This is the best laptop for the general consumer around $1k.
- it has no annoying fans, it is completely silent
- a high res display with no PWM flickering and reasonable response times, no burn-in issues, enough brightness for outdoor use
- best-in-class hardware, very very efficient, amazing single thread performance, good multi thread, very good GPU
- no Microsoft Windows annoyances, ads, bloatware, broken stuff all the time
- much better real world performance on battery than x64 processors (!). you can get reasonable perf by setting Intel/AMD CPUs to high perf, but then goodbye battery life and get ready for very loud fans. this is simply a point not emphasized enough, the real world battery perf of Intel/AMD laptops is very sluggish on default power modes and despite that, they consume more battery than the M5
- amazing battery life
- good workmanship, no creaking, good hardware overall (mics, webcam, keyboard, touchpad!)
- very good speakers
> I wish it was different
Amen to that, my keyboard on my m1 air recently failed. I was horrified to find out it is literally riveted to the frame. I got this close to buying a new one. Something annoyed me about this perfectly good laptop being rendered compltely useless and I ended up buying a replacement keyboard, ripping out the old one and shimming this one with paper. Its not perfect but here I am typing from it.
But you are 100% right, there is just nothing better on the market. The gap is so big.
The riveting sounds, as you say, horrifying. Congrats on making it your own again.
It’s still remarkable to me that it’s even possible to do it at all. The amount of tech and miniaturization crammed into that thing — it would be easier for them to rivet, weld, and glue every part, and cheaper. And if the build quality weren’t so high to begin with, it wouldn’t have withstood the repair at all.
A good friend has a Framework, and it’s cool as hell, but incredibly primitive compared with your M1.
"it has no annoying fans"
I beg to differ ;)
- thermal throttling under sustained heavy load, though apparently there is the possibility to add thermal pads to get rid of throttling, probably at the expense of comfort
- no Linux support
Otherwise I agree, it is a wonderful machine. I'd replace my crappy thinkpad if I could.
My 2014 Air is still going strong for light web browsing and terminal use.
> thermal throttling under sustained heavy load
This gets mentioned a lot, but I do quite a bit of dev work on my M4 MBA and have never even felt it get warm. Sustained heavy loads are extremely rare with how quick this thing is.
And the fact that there is no annoying fan noise ever is just priceless.
With the way most consumer laptops have their fan curves set, you open a new web page and get an annoying ramp up. It is not just a hardware thing, but mostly a self inflicted wound of having a fan curve that is way too aggressive.
How long are your compile times?
Fairly short, I'm a Go developer generally working with terraform and microservices. I'd expect some throttling if you're doing 3+ minute compiles, I think. But I think the problem is overblown by the tech video reviewer population that regularly does extremely intensive workloads.
I wouldn't call my personal project "heavy load", but I have a cross-platform C++ project that I am developing on both a Windows gaming PC and a 2020 M1 macbook air.
I use clang to compile on both machines. The M1 mac has noticeably faster compile times.
If only it didn't have to run OSX.
Yeah, I am not a huge fan either. I would much prefer Linux or a very customized Windows.
For instance, the inability to write to NTFS filesystems without addons is annoying.
But I believe that for most users, the default MacOS experience is now much better than what Windows is with default settings.
On my Mac is is beachball… beachball… beachball… reboot… beachball… beachball… beachball.. you’d have thought somebody gets paid to make me watch the beachball for how much it happens. And this is a top of the line M4 mini with maxed out RAM and everything.
I had forgotten that mac has a beachball cursor. Something’s wrong on your macbook. (M4 max here)
What am I supposed to do, drive 300 miles to the nearest Genius Bar?
What would you do if your non-Apple computer was having performance issues?
I'd say this. I haven't had a Windows desktop computer with serious problems since 2007.
I had a long string of Windows laptops that were basically OK from maybe 2013 to 2023 except for problems with USB that got progressively worse over time (for each machine.) I think some of them were were real hardware problems but I think also the USB 3 spec doesn't guarantee that you can plug in very many devices and have it work, it depends on the PCIe architecture inside the machine. That "ding" sound when a USB device disconnects from windows has traumatized me and I've turned it off anywhere where I can because it is like a gunshot to a Vietnam vet.
I found very little literature about other Windows laptops users facing these problems but endless posts by AppleCare frequent fliers who seem to spend their lives at the Genius Bar and getting their old defective laptops replaced with new defective laptops, I think Windows users just expect it to be all screwed up.
For a long time Windows has struggled with processes that suck down a lot of resources at boot time. At home it is things that do software updates and saturate my 2x20Mbps internet connection. At work it is the backup program that saturates my Ethernet.
What have you tried?
Mostly getting stuff done on the Windows machine in the next room or playing music off a different stereo or playing music on cassette tape or minidisc on the same stereo, etc. It's easier to fall back to a world of 20th century electronics where latency is imperceptible than it is to dive into a world of third-party apps that were all designed around somebody's inscrutable KPIs but didn't consider at all my convenience or inconvenience. Probably it is Creative Cloud updating or some software for the mouse or some kind of crap and if I sat in front of the machine for 30 minutes it might settle down but it's rare that I sit in front of it for 30 minutes. It used to be that kind of thing wrecked the Windows experience but over a long period of time Microsoft did a lot of work to balance to load of startup processes and mostly you don't feel it.
My wife browses the web a lot on that Mac, she hasn't complained since I installed Firefox + uBlock Origin but maybe she expects it to be slow.
My 128GB RAM M3 Max had logic board replaced 3x and I am still getting beachball alongside screen falling apart in blocks... There is something wrong with their firmware, especially when you are switching between multiple users often.
I think user switching is part of the problem in my case.
Base m4 Mac mini. Only beach balling is when I saturate 16GB with compiles and builds. That thing of yours is a lemon.
Lemons do happen with Apple Silicon.
I had a Mac Studio that would kernel panic on a semi-weekly basis. Apple Care put me through the reinstall OS / remove all external devices tap-dance for weeks, insisting that hardware was the last thing to suspect - before Apple Silicon, kernel panics were almost always hardware, particularly RAM.
Ultimately I bought another Studio and swapped it in - kernel panics went away. With that evidence, Apple acknowledged the problem and exchanged my Studio for another one from the factory. I returned the swap unit within the 30 day window, so it didn't cost me anything but annoyance.
My problem was simply chrome so I switched to brave.
How many Electron apps are you running?
WTF are you doing with it? Mine doesn't do that (M4 Pro MBP / 24Gb)
Try to browse the web. Try to listen to music with Plexamp. Ordinary boring stuff but I think it is looking all over Slovakia for my AirPods or something so it can take them away from whatever machine I really want to use them on.
The feeling is exactly like the way it was with Windows circa 2005 when you expected your machine to go bad like cheese in a few months.
Are you sure yours isn't broken? My daughter has an M4 and she does hefty biochem stuff on it. No beachballing or anything. Same with my M4 Pro.
Also airpods move instantly here. No issues.
Eventually Asahi will catch up... if Apple doesn't turn around and purposely make it harder, hopefully we didn't just get lucky they were feeling "benevolent" with earlier M-series.
I believe they'll make it easier, actually. With this hardware at these prices, if they offered BootCamp again for Linux and Windows, they'd basically own the market almost overnight.
I’ll add that MacOS is crammed with spammy ads for Apple Music and other services I don’t want. To be fair somebody wants Apple Music whereas the Microsoft versions of those things are completely unwanted.
Ads and nags in the Windows World are drawn using the same HTML-based technology that has replaced Windows native apps since Windows 8, the ads and nags in MacOS are the 2025 anti-antialiased retreads of the 1999 MacOS X imitations of the modal dialogs from 1984 MacOS classic. It’s sad. When I set up a new Mac for my wife she was furious at how ad infested it was, especially to browse the web with Safari and if you want to add an ad blocked you need an Apple Account which is something she’s done without using macs for 20+ years.
Just wait til she jumps on a windows 11 device!
But I do agree with you. Thankfully it is minimal relative to windows.
If this one is anything like the previous ones, ThinkPad is still beating it in the keyboard department.
Plus you get x86_64 and vendor support for Linux.
X13 is probably the best equivalent in Lenovo's line.
