10 ms·

MacBook Air with M5

424 points by Garbage 7mo ago

clouedoc 7mo ago
What about MacBook Pro M5? Waiting for that one.
- Someone1234 7mo ago
  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-inch-macbook-pro-powered-by-the-m5-chip/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-... [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macbook-pro-with-all-new-m5-pro-and-m5-max/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macb...
  - WalterGR 7mo ago
    Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232453 - “MacBook Pro with new M5 Pro and M5 Max”
lacoolj 7mo ago
lol the iPhone of the laptop world (literally) next year we get the M6 Titanium and then the M7e
sq_ 7mo ago
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.
- stetrain 7mo ago
  Yep, seems like an expected spec bump. M4 to M5, base storage bumped from 256GB to 512GB, price increased by $100.
  - bobbylarrybobby 7mo ago
    And new wifi and bluetooth chips
tempaccount420 7mo ago
Wow, 512GB of storage on the base model! That means the more reasonable 1TB option is cheaper now (+$200 over base).
- aBioGuy 7mo ago
  The M4 MacBook Air (16gb, 1TB) retailed for $1400 (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1884084-REG/apple_mba13m4sb_15_13_macbook_air_m4.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1884084-REG/apple_mba...). The M5 equivalent is now $1300. 1TB requires the CPU upgrade.
- SirMaster 7mo ago
  Yes, previously the 512GB Air was $1200, now it's $1100.
vampiregrey 7mo ago
I am still waiting for Mac Mini with M5
- mobilio 7mo ago
  and MacStudio!
  - jtbaker 7mo ago
    studio with m5 ultra this week might have me pulling the trigger.
    - rajma 7mo ago
      You think they will skip M4 ultra? May be they slowly plan to launch ultra chips alternate years since the development costs are high and demand is niche. If they do a 1TB m5 ultra, I too would be configuring one for sure.
      - jtbaker 7mo ago
        I hope so! I already have the M4 mini pro - would like to bump up the prompt processing time and the memory bandwidth at the same time with the new M5 matmul changes.
  - Matheus28 7mo ago
    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.
    - bombcar 7mo ago
      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).
julianozen 7mo ago
Damn. Will this company ever make a Mac with cellular built in
- walterbell 7mo ago
  When they don't have to pay a percentage of sales price as royalty to Qualcomm.
  - julianozen 7mo ago
    All their iPhones run on Apple made cellular chips now
    - DonnieP 7mo ago
      They still pay a license fee to Qualcomm for the supposed Qualcomm IP in Apple's own chips.
    - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
      Not yet. Only the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17e and I believe the new iPads.
- dawnerd 7mo ago
  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.
  - julianozen 7mo ago
    They do it for iPad but yeah probably niche
  - tshaddox 7mo ago
    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.
NoLinkToMe 7mo ago
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.
- geerlingguy 7mo ago
  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.)
- SirMaster 7mo ago
  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.
  - NoLinkToMe 7mo ago
    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.
mg 7mo ago
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.
- gozzoo 7mo ago
  It has always been like this. Apple's signature for their laptops is their aluminium body and people seem to like it.
  - zarzavat 7mo ago
    It's essential for thermals. Without the unibody, it would throttle sooner and you'd lose performance.
    - dijit 7mo ago
      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.
      - Reason077 7mo ago
        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.
        tracker1 7mo ago
        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.
TZubiri 7mo ago
Damn, it feels like just yesterday they announced the Macbook Air with M4. Time flies...
- adolph 7mo ago
  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. https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air
honeycrispy 7mo ago
I wish they would provide Linux support. I can't stand OSX.
- saghm 7mo ago
  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_viable_is_asahi_right_now/ 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.
  - TingPing 7mo ago
    Asahi is great on earlier models but it will certainly not support the M5 before its already multiple models behind.
    - wpm 7mo ago
      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.
hash_it 7mo ago
Finally the specs which were actually needed!
mattfrommars 7mo ago
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.
- tornikeo 7mo ago
  > 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?
- s_dev 7mo ago
  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.
  - dockerd 7mo ago
    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.
- sevenseacat 7mo ago
  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)
- bombcar 7mo ago
  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).
