MacBook Air with M5

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-the-new-macbook-air-with-m5/

by Garbage • 5 months ago

424 503 5 months ago

sq_• 5 months ago

Seems to be the expected relatively small refresh, mostly just adding the M5?

The language towards the end of the press release implies to me that they're targeting last-gen Intel MacBook Air users thinking about upgrades more than anyone with an M2/3/4 MacBook.

stetrain• 5 months ago

Yep, seems like an expected spec bump. M4 to M5, base storage bumped from 256GB to 512GB, price increased by $100.

bobbylarrybobby• 5 months ago

And new wifi and bluetooth chips

tempaccount420• 5 months ago

Wow, 512GB of storage on the base model! That means the more reasonable 1TB option is cheaper now (+$200 over base).

aBioGuy• 5 months ago

The M4 MacBook Air (16gb, 1TB) retailed for $1400 (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1884084-REG/apple_mba...).

The M5 equivalent is now $1300. 1TB requires the CPU upgrade.

SirMaster2• 5 months ago

Yes, previously the 512GB Air was $1200, now it's $1100.

vampiregrey• 5 months ago

I am still waiting for Mac Mini with M5

mobilio• 5 months ago

and MacStudio!

jtbaker2• 5 months ago

studio with m5 ultra this week might have me pulling the trigger.

Matheus28• 5 months ago

What do you use the Mac Studio for?

I’ve always felt they weren’t really worth it for performance per dollar spent. For C++ work I just use a non-Mac workstation. For lighter workloads the Mac Mini is very capable already.

clouedoc2• 5 months ago

What about MacBook Pro M5? Waiting for that one.

Someone1234• 5 months ago

The MacBook Pro M5 came out about six months ago[0]. The MBPs M5 Pro and M5 Max were released today also[1].

[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macb...

WalterGR• 5 months ago

Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232453 - “MacBook Pro with new M5 Pro and M5 Max”

julianozen4• 5 months ago

Damn. Will this company ever make a Mac with cellular built in

walterbell• 5 months ago

When they don't have to pay a percentage of sales price as royalty to Qualcomm.

julianozen4• 5 months ago

All their iPhones run on Apple made cellular chips now

dawnerd• 5 months ago

I don't think that would be very popular considering how easy it is to hotspot to your phone. Their watches only offer cellular because they're frequently used away from a phone.

I would love it though if they did, but it would probably require a data-only esim.

julianozen4• 5 months ago

They do it for iPad but yeah probably niche

tshaddox• 5 months ago

Yeah, I'm surprised this request still comes up a lot in techie circles. 15 years ago it made sense. When I packed up and moved to San Francisco with nothing but an AirBnB for a few days, I didn't even have a smartphone, so I bought an iPad with cell data to be able to look for apartments. But these days, it's gotta be a pretty rare scenario to not have a smartphone with a data plan and at least a way to upgrade to enable tethering.

css_apologist• 5 months ago

why?

julianozen4• 5 months ago

I just do a lot of remote work and I rely on my phone which drains its battery and I’d love if I could just open my laptop and work

bombela• 5 months ago

To everybody trying to justify apple not offering a wwan option.

On Thinkpad you can add the module later. It's a simple upgrade, open up the laptop and plug in the wwan module. The Thinkpad already comes with a sim tray. Though today presumably you would use an esim.

But hey you can pick a color for your macbook, so that's something.

Extra rant: the hardware quality of modern MacBook is fantastic. The keyboard sucks. The reflective screen sucks. The number of ports is ridiculously small. Soldered ssd and ram etc etc. Fantastic battery life. My thinkpad is a turd in comparison. But at least it doesn't bend when dropped. MacOS is horrible, Linux is the only thing I want. Sleep on modern PC is broken by design. A MacBook sleeping loses 1% of battery per day. A thinkpad loses 100%. Why can't we have nice things god dammit.

zitterbewegung• 5 months ago

All of the rumors pointed that this time in the refresh cycle is a spec bump and if they ever were going to make a Mac with cellular it would be the end of the year with the Macbook Pro redesign.

smith7018• 5 months ago

Yeah, the rumor mill says the redesign will feature their C1X/C2(?) modem for the first time.

nicoburns2• 5 months ago

The rumours are that this is coming later this year with the M6 generation (along with OLED touch screens).

khazhoux• 5 months ago

I don’t think we’re getting those this year, now that M5 MBP just launched

NoLinkToMe4• 5 months ago

Yeah not sure if it's so necessary.

Everyone carries their phone. Power users (i.e. nomads who need connectivity in many different places) have lots of unlimited data plans available that are modestly priced (I've travelled asia the last few months and used e-sims for like $10 a month in each country). And that's a niche group, but even they have their phone as a hotspot. Downside is that it burns battery, but if you're sitting somewhere for any length of time that battery would matter, just plugging-in basically resolves that.

The vast majority of us are either at home, work, friends/family or a rotating set of a few local cafe's, all of which are in our wifi auto-connect list, and have their phone hotspot for the rare occasion there is no wifi.

Then for the powerusers you could just buy a mobile hotspot device as well, basically what your phone does but it's just connectivity + battery.

It's not as cheap a part as you'd think, estimates range between $100 and $300 extra per laptop, even though it seems like a niche thing for which alternatives at lower/similar price points (phone/dedicated device) already exist. So I'm not sure we're going to see it anytime soon. Maybe with Apple making its own modems now it'll happen in a few years. Previously it'd just make for a more expensive device for something few users need (and shipping cheap devices to everyone is a priority with their service business of $100b in 2025, more than Tesla with a market cap of 1 trillion)

elxr6• 5 months ago

The vast majority of us are either at home, work, friends/family or a rotating set of a few local cafe's, all of which are in our wifi auto-connect list, and have their phone hotspot for the rare occasion there is no wifi.

So the minority that goes further than that doesn't matter? Also "rare occasion there is no wifi" is a very city-centric view, and a bit out of touch. We're talking about a trillion dollar hardware company here, asked to add a tiny modem to a laptop. It's a dead simple change.

If I was in the position to buy a premium laptop, work on the go a lot, and enjoy being in nature, I'd 100% want cellular in my laptop. There's zero downsides for someone like that.

wpm2• 5 months ago

If "just hotspot your phone" was hunky dory why does Apple sell iPads with cellular modems?

Also, have you ever used an iPad with a cellular modem? It's a far better experience than tethering. One (larger) battery to run down instead of two, lower latency (the extra hop from iPad to phone over Wi-Fi is gonna add at least a few dozen ms to every single web request), and best of all, I don't have to think about it. I don't have to wait, or fumble around with my phone. I take my iPad out on the train, turn cellular data on in the control center, and in half a second I'm connected to 5G. It's a vastly better way to connect on the go. Tethering is a last resort for me.

4fterd4rk• 5 months ago

Because of the integration between the iPhone and the Mac it is extremely easy to tether your Mac to your phone. Like three clicks easy. Why would anyone want to pay for another data plan?

Marsymars• 5 months ago

Well, I don't have an iPhone, so that particular premise doesn't apply.

headcanon• 5 months ago

Yeah that would be nice. My thinking is that they don't want to cannibalize ipad sales.

kylehotchkiss• 5 months ago

Agreed. That's my upgrade cue. Cellular iPad changed me.

Mobile hotspot is clunky and unreliable still. I don't see that changing in the next 5-10 years.

BirAdam• 5 months ago

No. Apple needs reasons for the iPad to exist.

cdcarter• 5 months ago

Even a PCMCIA slot would help! ;)

a4564639• 5 months ago

I see the need for cellular built in. But apple is cash cow machine. All they will do is make more cash cows

NoLinkToMe4• 5 months ago

Not exciting at all, but a nice incremental upgrade. I always enjoy incremental upgrades from Apple as they're usually significant, and 4 years worth of increments add up to big leaps, to the point my 8 year upgrade cycle is usually quite exciting.

Though a bit disappointing that it came with a $100 (almost 10%, above inflation) price bump. There's not much point to a spec bump when it's paired with a price bump, and faster specs for more money is usually an option. This negative price-sensitivity is particularly important for a model (Air) that caters to casual users, who typically aren't at all begging for spec bumps, and certainly not willing to pay much extra for them.

Yes the new cheap macbook will fill the gap below it, but the new MBA's don't seem like great value play. I recently bought a new old M2 model for roughly a 40% discount for my girlfriend and the value is insane. Same ports, screen, battery life, same formfactor/weight/keyboard, same software, storage, memory. Only it doesn't have the latest fast M5 chip, but for almost all Air users I think that's not a necessity. Certainly my gf wouldn't experience a difference in the next 6-8 years of use I think she'll reasonably get out of this thing.