How’s ACPI and real suspend (not that “fake” soft suspend) these days? I’m still burned after running Linux on a laptop since 2002 and not having proper power management for suspend :(
… if it’s not the power layer, it’s the network, video, Bluetooth that won’t power up anymore after a nap
> very good speakers
All of the above is true but this, actually, is not entirely: they use a lot of DSP. If you try the same speakers with regular Fedora Asahi with no DSP profile (i.e. vanilla sound), they're very mediocre and do not handle bass well. So, like with many aspects of Apple hardware, this is an example of their software/firmware complimenting the hardware.
Plus a touch pad that uses all available space and allows clicks on any part of the touchpad surface.
I prefer the Dell Rugged line or Thinkpads, since a single water droplet on the keyboard is enough to kill this laptop.
???
I do dishes with an MBP next to the sink. I wouldn't put it under the faucet, but it's ~fine so far.
I wouldn't if I were you. Indeed there's a membrane that can keep drops away from electronics, but one big drop will find a way eventually. Doesn't even have to be a spill. Macs are infinitely fragile actually, there is zero effort spent on moisture or even dust intrusion.
Did this happen to you? I was under the impression that a tiny spill was no longer fatal for Mac laptop keyboards. I've seen it happen a few times and be fine, but maybe the people I knew were just lucky?
The new Apple keyboard seems to fix itself. Once my command key had fallen down. It actually fixed itself somehow. I think it’s got whatever miracle metal snaps back into shape in there. And my kid has been using my old laptop and leaving crumbs; when a crumb gets under the key you feel it, but just press it in and destroy the crumb and the key is fine.
I remember the old keyboard because I got so sick of it I snapped the laptop in half in a rare fit of disgust (I was under a lot of stress at the time).
Overall, Apple blew it out of the park, and I happily forgive the earlier problems. Now I hope that Tahoe is just some kind of planned demolition phase before they introduce a totally new unsurpassable stable OS.
The last 3 dells at work, all high end precision/pro max machines, have lasted 9 months before failing completely. No thanks.
I hate thinkpads. I was a traveling consultant for nearly a decade. I had three thinkpads and two completely broke within 2 years. The third was ok but when replaced with a MacBook pro I became an apple convert.
I'm glad the air now comes standard with 16GB of RAM and 512GB disk space.
It's not that the M1 with 8/256GB was slow at all, but even browsing the web gets into 12GB of usage and exhausting the 256GB is fairly easy if you backup your 256GB phone, try to edit a few videos, download enough Gradle/Go/Cargo/Node packages, or install enough 20GB office apps.
Any apple silicon with 16GB / 512GB of stage (even the M1 series) should have a much longer useful life and avoid disk/storage aging as rapidly from the constant swapping.
Where does it stop? Of course having a bit more room does not hurt, but my view is that if 256GB was not enough for you, 512GB wouldn't be either.
To me it's mostly about learning to mange RAM and storage space on your machine. A lot of stuff does not need to be hoarded on the machine. Move infrequently accessed data to an external drive. Be ruthless about purging stuff you no longer really need. Refuse to run apps that consume tens of GBs of RAM on a whim (looking at you Firefox, I've been impressed with how efficient and stable the Helium browser has been for me). If you are a developer, engineer for efficient use of RAM and storage.
Like I said, 16gb RAM and 512GB storage minimum is nice, but if the fundamental issues that contribute to massive and wasteful use of resources on our machines are not addressed, nothing will be enough.
>Where does it stop?
I don't know but macOS is making it ever more difficult to manage storage, with lots of random things under "macOS" pushing ~40GB or "System Data" that gets a crapload of unrelated things like podcast [1] downloads, with no easy way to purge.
[1] I spent too much time hunting down ~250GB of missing disk space, and it turns out it was the Podcasts app's cache, while the app itself reported no downloads. I fully expected this to be managed automatically, but was getting out of disk space warnings. It's a mess.
I think 512GB is a fair minimum for a computer these days, but I agree with your "Where does it stop?" sentiment when it comes to RAM.
If browsing the web takes 12GB of RAM, at what point do we stop chasing after more RAM and instead start demanding better performance and resource usage out of the web?
From observing family members, 256GB is usually fine, but small enough that normal computer use can accidentally fill it up. 512GB provides plenty of headroom for them. 512GB is tight for more involved usage that’s not serious media creation, and 1TB is comfortable. 1TB seems like the realistic minimum for heavier media creation.
This is also just the direction that AI is taking us, even for people who wouldn't describe themselves as traditional developers.
Setting aside on-device LLMs, one needs RAM and disk space just for the multiple isolated Claude Cowork etc. VMs that will increasingly become part of people's everyday lives.
And when it's easier than ever to create an Electron app, everything's going to have an Electron app, with all the RAM/disk overhead that entails. And of course, nobody's asking their agents "optimize the resource usage of the app I made last week" - they're moving on to the next feature or project.
I suppose the demoscene will always be there, for those of us who increasingly need a refuge from ram-flation.
Can I just lean on my cane for a second, and say that the first machine I connected to a network had 256KB RAM, and I considered myself lucky to have so much. My 150 baud modem downloaded text slower than I could read it.
I know how we got to these large numbers. Shit, I helped build the road. It still blows my brains out.
Lets be real, the fact that the Air is good for developers is.. honestly, great.
But these devices are meant for home users.
Not a tremendous amount of home users having huge gradle/go/cargo/node packages in my experience.
The backup problem is real, I'm surprised Apple doesn't come out with a new time capsule (edit: for phones/tablets)- but I guess they want that sweet iCloud services dollar.
maybe I’m forgetting all the benefits of time capsule but you can plug any old storage device into a Mac now and turn it into a “Time Machine.“ It’s pretty turnkey at this point. What would a modern time capsule offer besides maybe remote back ups?
oh no, absolutely- apologies for the confusion.
Time "Machine" on MacOS continues to work (though it's clearly not as important to Apple as it once was).
The issue is: if you want to back up a phone: it will take space from your laptop and it must be tethered to do the backup. This means that if you have a 1TiB phone, like I do, you need at least 1TiB of local disk on your laptop to be able to do a single backup if the phone is anywhere near full.
This is in contrast to how Time Capsule works right now for MacOS, whereby you have an SMB share (like, a 100+TiB NAS) and your laptop will just back itself up when it can.
Such a feature would be pretty killer on iPhones/iPads, or having a "photo server" to offload your photos... idk, but Apple won't do it.
That’s a really good point.
I'm excited about this. The previous generation base model 15" Air was good enough for our company to make it the default computer for everyone. Previously we were giving out base model MBP's. And they're $1000 cheaper.
Today, the MBP is just way too powerful for anything other than specific use cases that need it.
Yes, back 10-15 years ago MBP felt more prosumer to me but they have monstrous performance and price points nowadays, like true luxury items or enterprise devices, that I'm happy to see good base specs on the MBA. The base spec on that device matters a lot. Also, Apple will probably release a cheaper MacBook this week and if the rumor holds, it'll be good enough for most consumers.
Out of curiosity, what are some good use cases for a MBP now with the MBAs being so powerful?
I can think of things like 4K video editing or 3D rendering but as a software engineer is there anything we really need to spend the extra money on an MBP for?
I'm currently on a M1 Max but am seriously considering switching to an MBA in the next year or two.
> Out of curiosity, what are some good use cases for a MBP now with the MBAs being so powerful?
Local software development (node/TS). When opus-4.6-fast launched, it felt like some of the limiting factor in turnaround time moved from inference to the validation steps, i.e. execute tests, run linter, etc. Granted, that's with endpoint management slowing down I/O, and hopefully tsgo and some eslint replacement will speed things up significantly over there.
I’ve hit limitations of M1 Max pros all the time (generally memory and cpu speeds while compiling large c++ projects)
Airs are good for the general use case but some development (rust, C++) really eat cores and memory like nothing else.
What are your specs?
That does seem to fit the bill though of being more of a niche use case for which MBPs will be best suited for going forward.
Seems like most devs who are not on rust/c++ projects will be just fine with an Air equipped with enough memory.
Because you can buy it with 32GB of unified RAM, the MBP is now actually the cheapest device for something... useful local AI models!
