Comment by darkteflon
15 hours ago
I bought an 8gb M1 Air in 2020 (for what now feels like an absurdly small sum of money) as an experiment in how-cheap-is-too-cheap / chuckable travel laptop. I ended up using it as my main laptop for 2 years without regret, then handed it to my son for school.
It remains in perfect condition and as delightful to use as the day I bought it (Apple software snafus notwithstanding). I fully expect to get at least 10 years use out of it. Honestly, I feel like it could probably carry him all the way through school - but I’d be embarrassed to say that out loud since that’s another 9 years.
I've been on my M1 Air, 16GB, since a few weeks after launch, more than six years now. I still use it daily with lots of Docker containers, VS Code, tons of Electron apps, a small macOS arm VM, and lots of browser tabs simultaneously. Recently, Claude's VM environment is getting exercised simultaneously. Usually the memory pressure is into yellow, but responsiveness is still far higher than any Mac from the Intel days, and far more usable than any Windows laptop that I have the misfortune to experience when borrowing somebody else's computer. And despite all that memory pressure, my SSD isn't getting worn out by swapping, I'm at only "3%" of SSD wear, if those stats on the CLI are to be trusted.
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.
Same with the iPad Air m1, handles everything you throw at it, does video editing, office, etc. Connected to an external display and keyboard feels like a full laptop, on the couch is the best consumption device. And with Claude it can handle your coding sessions.
How do you use iPad for coding?
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I got the 8 GB version of the M1 Mac Book air for a freelance stuff where I had to ship stuff for iOS as well. Really wish I had gone for the 16 GB version, since I had no idea just how bad the memory situation would eventually get. That said, it’s at least a good little computer for me being on the move!
a bit of an aside but what's amazing is that Docker's recent beta VM for Mac (I think released a couple of months ago now) has dramatically improved the performance you get out of your CPU.
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.
And you forgot the best part: it is completely silent.
The quiet isn’t even the best part of passive cooling. It’s that the cooling will never stop working due to dust clogging fans.
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Still baffles the mind that Apple solved this issue some 20+ years ago, and others _still_ haven't. I remember being basically surrounded by jet engines running Word in school.
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).
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I did forget, because a silent laptop is now table stakes for me. I can't imagine buying anything with an audible fan again. I'd rather stay on the hardware I have.
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I appreciate a light whoosh from a laptop.
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Entry-spec M1 Air is the best computer ever made.
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.
I had a ton of issues with my Macbook pro M1 16GB, memory pressure would be in the yellow always and into red frequently which caused sound stutter and all sorts of issues.
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
That sound bug being there for so long would be pretty embarrassing for Apple if they haven't lost the ability to get embarrassed about the shitshow that OS X... i mean, macOS has become a long time ago..
Low memory handling is better that what Linux does, we can all at least agree on that :)
Memory pressure sort-of means something sort-of doesn't. It's certainly possible that critical pressure could cause audio issues, but it could also be impossible to ever notice.
More importantly you shouldn't be experiencing audio stalls, so complain in the feedback app if you do.
My concern with the Neo is that it may have the same "feels impossible for the price" quality early on, but the 8GB ceiling gives it much less room to become the kind of absurd long-lived machine your Air turned into
You can't change the RAM, so using it as a student, and then use it as a reliable sub pc in the future might make it last long.
I have the same model and have been using it as my personal laptop all along just fine. Doing my day job on it is a bit of a headache but I can do it in a pinch.
People who say it’s impossible to use a 8gb MacBook are being obtuse
I bought a 8gb m1 air just a few days ago to use as a travel laptop. The 8gb gives me memory anxiety coming from my 48gb m4, but it did force me to turn off some settings I never liked (siri, spotlight indexing) and I also discovered zed, ghostty, and orbstack to replace vscode, iterm, and docker desktop.
The memory limit is probably in my head now, it does pretty well as long as I'm not obsessing over activity monitor.
Mine M1 Air display just failed after 5+ years out of the blue like worked at night and stopped in morning and even pre-used LCD assembly cost $200-300. So repairing makes no financial sense.