Which is a fantastic position to be in, Apple creates so much value here that older models are amazing and affordable. But new models just don't seem very interesting to buy.

geerlingguy3• 5 months ago

If Apple introduces a $799 or $899 'value' MacBook (like iPad / iPad Air / iPad Pro lineup), they could say it's $300 off the MacBook Air's price now, with that $100 bump.

(I'm still surprised Apple isn't bumping their prices more due to RAM pricing, but maybe they're absorbing a little bit of their margins to potentially increase market share.)

SirMaster2• 5 months ago

But is it really a price bump? Yesterday the 512GB M4 Air was $1200, now the 512GB M5 Air is $1100, at least apples to apples.

Kinda is, kinda isn't.

NoLinkToMe4• 5 months ago

Fair point, I think I'll eat my words then.

The entry-level option however does constitute a forced bump in minimum-spend on the part of the customer of $100, even if in a spec-vs-spec comparison there is no bump. And you can argue this isn't great for an entry-level apple laptop mostly for casual users that don't need or are willing to pay for 512gb.

But the cheaper macbook is set to be announced tomorrow, probably filling some of the gap the M4->M5 left behind. So I think that probably neatly resolves it. Looks like it all makes sense.

astrange2• 5 months ago

M5 is not an incremental upgrade, it has MTE.

et-al2• 5 months ago

What’s MTE? I couldn’t find a reference to this anywhere in the press release or spec comparisons.

mg2• 5 months ago

The one thing that interests me most when it comes to laptops these days is weight. So I jumped right into the tech specs section and looked it up. Since this is the "Air" laptop of the company that is popular for thin and lightweight devices, my hopes were high.

But ...

The 13 inch version is heavier than a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Which has a 14 inch screen and can run Linux.

gozzoo2• 5 months ago

It has always been like this. Apple's signature for their laptops is their aluminium body and people seem to like it.

zarzavat2• 5 months ago

It's essential for thermals. Without the unibody, it would throttle sooner and you'd lose performance.

jermaustin1• 5 months ago

I like the aluminum body a lot. I'm not particularly clumsy, but each of my macbooks ends up with some fall damage at some point over the 5+ years that I have it.

When I used to be assigned a plastic Dell work laptop, I dropped one onto the carpeted floor of my office because I thought it was going into my padded sleeve of backpack and that cracked the case, and broke the screen. I've accidentally yoinked my MBA (last intel one they made) off my desk, and while it dented the body of it, nothing broke. That is now my drum computer, and it gets regularly pelted with drumsticks when my grip tires.

actionfromafar• 5 months ago

I like the touchpad. Is there any competitor which is as good and exact? I noticed in Linux, it's not as exact.

geerlingguy3• 5 months ago

The original Air lineup was thinner in the front and seemed a little lighter. The thicker front on newer airs gives more battery life, but I'm not a fan of it.

donkyrf• 5 months ago

If anybody else wondered about figures:

13.6 inch 2560x1664 screen, 1.23kg (13" Mac)

14.0 inch 1920x1200 screen, 0.98kg (14" Thinkpad)

zeusly3• 5 months ago

It comes with a 2880 x 1800 OLED

open-sesame2• 5 months ago

But then you'd have to have a plasticky thinkpad with half the screen resolution...

zeusly3• 5 months ago

It comes with a 2880 x 1800 120Hz OLED

bearjaws2• 5 months ago

The Air is going to run laps around the X1, in literally every benchmark you can come up with besides "its not open source". I have that same processor in a much bulkier thinkpad and it thermal throttles instantly doing basic office multi-tasking, with the fan running constantly.

Also its made out of metal.

mg2• 5 months ago

What basic office tasks are that?

The last time I was excited about the performance of local computers was in the 90s I think.

Modern laptops are so insanely fast. Not sure if they are 2x, 10x or 100x faster than I need them to be. But I never hear fans. I never have to wait for the machine these days.

nosioptar• 5 months ago

Thinkpads have track points, macs don't.

That benchmark is really important to me due to RSI. Track points save me a buttload of hand pain.

bryanlarsen3• 5 months ago

The X1 Carbon is getting updated to Panther Lake, and Panther Lake is getting competitive with the M5.

in literally every benchmark you can come up

Nope, Panther Lake will win most gaming benchmarks. The M5 will win most others but not by "running laps around" levels.

devilbunny• 5 months ago

I really like my X1 Carbon gen 7, aside from the bizarre Ethernet "port" (it has built-in Ethernet, but they didn't have room for RJ45, so instead of just telling you to buy a USB one it's on a dongle that blocks one of its two USB-C ports when plugged in, eliminating the advantage of "doesn't use a USB port"). But aside from fantastic Linux support, it's got little to recommend it over a similar-vintage MBA, which has a much better look and feel.

godelski• 5 months ago

I'm in the same boat and finding it disappointing.

For people saying this machine is so much faster, I don't care. My situation isn't the norm, but we're on HN. I have a powerful desktop that's my main compute machine and my laptop is a terminal. I need a web browser, whatever corporate shovelware I need, and a ssh connection (and tailscale). If I wanted to do real work locally I wouldn't be getting an Air.

While realizing I'm not the typical user, it's not like the typical Air user needs much compute anyways. The general public just uses web browsers.

Though one thing I'd love is if they could add just a little distance between the keyboard and screen so my screen doesn't get so dirty constantly... doesn't anyone use lotion at Apple?

jimbokun2• 5 months ago

There are a ton of rumors a much cheaper MBA is about to be announced.

usagisushi• 5 months ago

Same here. If the rumored A18 Pro MacBook stays under 1kg, it would be very compelling.

Regarding lightweight laptops, the Fujitsu FMV Note U series (14-inch) weighs only 634g-917g with Arrow Lake 255H and a replaceable battery.

caymanjim• 5 months ago

I bought a ThinkPad X1. Had to send it back for repairs three times in the first year, including a complete motherboard replacement, and it died again immediately after the warranty expired. Been a $2800 door stop since then. The case is flimsy plastic that gets beat to crap easily. The trackpad is over-sensitive in all the wrong ways which makes it hard to use as an actual laptop. Plus it's weaker and slower than an Air. Also unbearably loud and unbearably hot.

I don't like Apple as a company and I don't particularly like MacOS, but no one except Apple makes a laptop worth a damn.

throw393234• 5 months ago

I also bought a ThinkPad X1 back in 2015. Used it for 9 years with no issues at all. I installed Linux on it last year and still use it.

BunsanSpace2• 5 months ago

I have an X1 Carbon 2023. It's pretty solid, the only complaint I have is once the CPU usage is over 10% the fan starts running full blast.

Liftyee• 5 months ago

Was it a Gen 1 device? I bought a Thinkpad X13 Gen 1 many years ago and it kept having blue screens from RAM errors and other problems. Eventually after many warranty attempts and motherboard replacements they sent me a new X13 Gen 4. This has been running Ubuntu with no problems for 4 years now, it might be more a "lemons" phenomenon than a general rule. Also, AFAIK, the case is metal with a "soft-touch" coating.

The Apple ARM processors are still in a league of their own but personally I'm not willing to give up my OS freedom of choice for that advantage.

boomskats• 5 months ago

Not my experience in the slightest, after two decades of personal thinkpads and around 20 issued to my team.

Also if you'd just spent that extra 120 bucks for the 3 year onsite warranty, you'd have a lenovo technician replacing your motherboard at a location of your choice the next working day.

g947o• 5 months ago

Since when do we use crowdsourced anecdotes to represent product quality?

JCattheATM2• 5 months ago

but no one except Apple makes a laptop worth a damn.

That's pure nonsense. I'm a fan of the Asus ExpertBooks myself which seem to be largely ignored in these discussions. They weigh about 2 pounds, 15mm thick, they don't overheat, about 15 hours of battery, and pretty damn durable.

dask• 5 months ago

Very different experience here. I have an X1 Extreme Gen 4 since 2022 (running Linux), and have had zero hardware issues so far. The only thing that's annoying is that it gets quite warm on the hand rest.

a4564639• 5 months ago

Eh. Just simply on stability and life, beyond CMOS battery and laptop battery changes, my 5x 2015-2018 lenovos are working like a charm. I love the plastic case, it flexes and catches falls better than the mac. The MBPs have fallen down and dent like crazy, leak electricity through the metal body, weight like crazy and still no OS freedom and no free app store and you got to rely on "homebrew"? It is wild that we are relying on "home" brew for making a machine from on the richest companies in the world palatable.

jjtheblunt3• 5 months ago

i run fedora and arch on my m2 air, via the UTM app which wraps Apple Silicon hypervisor, and it's _fantastic_.

