I haven't purchased a new Mac for nearly a decade, instead getting refurbished models from https://www.hoxtonmacs.co.uk/ It's very easy on the wallet if you're getting models that are a few generations old, and honestly, if the MacBook Air is something you are considering you definitely don't need the current generation.
It costs 1,100eur for the cheapest model where I'm at. Not prohibitively expensive, but I would never pay it for a machine that does not properly run Linux. I'm sure it is good hardware compared to similarly priced laptops though.
My Retina MacBook Pro lasted over a decade, that's 200$ a year plus $50 battery replacement and $8 speaker. It still runs fine. Macs are an absurd value/quality for money. If M series Macs run this well, no one else comes even close.
I just replaced a quite cheap Windows laptop that was over 10 years old for an old person. It was just fine. The only reason it got replaced was because the battery was completely dead and being so old you couldn't find the part.
Not that it matters because it got replaced by a laptop costing 1/3 of the cheapest MBA.
Mac users are delusional about the longevity of Apple stuff and have a distorted worldview where PC users change their hardware every 2 years or so. They don't and my experience is that it's completely the reverse (hence the massive 2nd hand market for Macs).
I don’t know if this is Amazon’s pricing or Apple’s pricing but there’s only usually one reason when price is decrease. Lack of sales. And that’s been true for apples, MacBooks, the last two or three years.
I think this might be another sign of a slowing economy or high inflation.
I might be too informed by headlines than reality, but is my perception correct that the Windows experience is worsening by the year, particularly with regard to installation, configurability, UX, and privacy?
Apple certainly isn't perfect and has released some tripe lately (iOS 26) but I trust they'll work through the kinks. Apple seems to undulate, whereas Windows's trajectory seems net downward.
Spam marketing. Starting at $900 for 256gb hdd 16gb of ram and an M4 is nowhere near the midrange windows laptop price. A Lenovo E16 with a Ryzen 7, 64gb ram and 2tb SSD is $900 right now.
Toss that with the seemingly OBVIOUS throttling due to non-existent forced air cooling that nearly every fanboy bench tester has given a pass for.
15 years ago NO ONE would have tolerated a 40% performance drop after heatsoaking.
As someone that's been a lifelong windows user, i'm finally switching to a mac this month.
I have a large rig that I run as a dual linux/windows machine, but the quality of windows laptops have been getting poorer and poorer and the OS is increasingly becoming incredibly intrusive while removing core features.
I want to be able to search without it taking 5 mintues. I used to be incredibly pro windows laptops due to aspects like repairability, but i've had a horrific experience with Lenovo just trying to get a keyboard repaired. In the end, if I need to choose between two systems, both of which are unrepairable, i'd much rather have the one that will last me longer.
I don't want to use my singular experience as a data-point, but I'm someone that has never even thought about buying a mac before this, but the poor quality of windows OS has forced me.
Contrary to what others say, I don't think MacOS is that bad. In general, it's perfectly stable. There has been an increase in situational paper cuts -- I haven't experienced any I recall, but one cannot discount that others encounter weird problems. In the end it's significantly more stable than Windows and completely free of crapware.
Personally, the new look is annoying at worst, but it doesn't affect my day to day at all.
The biggest Apple problem is the same as its been for a decade: languishing Apple app development.
That Macbook Air is 1200 Euros where I live which is way above the price of the most sold Windows laptops according to the public sales data of big retailers here, which seem top hover around the 700-800 Euro pricing.
So no, it isn't cheaper when you look at what people actually buy. It's only cheaper if your data set is full of the unicorn $4k-8k Dell/HP/Lenovo workstations at corpo pricing .
Only if you compare the sale price of the Mac to the list price of the Windows machine. Which isn't fair, especially since Windows laptops go on sale far more frequently and deeply than Mac laptops do. A lunar lake machine with 16gb RAM and a small SSD should be $200 cheaper than that.
I'm still rocking a refurbished Macbook Pro 2015 CTO model. I was planning on upgrading this year or the next because of the Mx chip, but it seems like with the latest MacOS version, Apple software is falling to Jevons paradox: even though compute is becoming extremely fast, Apple is deciding to spend that extra compute on things not important to me (fancy glass effects).
I'm gonna wait out a bit longer and see if I can get away with using only my Linux Desktop.
This article is just an affiliate link ad page, the macbook air latest or older version (still brand new) has been priced 700-850 on amazon since the M1. you can pick up older models new for ~750. These posts show up on cnn, macrumors, fox everywhere. Theyre ads
The windows laptop experience is frankly nothing short of embarrassing today. Battery life is measured in closer to minutes than hours, sleep/hibernate is less reliable than my last Linux laptop (in 2017), default OS functionality is unusable for 10-20 minutes after booting, boot times measured in minutes, a never ending stream of windows updates (despite me installing them all at every opportunity), and such lacklustre performance are all problems I have with a < 4 month old top of the range dell laptop my work provided for me (and this is actually the second one they gave me.)
