MacBook Air M1: the best laptop?

&gt; <i>the biggest pain point for software developers is the small amount of RAM</i><p>Software developers thinking that 16GB is a small amount of RAM is why all of our software is fat barges of bloat now. Y&#x27;all, this prophecy is entirely self-fulfilling. Please stop.

I own an M1 MBA with 16GB of RAM and it&#x27;s a lovely little machine. I generally do SRE work and it works out ok for that for the most part. Intellij Idea, VS Code, a terminal and a browser.<p>Coming from an i9 16&quot; mbp the difference in usability is massive, I hated those fans so much. I do miss the larger screen size though; that, coupled with the lack of ports (just 2 Type-C, would like more) made me consider getting one of the new 14&quot;. The battery life is so insanely overkill in this laptop that I&#x27;d be willing to compromise on it for a bigger display, perhaps for the first time ever.<p>Would highly, highly recommend it for traveling though.

The M1 air is absolutely the best <i>computer</i> (not just laptop) I have ever used. I’ve used laptops since about the year 2000, and custom desktops throughout this time too. I built a Ryzen 3600 desktop computer in 2020 and a year later this ultra-thin just laptop blew it away. It was cheaper too and didn’t make noise OR heat! All tasks were quicker to accomplish: transcoding video, compiling programs, opening programs, the lot <i>BESIDES</i> gaming. The battery life was the cherry on top… I mostly use emacs in my day and I can get <i>20 hours</i> from a charge. It was unbelievable to finally have a nearly perfect machine which I could slip into my backpack and hardly notice.<p>The press on the Apple ARM processors is well deserved and I’ve also been throughly enjoying my new M1 Pro processor this week.

Coming from a 2014 MBP the trackpad is a HUGE downgrade (not nearly as responsive), macOS is for sure getting worse on each generation too. Other than these are pretty good.<p>A side note: I&#x27;ve been wanting to move to linux, the only thing stopping me is the local music management &amp; mobile syncing workflow, if anyone have any recommendation

I just wish programs would stop randomly crashing all the time. I am not sure if it&#x27;s connected to the dozen memory leaks or a consequence of those.

I think the price&#x2F;performance ratio depends on whether your use case works with with the 8&#x2F;256 or 8&#x2F;512 configurations. The moment you need to go 16&#x2F;512 or more, the price difference to 14&quot; is not that large, especially considering the better display - with the first improvement in resolution since October 2012, so over 9 years.

The new air’s right around the corner, so hopefully some of those concerns will be addressed. I’m excited that Apple can now release yearly refreshes without hesitation. No more vendor roadmaps to rely upon. This should mean faster iteration and refinement for what customers want.

It&#x27;s unfortunate it can&#x27;t drive an 8K display, but good that it can do 6K.

I only have Vivaldi, MS Outlook and MS Teams open at the moment. Memory consumed? 7.49 Gb. What does that tell you? 8 Gb is good for web browsing, reading emails, and attending online meetings. If that&#x27;s your typical workload then you&#x27;re good to go.<p>The HN crowd knows the developer toolsets very well, so you all know 16 Gb is the <i>minimum</i> you would allocate for a developer. The HN crowd may be less familiar with the toolsets of the so-called creatives, such as music production, video production or photography. Long story short, the advice in those communities is to not even think about running less than 16 Gb and seriously consider 32 Gb - especially if you&#x27;re a professional. The video producers recommend getting as much RAM as you possibly can.<p>The MacBook Air M1 wasn&#x27;t designed for those heavy-duty use cases, which is okay. That&#x27;s why Apple has brought out the MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro and M1 Max. If you don&#x27;t need it then don&#x27;t buy it. Otherwise it&#x27;s nice to have those options available.

The hardware maybe yes but I really don&#x27;t like macOS so it&#x27;s a pass for me.

On a Mac you can click the trackpad anywhere, which is great. But all Windows trackpads have a hinge at the top, so you can’t click near the top. Why don’t any Windows laptops use a Mac-like design? Is there a patent?

Is it possible to run Windows on these yet (in virtual)? That&#x27;s the only thing stopping me from getting an M1.

For me, I see:<p>- No OLED screen<p>- Limited RAM<p>- No ECC option<p>- Fixed NVMe of a small size<p>- Can&#x27;t have more than 1 NVMe for raid1<p>- No amd64 core for legacy software<p>It has advantages for some people, but not for me.

Have all the compatibility issues for the M1 chip been solved? I&#x27;ve been holding out on buying one of these machines because I&#x27;m afraid I will have to waste tons of time hacking together work arounds to get my development setup working.

I work a lot with Java 8 and Docker. Anyone has any hands on experience with these on M1? I am thinking about moving from MBP 2015 to MBA M1 16GB.

Long battery life and fanless quiet design are killer features imo but the 13&quot; screen is a no-go for my aging eyes.

But have the MBA M1&#x27;s been superseded by the M1 Pro and M1 Maxes?

id never get a device thats intentionally not designed to handle its own thermal output<p>FFS it’s the same thing minus s fan