AISnakeOil• 5 months ago

What I actually like about Apple products is the heft. They feel premium and the heaviness contributes a lot to the premium feel.

I tried a ThinkPad X1 Carbon as well, it felt like a toy.

eru2• 5 months ago

I'm not sure you want heaviness in a laptop?

happyopossum2• 5 months ago

The 13 inch version is heavier than a ThinkPad X1 Carbon

And costs ~800 more for 16Gb/512 with a slower CPU and worse battery life.

As someone who spends his life on the road with a laptop, I strongly feel that anything that works for you under 3lbs is the sweet spot. The difference between 2.2 and 2.7lbs is miniscule in the grand scheme of my backpack.

madeofpalk3• 5 months ago

Is Linux normally heavier?

Whatarethese• 5 months ago

Carbon fiber vs aluminum.

TZubiri• 5 months ago

Damn, it feels like just yesterday they announced the Macbook Air with M4.

Time flies...

adolph2• 5 months ago

Yep, they have been on a 12 month cadence each March for the last two years. The M1 (Nov '20) and M2 (Jul '22) lasted 20 months each.

https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air

honeycrispy• 5 months ago

I wish they would provide Linux support. I can't stand OSX.

saghm2• 5 months ago

It seems like there are a decent number of people finding Asahi stable enough for regular use: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1quko4w/how_via...

I imagine there are still some rough edges (and it seems like distro choices are probably a bit lacking at the moment if you prefer something outside of a few specific mainstream options) but given how niche ARM support was before the first M1 machines, the progress that's happened so far is honestly pretty astounding. Given that the iterations from M[n] to M[n + 1] seem less large than the initial leap from Intel to M1, it doesn't seem that crazy to imagine they'll end up closing the gap even further to the point where you could probably assume a similar level of hardware support from Asahi for a year-old Macbook as you would for a year-old non-Apple laptop.

As for Apple "supporting" Linux, my perception is that if they wanted to make it harder than it was for the people working on Asahi to even get this far, they almost certainly could have. It seems like they're probably doing the same thing that most laptop vendors do, which is not explicitly support it but also not go out of their way to block it either. For a company with the reputation and history Apple has, I think that's a pretty huge win for the community, and even as someone who overall has a somewhat negative inclination to purchase from them, I have to admit that they seem way less hostile to Linux on their ARM machines than I would have predicted.

TingPing2• 5 months ago

Asahi is great on earlier models but it will certainly not support the M5 before its already multiple models behind.

misswaterfairy• 5 months ago

It's worth watching the 39C3 talk about porting Linux to Apple Silicon earlier this year.

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-app...

The jist is that Apple don't want to prevent you from running your own bootable code on a Mac (which isn't true for iPhone and iPad, sadly), as long as you don't compromise the security of Apple's bootloader, code, etc.

theowaway213456• 5 months ago

Agreed - I just can't get excited about the world's fastest CPU core running on the world's most locked-down and developer-unfriendly OS.

virgildotcodes• 5 months ago

World's most developer-unfriendly OS seems a bit hyperbolic when such a large number of devs use MacOS as their primary dev OS.

sspiff• 5 months ago

Same. I was on macOS for work for about 3 years. Never gelled with me.

I was on an M2 Macbook Pro with Asahi and it was great. It's really hard to fault Apple's hardware for most use cases.

I'm currently on a Strix Halo laptop (HP Zbook), which is about as expensive, and the hardware is great, but power efficiency and build quality lag leagues behind by Apple. A 4000 euro laptop still feels like a cheap toy.

dcminter• 5 months ago

One of us! :)

Currently in a brief macos phase before I can be issued my Linux laptop at work. It's so clunky. A major annoyance for me right now is the lack of MST multi-screen over USB which means my nice daisy-chained home setup is fine on my near-decade-old Dell but doesn't work at all on the fancy Macbook. They have the hardware to support it, they just don't.

Generally the hardware with Apple is amazing but I'll take the hit on that and things like battery life just to get an OS that feels like it's on my side.

I'd maybe consider Asahi for home use but I'd be wary of it for work. Perhaps in a few years.

elxr6• 5 months ago

Good news, intel panther lake (and the laptops they come in) are on par with M5 macbooks in almost every way.

This year is a lot more competitive than any of the past ~4 years for premium laptops.

The asus expertbook ultra even has a much better screen, a much better keyboard, and a very similar haptic trackpad. Weighs less than a 13 inch macbook air too. There's cheaper options too that are close to as good (minus the screen).

peyton• 5 months ago

For something like my daily personal laptop the warranty is a big factor. I’d rather not deal with shipping it off to Asus for a couple months when it doesn’t boot or whatever.

lotsofpulp2• 5 months ago

Are there any non-Apple laptops yet where you can just close the lid and put the laptop in your bag and not worry about it being on?

jauntywundrkind• 5 months ago

M5 also features faster unified memory with 153GB/s of bandwidth

I was about to write a post mourning how much I wish Panther Lake really could compete, but lacked the memory bandwidth to offer a real challenge. But supposedly it can go up to 9600MT/s which would bring Panther Lake to ~150GB/s.

I am curious what the NPU on M5 has. The 50 TOp/s on Panther Lake is... fine. Apple is really seeing huge success with MLX, with an adoptable software stack that the PC world is super struggling to deliver.

dagmx• 5 months ago

Can you quantify your claim?

PTL’s highest SKU is comparable to the base M5 for only multicore perf at double the power use in every benchmark I’ve seen. It lags significantly behind in single core.

But I’d love to see a benchmark showing otherwise.

Just the latest I’ve seen https://youtu.be/7OxE7FwJPJM?si=b5T0PbmhUD1TXhX4

But I can find none that have PTL actually anywhere near M5 without strapping a much larger battery to the device

pjmlp• 5 months ago

Then support companies like Tuxedo, System 76, Dell, Asus,....

The only time Apple supported first class Linux on their consumer hardware was with MkLinux, and that was when everything was going down in flames and they needed to survive somehow.

w10-1• 5 months ago

No support needed. Run Linux in a VM. Devices are limited, and you can't save/restore your state, but there's no real performance hit: my code runs faster on macOS(VM(Linux)) than macOS.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

Buy the mac, try Linux in an hour, take it back if you don't like it.

myHNAccount1232• 5 months ago

Perhaps macOS would suffice?

cromka5• 5 months ago

I believe they'll enable it, actually, fairly soon. With this hardware at these prices, if they offered BootCamp again for Linux and Windows, they'd basically own the market almost overnight. Considering they have long-term contracts on RAM and SSDs and that they steep margin on their Mac hardware, there is hardly any reason to not make money off of those who actually wouldn't buy Mac hardware otherwise. Plus, there's a chance they'll also buy AirPods, mouse, keyboard, etc.

oblio3• 5 months ago

You must be new to the Apple world. Unless Apple starts failing again as a company (bad financials), they won't provide any official support for Windows or Linux.

a4564639• 5 months ago

Same. Virtualization is worse than on windows. OSX is garbage made by wannabe designers who don't know anything about human design

hash_it• 5 months ago

Finally the specs which were actually needed!

mattfrommars• 5 months ago

I have yet to understand myself why did I pay $2300 something for M4 Pro with 512gb storage. Like, for that kind of money, I should have gotten at least 1 TB.

My worst purchase thus far.

tornikeo• 5 months ago

why did I pay

Indeed, why did you? Didn't you read product specs for a device that costs nearly 2-and-a-half grand?

s_dev• 5 months ago

I went for an M4 Max, 128GB RAM and 2TB storage. My thinking is that we've crossed the rubicon of expecting tech to be orders of magnitudes faster a decade out. It won't be.

I expect this MacBook Pro (2024) to last a decade and inflation to eat away at value of cost/benefit of future purchases so I got the best one I could possibly afford. Meaning whatever entry level Apple laptop is available in 2034 will be only a small multiple faster than than my top of line 2024 one. I could be wrong as well but that's the dice roll.

dockerd• 5 months ago

You won't feel much difference in performance for the next 4 years but my guess is local LLM inference going to be much better post 3-4 generation.

sevenseacat• 5 months ago

I paid for an M1 Max when it came out. It was like $4500 AUD at the time.

I mean its still a decent machine, but man, I can get an M5 now for just over half the price...

(oh dang that was like nearly 5 years ago now)

bombcar2• 5 months ago

The thing with storage is you pay for it immediately-but you get zero value from it until you cross the smaller size boundary.

