner, otherwise this thing will run until it dies... and maybe some day they'll start comparing performance against their original M1.
Definitely. I have ZERO rational reasons to upgrade from my lowest-spec first-gen Air M1. I use it everyday and speed and battery life are still way more than I need.
I have yet to update beyond Monterey though (even though I really should) in case it slows down a bit or the battery life isn't as good.
It's one of those small things that makes like a bit easier. On Lenovo/HP these have been around for years and they don't cost that much.
And it isn't really ironed out to behave in Germany where on a train you have frequent losses of phone connectivity. Every time it loses signal, the hotspot drops out and disconnects.
The real reason is Apple wants you to buy an ipad for on the road. Laptops, according to them, are strictly for office/home usage where wifi is available.
Anecdotally, I've also seen her get issues when going from an area with bad connection to an area with good connection (iPhone will disconnect).
The experience with a non-iphone is also not seamless, though that's to be expected.
Point being that reliable and easy cellular access on a MacBook would be a pretty nice improvement. This is especially true given how much of what people do on computers relies on the internet these days.
Dunno about that, I've been using Androids for hotspotting for years, and haven't noticed any issues.
yeah i just checked mine, it says MacBook Pro 16" 2019 and the cpu is an intel i7. i don't know what to say, it still meets all my requirements, i don't feel any need to upgrade.
I have an M1 Pro (which is considered old now) and it's like night and day.
I'm on a 2020 [edit: I got it as part of comp for a contracting gig, is why the overlap in years with my 2014 MBP ownership, but didn't switch to using it for personal stuff until after that was over and my MPB wifi broke] M1 Air now, so close to or in year 6 for that. No issues yet and battery life still stellar, should get at least 2-3 more years.
(Folks who are like "LOL who even needs 18 hours of battery life?", which is a common sort of post on Apple laptop announcements: well for one thing it's extremely nice to be hunting for outlets even less often, and to maybe go on a whole light-laptop-use 3-day trip and not charge it the whole time and it's still alive at the end of it, or to have that battery as reserve for charging your phone, but also and perhaps most importantly, it means that a 30% degraded battery after several years of ownership still gets you 10+ hours of real-world use)
I was riding the 'service battery' indicator all the way to the bloody end. 1148 cycles, max capacity 3735 mAh.
I had the battery replaced, the tab key replaced, and the screen refinished (anti-glare coating removed) for about $240 a couple years ago and aside from the fact it can’t be updated beyond Big Sur 11.7.10 I have no issues.
I used my 2011 MBP daily until upgrading to a 2020 M1 air.
I kinda miss the ridiculous heat output on winter mornings.
Yeah, particularly for the Air that makes complete sense, though. Consumer laptops tend to get replaced pretty slowly. I'll be upgrading from a _2016_ MBP (though not to the Air, given the lack of the 120hz screen; going to go for the Pro).
But I am glad that they continue to refine the technology.
Besides, having a cellular modem also allows you to tap into both WiFi and Cellular seamlessly like your phone does to make your overall connection much more reliable.
On my Verizon plan (Unlimited Ultimate), I qualify for two 'connected devices' to be discounted. My Thinkpad is $10/mo extra on my account for unlimited LTE. I'm not a heavy data user by any means and this works out well for me.
I don't even want that on my iPad Pro. I would rather tether it with my phone, mobile hotspot, or some other wifi connection.
1) Apple releases incremental upgrades! Why won't they make huge strides every year so I can upgrade!
2) People who upgrade every year are sheeps!
3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice! (yes, not Windows though).
4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!
Apple is marketing to people who have devices that are old, because they are old.
"Hey, you noticed things are slow? Well, this thing is a lot faster" is pretty good marketing if it's true, nobody except the very wealthy are dropping thousands of euros/dollars on a new device for 10% performance gains, however if it's twenty-three times the performance of the Mac I currently own? Maybe it's enough to convince me or someone like my Mum to splurge on a new device.