I have noticed something similar. With the computer science undergrads and grad students I work with, Air is much more common than with the premeds and med students, many of whom have MBPs (who I am presuming do not need that much power).
I think its because compsci people know what they need to a greater degree than other majors. It's easier to upsell a computer to someone who doesn't really know about computers.
It could also be possible that compsci kids have a powerful desktop at home, or are more savvy with university cloud computing, for any edge cases or computationally expensive tasks.
I use vscode's tunnel from my MacBook Air to my Archlinux desktop a lot.
The MacBook Air has ~16 GiB RAM. The Desktop has 128 GiB, and a lot more processing power and disk space.
It’s possible that their departments give them computer recommendations that exceed what they actually need.
I’m not sure why this happens or who formulates these recommendations, but I’ve seen it before with students in fields that just don’t do much heavy duty computation or video editing being told to buy laptops with top-of-the-line specs.
I think there is a tendency to simply give in and buy bigger hardware if something doesn't work. With friends and family, I sometimes feel like having to talk them off the roof with regards to pulling the trigger on really expensive (relative to the tasks they're doing) hardware, simply because performance is often abysmal due to the fact that they trashed their OS with malware and bloatware and whatnot and can't understand all of that.
It's the same at work, to some degree. Our in-house ERP software performs like kicking a sack of rocks down a hill. I don't know how often I had to show devs that the hardware is actually idle and they're mostly derailing themselves with DB table locks, GC issues and whatnot. If I weren't pushing back, we probably would have bought the biggest VMs just to let them sit idle.
I have an M3 8gb air and it' mostly fine, unless I have a node server running or similar. Otherwise it's not very different to my M4 16gb iMac
I've no idea what the storage is on either of them, I've never looked. The days of needing storage are behind me, personally
I have a 16GB/512GB Air M1 (2020) because I knew I would need the extra space but this really makes me happy. A new Air, higher headroom, M5, is awesome. It’s not a MBP but it’s good enough for 95% of the daily stuff. If you aren’t running local agents this would be amazing.
Even with the $100 price bump, I think this is a win. 16/512 is a very nice base spec on Mac.
The one thing that interests me most when it comes to laptops these days is weight. So I jumped right into the tech specs section and looked it up. Since this is the "Air" laptop of the company that is popular for thin and lightweight devices, my hopes were high.
But ...
The 13 inch version is heavier than a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Which has a 14 inch screen and can run Linux.
I bought a ThinkPad X1. Had to send it back for repairs three times in the first year, including a complete motherboard replacement, and it died again immediately after the warranty expired. Been a $2800 door stop since then. The case is flimsy plastic that gets beat to crap easily. The trackpad is over-sensitive in all the wrong ways which makes it hard to use as an actual laptop. Plus it's weaker and slower than an Air. Also unbearably loud and unbearably hot.
I don't like Apple as a company and I don't particularly like MacOS, but no one except Apple makes a laptop worth a damn.
Not my experience in the slightest, after two decades of personal thinkpads and around 20 issued to my team.
Also if you'd just spent that extra 120 bucks for the 3 year onsite warranty, you'd have a lenovo technician replacing your motherboard at a location of your choice the next working day.
Was it a Gen 1 device? I bought a Thinkpad X13 Gen 1 many years ago and it kept having blue screens from RAM errors and other problems. Eventually after many warranty attempts and motherboard replacements they sent me a new X13 Gen 4. This has been running Ubuntu with no problems for 4 years now, it might be more a "lemons" phenomenon than a general rule. Also, AFAIK, the case is metal with a "soft-touch" coating.
The Apple ARM processors are still in a league of their own but personally I'm not willing to give up my OS freedom of choice for that advantage.
I have an X1 Carbon 2023. It's pretty solid, the only complaint I have is once the CPU usage is over 10% the fan starts running full blast.
I also bought a ThinkPad X1 back in 2015. Used it for 9 years with no issues at all. I installed Linux on it last year and still use it.
why did you create a throwaway account for this
Maybe they work for Apple
The Air is going to run laps around the X1, in literally every benchmark you can come up with besides "its not open source". I have that same processor in a much bulkier thinkpad and it thermal throttles instantly doing basic office multi-tasking, with the fan running constantly.
Also its made out of metal.
The X1 Carbon is getting updated to Panther Lake, and Panther Lake is getting competitive with the M5.
> in literally every benchmark you can come up
Nope, Panther Lake will win most gaming benchmarks. The M5 will win most others but not by "running laps around" levels.
At what power envelope? Intel chips can compete with M series chips, but usually at way higher power, which means fans running like a jet engine.
Similar power envelope. It depends on the laptop of course, but many Panther Lake laptops score comparably on battery life tests in reviews.
Thinkpads have track points, macs don't.
That benchmark is really important to me due to RSI. Track points save me a buttload of hand pain.
interesting, I had to stop using my trackpoint because it was giving me rsi in my index finger. the track pad hasn't given me any issues.
Ever since the T450 the trackpoint has been awful.
Can't replace the nob anymore either, as the convex knob was arguably the best
What basic office tasks are that?
The last time I was excited about the performance of local computers was in the 90s I think.
Modern laptops are so insanely fast. Not sure if they are 2x, 10x or 100x faster than I need them to be. But I never hear fans. I never have to wait for the machine these days.
Have you used a MacBook as a daily driver since the M chips came out?
No. I'm looking to get one with 64GB memory for local AI models. The worry is the keyboard experience on the MBA isn't as good as the MacBook Pro.
The keyboard and touchpad experience are nearly identical between the two... not nearly as good as old IBM Thinkpads used to be, but that's a trade with IMO the much better touchpad experience on Mac.
That said, I just don't think I can keep buying Apple hardware, just not a fan of the company... I only begrudgingly use Android as there isn't a reasonable, more open option.
I'll probably stick with my M1 air for personal use a couple more years then pass it on. My daughter is still using my now 13yo rMBP with 16gb/512gb. I wish the ram and storage upgrades on mac weren't so overpriced.
At current rates they aren’t overpriced at all. Frankly I’m surprised we didn’t see a big increase in cost with this generation.
Apple has their supply lines locked in a few years ahead of time... they likely won't see downward pressure for a couple years still. Not that they might not still take advantage... though downward sales pressure is a trade off too.
I’ve used both extensively and there’s very little difference in the keyboards between an Air and a Pro.
The difference in displays (Pro much brighter) and size/weight (Air much lighter) are much more significant considerations, IMO.
It has always been like this. Apple's signature for their laptops is their aluminium body and people seem to like it.
I like the aluminum body a lot. I'm not particularly clumsy, but each of my macbooks ends up with some fall damage at some point over the 5+ years that I have it.
When I used to be assigned a plastic Dell work laptop, I dropped one onto the carpeted floor of my office because I thought it was going into my padded sleeve of backpack and that cracked the case, and broke the screen. I've accidentally yoinked my MBA (last intel one they made) off my desk, and while it dented the body of it, nothing broke. That is now my drum computer, and it gets regularly pelted with drumsticks when my grip tires.
Unfortunately dropping your laptop once in 5 years actually does make you too clumsy for a plastic laptop.
As someone clumsy, I'm so grateful that my MacBook Air can take a beating. It has one slight dent of about 1mm in the 4 years I've had it and I definitely drop it or knock it off a desk or something a few times a year.
I'll take the extra weight of aluminum (0.3lb, 130g). Yes, someone might say the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is 14", but the 13" MacBook Air actually has a 13.6" screen.
If I were in the market for a PC laptop, I'd definitely take a look at the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but I'm also not worried about the weight of my MacBook Air. The X1 Carbon Intel ones are on sale right now since Panther Lake will be a huge upgrade coming soon, but even on clearance they aren't cheap. An X1 Carbon with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage (Ultra 7 268V, the cheapest one due to the sale) will cost $1,679 while a similar MacBook Air will cost $1,699 - and the M5 has 48% better single-core performance and 56% better multi-core performance (Geekbench). A 16GB/512GB (Ultra 5 225U) X1 Carbon is $1,538 compared to $1,099 for a MacBook Air - and the M5 has a 74% single and multi core advantage there.
Panther Lake might narrow the performance gap, but early indicators don't seem like that's the case. Even the top of the line Ultra X9 388H sees the M5 with a 36% single-core advantage while the Ultra X9 388H gets 3% faster multi-core. And I'm not sure the higher wattage "H" processors work for something like an X1 Carbon.