mifydev 7mo ago
What about the screen refresh rate? Do they deliberately keep it at 60hz so people would buy a MacBook Pro?
- a456463 7mo ago
  Yes. It's apple. It's about clear lines to milk peoples' cash and hoard it.
deleted 7mo ago
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mft_ 7mo ago
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.
- mixtureoftakes 7mo ago
  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
  - mft_ 7mo ago
    > 256gb m5 max would've straight up killed both of those products. 1) Not necessarily, as the thermals would presumably be different, the use-case is different (not everyone wants or needs a laptop; expandability of the Pro, etc.) and Max =/= Ultra, especially if you're crunching local inference. 2) Even if there was some cannibalisation, does that matter? Unless we assume Apple is running a higher profit margin on Studio/Pro machines (unlikely, since laptops are more expensive than the equivalent Mini/Studio) they're still making roughly the same money at the end of the day. And for the higher end (i.e. workloads needing the Ultra and/or >256GB RAM) there's still no competition. 3) I'd not be surprised (RAM shortages aside) to see the RAM options on the Ultra increase before long, maintaining the differentiation, just at a higher level. Basically, Apple stumbled into relevance as (amazingly) the most cost-effective option for local inference. Having found themselves in this position, it would be a huge fail to not lean further into this. They seem to be doing this to an extent by optimising chips for e.g. prompt processing, but increasing the RAM is needed too.
- regularfry 7mo ago
  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?
thesimp 7mo ago
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.
- zeusly 7mo ago
  That was not a base machine in 2020
- omnimus 7mo ago
  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.
teliskr 7mo ago
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.
- mixtureoftakes 7mo ago
  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
tiffanyh 7mo ago
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).
- joe_mamba 7mo ago
  >I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread. Which negative tone? 90% the mainline comments I see are positive.
- r0fl 7mo ago
  This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years
  - kibwen 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - lghh 7mo ago
      Mine shipped with one. It's not perfect, but it's always been more than capable for me. Did yours not boot into anything on startup?
    - wasting_time 7mo ago
      I wonder how many more sales Apple would get if they published enough specs to make Asahi et.al. first-class.
      - askonomm 7mo ago
        The amount of people that know how to and also want to replace their operating system is effectively a rounding error in the consumer electronic market in general.
        7mo ago
bengale 7mo ago
The base Macbook Air continues to be an absolutely great deal.
Xeoncross 7mo ago
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.
- cj 7mo ago
  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.
  - dillydogg 7mo ago
    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).
    - rocketvole 7mo ago
      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.
      - eru 7mo ago
        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.
hermanzegerman 7mo ago
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
bhouston 7mo ago
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.
- ProllyInfamous 7mo ago
  I love mine as well... got it for $849 at CostCo, last year, in an astoundingly-awesome tax-free weekend sale, with 2%cashback. Not really using it for anything demanding, mostly just listing to podcasts at night (the speakers are wonderful). Battery life is incredible. Screen mostly stays off, but is very clear — I can see the brightness being an issue if used outdoors/windowsun.
deleted 7mo ago
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frogperson 7mo ago
Why wont they put a usb-c port on both sides? So iritating to be limited on where i can sit when i charge.
- gowld 7mo ago
  Because the Pro costs more.
- FriedPickles 7mo ago
  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.
  - windowsrookie 7mo ago
    This was a limitation of intel CPU's at the time and required additional thunderbolt controller chips separate from the CPU.
- happyopossum 7mo ago
  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.
longbucks 7mo ago
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.
- jhawk28 7mo ago
  M5 is almost 2x the single core performance of the M1 Max. You would notice that things are faster.
  - metaltyphoon 7mo ago
    Well when macOS feels heavier now than before so is that 2x really a 2x?
  - maest 7mo ago
    But everything is fast enough, so moving to the M5 seems like a downgrade, as it is heavier
- carlosjobim 7mo ago
  Noted, I will inform Tim Cook.
  - WXLCKNO 7mo ago
    update: he's in shambles upon hearing the news
cybice 7mo ago
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.
petesergeant 7mo ago
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.