Maybe my current Mac is not "good enough" anymore when 23x is the number on the box if I buy new.
It's fair to compare with devices that you expect actual people to actually upgrade from, there's a lot of Intel macbook airs in the field.
Heck, even some professionals are still on Intel macs: https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/25-of-...
> 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice!
> 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!
2 and 4 kind of contradict each other.
I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.
My personal laptop is a 2014 MacBook Pro. I'll be buying one of these new M4 Airs, and comparing to an 11-year-old computer.
I now have an M2 Air and have zero complaints, it’s the best computing device I’ve ever owned. You’re going to really enjoy the M4.
Each year when Apple came out with new machines, we would make a game of putting together a dream machine --- ages ago, that could easily hit 6 figures, these days, well, a fully-configured Mac Studio is $14,099 and a Pro Display w/ stand and nano texture adds $6,998 or so.
Not surprising considering the CPU in the fastest "desktop" Mac before today was slower than an old Intel chips you can buy for ~$350 (e.g. the 14700k).
Sample size one: My spouse is using either a 2013 MBA and wants to upgrade, mostly b/c the enshitification of web sites. Basic productivity was okay-ish for her work (document creation, pdfs, spreadsheets, etc), but even Gmail now suffers with more than a tab.
Edit: thinking more, I don’t know if I agree with myself here.
It still makes claims like that arbitrary and meaningless. What does "23x faster" even mean, it's not like there are that many people who are upgrading from an Intel MBA yet are also fulltime Cinebench/etc. testers.
> It's fair to compare
Well yes. It's reasonably fair (realistically its not like any of those people this is targeted at would feel a difference between 10x, 15x or 30x) and obviously smart.
The measurements are in the linked footnote, they tested the “Super Resolution” upscaling feature of Pixelmator Pro.
When normal users are thinking "faster" they are really thinking about snappiness/responsiveness, not number crunching.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m4-vs-intel_...
Especially when for the M1 (2x faster) they decided to use an entirely different Photoshop benchmark YET they they still show it alongside the 23x for the Pixelmator one (presumably the M4 is NOT 2x faster than the M1 there..).
That's just objectively slimy (even if mostly harmless) marketing...
Also presumably Pixelmator's "Super Resolution" and Photoshop's "radial blur, content aware scale, diffuse, find edges" are also mostly GPU bound these days? Which again.. might not be the best indicator for "performance" for most consumers.
Edit: Looking at some more general benchmarks the the i7 (I7-1060NG7) from the last Intel MBA is "only" 4x (Geekbench MT), ~2.7x (Single-Core) or 2x (Cinebench single core) slower than the M4. Picking some highly specific "benchmark" that's several times higher than that is just dishonest.
Hmmm... The M4 might be ten million times faster than the AGC, depending on the instructions per clock of the AGC and the VAXstation 4000/60 with which we're comparing it.
I've got an M1 Air and there's still no really compelling reason to upgrade. MagSafe and a nicer camera don't really justify it, especially when Continuity Camera is better than on the M1 or M4.
These days, it's an anti-feature. I have USB-C for everything, why would I give that up?
Does this mean it's 23x faster for normal workloads? Nah.
Apple when they were pumping clang were also claiming that binaries produced with clang were much faster than those made with gcc. This was because they used a 15 years old version of gcc that didn't have any vector instructions (because they didn't exist at the time) and benchmarking using some code that was solely doing vector stuff.
In short, they don't lie, but it's a lie :D
Up to 23x faster. Of course, the fastest Intel MacBook Air is pretty old. But 23X is pretty crazy, right? I wonder what they are comparing against. Int-8 matrix multiplications or something else that’s gotten acceleration lately, maybe?
(Anyway, I just ordered one for my wife, a soon-to-be-ex-intel-mac user. She'll probably be pretty happy about this, especially since she doesn't have an intel air as powerful as that one.)
M3 1.6x faster than M1 (1 year ago).
= M4 1.2x faster than M3.
not bad, but Moore's law is dead for CPUs.
