The M1 MacBook Air: Perfection

If it’s not there, it’s very, very close…

How much do I love the new M1-powered MacBook Air? So much so that I bought it twice. How’s that for fanboy exuberance?

But I’m serious. I really did buy it twice. Not two MacBook Airs (Macbooks Air?), mind you. But when I heard about the first batch of M1 Macs I was so excited that I wanted to order whatever one would get to me the fastest. That meant the standard-order new MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM. While I’m normally the kind of guy to max out RAM when I can, I was okay with this because I also thought I would actually end up buying (and keeping) the new M1-powered MacBook Pro a few weeks later.

But then I got this new MacBook Air and it completely blew away the already insanely high expectations I had. It is so goddamn fast, with such insane battery life, that I’ve been living in a hyperbolic chamber the past few weeks.¹ There aren’t enough superlatives. I love this machine.

So… instead of getting an M1 MacBook Pro,² I ordered another M1 MacBook Air. This time with my standard 16GB of RAM, and I’ll return the 8GB model. But I’m even a little torn about that for a reason I wasn’t expecting: the 8GB model amazingly has seemed like more than enough RAM for everything I do. Mind you, I’m not doing video editing or anything really intensive on it. But even Chrome — resource hogging, memory devouring Chrome — seems to run silky smooth on this machine.³ So I just consider 16GB future-proofing.

Have I mentioned that I love this machine? I really believe it’s my favorite new Apple product since the AirPods. I know some people may not consider this machine to be new as it’s essentially just new internals in the tried and true old shell — here’s where I’ll note that this is also my first Mac with the new/old keyboard, oh Sweet Jesus it’s good to have this thing back. But this is one of those things you have to try for it to be believed.

I thought we were beyond “traditional” computers making leaps in speed improvements. It’s not like my two year old MacBook Air felt slow — hell, even my five-plus year old iMac still feels fast (even if it can’t run macOS Big Sur). But those old machines do feel slow relative to this machine. There are just a million little things this M1 machine does faster, and they add up to real time savings. Even just browsing the web feels significantly faster.

My other MacBook Air, the two year old one, is a work machine so I still have to use it. And I now dread it. Each and every day. It’s so much more cumbersome to use from the moment you open the lid and you have to wait for the screen to pop on. Again, in a vacuum these seconds and micro-seconds saved sound silly. In the real world, they matter!

We haven’t even talked about the fact that this new MacBook Air doesn’t have a fan. While my beloved (RIP) 12-inch MacBook also didn’t have a fan, that thing would get toasty at the bottom, and it was often maxed out with its wimpy Intel chip. This thing never gets toasty. It never gets tested. And it never gets loud, like my work MacBook Air does.

Another true test of this machine: opening Music (the artist formerly known as iTunes). On the “old” MacBook Air, this took quite some time for whatever reason. New MacBook Air? Instantaneous.

Some other smaller tidbits: the new function keys are great. Having a dictation key is interesting, like Apple wants us to use that feature more. And they should, it’s good! Ditto for Spotlight search. But the real star of the show is the Do Not Disturb key. Focused work FTW. We’ve talked about instant-on, but the machine also instant-sleeps too when you press down the Touch ID key. Nifty.

One thing that struck me as a bit odd: there is absolutely no branding on the outside of the MacBook Air box to let you know it’s an M1 chip inside. I couldn’t even find any fine print. Apple has never touted such innards, but still, I found this a little surprising when the Intel Macs are still on the market — though maybe that’s part of the point!

That also speaks to something I briefly hit on above: this feels almost like a new host in an old shell. That is, this MacBook Air was designed around what Apple could do with the Intel chips, without such constraints, it feels like this shell is going to change soon. While there is a rumored MacBook Pro body change, I’m curious what they do with the Air as well. Does it go smaller, and fill the void left behind by the 12-inch MacBook? I hope so. Without a fan, it’s really just a battery life choice at this point. Would I sacrifice an hour or two to have a machine that is half as heavy in a smaller frame?⁴ I think I would. Maybe we go back to a world where there’s an 11-inch Air alongside the 13-inch one? I miss that little guy. Though not the awful performance, battery life, or bezel. All of those things are now solved!

Such a machine I think may be the perfect Mac. I know I’ve said this a lot over the years, but now that Apple has clearly solved performance and battery life with the M1, the extreme form factors are worth revisiting. For now, this is the most perfect Mac ever made.

¹ Yes, I know the word is hyperbaric chamber. Let me have my pun.

² Granted, the MacBook Pro is still tempting with its even better battery life (without adding much bulk), but if the rumors are to be believed about a forthcoming redesign with the next variant of the M1 in mid-2021, this MacBook Pro seems like an in-between option.

³ Famous last words, I’m sure. But the new version of Chrome built for Apple Silicon does feel substantially faster than the last Intel version I used.

⁴ I realize it sounds insane to say I would sacrifice two hours of battery life. I’m old enough to remember MacBooks that wouldn’t last for two hours, period. But that’s how good the battery life is here. It’s truly incredible. To the point that it’s changing how I think about and use the machine. I don’t need to worry about charging it constantly when I’m not using it. It’s more like an iPad in that regard. If I see it’s low, I’ll charge it. I can’t overstate how much this matters.