12 ms·

Absolutely. The 11" MacBook Air was the best laptop Apple ever made.

by bergie 4mo ago

hyperhello 4mo ago
It was nice, but the screen bezel was huge. The latest 13 is about the same size and weight.
- rkomorn 4mo ago
  I loved mine but I'd be lying if I said it gave me three years of acceptable performance. Sure, I can blame Chrome and JS, but ultimately, the core 2 duo and 8GB RAM did not keep up very long.
  - kennywinker 4mo ago
    There was an 11” air with an i5/i7 - i splurged for 16gb of ram when i bought it in 2015 and it lasted me 10 years. It still works, but a few specific apps started to really drag on it.
    - JessieJanie 4mo ago
      It really pays longevity wise to get max ram!
      - rkomorn 4mo ago
        Sure, but the 11" MBA I bought was max specs at the time it was released and the point is: it didn't last long.
        kennywinker 4mo ago
        Timing. The core 2 generation was right before we hit a plateau in processors. An i5/i7 macbook from 2014-2015 felt pretty good for 5-6 years, until the m1 came out, and you can coast for another 2-4 years being annoyed some people have a faster machine before they start baking features into the OS that make your machine feel even slower. That’s 7-9 years of use depending on your tolerance for being behind the curve. Mine’s high, so I got 10 years out of it. Conversely if you bought an i7 macbook in 2019 it would have felt out of date in just 2-4 years, when everyone has an m1 or better and things are starting to slow down from OS changes that expect apple silicon. If you bought an m1 just a year later in 2020, i’d guess you’re feeling fine 6 years on.
        rkomorn 4mo ago
        Again: I bought a max spec model when it was released. I didn't wait years to buy the max spec model of a previous generation or something. I'm well aware CPUs got better and whatever arguments people want to make. None of this changes the fact that the initial 11" MBA was borderline obsolete from launch.
    - rkomorn 4mo ago
      I guess, but that kinda means I would've needed to improve my 11" MBA's longevity by buying another, more recent, 11" MBA though. :)
- petesergeant 4mo ago
  The _feel_ is very different though, even if the dimensions aren’t numerically. It was around half a cm at its thinnest, it was 250g lighter, and 23mm less deep. I think at those sizes, what reads as small differences give an outsized experiential factor.
stefanfisk 4mo ago
I yearn for an updated version of the 12” MacBook with modern specs and keyboard. The 13” Air is way too large to be the smallest MacBook ;_;
- djfergus 4mo ago
  Yes, same here. I can’t help but think they had an iPhone SOC planned for it (tiny motherboard, only one usb-c) but the hw/os team weren’t ready.
- rahoulb 4mo ago
  I really liked the 12" MacBook (although my all time favourite computer was the 12" PowerBook G4 - chunky by today's standards but I just loved it). I saw a review of the MacBook Neo where the reviewer was yearning after the 12" - but suggested that Apple has made UI elements so big with such ridiculous spacing and border radius that it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13". Which would not surprise me in the least - I struggle with my 16" MBP and this crappy UI "framework".
  - MrDOS 4mo ago
    > it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13" Native resolution on a 13" MacBook Air is already pretty unusable. Out of the box, the 13" MacBook Air (physical screen resolution 2560x1664) is configured with display scaling so that the “looks like” resolution is 1470x956 (i.e., macOS renders everything at 2x1470x956 – 2940x1912 – and then scales it down to match the display for output). If you dial the “looks like” resolution down to 1280x832 (so that the rendering resolution matches the output resolution; because, say, you prefer that every UI element not be a little bit blurry from being scaled down), you'll find yourself unbelievably short (ha) on vertical resolution. You basically have to turn dock hiding on. Even then, fixed-position headers are very common on websites these days, so between that and browser chrome, you'll often find that actual webpage content is crammed into the bottom half of the display.
    - fouc 4mo ago
      gotta have dock hiding & menu bar hiding & compact toolbar/tab settings for browser. only 80-90px of wasted height. The rest is web view. I can't think of any website I frequent having that fixed-position header either, so I'm gucci.
petesergeant 4mo ago
Part of that I think was that it was the first SSD laptop many people had had, so the fast boot up times were mind blowing. I had two, a work and a personal one, and I miss them terribly.
incanus77 3mo ago
Still using mine for occasional hacking, running Mint. Gets about two hours of battery. Great keyboard.