/typed from my Macbook Pro M4 — Love Apple — This is great!
When people put their hands on the real device, it was slaying almost everything on the market and soon it was clear that this thing is a revolution.
You don't one up this easily. Apple claims 2X performance improvement over M1 Air and I am sure its mostly true but that M1 Air was so ahead that for a lot of people workloads didn't catch up yet.
At this very moment I have 3 Xcode projects open, Safari has 147 tabs open and its consuming 11GB of my 16GB Ram and my SSD lifetime dropped to 98% due to frequent swap hits and yet I'm perfectly fine with the performance at this very moment and I'm not looking for immediate replacement.
Maybe this is just me managing my ADHD, but when I see people with hundreds of tabs open I just can't imagine how they work. Every tab has been mashed down to its favicon and I watch them struggle to find the right one. It seems insane to me.
I think of the >100 ones as people who have completely lost control of their lives. I'm sure they think of me as someone who needs everything to be just so and can't deal with the messiness of real life.
I do restart my browser once a month or so, if things ever feel less snappy than normal.
It looks like this: https://a.dropoverapp.com/cloud/download/5cda0c76-9398-475a-...
Once I no longer remember the older tabs I create a tab group from the current tabs in case there’s a tab I care about and start fresh.
So yea, same.
I did some research and I'm deferring for a semester but tbh my motivation is pretty low. As per perception it seems decent but depending on circumstances it's def a much better idea to do an on campus programme.
There was never a time when laptops were expected to last 10+ years.
But also apples upcharge on RAM is disgusting, so it's hard to blame them for picking the lowest spec model.
I am fine(ish) with the above setup, I don't know what you are talking about. 8Gb is plenty for website browsing.
1 persons "web browsing" is no browser extensions, a couple of gmail tabs, some light blog reading, and maybe something as heavy as reddit.
While another persons "web browsing" is running multiple browser extensions like grammerly, adblocker, etc. Along with a bunch of gmail tabs, plus a bunch of heavy "web apps"(think: miro, monday.com, google workspace/office365, photoshop online) and then throw 10s-100s of tabs of "research" on top of that.
8gb is quickly becoming unworkable for people that fall closer to the latter group.
That's computing, not web browsing. And on not so great platform than that.
MS Office has already stopped updating, along with some other software (though not much, most still updates without issues). As long as Firefox keeps receiving updates for my system, most things will be fine.
Looks like the only issue with your MacBook Air is there may be some metal issues. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/issues/1...
If those don't look like a problem for you, I'd definitely suggest giving it a try. MacOS 13 should give you at least 3 more years of use out of it.
Going beyond MacOS 13 I don't think is worth it. MacOS 14 is noticeably slower on my 2010 iMac, and there aren't any new features it can take advantage of anyways.
Apple Intelligence isn't it - it's just playing catch-up with a market that tries to slap AI onto everything it can think of.
The hardware upgrades are always nice but there's nothing 'out there' like a touch bar or even a 'dynamic island'. Just more safe iterations.
And why did Apple do all this? To increase the Average Selling Price ("ASP") of Macs. That's literally it.
the new M4 Macbook Air for $999 is incredible value and that's what I want the Air to be: a good compromise of power and price. For example, the 12" Macbook made too compromises to be just a little bit thinner.
I recall the amount of hate touch bar got on HN and everyone asking Apple to revert back to building normal machines (which they did with Macbook Pro).
They should have added the touch bar, not replacement the F keys with it.
Hence, innovation. Now you just get risk-averse updates that offer little reason to upgrade from previous models.
It's even better on the 2019+ models when they brought back the escape key.
I would agree that the added expense of that oled touchscreen isn't worth it tho. The M series Macs often go on sale at pretty large discounts (seemingly even more than the Intel Macs), and removing the oled touchscreen and the T2 chip that controlled it probably contributes to that.
Before this laptops were simply things that were small enough that you could carry one from point A to point B, but they were still effectively tethered to a wall and desk for any non-trivial usecases.
