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Have a look at the 12" Retina Macbook [0]. It's just called the 'Retina Macbook' (not air or pro). It was produced between 2016 and 2019. It is absolutely tiny,
by LeonM 2y ago
Have a look at the 12" Retina Macbook [0]. It's just called the 'Retina Macbook' (not air or pro). It was produced between 2016 and 2019. It is absolutely tiny, it ways just 920gr.
It took me a while to find a decent one second-hand, but it has been my ultimate travel companion since. It's small enough to just drop into any bag (handbag even) and can charge of any USB-C charger. No other brand of laptop in that form factor comes even close to build quality. I don't think any other unibody laptop of that size even exists.
If you get a later model (2017-2019, 3rd gen) then you get MacOS 13 (Ventura), which still receives updates. If you can find a later-model with upgraded CPU (i5) then performance is actually quite decent, lower-spec models are also still just fine for browsing, email and terminal work.
Supposedly it runs Windows just fine using bootcamp (I haven't tried). I have mine setup for dual-booting Linux. Linux support is decent, though out of the box no support for speakers (headphone jack works), it has a broadcom wifi/bt chip and the wifi works just fine, but bluetooth is currently broken. There are some out-of-tree patches that add limited BT support. I'm working on writing Linux drivers for audio and BT in my (admittedly limited) free time, if someone is interested in helping with that: find my email in bio.
Upsides:
- Very small and light
- Robust unibody
- Does 10 hours on a battery
- Spare parts still available
- Later models still get updates, including Windows
Downsides:
- Probably won't be long before MacOS 13 goes EOL
- First gen (2015-2016) supports up to MacOS 11 (EOL) and second gen (2016-2017) up to MacOS 12 (still receives security updates).
- Only one USB-C 3.1 port for everything, so if you want to charge and use USB peripherals at the same time you need to carry a dongle
- Very low travel keyboard (obviously)
- It's rare, so limited documentation for Linux support
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-inch_MacBook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-inch_MacBook