The highest non-H Panther Lake processor (Ultra 7 365) sees the M5 get 51% better single-core and 58% better multi-core. Maybe we'll see better, but it looks like Intel isn't closing the gap in 2026.
Does it? In my case, it was my father who dropped my mac but luckily everything was all safe with tis but a scratch. So perhaps that can be taken into factor as well that its more than one variable.
That being said, I am pretty clumsy but I have never dropped any hardware except a dumb phone which I threw out a lot and it was so small and tiny but it never had any problem.
And then one day I dropped it from top just a little bit and let it drop/slide inside my bag (like a cushion) and that day it died. I recently asked someone about it and turns out that its battery got inflated.
My father recently dropped my macbook air from the car essentially on concrete bricks.
It has just gotten a single dent for something less than 0.5 cm and its on the side (although this damage was done when the laptop was closed so some damage is just above the laptop's display aluminium shell.
To be honest, its barely visible and everything is working and there was no damage on display or anything else for what its worth.
I usually don't like apple but damn the macbook air is tiny and can take some damage.
Although I am still just a little sad about the damage because the laptop was perfect condition beforehand now that we talked about it but its incredibly better than any other laptop atleast with that thing in mind. Gonna use this laptop for a long time (M1 Air)
It's essential for thermals. Without the unibody, it would throttle sooner and you'd lose performance.
The aluminium chassis cannot be used for heat dissipation without risk of harming users. Which is why there is a "macbook air peformance mod" to add thermal-interface-material (instead of thermal insulation) to turn the chassis into a heatsink.
It's not a heatsink by default.
Not really. I did the thermal mod to my previous (M1) MacBook Air and it still didn’t get all that warm.
The Intel MacBook Pro I had before that one got far, far hotter - almost scalding hot if you really pushed it - without any modifications.
The last generation of Intel Macbooks was so bad... the i9 I was assigned from my job at the time would constantly go in and out of thermal throttling, making the whole experience effectively useless... It was also so locked down, I couldn't apply any mods to be able to underclock/volt the thing to something reasonable.
I really do hope that Linux becomes an option in more workplaces without being too locked down for developers.
Air has no thermal connection to the chassis for the purpose of making it safe to have in contact with skin.
People have been modding theirs to make this contact, though. And been getting a significant performance boost out of it.
I believe we are talking about slightly different things. Yes if they thermally coupled the body to the processor, then a small patch of the body would get very hot, burning the user.
However, the fact that the aluminum gets hot during prolonged use means that it is acting as a heat sink and cooling the CPU compared to a body made of plastic. Thermodynamics, it's the law!
>However, the fact that the aluminum gets hot during prolonged use means that it is acting as a heat sink and cooling the CPU compared to a body made of plastic. Thermodynamics, it's the law!
Not really. It's picking up "stray heat" that is radiated from the copper heatsink inside and conduction from the air in the fan system. It does not improve cooling the processor in any kind of manner. If it were plastic, the plastic would get warm too. Maybe it'll be a 2 degree difference.
Direct contact or bust.
It does actually help. All heat radiated into the aluminium isn’t in the copper, so makes it to the environment. The copper remains cooler overall.
It should improve ambient temperatures inside the body, allowing for more heat transfer.
It might be marginal, though.
The original Air lineup was thinner in the front and seemed a little lighter. The thicker front on newer airs gives more battery life, but I'm not a fan of it.
The thinness at the front was a bit of a hack though wasn’t it? So Steve Jobs could make it look good in photographs. I’d take the extra battery life any day.
I have the M1 MBA and M5 MBP. The wedge MBA feels noticeably thinner and the MBP feels kind of chonky in comparison. It's a bigger difference moving them one-handed than the specs would indicate.
I'm in the same boat. I have one of the original M1 MacBook airs, and the thicker front feels like overall a downgrade in hardware. Going up to higher ram amounts might be good for some of my datasets, but it's not needed for any software I run.
So I guess I'll wait for the next cycle and hope they return to the "Air" idea again.
I like the touchpad. Is there any competitor which is as good and exact? I noticed in Linux, it's not as exact.
Thinkpad touchpads are mediocre at best. Dell’s are a little worse than that IMHO.
I don’t understand why other laptop manufacturers don’t copy the Apple trackpad.
I have Lenovo laptop with quite mediocre touchpad. I got used to use gestures instead of clicking and it works great for me.
> The 13 inch version is heavier than a ThinkPad X1 Carbon
And costs ~800 more for 16Gb/512 with a slower CPU and worse battery life.
As someone who spends his life on the road with a laptop, I strongly feel that anything that works for you under 3lbs is the sweet spot. The difference between 2.2 and 2.7lbs is miniscule in the grand scheme of my backpack.
If anybody else wondered about figures:
13.6 inch 2560x1664 screen, 1.23kg (13" Mac)
14.0 inch 1920x1200 screen, 0.98kg (14" Thinkpad)
It comes with a 2880 x 1800 OLED
As long as your wallet “comes with” an extra $2000 over the MBA.
(EDIT: ninja’d, I see.)
The $3000 version does. The air is $1000
But then you'd have to have a plasticky thinkpad with half the screen resolution...
It comes with a 2880 x 1800 120Hz OLED
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
For an RRP of £3,259.99?
Compare that to the base 512GB, 16GB memory macbook air @ £1099.
The next comparable X1 Carbon I can find is: https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
RRP: £1,900.00 with this crappy display: 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 100%sRGB, 400 nits, 60 Hz
X1 Carbons have had 1800p screens for years now. They've also offered OLEDs for the past few generations.
Apple fanboys seem to lack the ability to google tech specs.
I really like my X1 Carbon gen 7, aside from the bizarre Ethernet "port" (it has built-in Ethernet, but they didn't have room for RJ45, so instead of just telling you to buy a USB one it's on a dongle that blocks one of its two USB-C ports when plugged in, eliminating the advantage of "doesn't use a USB port"). But aside from fantastic Linux support, it's got little to recommend it over a similar-vintage MBA, which has a much better look and feel.
What I actually like about Apple products is the heft. They feel premium and the heaviness contributes a lot to the premium feel.
I tried a ThinkPad X1 Carbon as well, it felt like a toy.
I'm not sure you want heaviness in a laptop?
Same here. If the rumored A18 Pro MacBook stays under 1kg, it would be very compelling.
Regarding lightweight laptops, the Fujitsu FMV Note U series (14-inch) weighs only 634g-917g with Arrow Lake 255H and a replaceable battery.
Is Linux normally heavier?
i run fedora and arch on my m2 air, via the UTM app which wraps Apple Silicon hypervisor, and it's _fantastic_.
I'm in the same boat and finding it disappointing.
For people saying this machine is so much faster, I don't care. My situation isn't the norm, but we're on HN. I have a powerful desktop that's my main compute machine and my laptop is a terminal. I need a web browser, whatever corporate shovelware I need, and a ssh connection (and tailscale). If I wanted to do real work locally I wouldn't be getting an Air.
While realizing I'm not the typical user, it's not like the typical Air user needs much compute anyways. The general public just uses web browsers.
Though one thing I'd love is if they could add just a little distance between the keyboard and screen so my screen doesn't get so dirty constantly... doesn't anyone use lotion at Apple?
There are a ton of rumors a much cheaper MBA is about to be announced.
Is it weird to anyone else that the M5 keeps the same limitations of the M4, and tops out at 128 GB of RAM?
If one wants to serve large-ish LLMs locally, an M3 Mac Studio w/ 512 GB/RAM is still a super compelling option, and I was hoping that the M5's would bump us up to 1TB of unified memory.
Don't get me wrong -- seeing them use LMStudio as the benchmark for measuring local LLM inference is super awesome for the local / open-source LLM community, but seeing this have the same 128GB cap as the M4 is... disappointing?
M3 Studio is still the best option if one wants 512GB.
Apple hasn't suddenly stopped being Apple. They strongly differentiate the boundaries of their product lines and have never let use case leakage spread across their product lines.
Yes, but the M3 was used in the Mac Studio as well as the Macbook Air, wasn't it?