The only thing I'd want is something that'd make it last even longer like waterproofing the top keyboard layer.
Of course iPods became very popular because they put it all in a package that gave it a UX that non-nerds wanted to use. The flash drive style MP3 players… had tiny capacities, they had to be “managed” by the users. iPods, just dump your whole hard drive on the thing. That solid state memory is much better in a mobile device… I mean, my Sandisk player, I’ll give it an A+ on reliability. C- on capacity. Apple always gets a B in every field.
Their next thing was supposed to be VR. But nobody could find an application for VR, so Apple’s gimmick of taking something with a perfect idea and making a copy that is almost as good at the thing it does right, but which doesn’t have any massive downsides, didn’t work.
They are in a tough spot now, the tech sector seems to have lost its dreamers and so nobody is making these A+/C- devices for them to level out.
Of course, the VR thing is a remarkably well engineered thing nobody needs.
Last time people cried for Apple to innovate they added the touch bar to laptops. Computers (and phones) are a mature product category where I don't want innovation, I just want them to be functional.
That seems like a pretty big deal to me?
Extrapolating your personal experience to all use cases is generally a bad idea.
I think a macbook with a much better front facing camera would be good, teleconferencing is a multiple times a day use case for us. They did an in-between with the system that allows you to use your iphone camera(s) which do support more wide angles, but that doesn't work on my current work laptop as it's locked down and I'd have to lock down my personal iphone as well if I want the two to connect.
I ended up having to disable almost the whole bar to keep it from happening, just fill it with "blank" zones.
I also can't reliably drag-n-drop with force-sensitivity turned on for the touchpad, so there's another "innovation" I have to turn off. I don't even have, like, dexterity issues or a disability or something, but it makes it so damn fiddly that my drag-n-drops drop too early about half the time.
Ah maybe RISC-V! Wouldn't that be fun
It’s fan-less design, so how does it compare with MacBook Pros with same M chips?
Does it throttle often? Can you have it comfortably on your lap in summer? Or unless you’re running 1-hour long 4K rendering or machine learning training sessions - you’d never notice?
UPDATE: what I am getting at - if you are developer and don’t care about screen or battery differences - should you go for same spec macbook pro instead of same spec macbook air.
If you are doing normal developer things, the MacBook Air is 100% fine. I use mine daily (M3 Air 13in, 24GB RAM), it handles Rails + Postgres, it handles JS (Next.js + React), it handles Flutter (for desktop and mobile), it handles IntelliJ and RubyMine and DataGrip, it handles Android Studio and Xcode for iOS apps -- including Android/iPhone software emulators. I can load up large Docker projects with 12+ containers, totally fine. I occasionally play with LM Studio, no issues.
Under all of the above, no throttling, no heat issues, works fine on laps, etc. Half the time, it's barely warm to the touch.
---
The only time it gets hot for me, is running the CPU + GPU max'd out hard, for long periods of time. If I try to run FF14 or Warframe via Crossover/Codeweavers for an hour or two, for example, it gets warm and throttles a bit. (Still works, no crashes, no issues, but it does get warm and throttle).
99%+ of developers are fine with a MacBook Air.
I eventually got the M1 Air for serious ocaml and rust development and found it would get quite toasty (tho never concerning) during big compile/test cycles, but generally only over several dozen seconds of full load.
I upgraded to a 14” pro with an M2 Max and am reasonably happy with it and think it was an important upgrade for my productivity. In daily use, fans kick in rarely but when needed for a speciality job like TLA model checking, they can reject a lot of heat (= performance margin). Of course it would be nice if it weighed less (mine is 1.8kg after including a case), but as a side benefit the machine can play games (even emulated x86 ones inside Parallels!) so it’s hard to say I’m worse off than my previous status quo of VSCode remoting into my big Linux desktop :)
I also do a lot of AI + Audio stuff, and it gets somewhat warm but not as much as when compiling heavy stuff.
Nothing else seems to make it sweat. Just games and presumably mining Bitcoin or other very intensive tasks.
