5 ms·

Another reason the Air is a good choice for most people is that it doesn't have a fan. I've cleaned quite a bit of dust/lint/etc. out of various laptops. Withou

Another reason the Air is a good choice for most people is that it doesn't have a fan. I've cleaned quite a bit of dust/lint/etc. out of various laptops. Without a fan, that's much less likely to be an issue. In one recent case, a family member was about to buy an entire new laptop because their old one was feeling very sluggish. I checked it out and realized that the fan had completely died and the system was constantly thermally throttling. A $12 replacement fan (and a thorough cleaning and CPU repaste) allowed them to put off a $1k+ purchase for at least a couple more years.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Ha ha, in my experience you are a downer. Sometimes I like to find a reason for a new purchase. ;-) (I suppose having fixed the fan though means I could get a little more for it on eBay.)
skinnymuch 4y ago
How do you know this stuff? My old 2014 MacBook Pro has the battery swelling up. I can’t afford more than a few hundred to fix everything. It’s a 2nd comp I use for a remote coworking Zoom session all day. I could have the same problems. I’ve never cleaned the laptop either..heh. I am a programmer so I am not afraid of hardware.
- raincom 4y ago
  Battery swelling = battery replacement. I suggest you replace the battery. Don't wait, as swollen batteries can explode. Apple will charge $200 to replace, or try a local authorized dealer. You can try install the battery yourself by ordering from iFixit. If I were you, I would just get a refurbished M1 MacBook Air from Apple, instead of spending $200 on the battery.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    Thanks I honestly didn't know. Spending a few hundred isn't a problem thankfully.
- nfriedly 4y ago
  First, as raincom mentioned, an expanding battery is a major concern. I'd recommend putting it somewhere fireproof immediately (such as in a metal trash can, or on a concrete pad), and making a plan to have the battery removed and properly disposed of in the near future. Running the battery down to below 30% might also be a good idea, but only after it's somewhere fireproof. Edit: here's some more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/comments/gebotv/faq_what_to_do_if_you_have_a_swollen_battery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/comments/gebotv/faq_wh... To answer your question, though, I've learned from iFixit guides, youtube videos, just taking things apart and tinkering with them, etc. Apple uses some oddball screws sometimes, but you can get a toolkit with everything you need for $30 or less. I'm more of a software guy, but I mess with hardware occasionally. (I'm also willing to pay a professional if I feel like it's over my head.)
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    Thanks. I didn't know. Clearly don't know anything about hardware heh.
dividedbyzero 4y ago
Another vote in favor of the Air for most people. I have an M2 Air with 24gb and a 16" M1 Pro or Max from work with tons of RAM and while I'm aware the 16" is vastly superior in a lot of ways on paper, in practice I hardly ever notice (or actually can't tell). The M2 has been powerful enough for everything I've thrown at it and then some; CaptureOne, dev work in Scala, fairly large Rust projects in VSCode, the occasional VM, 3d modelling, never felt bogged down. 24GB has been plenty for me and I've been kinda worried since I had more on my previous machine, but even with a bunch of containers and a VM here and there plus hundreds of tabs, half a dozen VSCode windows, CaptureOne in the background, a bunch of electron apps, ... it holds up just fine, with room to spare; not sure how that's possible, but I'm pretty sure it's managing to fit almost as much into 24gb than a previous Intel did into 32gb. Having no fan is an absolute game changer not just because of dust, but this way I can have the machine running near its thermal ceiling for extended amounts of time without going crazy from the fan noise, very handy when gaming, which I wouldn't want to do on the other Macbooks for that reason. I had to put a CPU indicator into the menubar because there's no way to hear high load anymore, so it's very easy to miss that Steam has crashed again and is now keeping all cores maxed etc. The silence really nice when using it in a quiet space, e.g. for tethered shooting without disturbing people, or in the quiet coach of a train, absolutely love it. I'd recommend the one with fewer GPU cores since that might give you slightly worse graphics, but it'll thermal throttle later and less overall when gaming or rendering. Other differences that aren't as drastic as the specs suggest include the display, which other than the difference in real estate, I can't say I've ever really noticed to be worse, it looks gorgeous despite its significantly lower specs. The 16" has very nice sound for a laptop, but the Air sounds way better than anything that thin should, it's better than the stereo speakers in my Dell monitor, fine for a quick round of casual gaming and the like. Connectivity might be a dealbreaker (esp. the single external display), but it fits what I need well (except for the SD card reader, would love to have that). And it's pretty lightweight, very sturdy, thin, compact, which is what ultimately made me pick it, much more suitable for travelling and having it in a backpack when cycling and the like. It'll even run off a tiny 30W power bricklet!

