I'm not sure I'll need another computer anytime soon. Even though the kids jumped on it once when I left it on the couch for a few minutes, bending the case on one side of the keyboard. It bent back mostly flat. Gives it a bit of personality.
Never before has $1099 (or whatever) of hardware gone so far for me.
Using a macbook air, even a recent one, before this Docker was definitely usable but noticably slower. Probably still worth it but a noticable tradeoff using it as a dev machine Vs a pro. Now that tradeoff has basically gone away.
A few years ago in an old job I got a monster-specced Dell laptop, and it would still roar if I opened anything. I had to pull all the nerf tricks through the BIOS to at least keep it somewhat tolerable in low-load scenarios (i.e. most of the workday).
All the i7/i9 Macbook pros that I used back in the day were obnoxiously load. Even when not under particularly heavy load.
They're all fairly low-spec in absolute terms, but even 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC is adequate to run Win10 and office apps, at least, it was before all the Copilot bloat. And you can buy them as an individual, if you search them out explicitly.
But that's not what the mass market buys when they go shopping. Partly because that's not what Best Buy puts on the shelf, and partly because Microsoft sternly warns that such machines aren't recommended for the AI-encumbered future. Gotta push 40 TOPS and have at least 16GB to get Microsoft's blessing, which I think is the single largest driving force behind the hardware upgrade cycle.
Fanboys.
But Apple's fanless machines do b) and then they just charge you the premium. There are a few fanless PC laptops that do the same thing, but most people don't want that, because they'd rather save a significant amount of money by getting the same performance out of a less expensive CPU with a fan.
I have used both airs and the max versions of macbooks, and the airs are embarrassingly on par for too many things. I understand it may be hard to believe, but one can do actual, serious work on a macbook air.
Of course one could say that ~having~ using the fan is always optional anyway (like the older 13" macbook pro was mostly an air with a fan) and in these types of tasks you may barely hear it. But still I prefer the peace of not ever hearing a fan for my to-go laptop.
Can confirm. I used an Air for a couple of years as a bit of an experiment at work. Ultimately we did go back to Pros, specifically discounted M3 Max ones, just because I did start hitting bottlenecks running Xcode + Android Studio + Firefox + Slack + Telegram + god knows what else, I did FINALLY find the thermal throttling at the end and we ended up going with more expensive machines. That was over a year ago and I purchased the Air I had been using for my wife, who is using it today. It meets and exceeds all her needs and she loves the thing.
Ultimately I did have to cave and get a bigger Mac for work, but that was more out of convenience than necessity. I could've made the Air work if I wanted to, but ultimately I wanted a larger screen and more displays.
5W Phone CPUs of today are faster than 105W workstation CPUs of ten or fifteen years ago. It's not a matter of whether it can do real work, of course it can. The question is, in the instances when you still have to wait for the machine, would you rather wait noticeably longer or pay significantly more money in order to avoid white noise? That's the trade off, and most people pick saving time and money over silence, so that's what most vendors offer.
It's not that they can't figure out how to do it. They do make them. There are AMD chips with TDP configurable down to ~15W and fanless laptops that have them. They're just not as popular when you give people the choice.
Yeah tbf I would probably consider just using my phone with my mobile usb-c monitor and bluetooth keyboard, if iOS was not so hostile to be used for actual work (and it does not seem simple in android either, though maybe I would be eventually able to make it work there). It would be very useful to have such a light setup on the go, as I do not necessarily need strong multicore performance all the time.
> AMD chips with TDP configurable down to ~15W
I don't trust the TDP values companies publish because there is no standard way to define what TDP is or how it is measured. At best they are consistent in how they measure them within each brand, so you can at least compare different generations.
And in any case, the question is how competitive such a configuration is vs an ARM-based laptop, with much longer tradition in the low-power space. Could be my searching skills, but looking to get a laptop recently I did not find anything in a better spot in the efficiency/performance/price axes than an air. In particular I was unable to find AMD fanless laptops anyway.
