I want to buy a Macbook Air and am deliberating which year's model to buy. I'd be fine with the newest, but want to check whether or not the newer models have any caveats.
An example of something like this is Lenovo switching to a chiclet keyboard with the 30 series, or the newest Mac Mini having the RAM soldered unto the mobo so that you cannot upgrade it. I think I read somewhere that newer Macbook Airs are more locked down so that it's harder to replace the battery, for example. Is this true?
What kind of decreases in quality did Macbook Air updates bring, and when were they? Which model would you recommend?
To expand: I want a Macbook Air rather than another lineup because I prefer the keyboard on the Air. I've tried keyboards of the 2017 and 2011 models, and both were far superior than the keyboards on the 12" Macbook and the Macbook Pro, in my opinion.
But I worry about the weaker processor, which is why I want to stick to a relatively recent model. I'm used to a Thinkpad X220, and if I can find something with similar processing power, I am more than content. Something else I am considering is running a Mac Mini / Hackintosh with more CPU power at home, and relying on remote access with an old (, low-end) Macbook Air.
Jackson Davis
Bump.
Isaiah Parker
>Mac Mini / Hackintosh with more CPU power at home >Mac Mini more CPU power mac mini is their least viable setup, nigger. for repairs check sites like ifixit. you can also get a pro before they switched keyboards to butterfly switch. It will also come with retina display.
There haven't been decreases in quality to MBA build quality. The most recent ones are fine, if a bit high priced for their spec. I have a specced out 2015 i7 MBA 11" and it's a beautiful little machine.
Ryder Wright
Nope. They're as locked down as they've been since they first released. No significant changes have been made to the design. You should be fine. t. guy who built a frankensteined MBA from spare parts.
Get a refurbished 2015 MBP, it has a better everything else (including keyboard) and will probably not cost much more.
Noah Richardson
CAM GUY here... and i can confirm the 2011 macbook air is GOAT. I got a 256gb SSD version very cheap because some guy thought the machine was broken when it was actually the charger cable conductor was broken lol.
They havent changed since the 2011 model. look for that one second hand you can find it cheap because the batteries wear out and people think its the end of the world. It isnt. I frankly think the new models are far overpriced for what they are.
I run exclusively debian on mine and have a comfy windows 7 VM for autodesk software and it runs it flawlessly. I do real machining with it in the shop so fuck you haters [pic related]
i much prefer it over a MBP as its just so ultraportable. I cycle around with it and barely know its there compared to my old lattitude d830. I have crashed my bike a few times with it in my bag and its not dinged up at all. That is a shit meme. And i have a XEON at home if i want to do real computation. MBP arent worth it. For me its all about portability.
TLDR. 2011 second hand, big ssd, replace battery, debian: Perfection.
>yeah whatever pal Sure, whatever. Has Core i5 Haswell, but actually can't do more, than 300$ chinkbook with Sandy Bridge Pentium @ 1.6 GHz Because this 4260u throttles, due to shitty cooling system, but chinkbook doesn't throttle, because it has ticc copper heat sink and vents. It is like putting V8 with turbine in Renault Twingo and limiting a power to 25 kW, or wrapping a banana with duck tape, so you can eat only half of it.
>Replacing unstable shit with something more stable >doing it wrong
Hunter Bailey
You're making me feel like getting the i7 model. It should perform better than your piece of crap.
Justin Davis
Your right, but then you don't buy a Renault twingo as a base for track use. Daily use its great and I can run a full Windows 7 VM transparently ! That's good enough for me. If you are wanting compute grunt you are doing wrong. Fuck throttling it's only dual core ! Which is useless anyway. Maybe if you are one of those Adobe Lightroom types you might get burned like my friend did (who have the machine super cheap) but the only time I peg my cores is occasionally transcoding some 192k flacs to 48k ALAC for my iPhone... That and Jow Forums crypto miners....
Joshua Phillips
>macshit Even walmart acer garbage performs better than macshit.
But it's a Macbook Air! At least when it's trash it still sells for something whereas an Acer garbage would fetch nothing.
Jeremiah Collins
>at least i can sell this $900 turd if for $500 and only lose $400 rather than just buying a superior computer for $300 that's still faster than macshit after 3 years
Kevin Stewart
Alright, so this went a little off-topic, but thanks for the input. The 2011 model seems appealing, but benchmarks say the CPU is worse than that of an X220. Is that true? I don't do anything heavy, but even on an X220, Firefox will freeze if I have too many tabs open. Do you think that will happen on that model as well?
And are there perhaps any major improvements on models later than the 2011 one?
Brandon Ortiz
Take whatever model CPU is in the mac, go down 2 SKU models and 3 generations, that's how the mac will perform.
So I looked at the advice of , and I am impressed by the 2012 MBPs now. That one is much more upgradable and the weight isn't that bad. Is the keyboard as good as the MBA ones?
Who in the right mind will run furmark for hours on the fucking laptop. If you need that much performance, get a fucking desktop like a human being with a brain. And Acer looks like shit and still gets hot under load, so you cannot "comfortably" type on the same garbage keyboard, just like mac.
Laptops, especially high performance ones, are the fucking meme. Give me something like opensource ipad pro and i will take any day of the week.
Jacob Wright
Give you something that doesn't exist. FalcePalm
John Lewis
>you're using it wrong! The last bastion of the mactoddler.
This. That's also what I got for cheap last year. And I can still resell it for a profit anytime now.
Owen Edwards
If Apple finally updates the MacBook Air this year get that one. If they don't, don't get one. They're deprecated trash with a shitty screen and an outdated processor.
Kayden Young
>macshit Found your problem.
Dominic Foster
Just get a used 2015 one which has the exact same specs as the latest one.
Camden Gonzalez
It's like you retards don't know how to read.
Tyler Moore
It's like you retards actually think macshit is worth buying.
Wyatt Reyes
I'm arguing that there is no laptop worth buying.
Tyler Stewart
This: Buy a cheap pre-2016 13" MBP. Same keyboard, very similar form factor, much better screen and performance.
Charles Brown
Just get a $300 walmart Acer, it'll be 3x faster and have better battery life.
Brody Brown
With a shitty 1366x768 screen, garbage keyboard with design and build quality that looks like it was made of empty bottles of bonaqua? Is there some option for not poorfag? Show me objectively best laptop, that has: 1. Good keyboard 2. Good screen 3. Good design and build quality Protip: you cannot.
Juan Phillips
And in new one this problem was fixed so it doesn't throttle any worse that it's competitors.
>doesn't throttle any worse that it's competitors. >doesn't throttle Reading comprehension? >Acer is garbage, but even they're light years ahead of Apple shit. >the CPU speed jumped back and forth between 400 MHz and 3.4 GHz. Why are you lying on the internet?
>review literally says throttlebook throttles immediately >mactoddlers are both technology illiterate and illiterate TOPKEK
John Perry
Well, this shit actually looks good. Too bad it's xboxhuge, weights 4kg and has a battery life of the whopping 50 minutes. Not particularly portable if you ask me.