The 128gb limitation feels like it's portrayed as a limitation of the M5 chip itself -- not just of the Macbook Air product line.
I tremble to think at the cost of 1TB of ram in an apple laptop.
It was the M3 Ultra that had that much RAM capacity, not the Pro or the Max.
It is disappointing they didn't up it to at least 256GB on the laptops, but we'll have to wait for the next iteration of the studio to see if they'll give us 1TB unified memory.
Oh nice. Super good clarification, I appreciate the correction -- thank you!
Here's holding out hope that we'll still be able to see an M5 Ultra then! :)
The new cheap Macbooks have also been more or less confirmed.
Macbook Neo, probably coming with the iPhone A-series chips https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/03/apple-accidentally-leak...
iPhone processor? Should be interesting to see how performance is.
I was hoping they would move one of the usb c ports over to the right side. this is the only thing I dislike about the M4 air
I have 2 thinkpads, and one of them is better in every aspect - except that the inferior one has it's 2 USB-C ports on opposite sides of the laptop, while the other one has both ports on the same side. Being able to plug in the charger from either side is really great, will definitely look for that in a future laptop.
I wish they would provide Linux support. I can't stand OSX.
It seems like there are a decent number of people finding Asahi stable enough for regular use: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1quko4w/how_via...
I imagine there are still some rough edges (and it seems like distro choices are probably a bit lacking at the moment if you prefer something outside of a few specific mainstream options) but given how niche ARM support was before the first M1 machines, the progress that's happened so far is honestly pretty astounding. Given that the iterations from M[n] to M[n + 1] seem less large than the initial leap from Intel to M1, it doesn't seem that crazy to imagine they'll end up closing the gap even further to the point where you could probably assume a similar level of hardware support from Asahi for a year-old Macbook as you would for a year-old non-Apple laptop.
As for Apple "supporting" Linux, my perception is that if they wanted to make it harder than it was for the people working on Asahi to even get this far, they almost certainly could have. It seems like they're probably doing the same thing that most laptop vendors do, which is not explicitly support it but also not go out of their way to block it either. For a company with the reputation and history Apple has, I think that's a pretty huge win for the community, and even as someone who overall has a somewhat negative inclination to purchase from them, I have to admit that they seem way less hostile to Linux on their ARM machines than I would have predicted.
Asahi is great on earlier models but it will certainly not support the M5 before its already multiple models behind.
That's only because they are focusing on upstreaming all of their work into the kernel first. A handful of them spent a small amount of time building some device trees for M3 and it didn't take them long to get to the point M1's were at at the first release of Asahi.
I imagine once a lot of the cleanup and maintenance is done on what they have, they'll be in a better spot to accelerate support for other SoCs, and it probably won't be half a decade before the M6 or whatever is supported.
All said, Apple could just spend a tiny tiny amount of their warchest and just ship some goddamn drivers for Linux a la Boot Camp and save the Asahi team the time divining it from the tea leaves.
Sure, I don't disagree. I feel like I was pretty explicit about what I was claiming though:
> it doesn't seem that crazy to imagine they'll end up closing the gap even further to the point where you could probably assume a similar level of hardware support from Asahi for a year-old Macbook as you would for a year-old non-Apple laptop
Is it? I have my old M1 Air and I am very curious but don't want to go through the trouble of fiddling about with linux for a few days just to leave it rotting after. I would be inclined to maintain a dual boot situation as well and SSD space is at a premium.
As far as I can tell, Asahi actually requires dual boot. There doesn't seem to be an option to install it standalone. (But I have an M4 Air, so I'm not able to install it yet)
Just looked into it - MacOS is required for installation - and they firmly recommend leaving a minimal installation on the drive for things like firmware updates and disaster recovery.
Good news, intel panther lake (and the laptops they come in) are on par with M5 macbooks in almost every way.
This year is a lot more competitive than any of the past ~4 years for premium laptops.
The asus expertbook ultra even has a much better screen, a much better keyboard, and a very similar haptic trackpad. Weighs less than a 13 inch macbook air too. There's cheaper options too that are close to as good (minus the screen).
Can you quantify your claim? PTL’s highest SKU is comparable to the base M5 at double the power use in every benchmark I’ve seen.
Are there any non-Apple laptops yet where you can just close the lid and put the laptop in your bag and not worry about it being on?
It’s funny that this is even remotely a concern in 2026. We have computers you can talk to but Windows laptops maybe won’t go to sleep in your backpack.
I do hope that it’s fixed though. I haven’t followed Windows laptops that closely, but my work laptop from a few years ago does lose battery surprisingly quickly when “sleeping”.
You can go into Windows settings and change what happens when you close the lid to hibernate or power down.
That is more like a “wish” in windows.
> M5 also features faster unified memory with 153GB/s of bandwidth
I was about to write a post mourning how much I wish Panther Lake really could compete, but lacked the memory bandwidth to offer a real challenge. But supposedly it can go up to 9600MT/s which would bring Panther Lake to ~150GB/s.
I am curious what the NPU on M5 has. The 50 TOp/s on Panther Lake is... fine. Apple is really seeing huge success with MLX, with an adoptable software stack that the PC world is super struggling to deliver.
For something like my daily personal laptop the warranty is a big factor. I’d rather not deal with shipping it off to Asus for a couple months when it doesn’t boot or whatever.
Would warranty cover a Macbook with Linux on it?
Same. I was on macOS for work for about 3 years. Never gelled with me.
I was on an M2 Macbook Pro with Asahi and it was great. It's really hard to fault Apple's hardware for most use cases.
I'm currently on a Strix Halo laptop (HP Zbook), which is about as expensive, and the hardware is great, but power efficiency and build quality lag leagues behind by Apple. A 4000 euro laptop still feels like a cheap toy.
One of us! :)
Currently in a brief macos phase before I can be issued my Linux laptop at work. It's so clunky. A major annoyance for me right now is the lack of MST multi-screen over USB which means my nice daisy-chained home setup is fine on my near-decade-old Dell but doesn't work at all on the fancy Macbook. They have the hardware to support it, they just don't.
Generally the hardware with Apple is amazing but I'll take the hit on that and things like battery life just to get an OS that feels like it's on my side.
I'd maybe consider Asahi for home use but I'd be wary of it for work. Perhaps in a few years.
No support needed. Run Linux in a VM. Devices are limited, and you can't save/restore your state, but there's no real performance hit: my code runs faster on macOS(VM(Linux)) than macOS.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...
Buy the mac, try Linux in an hour, take it back if you don't like it.
Then support companies like Tuxedo, System 76, Dell, Asus,....
The only time Apple supported first class Linux on their consumer hardware was with MkLinux, and that was when everything was going down in flames and they needed to survive somehow.
Perhaps macOS would suffice?
Agreed - I just can't get excited about the world's fastest CPU core running on the world's most locked-down and developer-unfriendly OS.
World's most developer-unfriendly OS seems a bit hyperbolic when such a large number of devs use MacOS as their primary dev OS.
Agreed, it’s Unix like, homebrew is great, it’s like GP forgot about windows
In NL I can buy a base Macbook Air with 16G memory and 512G SSD voor 1199,- inc tax.
I just looked up my M1 receipt: in 2020 I bought a Macbook Air M1 with 16G memory and 512G SSD for 1399,- inc tax.
I did not expect the price for a base machine to go down in 2026.
The base M1 was 256gb 8gb ram for 999usd. Thats why yours was 1399eur.
Each Air generations gets slight upgrade and also now got 100usd price increase.
That was not a base machine in 2020
I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread.
The MBA is an amazing value, and appears to have only gotten slightly cheaper.
This is a solid product, that continually receives incremental improvements and delivered at a lower price point (when spec'd out).
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.
PS. The biggest speedup I got this past year (10x) was switching to native TypeScript (tsgo) and native linting (biome or oxlint).
> absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs
Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box. The news here isn't "The M5 Air is a disappointment", it's "Laptops are commoditized and boring".
As a developer my quality of work life improved radically when they let me have a Mac instead of the Windows laptop I was using.
Were you 3x as productive though? That's the analysis "they" tend to be doing.
I don't even use windows (beyond gaming). The Jedi and I are just off on the ends of the bell curve pointing and the stupid numbers on the stupid price tag.