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Ha ha, in my experience you are a downer. Sometimes I like to find a reason for a new purchase. ;-) (I suppose having fixed the fan though means I could get a little more for it on eBay.)

skinnymuch 4y ago

How do you know this stuff? My old 2014 MacBook Pro has the battery swelling up. I can’t afford more than a few hundred to fix everything. It’s a 2nd comp I use for a remote coworking Zoom session all day. I could have the same problems. I’ve never cleaned the laptop either..heh. I am a programmer so I am not afraid of hardware.

raincom 4y ago
Battery swelling = battery replacement. I suggest you replace the battery. Don't wait, as swollen batteries can explode. Apple will charge $200 to replace, or try a local authorized dealer. You can try install the battery yourself by ordering from iFixit. If I were you, I would just get a refurbished M1 MacBook Air from Apple, instead of spending $200 on the battery.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  Thanks I honestly didn't know. Spending a few hundred isn't a problem thankfully.
nfriedly 4y ago
First, as raincom mentioned, an expanding battery is a major concern. I'd recommend putting it somewhere fireproof immediately (such as in a metal trash can, or on a concrete pad), and making a plan to have the battery removed and properly disposed of in the near future. Running the battery down to below 30% might also be a good idea, but only after it's somewhere fireproof. Edit: here's some more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/comments/gebotv/faq_what_to_do_if_you_have_a_swollen_battery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/comments/gebotv/faq_wh... To answer your question, though, I've learned from iFixit guides, youtube videos, just taking things apart and tinkering with them, etc. Apple uses some oddball screws sometimes, but you can get a toolkit with everything you need for $30 or less. I'm more of a software guy, but I mess with hardware occasionally. (I'm also willing to pay a professional if I feel like it's over my head.)
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  Thanks. I didn't know. Clearly don't know anything about hardware heh.

dividedbyzero 4y ago

Another vote in favor of the Air for most people. I have an M2 Air with 24gb and a 16" M1 Pro or Max from work with tons of RAM and while I'm aware the 16" is vastly superior in a lot of ways on paper, in practice I hardly ever notice (or actually can't tell). The M2 has been powerful enough for everything I've thrown at it and then some; CaptureOne, dev work in Scala, fairly large Rust projects in VSCode, the occasional VM, 3d modelling, never felt bogged down. 24GB has been plenty for me and I've been kinda worried since I had more on my previous machine, but even with a bunch of containers and a VM here and there plus hundreds of tabs, half a dozen VSCode windows, CaptureOne in the background, a bunch of electron apps, ... it holds up just fine, with room to spare; not sure how that's possible, but I'm pretty sure it's managing to fit almost as much into 24gb than a previous Intel did into 32gb. Having no fan is an absolute game changer not just because of dust, but this way I can have the machine running near its thermal ceiling for extended amounts of time without going crazy from the fan noise, very handy when gaming, which I wouldn't want to do on the other Macbooks for that reason. I had to put a CPU indicator into the menubar because there's no way to hear high load anymore, so it's very easy to miss that Steam has crashed again and is now keeping all cores maxed etc. The silence really nice when using it in a quiet space, e.g. for tethered shooting without disturbing people, or in the quiet coach of a train, absolutely love it. I'd recommend the one with fewer GPU cores since that might give you slightly worse graphics, but it'll thermal throttle later and less overall when gaming or rendering. Other differences that aren't as drastic as the specs suggest include the display, which other than the difference in real estate, I can't say I've ever really noticed to be worse, it looks gorgeous despite its significantly lower specs. The 16" has very nice sound for a laptop, but the Air sounds way better than anything that thin should, it's better than the stereo speakers in my Dell monitor, fine for a quick round of casual gaming and the like. Connectivity might be a dealbreaker (esp. the single external display), but it fits what I need well (except for the SD card reader, would love to have that). And it's pretty lightweight, very sturdy, thin, compact, which is what ultimately made me pick it, much more suitable for travelling and having it in a backpack when cycling and the like. It'll even run off a tiny 30W power bricklet!