- JCattheATM 7mo ago
  It's nice to see someone with reasonable restraint...way too many people on here with disposable incomes think they need a new macbook each year.
t1234s 7mo ago
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
- avhception 7mo ago
  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.
  - a456463 7mo ago
    You want framework. I can switch ports in whatever configuration I want.
MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
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.
firemelt 7mo ago
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
- a456463 7mo ago
  This is why people generally prefer Lenovos and Frameworks. You can upgrade when you need to and don't have to get a whole new laptop. Despite all what Apple claims as environmentally friendly, they are not. They are pushing more products that will be paperweight when apple deems them to be.
jmyeet 7mo ago
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.
- soared 7mo ago
  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.
hybrid_study 7mo ago
No Nano-texture display option. Damn you, Apple!
HanClinto 7mo ago
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.
- browningstreet 7mo ago
  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.
  - HanClinto 7mo ago
    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.
    - lm28469 7mo ago
      Only the m3 ultra supported more than 128gb, I don't think they used them on anything other than the studio.
- cco 7mo ago
  I tremble to think at the cost of 1TB of ram in an apple laptop.
- NineStarPoint 7mo ago
  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.
std_move 7mo ago
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 There is simply nothing comparable in the Windows laptop world. You can maybe get a cheaper Windows laptop but it will be terrible in almost everything - the new Apple budget MacBooks will probably be a much better choice. And around $1000, there is no comparison. I wish it was different.
- winrid 7mo ago
  How do you know there's no PWM flicker? Even my M3 Pro with its supposed 10khz backlight burns my eyes, I had to get rid of it. Is this display not oled?
  - std_move 7mo ago
    MacBook Air has an IPS display with no flickering, see https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-15-M4-review-The-fanless-M4-SoC-is-years-ahead-of-the-competition.976933.0.html#c12935112 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-15-M4-review... Recent Pros have miniLED with high freq PWM.
    - manaskarekar 7mo ago
      There’s still temporal dithering. It can be disabled but it doesn’t seem to help. https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor
ismailmaj 7mo ago
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.
MantisShrimp90 7mo ago
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.
- myHNAccount123 7mo ago
  > 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?
- vertigo-1 7mo ago
  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.
- std_move 7mo ago
  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 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.
- madeofpalk 7mo ago
  > 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.
adolph 7mo ago
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 wondering why they would have a 2 GPU core option. Maybe the 6 GPU one is binned since it is only available with 16G RAM? But no, the 10 GPU core is also needed for any storage increase....
haunter 7mo ago
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-leaks-macbook-neo/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/03/apple-accidentally-leak...
- normie3000 7mo ago
  iPhone processor? Should be interesting to see how performance is.
  - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
    The latest iPhone processors are faster for single core performance than an M1.
subpixel 7mo ago
I ordered the M4 in February and it looks like they upgraded me to the M5 and never even alerted me to the fact. At least I now understand the delay.
dzhiurgis 7mo ago
Needs 64GB ram so I can update from my 16" M1 32GB (whopping 5 years now). Higher resolution screen would be nice too. Otherwise I'll keep extending warranty on current one.
nodesocket 7mo ago
I have a MacBook Pro M1 Max and trying to decide if upgrading to the new Air makes sense.
desireco42 7mo ago
The only thing that can spoil this laptop is if it is getting hot... otherwise on paper and probably in reality is excellent machine. As a developer, I don't need pro, it is more expensive, heavier, bulkier, hotter.
sciencesama 7mo ago
is the screen pro res ? 120hz ?`
Frannky 7mo ago
I love it. I still use a 2020 M1 since I had not had a reason to change it. So smooth and fast and silent and thin. I don't really have a reason to buy a new one but if it broke or I lost it I would for sure buy this new one. Pros are too bulky for me. The only thing I miss I the ability to run local big models at high token rate. Taking into account Tesla chips deliver way more intelligence on smaller hardware maybe we will get there, a glm5 model running locally at 100 tokens/sec would be really dope!