As a Windows-based developer from 1996 to 2015 and then Linux from 2015 to 2020, I can say that my dev experience is immeasurably better using a Mac.
The ranking is MacOS >> Linux >> Windows. The Apple ecosystem is expensive but worth it if you can afford it (iPhone + Watch + iPad + AirPods + Mac.)
$350 windows box probably isn't silent like the MBA
> Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box
Depends. Are you doing dev on Microsoft's stack, or are you doing dev on all of the other stacks?
I mean... it really doesn't matter.
There are only a couple of relatively niche spaces where things like cpu performance are really the bottleneck right now.
Hell - RPi 5 is perfectly fine for a huge range of development tasks. The 8gb version is very reasonable $125.
Can you find things that these boxes can't do? Absolutely. Do most developers do those things? ehhhh probably not. Especially not in the webdev space.
Would I still pick a nice machine if given the chance? Sure, I have cash to burn and I like having nice laptops (although not Apple...).
But part of the "AI craze" is that hardware genuinely is commoditized, and manufacturers really, REALLY wanted a new differentiating factor to sell people more laptops. There's not much reason to upgrade, especially if the old machine was a decent machine at time of purchase.
I have 8 year old dell XPS laptops that do just fine for modern dev.
> Depends. Are you doing dev on Microsoft's stack, or are you doing dev on all of the other stacks?
You can run docker in WSL better than you can on a Mac. You can run Linux natively on that box, too. "Stacks" is sort of ambiguous (my world is embedded junk, and the answer for using a mac with these oddball USB flashers and whatnot is pretty much "Just No, LOL"), but to claim that the mac is more broadly capable in these spaces when it is clearly less is.... odd.
Macs are popular among the SV set, so macs are strong in whatever the SV set thinks is important (thus "I bought a Mac Mini for OpenClaw!"). And everything else runs on $350 windows garbage.
It's a bit slow, but still workable for Rust too. I prefer doing my daily work on a much more powerful 9955HX though.
Makes sense; according to Geekbench, 9955XX has about a 25% lead in multi-core over the base M4, and about a 5% lead in multi-core over the base M5. And more cores, so better for parallel Rust compilation.
This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years
Until they release an update that slows it down
Which one is that? My M1 MBA absolutely rips still.
I don't get it either. I've rolled out well over a hundred of these in a higher education setting and I have never had one have a hardware issue or needed to retire it other than wanton damage. I still have a ton of M1s in circulation and they are great still. I had to just replace a Dell with only 2.5 years of service, they tend to fall apart.
The MB Air M line is a personal contender for best product of all time: Fantastic performance without fans, amazing battery life, high res display and build quality at that price point.
When the M1 came out it was quite frankly unbelievable. And, even after all these years, I still don't see who would beat it across those dimensions.
My M1 Air is going strong as my travel & about-town laptop. It can do everything I do on my vastly more powerful M4 mbp, aside from compile multiple mobile apps simultaneously in less than a minute. Absolutely insane value and anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they are talking about.
> The MBA is an amazing value, and appears to have only gotten slightly cheaper.
Looks to me like the base model went up by $100, no?
The whining is just whining. It's a fine laptop, but it's not significantly improved from the one they shipped a year ago. Add to that the fact that laptops as a whole are well on the way down their commoditization slope and the general HN desire to cheer about Great New Apple Devices, this is for sure a backwards step.
Base price went up, as did storage and the new price is cheaper than the previous price + equivalent storage I think
>I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread.
Which negative tone? 90% the mainline comments I see are positive.
I refuse to buy macbooks/apple products and advise my people to do the same.
I make it clear it's not about specs, it's not about UI, its about the fact that apple makes the world actively worse so they can sell you a better alternative.
You cant have iMessage anywhere else because they don't want you to, you are locked into apple stores because they refuse competition, you cant repair your own device because they get that money back in repair fees.
Its not about the operating system or the specs, I feel investing in Linux is the best way to create a more sustainable future for me and the ones I love and changing that take will require systemic changes, not these spec bumps and UI overhauls people fixate on.
I would normally strongly agree, I don't like Apple as a company - for example the Apple store and Patreon 30 % tax https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46801419 Their policies overall.
However there is no comparable laptop hardware in the non-Apple world. Even if I wanted to pay double, there is no usable fanless high-quality quick laptop. Very sadly. The Air is just too good for the money and the competition too bloody incompetent and bad.
> you are locked into apple stores because they refuse competition
I don't follow this one. You can buy Apple hardware from other retailers. You can download software, out of the box, from places other than the Mac App Store.
> I make it clear it's not about specs, it's not about UI, its about the fact that apple makes the world actively worse so they can sell you a better alternative.
I like the UI. What do you think they making worse?
what are you poor? If you need to repair something its probably junked anyway, I used to work at geeksquad. Most common "repairs" people were bringing laptops in for were liquid spills. Take a quick hike back to the computer section.
I bought the M4 air given that the consensus was also that it was the best value for 1k, but I ended up returning it and went for pro base model for a few reasons (still valid for M5 AFAIK from a bit of research):
- pro motion (120hz screen).
- better display brightness which is important when there is a bright sun outside.
- 1 more USB-C port and HDMI port (no dongle hell).
- 20% more battery life.
- This is more personal, but 13" is too small and 15" is too big, so 14" MBP worked best for me (~25 HFOV with a stand + KBM).
It's hard to justify saving 400 bucks given the gap between the models, but the decision is closer since the air has 16GB memory by default since M4 AFAIK.
Does the chip actually improves? I’m still on a specced out M1 Max (64GB RAM / 2TB SSD) and it still feels like a beast for my daily work. It’s wild that we’re at the M5 now, but it’s hard to justify an upgrade when this machine still handles everything I throw at it so well. Seeing 512GB finally become the baseline is great, but I think I’ll be holding onto this M1 for a while longer.
M5 is almost 2x the single core performance of the M1 Max. You would notice that things are faster.
Well when macOS feels heavier now than before so is that 2x really a 2x?
Noted, I will inform Tim Cook.
update: he's in shambles upon hearing the news
I have yet to understand myself why did I pay $2300 something for M4 Pro with 512gb storage. Like, for that kind of money, I should have gotten at least 1 TB.
My worst purchase thus far.
I went for an M4 Max, 128GB RAM and 2TB storage. My thinking is that we've crossed the rubicon of expecting tech to be orders of magnitudes faster a decade out. It won't be.
I expect this MacBook Pro (2024) to last a decade and inflation to eat away at value of cost/benefit of future purchases so I got the best one I could possibly afford. Meaning whatever entry level Apple laptop is available in 2034 will be only a small multiple faster than than my top of line 2024 one. I could be wrong as well but that's the dice roll.
You won't feel much difference in performance for the next 4 years but my guess is local LLM inference going to be much better post 3-4 generation.
> why did I pay
Indeed, why did you? Didn't you read product specs for a device that costs nearly 2-and-a-half grand?
The thing with storage is you pay for it immediately-but you get zero value from it until you cross the smaller size boundary.
When my 1TB had about 400GB on it, the extra space "was worthless" - but now it's useful (though I have my suspicions that most of the extra space is being taken up by cloud caches).
I paid for an M1 Max when it came out. It was like $4500 AUD at the time.
I mean its still a decent machine, but man, I can get an M5 now for just over half the price...
(oh dang that was like nearly 5 years ago now)
Wow, 512GB of storage on the base model! That means the more reasonable 1TB option is cheaper now (+$200 over base).
The M4 MacBook Air (16gb, 1TB) retailed for $1400 (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1884084-REG/apple_mba...).
The M5 equivalent is now $1300. 1TB requires the CPU upgrade.
Yes, previously the 512GB Air was $1200, now it's $1100.
Damn. Will this company ever make a Mac with cellular built in
Yeah not sure if it's so necessary.
Everyone carries their phone. Power users (i.e. nomads who need connectivity in many different places) have lots of unlimited data plans available that are modestly priced (I've travelled asia the last few months and used e-sims for like $10 a month in each country). And that's a niche group, but even they have their phone as a hotspot. Downside is that it burns battery, but if you're sitting somewhere for any length of time that battery would matter, just plugging-in basically resolves that.