Devs/Gamers should always go for a Pro machine.
The laptop never got hot, game never stuttered (beyond NMS glitching engine which exists on windows too). Slight bit of increased warmth, but my phones gotten hotter browsing bloated websites.
I don’t blame Microsoft for looking at bailing on consoles. iPhones will be more powerful in a couple more cycles.
I’ll try to replicate the test with an M3 13” vs the 15” touchbar intel. Don’t have my MBPs at work.
Depends on how much you care about the last bit of performance and how often you expect running into throttling. In my experience, it takes the M2 Pro multiple minutes of full load before the fan starts. I do a lot of Rust programming on smaller projects and I think the air would have been fine for me. Compilation takes at most a few minutes on the first run. For doing larger projects like LLVM, the pro is a better option. MLIR took 10 minutes to compile each time I pulled in new commits on main. Then throttling becomes an issue.
Struggle as in the build takes 3+ mins
In general though it's cool, maybe when charging it gets warm but I use it on a desk mostly
A general gripe I have switching devices is the keyboard layout ha cmd+c vs. ctrl+c
Stick to an ext keyboard I guess
Edit: 16GB RAM is what I have I sometimes get the "out of application memory" message
Anyway I use my computer for freelancing/working on multiple platforms, it was a good buy (used), alternatively I could have went with a mini but that screen is so good on a mac (although I develop with an ultrawide external monitor).
It's basically the same without the fan noise, it's a lot cooler, and it seems to handle whatever tasks I throw at it just fine.
I would probably go with the Air if I was a project manager, development manager, or someone that did not have to do much work with code.
However, it is surprisingly functional and I don’t strictly need any additional ram, which was surprising to me.
Never noticed any thermal issues at all. It barely gets warm for me.
Make sure to get at least 16GB RAM.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/30/24270669/apple-macbook-p...
So if you’re not gaming nor have tons of UI windows open (since macOS UI is rendered with GPU) - you’ll never experience your M-series getting hot.
No complaints whatsoever.
Never heard the fan come on a single time with either machine while developing. Heat has never been an issue. Battery life is superb on both. Pro has better screen but is way heavier. Air is much nicer to bring to a cafe.
The only time I've ever heard the fan come on is when playing 3d games, especially non-native Apple Silicon games.
If I were getting one only for development, I'd get an Air. If it were meant to be a desktop replacement workstation for work and gaming and movies and such, then the Pro.
Both are easily more than fast enough for web dev. Not sure about other stacks (especially with heavy compiles or virtualization). I have a few services in Docker and that's fine (on both machines).
It's just so so much better than the shitty old Wintel days that I don't even worry about it anymore. Lightyears ahead of any ThinkPad or Latitude, etc.
It never gets hot to the touch either (which wasn't the case with my old ThinkPads, for example, or the Intel MacBook Pro I had immediately prior). Apple Silicon is just incredible and I don't think I can ever go back now.
Most 70 inch monitors are 4K, not 8k. The more recent models can do 120 Hz.
enjoy not having suspend, a webcam, a microphone... at that point it's just a useless paper weight.
just enjoy MacOS on it.
On the other hand, both using ChatGPT myself and the few usage figures they have released are very impressive.
So, I went ahead and bought a MacBook Pro myself, set up all corporate apps (since the company runs M365 and mostly SaaS apps), and everything works seamlessly. My productivity is great—I don’t have to deal with the frustrations of Windows.
Now, once a week, I power up the ThinkPad X1, install patches and updates, then shut it down. The rest of the time, it just sits in the corner collecting dust along with all my other older Intel based MacBooks.
Out of pocket couple of grand, but the boost in my ability to deliver work more than makes up for that.
At home when not at my desk I’ve been using screen share to remote in from the 2018 Air, this is the first time since 2018 I bought a new computer and it’s oddly nice having it not be a laptop, don’t have to worry about the precious built-in screen or keyboard.