Just as an example, during light work with my m5 mac (eg editting a text file, or writing this comment while a youtube video plays in the background and a bunch of light stuff run in the background too, screen low lit) I see 3-4W total system consumption reported by the OS, while a wattmeter shows 7-9W consumed. Part of it may be hardware, part of it software, but figuring out idle consumption is actually very important for making fanless work. A lot of work a cpu does in a normal day of mine is in bursts. Much of the time it is not necessarily doing much, and you need the thermal headroom for when it is actually needed. Last time I tried tinkering with a thinkpad and linux I did not get remotely as far. I would be happy if there get to be more options.
> The question is, in the instances when you still have to wait for the machine, would you rather wait noticeably longer or pay significantly more money in order to avoid white noise
If I encountered these instances often enough, then definitely a fanless laptop would not be appropriate for my use-cases. But I don't encounter them for what I want to use it for, and the next option with a fan is a larger, heavier and more expensive laptop, which I don't need. When I needed one for my work, I got one. I also have a 16" one that stays mostly at home because I cannot carry this weight around daily and I do stuff I cannot do with an air there.
Happy to see Gerbil Scheme occupies 4GB RAM use on the Neo while building.
My Thinkpads seem to only use the fan occasionally but then my work load is very light.
I can't stand Apple, but it's the truth. I used one sporadically to build my stuff for Mac. Going back to my Windows workstation after that always felt like travelling 15 years back in time. I recommended M1 Air to everyone whose workflow was compatible with a Mac. Most of the people who acted on that recommendation still use it and don't really think about upgrading.
(Honest question: I'm a longtime Mac user, I use Macs at work and I can tell you the correct DFU port for each model. But my home computer for the last 6 years has been an HP EliteBook with Ubuntu.)
Remote makes it way more useful, but bashing out well-formatted code on the road is trivial in Textastic, for instance.
My M1 air (I think 8GB?) had similar issues My M2 24gb was amazing - especially since it allowed dual monitors. I recently upgraded to the M4 32GB and it is my "do everything" computer and is absolutely awesome.
My personal experience with the m-series is that get as memory as possible. I do feel the M1 had issues based on the couple I owned.
EDIT: Even on 32GB my memory pressure is constantly in the yellow, but have not seen it go to red
More importantly you shouldn't be experiencing audio stalls, so complain in the feedback app if you do.
Low memory handling is better that what Linux does, we can all at least agree on that :)
OpenBSD 7.1, 2022-04-21 -- https://www.openbsd.org/71.html
R/AsahiLinux posting from around that time, only one comment -- https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/u8rb2o/openbsd_...
No temptation to open Youtube or other distractions.
Just an emacs session with code and notes. Forcing myself to read the man-pages first before googling anything.
The memory limit is probably in my head now, it does pretty well as long as I'm not obsessing over activity monitor.
Ones low down in the curve can be less steep of course.
People who say it’s impossible to use a 8gb MacBook are being obtuse
Absolutely untrue. Your 2020 CV makes you completely unemployable in 2026.
I bought a 2019 Intel MBP and that was by far the worst laptop I've ever had. After just a year of use it was constantly overheating and running out of memory and disk space, barely able to open a terminal. It was so bad that I hesitated to buy the Apple silicon versions, but the good reviews convinced me and it has been going strong ever since.
Yet considering the price I've paid for it like $0.5 per day and used it daily for 10-16 hours a day. Pretty much like phones I use except I use them much less and drop them often unlike a macbook.
So for me it did make sense to repair - it costs less than a new laptop, at least
If so this is like an option for like super skilled 1% of 1% of us who repair their devices.
I obviously checked repair videos and just disassembling top part almost impossible without destroying everything except for aluminum cover. Doing it properly on first try is well beyond my skills.
On top of it there is always risk of getting damaged part considering how super fragile it is.
Unfortunately the display in my M1 has failed and a replacement is £500-700. Very frustrating.
I don't get the hate on the base model / 8GB. If it's not enough for you, don't buy it.