MacBook Air with M5

424 points by Garbage 7mo ago

clouedoc 7mo ago

What about MacBook Pro M5? Waiting for that one.

Someone1234 7mo ago
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-inch-macbook-pro-powered-by-the-m5-chip/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-... [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macbook-pro-with-all-new-m5-pro-and-m5-max/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macb...
- WalterGR 7mo ago
  Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232453 - “MacBook Pro with new M5 Pro and M5 Max”

lacoolj 7mo ago

lol the iPhone of the laptop world (literally) next year we get the M6 Titanium and then the M7e

sq_ 7mo ago

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.

stetrain 7mo ago
Yep, seems like an expected spec bump. M4 to M5, base storage bumped from 256GB to 512GB, price increased by $100.
- bobbylarrybobby 7mo ago
  And new wifi and bluetooth chips

tempaccount420 7mo ago

Wow, 512GB of storage on the base model! That means the more reasonable 1TB option is cheaper now (+$200 over base).

aBioGuy 7mo ago
The M4 MacBook Air (16gb, 1TB) retailed for $1400 (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1884084-REG/apple_mba13m4sb_15_13_macbook_air_m4.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1884084-REG/apple_mba...). The M5 equivalent is now $1300. 1TB requires the CPU upgrade.
SirMaster 7mo ago
Yes, previously the 512GB Air was $1200, now it's $1100.

vampiregrey 7mo ago

I am still waiting for Mac Mini with M5

mobilio 7mo ago
and MacStudio!
- jtbaker 7mo ago
  studio with m5 ultra this week might have me pulling the trigger.
  - rajma 7mo ago
    You think they will skip M4 ultra? May be they slowly plan to launch ultra chips alternate years since the development costs are high and demand is niche. If they do a 1TB m5 ultra, I too would be configuring one for sure.
    - jtbaker 7mo ago
      I hope so! I already have the M4 mini pro - would like to bump up the prompt processing time and the memory bandwidth at the same time with the new M5 matmul changes.
- Matheus28 7mo ago
  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.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    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).

julianozen 7mo ago

Damn. Will this company ever make a Mac with cellular built in

walterbell 7mo ago
When they don't have to pay a percentage of sales price as royalty to Qualcomm.
- julianozen 7mo ago
  All their iPhones run on Apple made cellular chips now
  - DonnieP 7mo ago
    They still pay a license fee to Qualcomm for the supposed Qualcomm IP in Apple's own chips.
  - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
    Not yet. Only the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17e and I believe the new iPads.
dawnerd 7mo ago
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.
- julianozen 7mo ago
  They do it for iPad but yeah probably niche
- tshaddox 7mo ago
  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.

NoLinkToMe 7mo ago

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.

geerlingguy 7mo ago
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.)
SirMaster 7mo ago
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.
- NoLinkToMe 7mo ago
  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.

mg 7mo ago

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.

gozzoo 7mo ago
It has always been like this. Apple's signature for their laptops is their aluminium body and people seem to like it.
- zarzavat 7mo ago
  It's essential for thermals. Without the unibody, it would throttle sooner and you'd lose performance.
  - dijit 7mo ago
    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.
    - Reason077 7mo ago
      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.
      - tracker1 7mo ago
        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.

TZubiri 7mo ago

Damn, it feels like just yesterday they announced the Macbook Air with M4. Time flies...

adolph 7mo ago
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. https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air

honeycrispy 7mo ago

I wish they would provide Linux support. I can't stand OSX.

saghm 7mo ago
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_viable_is_asahi_right_now/ 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.
- TingPing 7mo ago
  Asahi is great on earlier models but it will certainly not support the M5 before its already multiple models behind.
  - wpm 7mo ago
    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.

hash_it 7mo ago

Finally the specs which were actually needed!

mattfrommars 7mo ago

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.