Caveat may be if I wasn’t working remote perhaps it would be different but not sure, using the 2018 Air as a client for the M4 Pro has been pretty solid for my current purposes and it’s nice still having an Intel Mac for the edge case backwards compatibility development needs.
Whoops didn’t mean to make a blog post in here…
That is along with their recent upgrade which bump All Mac model to 16GB Baseline. In Apple's History, the M4 Mac mini and M4 MacBook Air are perhaps the best value for money in the entire History of Mac. I actually dont even record anything that came close.
i need more compute? using a saas solution i need more storage? tiny external ssd or cloud storage
the 8gigs of ram also aren't holding me back, i think most people just cry based on principle and would be fine with it in a double-blind test
I said I'd buy the next Air as long as it had 6GHz wifi support (6E, eventually 7) but now that it's out it's just not enough of an upgrade for me (a lot of money for 25% more RAM, CPU performance, and 6GHz wifi).
https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-M3,...
Looks like the only arguments for the M4 Air are:
- 32GB RAM option
- 2 more CPU cores
- 100GB/s vs 120GB/s memory bandwidth
There's a BTO 24GB RAM option.
And this is to finally replace my trusty 2025 MBPr. It's had an extremely good run. May this one also be a ten year laptop.
I think I’ll pass..
This really looks like an amazing computer if it can handle long IDEA hours on medium projects.
([1] These days my daily driver is an m1 mbp of some whizzbang 32gb variety, which only replaced the mba because my spouse wanted a travel machine and the mbp came for the low low cost of being caught in the late 2022 startup crash. For day to day ordinary backend dev work there really isn't a noticeable difference in my experience, except I guess the mbp is more awkward when working-from-couch. arm vs x86 was sometimes a little awkward around launch, but I can't remember the last time it was an actual hassle.)
That said, the fact that a 5 year old laptop with 8GB RAM is usable even for coding situations is astounding.
If Apple had made it clear they weren't gonna release a non-reflective screen for the Macbook air, I might've just kept the M3 or perhaps gotten the heavy Pro. Now I don't feel like getting any of these.
I know, I know, it doesn't feel nice to stick glass in front of it -- but seriously, try it. I didn't believe it at first, but it's great.
One concern is that adding a layer to the screen is not intended for the device, and it will scratch or touch for example the keys.
They started shifting production out of China several years ago.
For instance this 2023 news item.
> Apple is continuing to reduce its reliance on China for production of its most popular products, moving to India and Thailand for key manufacturing.
https://www.channelnews.com.au/apple-moves-iphone-macbook-pr...
Things have only accelerated since.
I don't think Apple has enough final assembly in Thailand or Vietnam yet. US-bound product should still coming from China unless I'm missing something here. I just wouldn't put too much faith in to a one year old article with no followup and then assume that things have actually been accelerating without anyone noticing. The most I could find is:
https://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/apples-production-stra...
I can't find anything at all on Thailand beyond hopeful articles.
I agree that this was initially the case, but China's zero Covid policy factory shutdowns led Apple (and others) to start moving production out of China in earnest.
India, for example, is now producing current generation iPhones for export, not just makung the cheaper variants for sale inside India.
> One of the biggest shifts in manufacturing has been reducing dependence on China. The magnitude of that move was reinforced today with news that India-made iPhone exports were said to have jumped by a third to nearly $6 billion in value in the six months to September.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-10-29/apple-...
Apple has been moving to shift a significant portion of manufacturing out of China for some time now.
> Apple Aims to Make a Quarter of the World’s iPhones in India
https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-aims-to-make-a-quarter-of-the...
13" M4 Air, 24GB, 512GB - £1,399
14" M4 Pro MBP, 24GB, 512GB - £1,779 at Costco.
For that you get amazing speakers, way better screen (with correct scaling), more performance, better chip, better battery, better mics, TB5 ports and HDMI/SD ports.