The vast majority of us are either at home, work, friends/family or a rotating set of a few local cafe's, all of which are in our wifi auto-connect list, and have their phone hotspot for the rare occasion there is no wifi.
Then for the powerusers you could just buy a mobile hotspot device as well, basically what your phone does but it's just connectivity + battery.
It's not as cheap a part as you'd think, estimates range between $100 and $300 extra per laptop, even though it seems like a niche thing for which alternatives at lower/similar price points (phone/dedicated device) already exist. So I'm not sure we're going to see it anytime soon. Maybe with Apple making its own modems now it'll happen in a few years. Previously it'd just make for a more expensive device for something few users need (and shipping cheap devices to everyone is a priority with their service business of $100b in 2025, more than Tesla with a market cap of 1 trillion)
If "just hotspot your phone" was hunky dory why does Apple sell iPads with cellular modems?
Also, have you ever used an iPad with a cellular modem? It's a far better experience than tethering. One (larger) battery to run down instead of two, lower latency (the extra hop from iPad to phone over Wi-Fi is gonna add at least a few dozen ms to every single web request), and best of all, I don't have to think about it. I don't have to wait, or fumble around with my phone. I take my iPad out on the train, turn cellular data on in the control center, and in half a second I'm connected to 5G. It's a vastly better way to connect on the go. Tethering is a last resort for me.
> If "just hotspot your phone" was hunky dory why does Apple sell iPads with cellular modems?
Because iPads are fundamentally different than laptops. Workers use tablets in the field all the time, often for shorter, quick, one-off checks and such. If you're in a fleet truck or on a job site, having a tablet on the passenger seat to check on work orders is easy. Pulling out a laptop is a much bigger pull, and more awkward.
> The vast majority of us are either at home, work, friends/family or a rotating set of a few local cafe's, all of which are in our wifi auto-connect list, and have their phone hotspot for the rare occasion there is no wifi.
So the minority that goes further than that doesn't matter? Also "rare occasion there is no wifi" is a very city-centric view, and a bit out of touch. We're talking about a trillion dollar hardware company here, asked to add a tiny modem to a laptop. It's a dead simple change.
If I was in the position to buy a premium laptop, work on the go a lot, and enjoy being in nature, I'd 100% want cellular in my laptop. There's zero downsides for someone like that.
Not saying a minority of users doesn't matter, just saying it's bad business to increase the price of an entry-level laptop by $200 for a minority user who has alternative solutions that are free or cheap.
Apple traditionally keeps a simple line-up of 3 or 4 models per product category. And each product has limited simple upgrade options consisting of normal vs expanded ram/storage/cpu.
Could they technically create 300 models with every permutation? From cellular, to touch-screen laptop, oled/led screen, different ports, battery sizes etc.
Sure, but they'd be confusing their customers with a complicated product offering and adding complexity in their supply chain hurting their margins, to pursue ever smaller niches that don't improve their bottom line, while competing with small niche brands that already cater to this demand.
And what's the point? You have cellular on your phone and a $3 usb cable plugs it into electricity, meaning you already have cellular for your laptop. You can buy dedicated cellular hotspots the size of a Airpods case that you can throw into any bag, jean or or jacket pocket.
Now if a cellular modem was a $1 part, sure, throw it in there. But it's not, again if you look at industry prices it adds between $100 and $300 to the retail price.
A $200 price bump makes sense for a common need, not for a niche use for an entry-level laptop model, in fact raising the price of an entry-level laptop by $200 is absolutely nuts for a minority use. Niche users can plug in their phone or buy a dedicated hotspot. You say I have a city-centric view, sorry but I don't know if you're not familiar with the typical macbook air buyer. Southpark did a satirical episode about them and it's not far from the truth.
Macbook Pro would be a different story, but this thread is about the air. I do think they'll introduce it in the next 2 years because Apple started to build its own modems. Previously they'd basically increase their entry-level product by a lot just to offload the majority of that price increase as revenue for Qualcomm, it was an entirely bad business decision and no surprise they didn't take it.
> Could they technically create 300 models with every permutation? From cellular, to touch-screen laptop, oled/led screen, different ports, battery sizes etc.
Nice slippery slope.
All they need is 2-3 higher-end configs to start with (aka people who are already spending more on RAM/storage) with an additonal checkbox for 5G/cellular. It may not be optimal for business, but there's a market for it, I guarantee you.
They literally make $200 ipad keyboards that are extremely unremarkable yet they still sell well.
They make a vision pro, that can't even do a quarter the things a $1000 macbook can do; and still build them to this day, despite the massive complexity of that hardware combined with the tiny target market.
But a cell modem in a computer is too niche? You know the ipad has had modems right? Is a macbook any less deserving of a modem (or any less difficult to add a modem too) than an ipad?
I don't think that would be very popular considering how easy it is to hotspot to your phone. Their watches only offer cellular because they're frequently used away from a phone.
I would love it though if they did, but it would probably require a data-only esim.
Yeah, I'm surprised this request still comes up a lot in techie circles. 15 years ago it made sense. When I packed up and moved to San Francisco with nothing but an AirBnB for a few days, I didn't even have a smartphone, so I bought an iPad with cell data to be able to look for apartments. But these days, it's gotta be a pretty rare scenario to not have a smartphone with a data plan and at least a way to upgrade to enable tethering.
They do it for iPad but yeah probably niche
When they don't have to pay a percentage of sales price as royalty to Qualcomm.
All their iPhones run on Apple made cellular chips now
They still pay a license fee to Qualcomm for the supposed Qualcomm IP in Apple's own chips.
Because of the integration between the iPhone and the Mac it is extremely easy to tether your Mac to your phone. Like three clicks easy. Why would anyone want to pay for another data plan?
Well, I don't have an iPhone, so that particular premise doesn't apply.
All of the rumors pointed that this time in the refresh cycle is a spec bump and if they ever were going to make a Mac with cellular it would be the end of the year with the Macbook Pro redesign.
Yeah, the rumor mill says the redesign will feature their C1X/C2(?) modem for the first time.
No. Apple needs reasons for the iPad to exist.
Yeah that would be nice. My thinking is that they don't want to cannibalize ipad sales.
The rumours are that this is coming later this year with the M6 generation (along with OLED touch screens).
I don’t think we’re getting those this year, now that M5 MBP just launched
Maybe not, but the rumours have been exactly that (6 month refresh cycle).
Even a PCMCIA slot would help! ;)
why?
I just do a lot of remote work and I rely on my phone which drains its battery and I’d love if I could just open my laptop and work
I have to work for 3 hours in a place with no wifi and no power outlet twice weekly. I physically connect my iphone to the MBA and it works great. The phone stays charged 100% and the laptop drains maybe 20% battery in 3 hours.
A 10 or 20 gram usb-c cable will literally solve this problem forever for $2.99
Buy one of those data hotspots? Then you don’t drain your phone or your laptop; plus can connect your laptop and phone to it.
Agreed. That's my upgrade cue. Cellular iPad changed me.
Mobile hotspot is clunky and unreliable still. I don't see that changing in the next 5-10 years.
Seems to be the expected relatively small refresh, mostly just adding the M5?
The language towards the end of the press release implies to me that they're targeting last-gen Intel MacBook Air users thinking about upgrades more than anyone with an M2/3/4 MacBook.
Yep, seems like an expected spec bump. M4 to M5, base storage bumped from 256GB to 512GB, price increased by $100.
And new wifi and bluetooth chips
I should top up my m3 ram damn I really regret it, cant even open android studio and emulator in will be on yellow zone
I am still waiting for Mac Mini with M5
and MacStudio!
What do you use the Mac Studio for?
I’ve always felt they weren’t really worth it for performance per dollar spent. For C++ work I just use a non-Mac workstation. For lighter workloads the Mac Mini is very capable already.
The Studio (Stud IO™) is the new Mac Pro - it's not "worth it" unless you need the most performance period - or you have money to spare.
Or you really, really need to drive eight displays from a single machine.
For "home user" stuff a Mac mini or MacBook is going to do everything you ever need (in fact, they have the problem where the M1 systems are still perfectly capable, six years later).
studio with m5 ultra this week might have me pulling the trigger.
The base Macbook Air continues to be an absolutely great deal.
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.