tornikeo 7mo ago
> 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?
s_dev 7mo ago
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.
- dockerd 7mo ago
  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.
sevenseacat 7mo ago
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)
bombcar 7mo ago
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).

mifydev 7mo ago

What about the screen refresh rate? Do they deliberately keep it at 60hz so people would buy a MacBook Pro?

a456463 7mo ago
Yes. It's apple. It's about clear lines to milk peoples' cash and hoard it.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

mft_ 7mo ago

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.

mixtureoftakes 7mo ago
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
- mft_ 7mo ago
  > 256gb m5 max would've straight up killed both of those products. 1) Not necessarily, as the thermals would presumably be different, the use-case is different (not everyone wants or needs a laptop; expandability of the Pro, etc.) and Max =/= Ultra, especially if you're crunching local inference. 2) Even if there was some cannibalisation, does that matter? Unless we assume Apple is running a higher profit margin on Studio/Pro machines (unlikely, since laptops are more expensive than the equivalent Mini/Studio) they're still making roughly the same money at the end of the day. And for the higher end (i.e. workloads needing the Ultra and/or >256GB RAM) there's still no competition. 3) I'd not be surprised (RAM shortages aside) to see the RAM options on the Ultra increase before long, maintaining the differentiation, just at a higher level. Basically, Apple stumbled into relevance as (amazingly) the most cost-effective option for local inference. Having found themselves in this position, it would be a huge fail to not lean further into this. They seem to be doing this to an extent by optimising chips for e.g. prompt processing, but increasing the RAM is needed too.
regularfry 7mo ago
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?

thesimp 7mo ago

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.

zeusly 7mo ago
That was not a base machine in 2020
omnimus 7mo ago
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.

teliskr 7mo ago

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.

mixtureoftakes 7mo ago
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

tiffanyh 7mo ago

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).

joe_mamba 7mo ago
>I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread. Which negative tone? 90% the mainline comments I see are positive.
r0fl 7mo ago
This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years
- kibwen 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - lghh 7mo ago
    Mine shipped with one. It's not perfect, but it's always been more than capable for me. Did yours not boot into anything on startup?
  - wasting_time 7mo ago
    I wonder how many more sales Apple would get if they published enough specs to make Asahi et.al. first-class.
    - askonomm 7mo ago
      The amount of people that know how to and also want to replace their operating system is effectively a rounding error in the consumer electronic market in general.
      - 7mo ago

bengale 7mo ago

The base Macbook Air continues to be an absolutely great deal.

Xeoncross 7mo ago

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.

cj 7mo ago
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.
- dillydogg 7mo ago
  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).
  - rocketvole 7mo ago
    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.
    - eru 7mo ago
      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.

hermanzegerman 7mo ago

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

bhouston 7mo ago

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.

ProllyInfamous 7mo ago
I love mine as well... got it for $849 at CostCo, last year, in an astoundingly-awesome tax-free weekend sale, with 2%cashback. Not really using it for anything demanding, mostly just listing to podcasts at night (the speakers are wonderful). Battery life is incredible. Screen mostly stays off, but is very clear — I can see the brightness being an issue if used outdoors/windowsun.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

frogperson 7mo ago

Why wont they put a usb-c port on both sides? So iritating to be limited on where i can sit when i charge.

gowld 7mo ago
Because the Pro costs more.
FriedPickles 7mo ago
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.
- windowsrookie 7mo ago
  This was a limitation of intel CPU's at the time and required additional thunderbolt controller chips separate from the CPU.
happyopossum 7mo ago
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.

longbucks 7mo ago

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.

jhawk28 7mo ago
M5 is almost 2x the single core performance of the M1 Max. You would notice that things are faster.
- metaltyphoon 7mo ago
  Well when macOS feels heavier now than before so is that 2x really a 2x?
- maest 7mo ago
  But everything is fast enough, so moving to the M5 seems like a downgrade, as it is heavier
carlosjobim 7mo ago
Noted, I will inform Tim Cook.
- WXLCKNO 7mo ago
  update: he's in shambles upon hearing the news

cybice 7mo ago

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.

petesergeant 7mo ago

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.

