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> I've been looking at MacBook Air also because they're pretty much the kings when it comes to battery life for a handbag sized laptop. Battery life is, indeed
by kcartlidge 4y ago
> I've been looking at MacBook Air also because they're pretty much the kings when it comes to battery life for a handbag sized laptop.
Battery life is, indeed, impressive.
Last night I spent around 5 hours doing C# dev in VS Mac, with multiple projects being built every few minutes, cross-platform binaries for Intel Mac, Windows, and Linux being produced every half hour or so, plus Highland 2, Word 2016, and Vellum. With all that it used 28% battery across that 5 hours (and never got warm). On full brightness too (for my sins).
I know the question isn't about dev, but writing uses less resources and gives even better battery life so 18 hours (for example) is definitely possible.
The only issue I have is the keyboard. Far better than the 'broken' ones of a few years ago but I really wish they'd go for thicker machines and increase the travel. I've just got rid of my last ThinkPad and it's the one thing I miss.
Oh, and there is no longer a hotkey to control the backlight brightness; it's automatic. Which genuinely works perfectly except that it doesn't come on for your very first sign in at boot-up, so entering your password then can be tricky without ambient light (though after that you can use the fingerprint reader). It's a really strange UX flaw. Not related to your question, I know, but you don't say whether you're already on a Mac or switching so I wanted to be honest about this as it is really annoying but rarely mentioned.