Apple MacBook Air M3

I'm a year and a half in and everything is running smooth. I still get a full workday out of the battery - and that's using Linux. That's plenty for me. It opens smooth. The keyboard is good - no deck flex. The screen is fine - even at only 300nits I don't need it brighter as I don't work in bright areas. I really really don't see how this won't last another 2 and half years or even more.

I’ve 128GB of memory in my laptop. But running models with LM studio turns the fans to 100 and isn’t as effective as the hosted models. So I’m not worried about ram. I’m hoping for a revolution or what comes after LLMs to see if local will be better.

Apple is not what it used to be… We see it in the hardware AND the software. It used to be: think different It used to be: It just works… Now we got “apple intelligence” and subscriptions all over the place and also the lock-in feels stronger over time. Don’t even get me started that one can’t easily replace the battery oneself. They gradually convinced us that reduced repairability is fine. I got my first MacBook Pro in 2006… things were quite different back then. Anyway, I’ve decided I wanted to get away from BigTech a while ago. Apple is the hardest part for me. They used to have this annoyance-free usability that I loved so much. iPhone Duo, Touchscreen on the Mac, liquid glass, visionPro, etc. are all valid things to go after and I don’t think these are bad things per se. But it is not what I care about. And clearly the focus has shifted away from the values I used to share with this company about what constitutes a good product. I took the hit on the ownership/control side because their products were so ‘seamless’. Now I hope the Framework and Fairphone (with eOS) have matured enough to not regret when I am getting off the Apple-train. I don’t expect a frictionless experience - it just has to be sufficiently annoyance-free. I’ll happily take some rough edges in exchange for greater control and ownership. “Unfortunately” their products are really sturdy and it will take a while until my M3 MacBookAir and iPhone 14 need to be replaced ^^

I got an M1 Max studio w/ 64gb when they first came out and I love it. Price was obviously a lot more reasonable at the time. I’m fortunate to have dedicated office space, and there is definitely a nice psychological effect to having a desktop in a specific spot and “going to the office”. I’ve since purchased an m3 MacBook Air as my thin client and for lightweight travel use, and when my wife needs to take a call in the office or whatever I pop out to the living room and either hop on Remote Desktop or SSH into my Studio. Highly recommend this setup. If you’re primarily doing thin client on a local network, a neo should be fine for that (and to use as a media player/communicator around the house). That said, I have been eyeballing Omarchy…

I was surprised when I bought my 'cheap, crappy' 2024 M3 Air ($1.3K) and it ran circles around my top-of-line last Intel MBP ($4.6K).

I get it. I wish there were more great laptop makers. I had a maxed out 16in M2 Max MacBook Pro, now I have an 15in M3 MBA. I also have a maxed out HP G1A Ultra running Fedora. They’re all excellent.

While not quite what you are saying here, I have found that I like usbc charging on my 15in m3 MacBook Air way more than its magsafe. The magsafe is always falling out as soon as I move the computer on and off my lap and is another cable that I can only use for one purpose. Nowhere near as good as it was back in the early 2010s macbook days...

Works well for me. I'm on desktop (Macbook Air M3) but have a decent amount of RAM

Works great on my M3 MacBook Air under Safari. GPU core temps got into the 130-160 degrees F. range. Fun demo!

It is literally the main reason I would purchase an Air (were I in the market — am not). 15" screen would be reason#2. There were several generations of Apple laptops that mysteriously didn't have MagSafe — I never bought one — very glad to see its return on my own M315MBAir.

I've got an M3 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and it runs Ableton and Serato so well I don't actually need a Pro anymore, so Mac may have shot themselves in the foot there.

I love my MacBook Air 15" M3 so much. It is large fast and light. While I really appreciate the improved M5, my main ask is actually a brighter screen. The current 500 nits is a bit low if you are ever not in a dark room. Anyhow, because the differences between my M3 and the new M5 are just the CPU/GPU and I am not actually hurt much by the current CPU speed, I won't be upgrading.

The MBA is an absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs. I use it (MBA 15" M3) with a large complex TypeScript code base, and it is fast and amazing at 24GB of ram or more.

I skipped the touchbar/buttery era, but before that the GPU/ballgate disaster plagued the MacBookPro lineup — pushed me away from Apple hardware for over decade! My vision has since gotten bad enough that I can't really use laptops/phones well , anymore — but recently got a 15" MacBookAir, M3 pre-Tahoe (for bedtime youtubies). The hardware is exceptional, battery life even more so ... and I'll never update the operating system.

If you place 1mm thermal pads between the sinks and the case, the CPUs/GPUs won't throttle as readily. At least for my M3 MBA (check your actual clearance). I replaced a MacPro5,1 with an M2Pro — which uses soooooo much less energy performing similarly mundane tasks (~15x+). Idle is ~25W v. 160W

Very large monitors are amazing. I’ve been rocking a single OLED 48” monitor for my MacBook Air M3. It is killer and I can not go back to smaller screen sizes. I just wish it was 6K or 8K instead of my current 4K. And if I do upgrade it will be to a 52/55”.

>I ditched MSFT stock a few years ago in favor of AMD I bought equal amounts of MSFT and AMD, about four years ago. Haven't touched any of the AMD, yet... and was thinking maybe I should sell it all (also don't like AI-integrated things, fellow Old Man)... but now that GPUs are so expensive I haven't pulled the trigger, yet. Until a few months ago, AMD had been break-even for my then-three-years of holding. >I am ditching is a 2006 Xeon dual core Mine is a 2009, and honestly was held together with patches/glue (not literally). Also very stable after boot-up, but boots were becoming 50/50. I migrated off of Xeons (as my main machine) Jan 2023, when Apple released their M2Pro "Silicon" models. I also got a 15" M3 Macbook Air. Both machines make great internet browsers. I hate modern macOS, but it is usable when you block apple/icloud (entirely), at the host level. No update nags, no cloud storage BS, no problems. All my serious writing/paperwork happens offline, on quite antiquated equipment (oldest being my Smith Corona c~1946). Very happily awaiting the return of in-person meetups, as generative AI video begins requiring such social connection.