MacBook Air with M1 – A Love Letter

December 25, 2021
7 min read

It’s hard to write nice things. If I had to write a TLDR version of the review, it would have been – it just works, except for speakers. This laptop is so good, you don’t even notice. It is powerful, it has a great battery life and what’s even more surprising, this machine doesn’t have a fan. I’m not entirely sure this laptop is even legal.

It’s so good I have two of them at home. I finally exchanged my Lenovo Thinkpad at work for a MacBook Air.

What it replaced

The one and only MacBook I owned was my Early 2015 MacBook Pro with Intel Core i3, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD. I bought it 6 years ago as a reward, for finishing my master’s thesis. At the time, the only upgrade was SSD, but that was only because they didn’t have 128 GB available. I also wanted a MacBook Pro instead of Air, because of the Retina screen.

Over the years, this Mac got slow. It got so bad, I tried to reinstall the OS and delete everything because I thought something must have gone horribly wrong for it to be so slow. But it’s just time. Retina display, entry-level processor and 8 GB of RAM are too basic even for a casual browsing now.

That is why for the last two years I considered my iPad Pro 12.9” to be my primary computer. When M1 Macs came out, I was tempted, but wasn’t sure if I ever need another Mac, or will I become iPad only? It sure felt like it. But the more I read and watch about the new Macs, the more I wanted one, maybe even to replace my iPad.

So half a bottle of whiskey later, I order a M1 MacBook Air with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD.

Design

Lately, I have a tendency to choose unusual colours, so the model I bought was Gold. I was intrigued, but not sure about my choice. After getting it out of the packaging, I immediately fell in love. It’s just beautiful. The colour plays nicely in different lightning. It changes from gold, to rose gold, to pink and to just light, almost silver. Now as I type it looks more like a copper. I also like how thin and light it is.

For work, I chose dark grey and … I don’t like it. It is too boring. Too computery. I’m hoping rumours are true and Apple will introduce a colourful MacBook Air.

I would like for a screen bezel to be smaller, which would make a whole device smaller. Not only that, but I also don’t like that there is “MacBook Air” written under the display. I know what I bought and use, and it feels very Samsung-y to stick the name wherever you can. It seems that the early 2015 MacBook Pro was an odd one, as it didn’t have the name written.

Dongletown

For the last 5 years I’ve read, watched and listened to everyone whining about MacBooks having only USB-C and some of them only 1 or 2 ports. I thought everybody is just nuts and tries to find a problem where there is none. That is, of course, until I bought such a laptop myself. MacBook Air has 2 USB-C ports and a headphone jack. Typically, that is more than enough for me. And this is when it got to me – most of the time, that is what everyone is talking about. I need to connect a display through HDMI and Logitech keyboard using their USB type-A dongle. Something I didn’t even think about before, gave me pause.

After some consideration, I bought an Apple dongle for HDMI, USB type-A and USB type-C. It’s a small, light dongle which should be enough for me. I also use microSD cards from my camera, but I transfer photos to the iPad Pro, so I already have a USB-C card reader from Apple.

That’s not the end of the world, but it is added cost and an inconvenience. But I’m more than 100% sure, many MacBook Air buyers won’t have such problem. They’ll use it without anything connected to it and charge with the brick and cable that comes with it.

Touch ID

Using biometric authentication in modern computers is genius. All joking aside, I like having Touch ID on a Mac. Unlock with Apple Watch never worked for me on my previous MacBook, so having fingerprint sensor built-in is much faster and easier to use.

It’s just a little convince for logging in, but a massive quality of life improvement for using 1Password.

There is not much more to add, but it’s just so good, to warrant its section.

Keyboard and Trackpad

There is little to say about the trackpad. I thought that the one I had on my MacBook Pro was big, but this one is just massive, and I like it. If there is space – put the biggest one you can. Since it’s not mechanical, and you can press wherever, I don’t see any problem. Moreover, the size doesn’t add the issue of accidentally touching it while typing, so thumbs-up from me.

Keyboard, on the other hand, is a very controversial topic. I was lucky to buy the last laptop with non-butterfly keys and didn’t have any difficulties with it. But I loved how butterfly keyboard felt. The scissor-switch one is a bit wobbly for me. I loved Smart Keyboard Folio for iPad Pro much better. But I enjoy the keyboard on this MacBook Air quite a lot. It feels nice. For my taste it could’ve been a bit clickier, but I could see how many would hate it.