When my 1TB had about 400GB on it, the extra space "was worthless" - but now it's useful (though I have my suspicions that most of the extra space is being taken up by cloud caches).

mifydev• 5 months ago

What about the screen refresh rate? Do they deliberately keep it at 60hz so people would buy a MacBook Pro?

a4564639• 5 months ago

Yes. It's apple. It's about clear lines to milk peoples' cash and hoard it.

mft_2• 5 months ago

Looking at the M5 Max specifically, two thoughts:

1) The price for a 14" model with the most powerful Max processor with 128GB of RAM ($5099 with all else left at the default settings) doesn't seem to have jumped hugely considering what's being going on with RAM prices in the world.

2) Interesting/disappointing that they aren't offering a model with even more RAM, further jumping on the local inference train.

mixtureoftakes2• 5 months ago

Yeah and also they still want to get at least some sales on the mac studios and mac pros with ultra chips, 256gb m5 max wouldve straight up killed both of those products.

We can have nice things but nobody is going to hurt themselves to give out things that are the very best possible, theres probably a lesson in this

mft_2• 5 months ago

256gb m5 max would've straight up killed both of those products.

1) Not necessarily, as the thermals would presumably be different, the use-case is different (not everyone wants or needs a laptop; expandability of the Pro, etc.) and Max =/= Ultra, especially if you're crunching local inference.

2) Even if there was some cannibalisation, does that matter? Unless we assume Apple is running a higher profit margin on Studio/Pro machines (unlikely, since laptops are more expensive than the equivalent Mini/Studio) they're still making roughly the same money at the end of the day. And for the higher end (i.e. workloads needing the Ultra and/or >256GB RAM) there's still no competition.

3) I'd not be surprised (RAM shortages aside) to see the RAM options on the Ultra increase before long, maintaining the differentiation, just at a higher level.

Basically, Apple stumbled into relevance as (amazingly) the most cost-effective option for local inference. Having found themselves in this position, it would be a huge fail to not lean further into this. They seem to be doing this to an extent by optimising chips for e.g. prompt processing, but increasing the RAM is needed too.

regularfry• 5 months ago

Production question, then, for those who know about these things: how far ahead would Apple have locked in their prices for buying RAM for this line, for the units that are part of the initial release?

thesimp• 5 months ago

In NL I can buy a base Macbook Air with 16G memory and 512G SSD voor 1199,- inc tax.

I just looked up my M1 receipt: in 2020 I bought a Macbook Air M1 with 16G memory and 512G SSD for 1399,- inc tax.

I did not expect the price for a base machine to go down in 2026.

zeusly3• 5 months ago

That was not a base machine in 2020

omnimus• 5 months ago

The base M1 was 256gb 8gb ram for 999usd. Thats why yours was 1399eur.

Each Air generations gets slight upgrade and also now got 100usd price increase.

teliskr• 5 months ago

I've been using Macbook Pros for a long time. I usually spend 3-4k on them. I recently purchased an 14" Asus ZenBook for $1300 and loaded Omarchy Linux on it. I wanted to have something less expensive and lightweight for traveling. I really like it a lot! I notice that it is a little slower than my Macbook Pro, but the performance completely acceptable for most things.

mixtureoftakes2• 5 months ago

laptops seem kinda solved now? for every cpu vendor and every os theres now a great option that just, works, so everyone can just use what they like and not be at a disadvantage due to not knowing the latest developements in the space, or due to habitual preference. Good type of boring

tiffanyh• 5 months ago

I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread.

The MBA is an amazing value, and appears to have only gotten slightly cheaper.

This is a solid product, that continually receives incremental improvements and delivered at a lower price point (when spec'd out).

joe_mamba• 5 months ago

I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread.

Which negative tone? 90% the mainline comments I see are positive.

r0fl• 5 months ago

This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years

gib4442• 5 months ago

Until they release an update that slows it down

bhouston4• 5 months ago

The MBA is an absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs. I use it (MBA 15" M3) with a large complex TypeScript code base, and it is fast and amazing at 24GB of ram or more.

PS. The biggest speedup I got this past year (10x) was switching to native TypeScript (tsgo) and native linting (biome or oxlint).

packetlost2• 5 months ago

It's a bit slow, but still workable for Rust too. I prefer doing my daily work on a much more powerful 9955HX though.

ajross5• 5 months ago

absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs

Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box. The news here isn't "The M5 Air is a disappointment", it's "Laptops are commoditized and boring".

a4564639• 5 months ago

dudee.. ihave 32GB ram in a laptop from 2015 and $300 laptop from ebay for compiling kernels. please.

ajross5• 5 months ago

The MBA is an amazing value, and appears to have only gotten slightly cheaper.

Looks to me like the base model went up by $100, no?

The whining is just whining. It's a fine laptop, but it's not significantly improved from the one they shipped a year ago. Add to that the fact that laptops as a whole are well on the way down their commoditization slope and the general HN desire to cheer about Great New Apple Devices, this is for sure a backwards step.

c-hendricks• 5 months ago

Base price went up, as did storage and the new price is cheaper than the previous price + equivalent storage I think

jstummbillig• 5 months ago

The MB Air M line is a personal contender for best product of all time: Fantastic performance without fans, amazing battery life, high res display and build quality at that price point.

When the M1 came out it was quite frankly unbelievable. And, even after all these years, I still don't see who would beat it across those dimensions.

allthetime5• 5 months ago

My M1 Air is going strong as my travel & about-town laptop. It can do everything I do on my vastly more powerful M4 mbp, aside from compile multiple mobile apps simultaneously in less than a minute. Absolutely insane value and anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they are talking about.

ProllyInfamous3• 5 months ago

fantastic performance without fans

I have an MBA15M3 that is lovely. With 1mm thermal heat pads (internal, CPU|case), I was able to increase the run-time before throttling significantly.

Among my favorite evening companions. Much more durable than initially conceivable.

havaloc• 5 months ago

I don't get it either. I've rolled out well over a hundred of these in a higher education setting and I have never had one have a hardware issue or needed to retire it other than wanton damage. I still have a ton of M1s in circulation and they are great still. I had to just replace a Dell with only 2.5 years of service, they tend to fall apart.

ProllyInfamous3• 5 months ago

Twenty years ago, I worked at a Dell laptop repair facility, which primarily supported education customers.

other than wanton damage

Some fairly clever students read their warranties closely and figured out how to get annual upgrades without violating warranty exclusion clauses. Very clever. Very annoying.

Robdel122• 5 months ago

I retired my M1 MacBook Air last year, really out of power greed. I wanted to play with local LLMs (lol).

I seriously never had issues with my m1 in my workloads. Dev stuff, docker, etc. editing 30min 4k GoPro videos. I probably would these days with rust dev stacked in there but yeah. Can’t agree more, they’re an amazing value.

a4564639• 5 months ago

Because Apple is ripping everyone off in the name of design when things apples to apples are much better elsewhere

bengale• 5 months ago

The base Macbook Air continues to be an absolutely great deal.

Xeoncross2• 5 months ago

I'm glad the air now comes standard with 16GB of RAM and 512GB disk space.

It's not that the M1 with 8/256GB was slow at all, but even browsing the web gets into 12GB of usage and exhausting the 256GB is fairly easy if you backup your 256GB phone, try to edit a few videos, download enough Gradle/Go/Cargo/Node packages, or install enough 20GB office apps.

Any apple silicon with 16GB / 512GB of stage (even the M1 series) should have a much longer useful life and avoid disk/storage aging as rapidly from the constant swapping.

cj• 5 months ago

I'm excited about this. The previous generation base model 15" Air was good enough for our company to make it the default computer for everyone. Previously we were giving out base model MBP's. And they're $1000 cheaper.

Today, the MBP is just way too powerful for anything other than specific use cases that need it.

dillydogg• 5 months ago

I have noticed something similar. With the computer science undergrads and grad students I work with, Air is much more common than with the premeds and med students, many of whom have MBPs (who I am presuming do not need that much power).

jug2• 5 months ago

Yes, back 10-15 years ago MBP felt more prosumer to me but they have monstrous performance and price points nowadays, like true luxury items or enterprise devices, that I'm happy to see good base specs on the MBA. The base spec on that device matters a lot. Also, Apple will probably release a cheaper MacBook this week and if the rumor holds, it'll be good enough for most consumers.

boutell• 5 months ago

Because you can buy it with 32GB of unified RAM, the MBP is now actually the cheapest device for something... useful local AI models!

giwook2• 5 months ago

Out of curiosity, what are some good use cases for a MBP now with the MBAs being so powerful?

I can think of things like 4K video editing or 3D rendering but as a software engineer is there anything we really need to spend the extra money on an MBP for?