I've been using Macbook Pros for a long time. I usually spend 3-4k on them. I recently purchased an 14" Asus ZenBook for $1300 and loaded Omarchy Linux on it. I wanted to have something less expensive and lightweight for traveling. I really like it a lot! I notice that it is a little slower than my Macbook Pro, but the performance completely acceptable for most things.
laptops seem kinda solved now? for every cpu vendor and every os theres now a great option that just, works, so everyone can just use what they like and not be at a disadvantage due to not knowing the latest developements in the space, or due to habitual preference. Good type of boring
Why wont they put a usb-c port on both sides? So iritating to be limited on where i can sit when i charge.
I'll upgrade my M1 MBA when they do. I remember my Intel MBP running noticeably hotter when plugged in on one side vs the other, so maybe it's trickier than it seems.
Because the Pro costs more.
With the MagSafe charging port I never worry about it - if the cord runs behind the laptop and I kick it, nothing bad happens.
I mean I get it - it's slightly annoying to need an extra 18" of charging cable length but at the end of the day tradeoffs for a smaller, cheaper, lighter machine have to exist.
m1 has perfect performance. Screen is the issue. Having all modern devices with 90-120Hz and good brightness, Im feeling headache switching on air on regular basis.
Wow it's so exciting. And next year there will be a M6 MacBook looking exactly the same with slightly different specs.
Hardware is completely boring now. That also applies to Phones
No Nano-texture display option. Damn you, Apple!
The difference is in the number of GPU cores. One chip has an 8-core GPU, while the other has a 10-core GPU.
I’m still running a 2013 MacBook Air. 4gb of RAM, no CPU to speak of. Still works.
I’ll probably buy this, unless the cheap one they release tomorrow is better. A current MacBook is something like 30x more powerful than my ancient one. It’s going to be insane.
lol the iPhone of the laptop world (literally)
next year we get the M6 Titanium and then the M7e
Finally the specs which were actually needed!
What about MacBook Pro M5? Waiting for that one.
The MacBook Pro M5 came out about six months ago[0]. The MBPs M5 Pro and M5 Max were released today also[1].
[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macb...
Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232453 - “MacBook Pro with new M5 Pro and M5 Max”
Looking at the M5 Max specifically, two thoughts:
1) The price for a 14" model with the most powerful Max processor with 128GB of RAM ($5099 with all else left at the default settings) doesn't seem to have jumped hugely considering what's being going on with RAM prices in the world.
2) Interesting/disappointing that they aren't offering a model with even more RAM, further jumping on the local inference train.
Production question, then, for those who know about these things: how far ahead would Apple have locked in their prices for buying RAM for this line, for the units that are part of the initial release?
Yeah and also they still want to get at least some sales on the mac studios and mac pros with ultra chips, 256gb m5 max wouldve straight up killed both of those products.
We can have nice things but nobody is going to hurt themselves to give out things that are the very best possible, theres probably a lesson in this
Damn, it feels like just yesterday they announced the Macbook Air with M4.
Time flies...
Yep, they have been on a 12 month cadence each March for the last two years. The M1 (Nov '20) and M2 (Jul '22) lasted 20 months each.
Not exciting at all, but a nice incremental upgrade. I always enjoy incremental upgrades from Apple as they're usually significant, and 4 years worth of increments add up to big leaps, to the point my 8 year upgrade cycle is usually quite exciting.
Though a bit disappointing that it came with a $100 (almost 10%, above inflation) price bump. There's not much point to a spec bump when it's paired with a price bump, and faster specs for more money is usually an option. This negative price-sensitivity is particularly important for a model (Air) that caters to casual users, who typically aren't at all begging for spec bumps, and certainly not willing to pay much extra for them.
Yes the new cheap macbook will fill the gap below it, but the new MBA's don't seem like great value play. I recently bought a new old M2 model for roughly a 40% discount for my girlfriend and the value is insane. Same ports, screen, battery life, same formfactor/weight/keyboard, same software, storage, memory. Only it doesn't have the latest fast M5 chip, but for almost all Air users I think that's not a necessity. Certainly my gf wouldn't experience a difference in the next 6-8 years of use I think she'll reasonably get out of this thing.
Which is a fantastic position to be in, Apple creates so much value here that older models are amazing and affordable. But new models just don't seem very interesting to buy.
But is it really a price bump? Yesterday the 512GB M4 Air was $1200, now the 512GB M5 Air is $1100, at least apples to apples.
Kinda is, kinda isn't.
Fair point, I think I'll eat my words then.
The entry-level option however does constitute a forced bump in minimum-spend on the part of the customer of $100, even if in a spec-vs-spec comparison there is no bump. And you can argue this isn't great for an entry-level apple laptop mostly for casual users that don't need or are willing to pay for 512gb.
But the cheaper macbook is set to be announced tomorrow, probably filling some of the gap the M4->M5 left behind. So I think that probably neatly resolves it. Looks like it all makes sense.
M5 is not an incremental upgrade, it has MTE.
What’s MTE? I couldn’t find a reference to this anywhere in the press release or spec comparisons.
If Apple introduces a $799 or $899 'value' MacBook (like iPad / iPad Air / iPad Pro lineup), they could say it's $300 off the MacBook Air's price now, with that $100 bump.
(I'm still surprised Apple isn't bumping their prices more due to RAM pricing, but maybe they're absorbing a little bit of their margins to potentially increase market share.)
What about the screen refresh rate? Do they deliberately keep it at 60hz so people would buy a MacBook Pro?
What I find interesting is how over a long period Apple had to basically reverse everything Johnny Ive was probably responsible for before he left and how we got back to where we were 10-15 years ago in many ways.
Remember how cool MagSafe was? Tripping over a cable no longer meant smashing your laptop. In the late 2000s, this was amazing. Then they made the laptops thinner so we got MagSafe 2. Annoying if you had chargers but whatever. And then... gone.
Macbook Air? The 2008 version I don't count. It's a weird and bad product. But the 2010/2011 products were rock solid and nobody could compete with Apple's value proposition for the hardware. Nobody. And they continued to be amazing but suffered from a screen that didn't get an upgrade from 2011 (IIRC). Where was the retina display? It was such an obvious upgrade.
But then Apple killed it for the 12" Macbook, which was a horrible product. Too many compromises. A single port. Ugh. That was Johnny Ive's baby.
Oh and let's not forget the whole butterly keyboard debacle, all for an estimated 0.5mm decrease in thickness. It failed because it got dust in it. It was expensive to replace. It was just a terrible design decision.
Oh and the Touch Bar? Please.
It was clear that Apple just wanted to increase the ASP of hheir laptops. So getting a good laptop for $1000 was no longer on the cards. Instead we were forced into the 13" Macbook Pro at the better part of $2000.
And here we are in 2026. MagSafe is back (has been for a few years obviously). The butterfly keyboard got ditched (again, some years ago). And they of course killed in the 12" Macbook and brought back to Macbook Air (again, some years ago).
But my point is that in many ways the 2026 Macbook air looks a lot like the 2010-2015 Macbook Air. Updated specs of course but it sits in that same segment of being "good enough" for most people and being excellent value.
One simply cannot overstate the importance of being able to walk into an Apple Store and just buying one. For me, this alone kills buying almost anything else. Even getting a charger for non-Apple laptops could be nontrivial. It's less of an issue now with USB-C charging but a lot of higher end Windows laptops can't draw enough power so still have their own chargers.
I like 16GB/512GB as the new baseline. Given what AI has done to RAM and SSD pricing, a slight price bump to $1099 seems perfectly acceptable to me.
What is the importance of going to a store and buying one? If you live in any major metro you can just go to any big box retailer, or a microcenter if you have one, and buy any other brand’s laptop.
Their problem is that it looks great and all, but there's just zero reason to upgrade my M2 MBA -- until I'm forced to install Tahoe. When it's time to buy, I'll grab one of these or whatever's latest, I'm sure, and I'll get another Mac without thinking twice about it, but I'm not even sure I'd notice the giant speed difference?
I did get tricked into putting Tahoe (or whatever the iOS version is called) on my iPhone 12 Pro though, and my phone is now sluggish and sad, so I am going to have to upgrade it, which I'm carrying quite a lot of resentment about. Hoping I can hold off until the fold phone.