Apple MacBook Air M1

How else would they get consoomers to keep buying? I am a dev with a m1 air 16gb and I have 0 reason to update yet, it's been 6 years now, laptops are solved for 90% of people, they need to introduce gimmicks to create demand

I've been on my M1 Air, 16GB, since a few weeks after launch, more than six years now. I still use it daily with lots of Docker containers, VS Code, tons of Electron apps, a small macOS arm VM, and lots of browser tabs simultaneously. Recently, Claude's VM environment is getting exercised simultaneously. Usually the memory pressure is into yellow, but responsiveness is still far higher than any Mac from the Intel days, and far more usable than any Windows laptop that I have the misfortune to experience when borrowing somebody else's computer. And despite all that memory pressure, my SSD isn't getting worn out by swapping, I'm at only "3%" of SSD wear, if those stats on the CLI are to be trusted. I'm not sure I'll need another computer anytime soon. Even though the kids jumped on it once when I left it on the couch for a few minutes, bending the case on one side of the keyboard. It bent back mostly flat. Gives it a bit of personality. Never before has $1099 (or whatever) of hardware gone so far for me.

Putting aside anything specific to Framework, this article really puts into perspective just how piss poor the laptop market is right now. Macs have fantastic hardware, but of course only really run macOS. The future of Asahi Linux is very questionable and, like the author, is not something I'm interested in relying on. I don't hate macOS by any means but I much prefer running Arch with Hyprland. PC laptop hardware is just shit in comparison. Like the author, my X1 Carbon (Gen 11) has keys that intermittently fail, and the cooling is pretty bad (I actually love the OLED display, though, and don't really understand the author's concerns here). I haven't found any non-Mac laptops that beat the X1 Carbon line, though (relatively low bar that it is). Frameworks are cool if you are fine with the tradeoffs, but personally I'm just not -- I much prefer to tinker with desktops/servers, and am totally fine with laptops being a physically-closed "appliance," as long as that results in great battery life, cooling, and adequate performance (I can always offload heavy tasks to my desktop if need be). Which is all to say: what I want is Mac equivalent hardware that can reliably run Linux. For now, I've landed on using my extremely beefy Arch desktop when at home, and my M1 MacBook Air (which is still running great 5 years on) when mobile. Even accepting that I'll be using an Apple device when mobile, though, there's still room for improvement in this setup: I'd love LTE support (no, a hot…

5+ years for home users and systems administrators. I have a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, it's fine for everything I need. The only issue is, as other points out, the external monitor issue. Only one monitor, and certainly no daisy chaining of displays.

My 2014 got a little screwy around 2022 and eventually wifi stopped working entirely (I suspect battery swelling putting pressure on something) but if not for that I'd still be using it. Hell, I probably could have gotten it fixed, though I'd prefer to put that money toward another machine that'll last me 8+ years. 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)

Comparing the UK prices, my M1 256gb macbook air cost me £915 four years ago and the new equivalent is £879 or 4% less. It's nice but I wouldn't say "Apple Is Going Nuts."

I know Windows laptops are very finicky and unreliable. For example, loads of people complain that $3000 Razer laptops break after a few months. I guess I'm mostly talking about Apple overall. You're paying a lot more money for self-repairability. Frameworks are generally more expensive than Macs, sometimes 50% - 100% more expensive for a similar laptop. That's crazy. Macs are tanks. Not a single issue with my 4 year old M1 Air. Even if there is an issue, I can still take it to an Apple Store to get it looked at.

I bought a MBA M1 in 2021 (replacing a 2015 MBP) and it's really a nice machine, but the OS is not as nice. I'm running Fedora Silverblue on 2 other computers and while Gnome is not as polished, the whole ecosystem actually let you adapt it to your workflow, which macOS does not. I don't really use a lot of pro software for non-programming tasks, so I don't miss them. Flatpak and GTK based applications are more than OK for the majority of tasks I have to do. And for the rest, it's easy to write some scripts. The main pros for me were no annoyances from corporate headquarters (pushing whatever services) and sensible configuration choices.

It’s amazing how the M1 Air aged, that is, not at all! I got one in a similar time and I haven’t felt the need to upgrade once. I’ll never stop complaining about how macOS is a subpar experience for software development, but the hardware is still, after 4 years, unmatched. I literally can’t buy a similarly well working windows or Linux laptop.

> They're literally the same chips. At what grade? Plus, how much extra endurance is baked in to Apple's drives, i.e. how over-provisioned are they? My MacBook Air M1 reports 99% health after being daily driven (and some 26TB written to it) at work since 2020 (we got these as soon as they introduced), and I don't baby its drive in any way.

I'm still very happy with my 8GB Air M1 as well. It's incredible how well it still works for a 4 year old entry level laptop. I see all these new M's come out, and I'm sure they're fantastic, but I'm not at all tempted to upgrade.

Exact same boat here. A friend and I both bought the 2020 Intel MBA thinking that the M1 version was at least a year out. It dropped a few months later. I immediately resold my Intel MBA seeing the writing on the wall and bought a launch M1 (which I still use to this day). Ended up losing $200 on that mis-step, but no way the Intel version would still get me through the day. That said...scummy move by Apple. They tend to be a little more thoughtful in their refresh schedule, so I was caught off guard.

I have not heard anything about SSD issues from my friends in the IT department who service hundreds of laptops… Personally I’m still running an M1 MacBook Air which has been bulletproof for almost 4 years now. Before that I ran a 12” MacBook for 5 years. My last problem with a Mac laptop was in the 17” PowerBook days, circa 2010 (I suspect the case flexed and damaged the logic board)

I spent $1700 or so on my M1 Air not too long after they were released. A ThinkPad X1 Carbon would have cost me more money for massively worse performance. Quality costs more. The difference is that a 4800U would be looking pretty bad vs a HX370 while the M1 still looks decent 4 years later (especially when that HX370 is unplugged).

Got my M1 in 2020 when it first launched and was drawn by the 15 inch air due to the screen real estate, but have literally no other reason to replace it. Couldn't say the same for any other 4 years old laptop.

Yeah, exactly this. I'm still on a nearly 4-year-old 16GB M1 MacBook Air. I'm coding SwiftUI, cutting 4K video, and using local 7B models. If I could spec an M4 MacBook Air up to 32GB of RAM, and it was better with local models, I would strongly consider it, but man… this M1 is still more than enough.

My M1 is still fine after 3 years of usage, being dropped from 1m+ by my cat, and being sat on (while in a backpack though).

>> So if framework can let you reuse the "shell" for 2-3 upgrade cycles I badly want the framework laptop idea to succeed - the idea of re-using your old laptop battery as a battery bank when you upgrade, that's just brilliant. The idea of taking your old motherboard and sticking it in a slim case that bolts to the vesa mount on the back of your monitor, beautiful. However, it's far more expensive that just buying a MacBook. I bought the base model M1 Air for £999 at launch. I just sold it, what's this, 3 years later, with 90% battery life remaining for £600 plus shipping, after eBay & paypal's cut I'm £537. That's £462 for 3 years of having faster single core / interactive responsiveness than anything else at comparable price on the market. How much more would I have had to pay over a similar time frame for a slower heavier framework with much much less battery life. I considered the framework for this laptop cycle but instead I just traded up to a second hand 16" M1 Pro/16Gb/1Tb with 16 cycles count on the battery - i.e. brand new. Sure it's 25% slower than the equiv £2800 M2 Pro version but this cost me just £1500 delivered in pristine condition. I'm feeling very confident I'm going to come out ahead again in total cost of ownership.