I'm currently on a M1 Max but am seriously considering switching to an MBA in the next year or two.

jug2• 5 months ago

Even with the $100 price bump, I think this is a win. 16/512 is a very nice base spec on Mac.

drob5185• 5 months ago

That works for a LOT of people. Not me, but the everybody else in my family.

reactordev• 5 months ago

I have a 16GB/512GB Air M1 (2020) because I knew I would need the extra space but this really makes me happy. A new Air, higher headroom, M5, is awesome. It’s not a MBP but it’s good enough for 95% of the daily stuff. If you aren’t running local agents this would be amazing.

btown• 5 months ago

This is also just the direction that AI is taking us, even for people who wouldn't describe themselves as traditional developers.

Setting aside on-device LLMs, one needs RAM and disk space just for the multiple isolated Claude Cowork etc. VMs that will increasingly become part of people's everyday lives.

And when it's easier than ever to create an Electron app, everything's going to have an Electron app, with all the RAM/disk overhead that entails. And of course, nobody's asking their agents "optimize the resource usage of the app I made last week" - they're moving on to the next feature or project.

I suppose the demoscene will always be there, for those of us who increasingly need a refuge from ram-flation.

dijit4• 5 months ago

Lets be real, the fact that the Air is good for developers is.. honestly, great.

But these devices are meant for home users.

Not a tremendous amount of home users having huge gradle/go/cargo/node packages in my experience.

The backup problem is real, I'm surprised Apple doesn't come out with a new time capsule (edit: for phones/tablets)- but I guess they want that sweet iCloud services dollar.

Forgeties793• 5 months ago

maybe I’m forgetting all the benefits of time capsule but you can plug any old storage device into a Mac now and turn it into a “Time Machine.“ It’s pretty turnkey at this point. What would a modern time capsule offer besides maybe remote back ups?

dubeye• 5 months ago

I have an M3 8gb air and it' mostly fine, unless I have a node server running or similar. Otherwise it's not very different to my M4 16gb iMac

I've no idea what the storage is on either of them, I've never looked. The days of needing storage are behind me, personally

prmph• 5 months ago

Where does it stop? Of course having a bit more room does not hurt, but my view is that if 256GB was not enough for you, 512GB wouldn't be either.

To me it's mostly about learning to mange RAM and storage space on your machine. A lot of stuff does not need to be hoarded on the machine. Move infrequently accessed data to an external drive. Be ruthless about purging stuff you no longer really need. Refuse to run apps that consume tens of GBs of RAM on a whim (looking at you Firefox, I've been impressed with how efficient and stable the Helium browser has been for me). If you are a developer, engineer for efficient use of RAM and storage.

Like I said, 16gb RAM and 512GB storage minimum is nice, but if the fundamental issues that contribute to massive and wasteful use of resources on our machines are not addressed, nothing will be enough.

1123581321• 5 months ago

From observing family members, 256GB is usually fine, but small enough that normal computer use can accidentally fill it up. 512GB provides plenty of headroom for them. 512GB is tight for more involved usage that’s not serious media creation, and 1TB is comfortable. 1TB seems like the realistic minimum for heavier media creation.

matthewkayin2• 5 months ago

I think 512GB is a fair minimum for a computer these days, but I agree with your "Where does it stop?" sentiment when it comes to RAM.

If browsing the web takes 12GB of RAM, at what point do we stop chasing after more RAM and instead start demanding better performance and resource usage out of the web?

ProfessorLayton• 5 months ago

Where does it stop?

I don't know but macOS is making it ever more difficult to manage storage, with lots of random things under "macOS" pushing ~40GB or "System Data" that gets a crapload of unrelated things like podcast [1] downloads, with no easy way to purge.

[1] I spent too much time hunting down ~250GB of missing disk space, and it turns out it was the Podcasts app's cache, while the app itself reported no downloads. I fully expected this to be managed automatically, but was getting out of disk space warnings. It's a mess.

Xeoncross2• 5 months ago

It doesn't stop, it's just where we are in this rolling window of time.

16GB of RAM (currently) works for 90% of professions daily needs.

drob5185• 5 months ago

I agree with the sentiment, but in general it's not worth my time to try to purge. I used to do that back in 2005. Heck, in the 1990s, I'd buy a new hard drive every year. But these days, I find that a hard drive lasts me for 5 years if I plan well.

themadturk7• 5 months ago

My first Apple Silicon machine was an 8GB/512GB M1 MacBook Air. I rarely bumped up against the RAM, but I was pretty happy using between 300-400GB on the SSD, so I really think the 512GB was plenty. I have a 1TB machine now, and typically still use less than 512GB...but now and then I've found a good use for nearly all of that terabyte.

You're right, learning to manage storage space is important, but you need to have some storage space to manage first. 256GB is the bottom of the barrel.

sonofhans4• 5 months ago

Can I just lean on my cane for a second, and say that the first machine I connected to a network had 256KB RAM, and I considered myself lucky to have so much. My 150 baud modem downloaded text slower than I could read it.

I know how we got to these large numbers. Shit, I helped build the road. It still blows my brains out.

Doctor_Fegg• 5 months ago

Luxury. I dialled into FidoNet with my 64k Amstrad CPC (contd. p94. Mein gott I’m old)

themadturk7• 5 months ago

Yup. I ran UUCP on a 64K Kaypro with a 1200 baud modem.

themadturk7• 5 months ago

I never understood the 256GB SSD on the MBA. That's no space at all.

hermanzegerman• 5 months ago

Wow it's so exciting. And next year there will be a M6 MacBook looking exactly the same with slightly different specs.

Hardware is completely boring now. That also applies to Phones

bhouston4• 5 months ago

I love my MacBook Air 15" M3 so much. It is large fast and light. While I really appreciate the improved M5, my main ask is actually a brighter screen. The current 500 nits is a bit low if you are ever not in a dark room.

Anyhow, because the differences between my M3 and the new M5 are just the CPU/GPU and I am not actually hurt much by the current CPU speed, I won't be upgrading.

ProllyInfamous3• 5 months ago

I love mine as well... got it for $849 at CostCo, last year, in an astoundingly-awesome tax-free weekend sale, with 2%cashback.

Not really using it for anything demanding, mostly just listing to podcasts at night (the speakers are wonderful). Battery life is incredible. Screen mostly stays off, but is very clear — I can see the brightness being an issue if used outdoors/windowsun.

longbucks• 5 months ago

Does the chip actually improves? I’m still on a specced out M1 Max (64GB RAM / 2TB SSD) and it still feels like a beast for my daily work. It’s wild that we’re at the M5 now, but it’s hard to justify an upgrade when this machine still handles everything I throw at it so well. Seeing 512GB finally become the baseline is great, but I think I’ll be holding onto this M1 for a while longer.

jhawk28• 5 months ago

M5 is almost 2x the single core performance of the M1 Max. You would notice that things are faster.

metaltyphoon• 5 months ago

Well when macOS feels heavier now than before so is that 2x really a 2x?

maest• 5 months ago

But everything is fast enough, so moving to the M5 seems like a downgrade, as it is heavier

carlosjobim• 5 months ago

Noted, I will inform Tim Cook.

WXLCKNO• 5 months ago

update: he's in shambles upon hearing the news

frogperson• 5 months ago

Why wont they put a usb-c port on both sides? So iritating to be limited on where i can sit when i charge.

gowld• 5 months ago

Because the Pro costs more.

FriedPickles• 5 months ago

I'll upgrade my M1 MBA when they do. I remember my Intel MBP running noticeably hotter when plugged in on one side vs the other, so maybe it's trickier than it seems.

windowsrookie2• 5 months ago

This was a limitation of intel CPU's at the time and required additional thunderbolt controller chips separate from the CPU.

happyopossum2• 5 months ago

With the MagSafe charging port I never worry about it - if the cord runs behind the laptop and I kick it, nothing bad happens.

I mean I get it - it's slightly annoying to need an extra 18" of charging cable length but at the end of the day tradeoffs for a smaller, cheaper, lighter machine have to exist.

lacoolj• 5 months ago

lol the iPhone of the laptop world (literally)

next year we get the M6 Titanium and then the M7e

cybice• 5 months ago

m1 has perfect performance. Screen is the issue. Having all modern devices with 90-120Hz and good brightness, Im feeling headache switching on air on regular basis.

petesergeant• 5 months ago

Their problem is that it looks great and all, but there's just zero reason to upgrade my M2 MBA -- until I'm forced to install Tahoe. When it's time to buy, I'll grab one of these or whatever's latest, I'm sure, and I'll get another Mac without thinking twice about it, but I'm not even sure I'd notice the giant speed difference?

I did get tricked into putting Tahoe (or whatever the iOS version is called) on my iPhone 12 Pro though, and my phone is now sluggish and sad, so I am going to have to upgrade it, which I'm carrying quite a lot of resentment about. Hoping I can hold off until the fold phone.