Sound

Speakers are the weakest point of this laptop. There is nothing remarkable about the sound. It is quiet. Even in a smaller room it is not comfortable to watch a TV show with sound turned all the way up, it’s just hard to hear things. I would rather play through iPad Pro or use headphones, not even talking about dedicated speakers.

Speed

This is a quality of life improvement. When you open the lid, and it instantly turns on, and you can place your finger on the fingerprint scanner and in a second you’ll see an unlocked computer. This is something you expect from iOS, not macOS laptop. It seems too good to be true.

Of course my comparison is to the entry-level laptop from 2016, but still, the speed blew my mind.

Battery

I started the part about battery life by writing the time I took it off the charger, how I used it during the day, etc. But I quickly realised how pointless it was. It’s just a full-day battery. Even better than an iPad. The feeling I get with this laptop – sometimes I remember to plug it in. This laptop is meant for charging overnight, working all day and charging after you are done, and it works for me this way.

MacBook Air with M1 re–introduced macOS to me. As soon as 2018 iPad Pro 12.9” came out, I fell in love. My first Apple device was iPhone 4, so iOS was always much closer for me. I like that the main interaction with the device are apps. That they open instantly, and you don’t have to manage them. That it is simple.

My MacBook Pro was underpowered for everything. It was entry-level configuration, so video editing, programming, or playing video games was not a fun experience, but also just using it as I was for writing, browsing, lightly editing photos – iPad was much faster and easier for that. So quickly, after buying an iPad, my MacBook Pro started gathering dust at home.

Now the tables are turned. I’m selling my iPad Pro because this MacBook gives me everything I want and even more. One might say, it is almost a perfect laptop.

Apple Event – November 2020

November 16, 2020
4 min read

It was another instalment of the beautiful commercial made by Apple, filled with amazing transitions and views of the Apple Park.

The presentation was short with a couple of minutes of recap by Tim Cook of all the products announced in the last 8 weeks.

This time there was a lot of background music when presenters were talking and I didn’t enjoy it, as it portrayed the ad vibe even more.

In the end they showed a bit with a PC guy from the old Mac vs PC commercials, it was OK. Judging by Twitter old-time Mac fans enjoyed it.

One More Thing — The Mac

Right at the beginning Tim Cook emphasised that One More Thing this time was relating to THE Mac. So, no AirTags, AirPods Studio or other devices.

I was surprised to learn that over 50% of Mac buyers are new to the system. On the other hand, with such a strong quarter for Mac, it is not a surprise that those weren’t only those who updated their computers.

They’ve made a commercial (yes, a commercial inside the commercial) showing many celebrities with Macs and a lot of those were with glowing logo. In black and white it was noticeable that they made focus on that, as it looked cool, but Apple doesn’t make such laptops anymore…

MacOS Big Sur

What they couldn’t show before is how macOS is better with Apple Silicon. It is more similar to the iOS and iPadOS in some regards. I know the internet is all about scores for CPU, but everyday little things are more important for the experience, especially on the types of machines Apple introduced. It launches apps instantly and more importantly it instantly wakes from sleep, just like iOS.

M1

This is the start of the next generation of Mac. First System on a chip for low-power Mac computers. It has 8-core CPU (4 High and 4 Low performance cores) and Apple says the High-performance core is the fastest core in the world right now.

All the new Macs

Apple introduced 3 new Macs, and they are similar to each other — MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini. For the first one it is a complete transition — you can’t buy Air with an Intel processor anymore. For the latter two it is the mainstream, low performance models, with Intel laptop and Mac mini still being sold as an option.

What they have in common is that all three have the same M1. You can choose up to 2 TB of SSD and 16 GB of RAM.

What is different is battery life in case of MacBook Pro and continuous performance. What that means is although the processor is the same because MacBook Air doesn’t have a fan and other two models do, they can not only reach the same speed as Air, but sustain it for longer periods of times.

It’s a shame that they didn’t update the camera in laptops. It is still the same 720p, very mediocre camera. Although the picture will be improved by the SoC thanks to Machine Learning.

Because Apple doesn’t sell any other display, it was funny how in every picture or video of people using Mac mini it was standing right on the stand of Apple XDR monitor, the stand for which costs $300 more than the computer itself.

I was blown away by the numbers provided regarding the battery life and am very optimistic about Mac lineup and will probably end up buying one of the laptops introduced (most probably MacBook Air). But of course the more exciting things will come out, when Apple will show iMac and Mac Pro with Apple Silicon inside. I can’t even imagine what will be possible with M1X (or whatever it will be called) where because of no thermal limitations there could be 16 cores and most of them would be High-performance.