[EDIT] I looked up at settings. Mystery partially resolved: I manually changed the default setting one notch down to get perfect integer scaling, i.e. my Air is running at virtual 1440x932 resolution, which is exactly 1/2 of its native 2880x1864 matrix. The default setting, though, is 1710x1107, which is 19/32. That said, if I set it back to the default, I find that text is too small - probably why I changed it in the first place - but things still look pretty crisp otherwise.
Most interesting part of it.
Wonder if someone can verify this?
See the section headlined "Verifiable Transparency":
Also the air physically can't accomodate USB-A, ethernet, hdmi etc.
32 or 64 GB would have been really a bless, as much as setting the base model at 16GB instead of 8.
M4 can do two external displays with the laptop screen active as well.
In the base model. Finally.
I just brought 2 laptops in the last 12 months, so I'm not rushing to buy this, but it's a great deal for the typical person.
4: Testing conducted by Apple in January 2025 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 32GB of RAM, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics and 16GB of RAM, all configured with 2TB SSD. Tested using Super Resolution with Pixelmator Pro 3.6.14 and a 4.4MB image. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
What a garbage piece of marketing, I can't believe they posted this on their official website. I used to like Apple, but virtually everything they've done over the past few years has made me despise them more and more. Excited to ditch my iPhone.
"But they should compare to ancient laptops in case anyone is switching between these specific models!"
10 years from now I'll be reading the same justification for 200x speed increase benchmark.
Comparing it to a 6 year old laptop.
> Up to 2x faster than MacBook Air (M1)
Comparing it to a 5 year old laptop.
Love these comparisons.
It's great it resonates with you! Rather compelling to realize their target upgrade cycle is only every 5+ years instead of a 1 or 2 year treadmill.
- Larger display with higher resolution and DPI
- Brighter display (1000nits vs 500nits) with mini-LED backlight, local dimming, and HDR
- 120Hz display
- 24hr battery life vs 18hr
- Active fan cooling vs passive cooling
- 6 speakers vs 4 speakers
- 3 TB4/USB-C ports vs 2
- HDMI port
- SDXC card reader
https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-M4,...
The Pro is also fan cooled, but with Apple Silicon I’m not sure that matters all that much at this performance band. If you need fan cooled performance you probably want to start thinking about a Pro level SoC, at which point you’re all in on a Pro machine anyway.
All* software now has native Apple Silicon builds.
* Except abandonware**, of course, but Rosetta is so good you need not notice. That said, I personally recommend never triggering Rosetta which helps you avoid accidentally running legacy drivers etc.
** For some reason, including Steam's installer, even though the games it wraps are universal/native ARM.
Whether that's worth it for you - hard to say.
You can get a good deal on a refurbished or used M* MBP and try it out. My 2021 M1 Max MBP is still going strong; so strong I just can't justify a new one.
Biggest thing to note is how many external displays you want to drive. I got the M1 Max to drive my 2-4.
I agree that Apple Silicon has given Apple an additional leg up on the competition, even aside from the more-than-competitive price.
The M4 Air is A$1699 here, when you subtract the 10% GST (our prices include GST), that converts to US$967. So we're not even paying a premium (although Apple hedging against US tariffs may play a part).
But why on earth Apple, your logos are filled with masonic and Babylonian symbology? Apple intelligence? Reversed Babalon? Mother of abominations? Really? Enough of this Thelema Crowley bullshit already. You are insulting my intelligence. We are reasonably educated people in Eastern Europe.
You don't have enough intellectual capital to generate more adequate geometry? And what is the message here? You are summoning the demons? :)
5G on a laptop also hurts battery life.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/03/04/after-14-years-ap...
I mean I like Apple hardware, but I also prefer to run Linux.
I am pretty sure almost everyone will gladly trade the "thinness" for a few standard USB and HDMI ports.
I know it seems like a champagne problem but the Pro really can get annoyingly heavy when traveling and the Air is dreamy how light it is.
I think there’s a lot of people that want something as light and thin as possible to slip into your purse and take to the cafe.
I have never seen any instance where a laptop's thinness ended up factoring in ease of portability.
Technology makes progress. Do you want a COM port?
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