JCattheATM2• 5 months ago

It's nice to see someone with reasonable restraint...way too many people on here with disposable incomes think they need a new macbook each year.

t1234s• 5 months ago

I was hoping they would move one of the usb c ports over to the right side. this is the only thing I dislike about the M4 air

avhception2• 5 months ago

I have 2 thinkpads, and one of them is better in every aspect - except that the inferior one has it's 2 USB-C ports on opposite sides of the laptop, while the other one has both ports on the same side. Being able to plug in the charger from either side is really great, will definitely look for that in a future laptop.

a4564639• 5 months ago

You want framework. I can switch ports in whatever configuration I want.

MagicMoonlight• 5 months ago

I’m still running a 2013 MacBook Air. 4gb of RAM, no CPU to speak of. Still works.

I’ll probably buy this, unless the cheap one they release tomorrow is better. A current MacBook is something like 30x more powerful than my ancient one. It’s going to be insane.

firemelt• 5 months ago

I should top up my m3 ram damn I really regret it, cant even open android studio and emulator in will be on yellow zone

a4564639• 5 months ago

This is why people generally prefer Lenovos and Frameworks. You can upgrade when you need to and don't have to get a whole new laptop. Despite all what Apple claims as environmentally friendly, they are not. They are pushing more products that will be paperweight when apple deems them to be.

jmyeet• 5 months ago

What I find interesting is how over a long period Apple had to basically reverse everything Johnny Ive was probably responsible for before he left and how we got back to where we were 10-15 years ago in many ways.

Remember how cool MagSafe was? Tripping over a cable no longer meant smashing your laptop. In the late 2000s, this was amazing. Then they made the laptops thinner so we got MagSafe 2. Annoying if you had chargers but whatever. And then... gone.

Macbook Air? The 2008 version I don't count. It's a weird and bad product. But the 2010/2011 products were rock solid and nobody could compete with Apple's value proposition for the hardware. Nobody. And they continued to be amazing but suffered from a screen that didn't get an upgrade from 2011 (IIRC). Where was the retina display? It was such an obvious upgrade.

But then Apple killed it for the 12" Macbook, which was a horrible product. Too many compromises. A single port. Ugh. That was Johnny Ive's baby.

Oh and let's not forget the whole butterly keyboard debacle, all for an estimated 0.5mm decrease in thickness. It failed because it got dust in it. It was expensive to replace. It was just a terrible design decision.

Oh and the Touch Bar? Please.

It was clear that Apple just wanted to increase the ASP of hheir laptops. So getting a good laptop for $1000 was no longer on the cards. Instead we were forced into the 13" Macbook Pro at the better part of $2000.

And here we are in 2026. MagSafe is back (has been for a few years obviously). The butterfly keyboard got ditched (again, some years ago). And they of course killed in the 12" Macbook and brought back to Macbook Air (again, some years ago).

But my point is that in many ways the 2026 Macbook air looks a lot like the 2010-2015 Macbook Air. Updated specs of course but it sits in that same segment of being "good enough" for most people and being excellent value.

One simply cannot overstate the importance of being able to walk into an Apple Store and just buying one. For me, this alone kills buying almost anything else. Even getting a charger for non-Apple laptops could be nontrivial. It's less of an issue now with USB-C charging but a lot of higher end Windows laptops can't draw enough power so still have their own chargers.

I like 16GB/512GB as the new baseline. Given what AI has done to RAM and SSD pricing, a slight price bump to $1099 seems perfectly acceptable to me.

soared• 5 months ago

What is the importance of going to a store and buying one? If you live in any major metro you can just go to any big box retailer, or a microcenter if you have one, and buy any other brand’s laptop.

hybrid_study• 5 months ago

No Nano-texture display option. Damn you, Apple!

HanClinto3• 5 months ago

Is it weird to anyone else that the M5 keeps the same limitations of the M4, and tops out at 128 GB of RAM?

If one wants to serve large-ish LLMs locally, an M3 Mac Studio w/ 512 GB/RAM is still a super compelling option, and I was hoping that the M5's would bump us up to 1TB of unified memory.

Don't get me wrong -- seeing them use LMStudio as the benchmark for measuring local LLM inference is super awesome for the local / open-source LLM community, but seeing this have the same 128GB cap as the M4 is... disappointing?

M3 Studio is still the best option if one wants 512GB.

browningstreet• 5 months ago

Apple hasn't suddenly stopped being Apple. They strongly differentiate the boundaries of their product lines and have never let use case leakage spread across their product lines.

HanClinto3• 5 months ago

Yes, but the M3 was used in the Mac Studio as well as the Macbook Air, wasn't it?

The 128gb limitation feels like it's portrayed as a limitation of the M5 chip itself -- not just of the Macbook Air product line.

cco• 5 months ago

I tremble to think at the cost of 1TB of ram in an apple laptop.

NineStarPoint• 5 months ago

It was the M3 Ultra that had that much RAM capacity, not the Pro or the Max.

It is disappointing they didn't up it to at least 256GB on the laptops, but we'll have to wait for the next iteration of the studio to see if they'll give us 1TB unified memory.

HanClinto3• 5 months ago

Oh nice. Super good clarification, I appreciate the correction -- thank you!

Here's holding out hope that we'll still be able to see an M5 Ultra then! :)

Tepix• 5 months ago

I'm pretty sure that the market for notebooks with more than 128GB memory at Apples prices is rather small.

std_move5• 5 months ago

This is the best laptop for the general consumer around $1k.

  - it has no annoying fans, it is completely silent
  - a high res display with no PWM flickering and reasonable response times, no burn-in issues, enough brightness for outdoor use
  - best-in-class hardware, very very efficient, amazing single thread performance, good multi thread, very good GPU
  - no Microsoft Windows annoyances, ads, bloatware, broken stuff all the time
  - much better real world performance on battery than x64 processors (!). you can get reasonable perf by setting Intel/AMD CPUs to high perf, but then goodbye battery life and get ready for very loud fans. this is simply a point not emphasized enough, the real world battery perf of Intel/AMD laptops is very sluggish on default power modes and despite that, they consume more battery than the M5
  - amazing battery life
  - good workmanship, no creaking, good hardware overall (mics, webcam, keyboard, touchpad!)
  - very good speakers

There is simply nothing comparable in the Windows laptop world. You can maybe get a cheaper Windows laptop but it will be terrible in almost everything - the new Apple budget MacBooks will probably be a much better choice. And around $1000, there is no comparison. I wish it was different.

orthoxerox• 5 months ago

If only it didn't have to run OSX.

std_move5• 5 months ago

Yeah, I am not a huge fan either. I would much prefer Linux or a very customized Windows.

For instance, the inability to write to NTFS filesystems without addons is annoying.

But I believe that for most users, the default MacOS experience is now much better than what Windows is with default settings.

PaulHoule8• 5 months ago

I’ll add that MacOS is crammed with spammy ads for Apple Music and other services I don’t want. To be fair somebody wants Apple Music whereas the Microsoft versions of those things are completely unwanted.

Ads and nags in the Windows World are drawn using the same HTML-based technology that has replaced Windows native apps since Windows 8, the ads and nags in MacOS are the 2025 anti-antialiased retreads of the 1999 MacOS X imitations of the modal dialogs from 1984 MacOS classic. It’s sad. When I set up a new Mac for my wife she was furious at how ad infested it was, especially to browse the web with Safari and if you want to add an ad blocked you need an Apple Account which is something she’s done without using macs for 20+ years.

bilegeek• 5 months ago

Eventually Asahi will catch up... if Apple doesn't turn around and purposely make it harder, hopefully we didn't just get lucky they were feeling "benevolent" with earlier M-series.

2III7• 5 months ago

- thermal throttling under sustained heavy load, though apparently there is the possibility to add thermal pads to get rid of throttling, probably at the expense of comfort

- no Linux support

Otherwise I agree, it is a wonderful machine. I'd replace my crappy thinkpad if I could.

My 2014 Air is still going strong for light web browsing and terminal use.

mholm2• 5 months ago

thermal throttling under sustained heavy load

This gets mentioned a lot, but I do quite a bit of dev work on my M4 MBA and have never even felt it get warm. Sustained heavy loads are extremely rare with how quick this thing is.

lurking_swe2• 5 months ago

for the general consumer

linux does not apply here. General consumer doesn’t even know what linux is.

fundad2• 5 months ago

Are the think pads at $1000 crappy?

odiroot• 5 months ago

If this one is anything like the previous ones, ThinkPad is still beating it in the keyboard department.

Plus you get x86_64 and vendor support for Linux.