Absolutely. The 11" MacBook Air was the best laptop Apple ever made.

by bergie 4mo ago

Absolutely. The 11" MacBook Air was the best laptop Apple ever made.

hyperhello 4mo ago

It was nice, but the screen bezel was huge. The latest 13 is about the same size and weight.

rkomorn 4mo ago
I loved mine but I'd be lying if I said it gave me three years of acceptable performance. Sure, I can blame Chrome and JS, but ultimately, the core 2 duo and 8GB RAM did not keep up very long.
- kennywinker 4mo ago
  There was an 11” air with an i5/i7 - i splurged for 16gb of ram when i bought it in 2015 and it lasted me 10 years. It still works, but a few specific apps started to really drag on it.
  - JessieJanie 4mo ago
    It really pays longevity wise to get max ram!
    - rkomorn 4mo ago
      Sure, but the 11" MBA I bought was max specs at the time it was released and the point is: it didn't last long.
      - kennywinker 4mo ago
        Timing. The core 2 generation was right before we hit a plateau in processors. An i5/i7 macbook from 2014-2015 felt pretty good for 5-6 years, until the m1 came out, and you can coast for another 2-4 years being annoyed some people have a faster machine before they start baking features into the OS that make your machine feel even slower. That’s 7-9 years of use depending on your tolerance for being behind the curve. Mine’s high, so I got 10 years out of it. Conversely if you bought an i7 macbook in 2019 it would have felt out of date in just 2-4 years, when everyone has an m1 or better and things are starting to slow down from OS changes that expect apple silicon. If you bought an m1 just a year later in 2020, i’d guess you’re feeling fine 6 years on.
        rkomorn 4mo ago
        Again: I bought a max spec model when it was released. I didn't wait years to buy the max spec model of a previous generation or something. I'm well aware CPUs got better and whatever arguments people want to make. None of this changes the fact that the initial 11" MBA was borderline obsolete from launch.
  - rkomorn 4mo ago
    I guess, but that kinda means I would've needed to improve my 11" MBA's longevity by buying another, more recent, 11" MBA though. :)
petesergeant 4mo ago
The _feel_ is very different though, even if the dimensions aren’t numerically. It was around half a cm at its thinnest, it was 250g lighter, and 23mm less deep. I think at those sizes, what reads as small differences give an outsized experiential factor.

stefanfisk 4mo ago

I yearn for an updated version of the 12” MacBook with modern specs and keyboard. The 13” Air is way too large to be the smallest MacBook ;_;

djfergus 4mo ago
Yes, same here. I can’t help but think they had an iPhone SOC planned for it (tiny motherboard, only one usb-c) but the hw/os team weren’t ready.
rahoulb 4mo ago
I really liked the 12" MacBook (although my all time favourite computer was the 12" PowerBook G4 - chunky by today's standards but I just loved it). I saw a review of the MacBook Neo where the reviewer was yearning after the 12" - but suggested that Apple has made UI elements so big with such ridiculous spacing and border radius that it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13". Which would not surprise me in the least - I struggle with my 16" MBP and this crappy UI "framework".
- MrDOS 4mo ago
  > it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13" Native resolution on a 13" MacBook Air is already pretty unusable. Out of the box, the 13" MacBook Air (physical screen resolution 2560x1664) is configured with display scaling so that the “looks like” resolution is 1470x956 (i.e., macOS renders everything at 2x1470x956 – 2940x1912 – and then scales it down to match the display for output). If you dial the “looks like” resolution down to 1280x832 (so that the rendering resolution matches the output resolution; because, say, you prefer that every UI element not be a little bit blurry from being scaled down), you'll find yourself unbelievably short (ha) on vertical resolution. You basically have to turn dock hiding on. Even then, fixed-position headers are very common on websites these days, so between that and browser chrome, you'll often find that actual webpage content is crammed into the bottom half of the display.
  - fouc 4mo ago
    gotta have dock hiding & menu bar hiding & compact toolbar/tab settings for browser. only 80-90px of wasted height. The rest is web view. I can't think of any website I frequent having that fixed-position header either, so I'm gucci.

petesergeant 4mo ago

Part of that I think was that it was the first SSD laptop many people had had, so the fast boot up times were mind blowing. I had two, a work and a personal one, and I miss them terribly.

incanus77 3mo ago

Still using mine for occasional hacking, running Mint. Gets about two hours of battery. Great keyboard.