Yet considering the price I've paid for it like $0.5 per day and used it daily for 10-16 hours a day. Pretty much like phones I use except I use them much less and drop them often unlike a macbook.
Had a similar issue - some of the display was garbled for more than a year. Had a replacement screen from aliexpress lying around that cost 126$ two and half years ago, got to do the replacement a few weeks ago, as the kid needed a laptop for school. Turns out the replacement screen resolution was not the same as the original, but it still works fine, took ~1 hour for the replacement.
So for me it did make sense to repair - it costs less than a new laptop, at least
Similar story here, I used the original M1 Air 8GB for for years, still in same great condition without any flaws. I did get a M4 Air last year because I just needed more than one display and wanted to work in a docked mode, and I have similar feelings with this machine too.
Same. Recently bought myself a M2 Air as a birthday gift for myself. 8GB, chucked OpenBSD on it and couldn't be happier. It does what I need, battery lasts long and easy to chuck around.
TIL you can run OpenBSD on apple silicon. With how much effort has gone into Asahi Linux, I'm surprised.
OpenBSD has had support for a bit over four years (v7.1, though the earlier v7.0 had /some/ support).
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_...
Only M1 and M2 machines though. M3 and up is still missing.
Running anything on Apple Silicon is result of Asahi Linux effort.
It has no graphics acceleration, right? Doesn’t windowing feel sluggish?
99% of the time I run dwm + emacs, most of the browsing in eww. The occasional 1% that I run a browser is negligible. The scrolling lag doesn't bother me too much. I basically run it as a distraction free machine with long battery life.
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.
I wouldn't be embarrassed, Apple computers hold their value and performance for a remarkable amount of time, and that was even before Apple Silicon, which, as I'm still running an M1 Pro machine, will last quite a while, another several years yet.
I have m1 pro mbp with 32gig ram too. I've never thought to upgrade my laptop and still.
I also got a M1 Air 8gb, bought 2021 and it's good but there's been various hardware go wrong - screen packed up, usb ports packed up, speakers knackered, battery says service. I think 10 years use would require quite a lot of fixing on mine.
Same, the Apple silicon chips have been huge.
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.
Since the M1, macbooks pretty much hit "good enough". I've got a 2021 macbook and a top of the line 2025 model from work as well. But the experience using them is pretty much exactly the same, the newer one is many multiples the performance, but my old one does everything instantly. So I can't tell the difference just using it normally.
I was in a similar boat with my M1 Pro. I have an M4 Pro for work but rarely notice the difference.
Unfortunately the display in my M1 has failed and a replacement is £500-700. Very frustrating.
I bumped up to 16gb ram and more storage... it's still running great for when I use it, which is not much tbf... I mostly use my desktop because my vision has gotten exceedingly bad the past few years and my 45" desktop displays are significantly easier for me to read and use... I can kind of manage with the M1 display set to max size/scale... but many apps and sites are problematic.
Have you tried the screen zoom in accessibility settings? The responsiveness is great with the trackpad gestures.
I haven't... Should probably look into it. I always hated Windows full screen zoom... But I regularly use the triple tap zoom in Android. I'll look into it next time.
I had an M1 pro with the touchbar thing that I bought used for <$1000 after I had to give my work one back when I changed jobs. It was the best upgrade I ever made. I cracked the screen and bought a M4 air on black friday for $750 or something which I'm using now.
I have a 2017 MacBook Air that's still going strong and will certainly hit 10 years. It definitely won't hit another 9 years after that, though... The keyboard doesn't have that much life left in it, and I won't be repairing it.
I think 8GB is harder to defend in 2026 than it was in 2020, but maybe Apple's low-end machines may be staying useful long after the spec sheet says they shouldn't...
Ram is massively more expensive in 2026 than it was in 2020. And the tasks the average person does hasn't changed in that time. I think it could be a good thing that Apple is setting a baseline that your apps should run with 8gb, there isn't a good reason you couldn't work with that amount.
apps are less problematic... the browser though...
it was not massively more expensive in the first half of 2025.
> And the tasks the average person does hasn't changed in that time.
Absolutely untrue. Your 2020 CV makes you completely unemployable in 2026.