X13 is probably the best equivalent in Lenovo's line.

alfiedotwtf3• 5 months ago

How’s ACPI and real suspend (not that “fake” soft suspend) these days? I’m still burned after running Linux on a laptop since 2002 and not having proper power management for suspend :(

… if it’s not the power layer, it’s the network, video, Bluetooth that won’t power up anymore after a nap

JoshTriplett4• 5 months ago

X13 is probably the best equivalent in Lenovo's line.

I think the X1 Carbon line is the best direct competitor.

junga• 5 months ago

There's not much difference between the keyboard of the X13 Gen 6 and the keyboard of the MacBook Pro M1. I own both devices. The keyboard of my T14s Gen 1 on the other hand is noticeably better.

Findecanor• 5 months ago

Not just low key travel. Here in Europe, Mac keyboards have an anemic vertical Return key. Its widest point is as wide as the `\` key on a US keyboard. No such issues on ThinkPads.

netsec_burn• 5 months ago

I prefer the Dell Rugged line or Thinkpads, since a single water droplet on the keyboard is enough to kill this laptop.

dgxyz3• 5 months ago

The last 3 dells at work, all high end precision/pro max machines, have lasted 9 months before failing completely. No thanks.

apparent• 5 months ago

Did this happen to you? I was under the impression that a tiny spill was no longer fatal for Mac laptop keyboards. I've seen it happen a few times and be fine, but maybe the people I knew were just lucky?

kristjansson2• 5 months ago

???

I do dishes with an MBP next to the sink. I wouldn't put it under the faucet, but it's ~fine so far.

hyperhello• 5 months ago

The new Apple keyboard seems to fix itself. Once my command key had fallen down. It actually fixed itself somehow. I think it’s got whatever miracle metal snaps back into shape in there. And my kid has been using my old laptop and leaving crumbs; when a crumb gets under the key you feel it, but just press it in and destroy the crumb and the key is fine.

I remember the old keyboard because I got so sick of it I snapped the laptop in half in a rare fit of disgust (I was under a lot of stress at the time).

Overall, Apple blew it out of the park, and I happily forgive the earlier problems. Now I hope that Tahoe is just some kind of planned demolition phase before they introduce a totally new unsurpassable stable OS.

zelda420• 5 months ago

I hate thinkpads. I was a traveling consultant for nearly a decade. I had three thinkpads and two completely broke within 2 years. The third was ok but when replaced with a MacBook pro I became an apple convert.

Buttons840• 5 months ago

Plus a touch pad that uses all available space and allows clicks on any part of the touchpad surface.

wisplike2• 5 months ago

I wish it was different

Amen to that, my keyboard on my m1 air recently failed. I was horrified to find out it is literally riveted to the frame. I got this close to buying a new one. Something annoyed me about this perfectly good laptop being rendered compltely useless and I ended up buying a replacement keyboard, ripping out the old one and shimming this one with paper. Its not perfect but here I am typing from it.

But you are 100% right, there is just nothing better on the market. The gap is so big.

sonofhans4• 5 months ago

The riveting sounds, as you say, horrifying. Congrats on making it your own again.

It’s still remarkable to me that it’s even possible to do it at all. The amount of tech and miniaturization crammed into that thing — it would be easier for them to rivet, weld, and glue every part, and cheaper. And if the build quality weren’t so high to begin with, it wouldn’t have withstood the repair at all.

A good friend has a Framework, and it’s cool as hell, but incredibly primitive compared with your M1.

kintamanimatt• 5 months ago

How did it fail?

ksec• 4 months ago

You do get a new battery with Keyboard replacement. So it is not that bad although it may still be better to buy a new MacBook considering the cost.

cromka5• 5 months ago

very good speakers

All of the above is true but this, actually, is not entirely: they use a lot of DSP. If you try the same speakers with regular Fedora Asahi with no DSP profile (i.e. vanilla sound), they're very mediocre and do not handle bass well. So, like with many aspects of Apple hardware, this is an example of their software/firmware complimenting the hardware.

duskwuff• 5 months ago

It's part DSP, part thermal modeling. The speakers can be driven pretty hard, but will overheat and fail if too much energy is put into them in too short a time. macOS has a thermal model to keep the speakers within safe limits; a major component of Asahi's DSP profile is a similar model. (Without that model in place, Asahi reduces the peak power level to avoid damage.)

TiredOfLife2• 5 months ago

Windows laptops also do, but unfortunately the DSP is not hidden in OS and are part of preinstalled software and usually not active by default.

noman-land• 5 months ago

"it has no annoying fans"

I beg to differ ;)

wiremine• 5 months ago

That it has no fans or the fans are annoying?

nekooooo• 5 months ago

what is this, slashdot? 

drob5185• 5 months ago

Wise guy. That said, upvoted for cleverness.

Robdel122• 5 months ago

Hey!… no yeah you’re right.

7thpower• 5 months ago

Shots fired!

rootnod3• 5 months ago

Credit where credit is due

winrid4• 5 months ago

How do you know there's no PWM flicker? Even my M3 Pro with its supposed 10khz backlight burns my eyes, I had to get rid of it. Is this display not oled?

std_move5• 5 months ago

MacBook Air has an IPS display with no flickering, see https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-15-M4-review...

Recent Pros have miniLED with high freq PWM.

lurking_swe2• 5 months ago

you forgot to mention the trackpad. MUCH nicer than the competitor trackpads. especially if you use some of the advanced gestures (some are hidden in accessibility settings).

lotsofpulp2• 5 months ago

You can also close the lid and trust it to stay off and open it up even a week later and resume at the same place you left off with very little battery usage. How no one else can figure out how to do this in almost 15 years or more is beyond me.

TiredOfLife2• 5 months ago

you forgot to mention the trackpad.

I have occasionally used MacBooks and the trackpad is the same as windows laptops. Or rather it becomes as good when I enable tap to click

mikae13• 5 months ago

You can maybe get a cheaper Windows laptop but it will be terrible in almost everything

It will be worse at almost everything, except running my preferred OS (Linux). Being able to upgrade/repair RAM, storage and battery at home is quite a perk too.

jruz• 5 months ago

Not on the latest but I’m happily running Asahi NixOS

benbayard2• 5 months ago

Many newer Windows laptops are now having their ability to update ram and storage removed as well. I believe the newest intel architecture introduced this, but my information might be out of date.

3abiton• 5 months ago

I totally get it. I have the M4 Air, grabbed it for 700$ on sale. I also have a MSI Creator with Linux (wayland). Performance wise the base Air crunches through everything up until lots of things are open and gpu is roaring (encoding or streaming), and with colima, I have few incus linux containers up and running. Battery life is formidable. Nothing comes close.

My linux laptop (32GB ram / beefy gpu) barely withstand 40 min on battery, but can handle very daunting tasks, and obviously gaming.

These are 2 different use cases, but right now, for the ultra portable laptop, Air is the king, until x64 brings back the efficiency per watt. Even qcom can't compete. That being said, I am a big fan of the apple hardware and not the apple software, so whenever Asahi linux is ready enough (with good battery life), I am definitely jumping ship.

fiedzia• 5 months ago

Being able to upgrade/repair RAM

Most upcoming laptops now have soldered RAM and soldered wifi becomes common too.

IshKebab2• 5 months ago

Honestly for the price you'd have to pay to get an equivalent Windows laptop you can buy two Macbook Airs. I think Apple's higher end machines are overpriced but their entry level laptops are a bargain, for what you get. Unless you need Linux (and the resulting bugginess/short battery life), it's really a no-brainer.

(Don't tell my Linux isn't buggy. I use it, but I regularly run into nonsense like this: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=512297 that doesn't happen on Windows or Mac. I still haven't figured out why VSCode freezes for half a second every few minutes on Linux.)

overfeed5• 5 months ago

Why the restriction to laptops? I don't get why prosumers would marry themselves 24/7 to a single portable device, when their conflicting requirements vary by task and circumstances: portability, high performance, low energy usage, and low noise aren't permanent requirements.

Sure, there's no single device that has Apple's blend of attributes, but who need that in this age of VMs and broadband Internet? My 32-core HEDT workstation outperforms anything Apple branded. I have a Chromebook when I need to be unplugged (<10% or the time)

anakaine• 5 months ago

My 32-core HEDT workstation outperforms anything Apple branded

Your high end hardware is not their target market / competition until you get into very purposeful tasks.

The market segment that exists for Macbook Pro is one where competitors battery life sucks, windows isnt the preferred OS, and high performance on a portable device on battery is beneficial. Its one where they have acceptable performance vs a dedicated desktop but remain portable and a good expected lifespan, as a portable.

freeone30002• 5 months ago

but who needs that?

