3 ms·

Strictly in my opinion, the M1 mba is perhaps a tie or even slightly edges out the x2_0 series. Solidly built (would I use it as a melee weapon? no, that's what

Strictly in my opinion, the M1 mba is perhaps a tie or even slightly edges out the x2_0 series. Solidly built (would I use it as a melee weapon? no, that's what actual melee weapons -- like model m keyboards -- are for), fast, quiet, great screen, insane battery life, usable unix under the hood. I'll grant that the older IBM keyboards were top notch, but the M1's is good enough and having a modern screen to read code on is worth the trade (at least for me, I spend way more time reading and thinking when writing code than physically banging away on the keyboard). I feel kind of weird gushing about hardware to be honest, but it's just that good a machine and I guess that's in keeping with the author's love of the x220? :) If I didn't have an m1 air though, an x200-series thinkpad running linux of some form probably would be my go-to! I still eye minifree.org from time to time when the temptation for a dedicated portable linux machine has me in its grip.

gumballindie 3y ago
The M1 is limited to a single os and is not upgradeable though.
- n8henrie 3y ago
  Mine dual boots MacOS and NixOS, and has also run Asahi.
  - hu3 3y ago
    But it's full of limitations last I tested. No webcam, battery drains because power management is poor/non existent, no external displays depending on the connection and good luck with the touchbar, connectivity is limited like no thunderbolt or hdmi support, no sound, no screen brightness control, and I didn't manage to pair any bluetooth devices. Things will gradually improve hopefully but I don't have time to navigate minefields at the moment. Not to mention if things go south you need another mac, faith and need to wipe all data without chance to recover any of it.
- parker_mountain 3y ago
  The former is not true, and the latter is kinda pointless when you're comparing it to a 10+ year old computer.
  - nextos 3y ago
    Sadly Asahi, whose work is really impressive, is getting a bit stuck. Polishing the last 10% is really hard without cooperation from Apple. It would be awesome to run Linux on a MBA M2 as a first-class citizen, like it used to be possible on MacBook Airs from the early 2010s. Everything just worked. Besides, AMD CPUs are getting really performant to the point they outclass M2 in some benchmarks. Battery and heat-wise they are still behind, but very reasonable. And they have the advantage of being x86_64, so all software just works. In some ways, a X13 / T13s AMD is the new X220.
    - parker_mountain 3y ago
      > Battery and heat-wise they are still behind, That's all that matters at this point, imo. Very few workloads that can be done on a laptop really benefit from an extra 5-10% perf boost. Performance has gotten good enough that it's no longer a differentiating feature
      - nextos 3y ago
        Sure, my point was that heat and battery are really good in AMD ThinkPads too. Not as good as in ARM Macs, but sufficiently good to be a compelling alternative. I have test-driven one and I could get ~10 hours of use plus it was warm and silent. Macs get a lot more, but some packages are a bit problematic to run on non-x86 architectures.
    - w0m 3y ago
      > It would be awesome to run Linux on a MBA M2 as a first-class citizen, like it used to be possible on MacBook Airs from the early 2010s. Everything just worked. My current personal laptop is a ~2010 i7 11" MBA running Ubuntu. Had to dump OSX a few years ago as updates eventually murdered performance on it (Tried clean install, still completely unusable after I made the mistake of letting OSX upgrade). Battery is kind of crap now, but still gets ~hour. Enough for it to sit plugged in next to the couch for a quick dig into something, I'll plug in if I need more. I am tempted to upgrade, maybe a Framework? but.. Why? I love the size, and it's still plenty fast enough.
ant6n 3y ago
No matte screen option on Apple though.
- superq 3y ago
  Never would I defend Apple, but I'm sure that's easily solved with a matte screen protector.
arh68 3y ago
Yeah. I had an X220 (or X220i?) years ago running Debian/WindowMaker until the motherboard died. I think a "tie" is fair. I'd say the MacBooks last a few years longer, though ThinkPads have more ports. ThinkPads were about as good 10+ years ago as MacBooks are now, so can we just call it a tie? I suppose. Unfortunately, the keyboards on both have regressed to "fine".

gumballindie 3y ago

The M1 is limited to a single os and is not upgradeable though.

n8henrie 3y ago
Mine dual boots MacOS and NixOS, and has also run Asahi.
- hu3 3y ago
  But it's full of limitations last I tested. No webcam, battery drains because power management is poor/non existent, no external displays depending on the connection and good luck with the touchbar, connectivity is limited like no thunderbolt or hdmi support, no sound, no screen brightness control, and I didn't manage to pair any bluetooth devices. Things will gradually improve hopefully but I don't have time to navigate minefields at the moment. Not to mention if things go south you need another mac, faith and need to wipe all data without chance to recover any of it.
parker_mountain 3y ago
The former is not true, and the latter is kinda pointless when you're comparing it to a 10+ year old computer.
- nextos 3y ago
  Sadly Asahi, whose work is really impressive, is getting a bit stuck. Polishing the last 10% is really hard without cooperation from Apple. It would be awesome to run Linux on a MBA M2 as a first-class citizen, like it used to be possible on MacBook Airs from the early 2010s. Everything just worked. Besides, AMD CPUs are getting really performant to the point they outclass M2 in some benchmarks. Battery and heat-wise they are still behind, but very reasonable. And they have the advantage of being x86_64, so all software just works. In some ways, a X13 / T13s AMD is the new X220.
  - parker_mountain 3y ago
    > Battery and heat-wise they are still behind, That's all that matters at this point, imo. Very few workloads that can be done on a laptop really benefit from an extra 5-10% perf boost. Performance has gotten good enough that it's no longer a differentiating feature
    - nextos 3y ago
      Sure, my point was that heat and battery are really good in AMD ThinkPads too. Not as good as in ARM Macs, but sufficiently good to be a compelling alternative. I have test-driven one and I could get ~10 hours of use plus it was warm and silent. Macs get a lot more, but some packages are a bit problematic to run on non-x86 architectures.
  - w0m 3y ago
    > It would be awesome to run Linux on a MBA M2 as a first-class citizen, like it used to be possible on MacBook Airs from the early 2010s. Everything just worked. My current personal laptop is a ~2010 i7 11" MBA running Ubuntu. Had to dump OSX a few years ago as updates eventually murdered performance on it (Tried clean install, still completely unusable after I made the mistake of letting OSX upgrade). Battery is kind of crap now, but still gets ~hour. Enough for it to sit plugged in next to the couch for a quick dig into something, I'll plug in if I need more. I am tempted to upgrade, maybe a Framework? but.. Why? I love the size, and it's still plenty fast enough.

ant6n 3y ago

No matte screen option on Apple though.

superq 3y ago
Never would I defend Apple, but I'm sure that's easily solved with a matte screen protector.

arh68 3y ago

Yeah. I had an X220 (or X220i?) years ago running Debian/WindowMaker until the motherboard died. I think a "tie" is fair. I'd say the MacBooks last a few years longer, though ThinkPads have more ports. ThinkPads were about as good 10+ years ago as MacBooks are now, so can we just call it a tie? I suppose. Unfortunately, the keyboards on both have regressed to "fine".