JCattheATM 7mo ago
It's nice to see someone with reasonable restraint...way too many people on here with disposable incomes think they need a new macbook each year.

t1234s 7mo ago

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

avhception 7mo ago
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.
- a456463 7mo ago
  You want framework. I can switch ports in whatever configuration I want.

MagicMoonlight 7mo ago

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.

firemelt 7mo ago

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

a456463 7mo ago
This is why people generally prefer Lenovos and Frameworks. You can upgrade when you need to and don't have to get a whole new laptop. Despite all what Apple claims as environmentally friendly, they are not. They are pushing more products that will be paperweight when apple deems them to be.

jmyeet 7mo ago

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.

soared 7mo ago
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.

hybrid_study 7mo ago

No Nano-texture display option. Damn you, Apple!

HanClinto 7mo ago

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.

browningstreet 7mo ago
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.
- HanClinto 7mo ago
  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.
  - lm28469 7mo ago
    Only the m3 ultra supported more than 128gb, I don't think they used them on anything other than the studio.
cco 7mo ago
I tremble to think at the cost of 1TB of ram in an apple laptop.
NineStarPoint 7mo ago
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.

std_move 7mo ago

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 There is simply nothing comparable in the Windows laptop world. You can maybe get a cheaper Windows laptop but it will be terrible in almost everything - the new Apple budget MacBooks will probably be a much better choice. And around $1000, there is no comparison. I wish it was different.

winrid 7mo ago
How do you know there's no PWM flicker? Even my M3 Pro with its supposed 10khz backlight burns my eyes, I had to get rid of it. Is this display not oled?
- std_move 7mo ago
  MacBook Air has an IPS display with no flickering, see https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-15-M4-review-The-fanless-M4-SoC-is-years-ahead-of-the-competition.976933.0.html#c12935112 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-15-M4-review... Recent Pros have miniLED with high freq PWM.
  - manaskarekar 7mo ago
    There’s still temporal dithering. It can be disabled but it doesn’t seem to help. https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor

ismailmaj 7mo ago

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.

MantisShrimp90 7mo ago

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.

myHNAccount123 7mo ago
> 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?
vertigo-1 7mo ago
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.
std_move 7mo ago
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 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.
madeofpalk 7mo ago
> 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.

adolph 7mo ago

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 wondering why they would have a 2 GPU core option. Maybe the 6 GPU one is binned since it is only available with 16G RAM? But no, the 10 GPU core is also needed for any storage increase....

haunter 7mo ago

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-leaks-macbook-neo/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/03/apple-accidentally-leak...

normie3000 7mo ago
iPhone processor? Should be interesting to see how performance is.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  The latest iPhone processors are faster for single core performance than an M1.

subpixel 7mo ago

I ordered the M4 in February and it looks like they upgraded me to the M5 and never even alerted me to the fact. At least I now understand the delay.

dzhiurgis 7mo ago

Needs 64GB ram so I can update from my 16" M1 32GB (whopping 5 years now). Higher resolution screen would be nice too. Otherwise I'll keep extending warranty on current one.

nodesocket 7mo ago

I have a MacBook Pro M1 Max and trying to decide if upgrading to the new Air makes sense.

desireco42 7mo ago

The only thing that can spoil this laptop is if it is getting hot... otherwise on paper and probably in reality is excellent machine. As a developer, I don't need pro, it is more expensive, heavier, bulkier, hotter.

sciencesama 7mo ago

is the screen pro res ? 120hz ?`

Frannky 7mo ago

I love it. I still use a 2020 M1 since I had not had a reason to change it. So smooth and fast and silent and thin. I don't really have a reason to buy a new one but if it broke or I lost it I would for sure buy this new one. Pros are too bulky for me. The only thing I miss I the ability to run local big models at high token rate. Taking into account Tesla chips deliver way more intelligence on smaller hardware maybe we will get there, a glm5 model running locally at 100 tokens/sec would be really dope!