I’m really happy with bringing my local workstation with me to a cafe, a coworking space, or on a trip. I love conveniently having one device for nearly everything, from AI fine-tuning to general development to gaming. And I love having a 12-hour battery life under normal use and USB-C charging. The screen is beautiful and great for watching movies on, too.

If you want one computing device, in total, a MacBook is a great choice. It’s overkill in most areas for most people, but it’s not deficient for anyone, and that matters a lot.

fundad2• 5 months ago

It's great that there is choice in the market isn't it?

wink• 5 months ago

Why the restriction to laptops?

The last company that was willing to give me a non-laptop desktop... I left in 2005. (with one exception where I simply did not ask)

Not even if "1k EUR desktop + 200 EUR netbook" would have cost less than a beefy laptop.

No, I don't know why.

raffraffraff• 5 months ago

Even though I'm done with apple, every time I use a non-apple laptop I think "this is a shit trackpad".

elAhmo• 5 months ago

Fully agree. I used to have a company issued MBP M3 Pro, and when I switched roles I got myself base M4 Air. Can't complain at all in the past year, I do feel throttling at times when running longer tasks, but for 99% of the time I don't feel I need anything better.

And I do work as a software developer, so anyone doing lighter usage not in this camp will feel the same.

M5 Air should be pretty much the same.

formvoltron• 5 months ago

Apple makes great hardware. I kind of knew this when I was 12 and I had an Apple IIc. I'm 52 now.

ant6n• 5 months ago

I have an M4 air. It’s a nice machine, but I do miss the non-reflective screen of my earlier Asus zenbook (similar size, weight, fanless, decent ergonomics, matte screen, but bog slow).

It seems the M5 air still has non non-reflective screen option, which is very unfortunate.

fastasucan• 5 months ago

Is it easy to install linux on them?

throwaway2903• 5 months ago

Asahi only supports M2 I think, so no.

gigatexal• 5 months ago

Yup. This a 1TB disk (how I’d configure it) and max out the ram is what I’d get.

angoragoats• 5 months ago

no Microsoft Windows annoyances, ads, bloatware, broken stuff all the time

MacOS absolutely has annoyances, ads, and broken stuff all the time.

When macOS shows an ad, it is sometimes harder to get rid of or disable than the ads built into Windows. For example, the ads to upgrade iCloud to a paid account.

I regularly run into bugs in macOS, both visual/cosmetic and functional, some of which have existed for multiple major versions with no fix.

thebytefairy• 5 months ago

Agree. I use both windows and mac daily, and I don't think Mac is much better in terms of annoyances and bugs.

panny• 5 months ago

-can't boot linux

No thanks.

applfanboysbgon• 5 months ago

I got an excellent Windows gaming laptop for $900 USD. It has a beautiful 17" 144hz glare-resistant display, not an awful glossy screen that might as well be a mirror in lit environment. The workmanship is great and the keyboard has a full numpad and utility keys. It came with a 1TB SSD and 16GB ram, both of which I doubled with additional parts after the fact for about $120. It would cost +$600 to reach 2TB SSD and +$400 per 16GB to extend the Macbook Air. Even at the current bullshit 500% inflated RAM prices, it would only cost $200 for +16GB on a Windows laptop. Given that 16GB is a complete non-starter for a $1.1k laptop in the world of programmers who only know how to use Electron, the Macbook Air is actually just garbage for price.

If money is no object to you, you can pay a >$1k premium for a 13" 60hz display if you care about fan noise under load or battery life. I personally don't mind either of those things, and will gladly enjoy my laptop with vastly superior specs in all other regards for half the price.

Windows has its problems, but they are fixable. You can hack and modify Windows all you want to get rid of the BS. I'll take that over an OS that believes the manufacturer owns the machine rather than the user, any day.

diffeomorphism• 5 months ago

Heavier than competing 14in laptops. Just okay res display. Low refresh rate. No oled or mini led. Basically unrepairable.

There are reasons the MacBook pro exists. The air is a nice machine but there are definitely trade-off.

adrian_b3• 5 months ago

I am probably not a "general consumer", so a description like

"MacBook Air with M5 now comes standard with 512GB of storage — double that of the previous generation — and can be configured up to 4TB for the first time"

for me sounds terrible in a very bad sense for a computer around $1k, so I would have never bought something like this even many years ago.

To be fair, due to the huge increase in the price of SSDs and DRAM, a 512 GB SSD @ $1100 no longer sounds so bad as one year ago, but it is still bad.

ismailmaj• 5 months ago

I bought the M4 air given that the consensus was also that it was the best value for 1k, but I ended up returning it and went for pro base model for a few reasons (still valid for M5 AFAIK from a bit of research):

- pro motion (120hz screen).

- better display brightness which is important when there is a bright sun outside.

- 1 more USB-C port and HDMI port (no dongle hell).

- 20% more battery life.

- This is more personal, but 13" is too small and 15" is too big, so 14" MBP worked best for me (~25 HFOV with a stand + KBM).

It's hard to justify saving 400 bucks given the gap between the models, but the decision is closer since the air has 16GB memory by default since M4 AFAIK.

MantisShrimp90• 5 months ago

I refuse to buy macbooks/apple products and advise my people to do the same.

I make it clear it's not about specs, it's not about UI, its about the fact that apple makes the world actively worse so they can sell you a better alternative.

You cant have iMessage anywhere else because they don't want you to, you are locked into apple stores because they refuse competition, you cant repair your own device because they get that money back in repair fees.

Its not about the operating system or the specs, I feel investing in Linux is the best way to create a more sustainable future for me and the ones I love and changing that take will require systemic changes, not these spec bumps and UI overhauls people fixate on.

vertigo-1• 5 months ago

what are you poor? If you need to repair something its probably junked anyway, I used to work at geeksquad. Most common "repairs" people were bringing laptops in for were liquid spills. Take a quick hike back to the computer section.

std_move5• 5 months ago

I would normally strongly agree, I don't like Apple as a company - for example the Apple store and Patreon 30 % tax https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46801419 Their policies overall.

However there is no comparable laptop hardware in the non-Apple world. Even if I wanted to pay double, there is no usable fanless high-quality quick laptop. Very sadly. The Air is just too good for the money and the competition too bloody incompetent and bad.

madeofpalk3• 5 months ago

you are locked into apple stores because they refuse competition

I don't follow this one. You can buy Apple hardware from other retailers. You can download software, out of the box, from places other than the Mac App Store.

myHNAccount1232• 5 months ago

I make it clear it's not about specs, it's not about UI, its about the fact that apple makes the world actively worse so they can sell you a better alternative.

I like the UI. What do you think they making worse?

a4564639• 5 months ago

I 100% agree. Most of the things that people say about lacking in non-macs, are eh. There are so many non-apple options that don't contribute to e-waste. Everything Apple can be dead at Apple's whims and it is ewaste.

adolph2• 5 months ago

  The difference is in the number of GPU cores. One chip has an 8-core GPU, while the other has a 10-core GPU.

I'm wondering why they would have a 2 GPU core option. Maybe the 6 GPU one is binned since it is only available with 16G RAM? But no, the 10 GPU core is also needed for any storage increase....

haunter• 5 months ago

The new cheap Macbooks have also been more or less confirmed.

Macbook Neo, probably coming with the iPhone A-series chips https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/03/apple-accidentally-leak...

normie3000• 5 months ago

iPhone processor? Should be interesting to see how performance is.

raw_anon_11114• 5 months ago

The latest iPhone processors are faster for single core performance than an M1.

subpixel• 5 months ago

I ordered the M4 in February and it looks like they upgraded me to the M5 and never even alerted me to the fact. At least I now understand the delay.

dzhiurgis2• 5 months ago

Needs 64GB ram so I can update from my 16" M1 32GB (whopping 5 years now). Higher resolution screen would be nice too. Otherwise I'll keep extending warranty on current one.

nodesocket• 5 months ago

I have a MacBook Pro M1 Max and trying to decide if upgrading to the new Air makes sense.

desireco42• 5 months ago

The only thing that can spoil this laptop is if it is getting hot... otherwise on paper and probably in reality is excellent machine.

As a developer, I don't need pro, it is more expensive, heavier, bulkier, hotter.

sciencesama• 5 months ago

is the screen pro res ? 120hz ?`

Frannky• 5 months ago

I love it. I still use a 2020 M1 since I had not had a reason to change it. So smooth and fast and silent and thin. I don't really have a reason to buy a new one but if it broke or I lost it I would for sure buy this new one. Pros are too bulky for me. The only thing I miss I the ability to run local big models at high token rate.

Taking into account Tesla chips deliver way more intelligence on smaller hardware maybe we will get there, a glm5 model running locally at 100 tokens/sec would be really dope!

MacBook Air with M5

Related Stories