I’m usually in the camp of “things aren’t as bad as you think and they weren’t as good as you remember” but I’ve upgraded from a mid range windows 10 laptop to this and it’s one of the first times I’ve ever experienced a complete step back on what should be a generational update. And that’s before you get to the “quality” of the hardware.
Meanwhile, my 5 year old MacBook pro is faster than either of those machines….
Now that M5 is out and the last of the M1/M2 products are basically cleared out (and made EOL), Apple can stop producing M1 Macbook Airs for Walmart and switch over to the plastic $599 A18 Pro-based Macbook they want to make.
Got one for my wife here in Canada recently, where it's on a similarly good sale.
It's a nicely put together piece of _hardware_ and firmware, way way better than the garbage Dell laptops I have to use for work, which are heavy and hot and regularly fail to manage basic things like customizing sleep/wake behavior…
… but I personally am completely unwilling to use a Mac unless I'm getting paid and forced to.
I hate MacOS. I hate the UI, I hate the fiddly little ways that it hides information about real file paths and makes it unnecessarily difficult to uncover the tall ones. I hate hate hate all the broken stuck-in-the-80s non-GNU CLI tools, and the kludged-together stupidness of the networking stack compared to Linux.
Windows 11 is arguably worse than MacOS in many of these ways, but Linux with a Gnome or Cinnamon or XFCE desktop is far far better.
I hate the lack of full-size USB ports and HDMI. I don't care if it makes the laptop 3 mm thicker. I want them, in particular to be able to plug in my Logitech wireless mouse adapter and all my 10-15-year-old USB devices which still work fine.
I hate the keyboard and trackpad. I want a pointing stick and a trackpad with physical buttons. I want page up/down buttons and separate delete/backspace.
So, the cheapest Macbook Air 2025 (MW123, 16/256) is 1140 USD in Europe.
For that price I see multiple gaming 15-16" laptops with good CPU and GPU in the range of 4060-5050 mobile, same memory 16Gb and more storage. With 144-165 Hz FHD gaming displays.
Next I see Vivobook 15" with OLED HiDPI display, top Intel CPU and again more storage.
Yet another smaller Vivobook 14" with weight the same as Mac, good Intel CPU, FHD OLED, more storage again.
Zenbook 14", good Intel CPU, OLED HiDPI screen, even lower weight, more storage.
HP with Snapdragon X Elite CPU is also in the same range, HiDPI screen, low weight.
Basically there are around half a thousand SKUs in that price range (+-50$) and I wouldn't call them mid range really. There many laptops with top CPUs, top GPUs (for that weight) and top display panels.
And I'm not even comparing high memory models. Kit out your Macbook with more RAM and more storage, clearly made out of unobtanium and unicorn tears, and comparison to x86 will fail completely.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 47.9 ms ] threadNot that it matters because it got replaced by a laptop costing 1/3 of the cheapest MBA. Mac users are delusional about the longevity of Apple stuff and have a distorted worldview where PC users change their hardware every 2 years or so. They don't and my experience is that it's completely the reverse (hence the massive 2nd hand market for Macs).
I think this might be another sign of a slowing economy or high inflation.
Apple certainly isn't perfect and has released some tripe lately (iOS 26) but I trust they'll work through the kinks. Apple seems to undulate, whereas Windows's trajectory seems net downward.
Toss that with the seemingly OBVIOUS throttling due to non-existent forced air cooling that nearly every fanboy bench tester has given a pass for. 15 years ago NO ONE would have tolerated a 40% performance drop after heatsoaking.
I have a large rig that I run as a dual linux/windows machine, but the quality of windows laptops have been getting poorer and poorer and the OS is increasingly becoming incredibly intrusive while removing core features.
I want to be able to search without it taking 5 mintues. I used to be incredibly pro windows laptops due to aspects like repairability, but i've had a horrific experience with Lenovo just trying to get a keyboard repaired. In the end, if I need to choose between two systems, both of which are unrepairable, i'd much rather have the one that will last me longer.
I don't want to use my singular experience as a data-point, but I'm someone that has never even thought about buying a mac before this, but the poor quality of windows OS has forced me.
Personally, the new look is annoying at worst, but it doesn't affect my day to day at all.
The biggest Apple problem is the same as its been for a decade: languishing Apple app development.
So no, it isn't cheaper when you look at what people actually buy. It's only cheaper if your data set is full of the unicorn $4k-8k Dell/HP/Lenovo workstations at corpo pricing .
I'm gonna wait out a bit longer and see if I can get away with using only my Linux Desktop.
I’m usually in the camp of “things aren’t as bad as you think and they weren’t as good as you remember” but I’ve upgraded from a mid range windows 10 laptop to this and it’s one of the first times I’ve ever experienced a complete step back on what should be a generational update. And that’s before you get to the “quality” of the hardware.
Meanwhile, my 5 year old MacBook pro is faster than either of those machines….
Now that M5 is out and the last of the M1/M2 products are basically cleared out (and made EOL), Apple can stop producing M1 Macbook Airs for Walmart and switch over to the plastic $599 A18 Pro-based Macbook they want to make.
It's a nicely put together piece of _hardware_ and firmware, way way better than the garbage Dell laptops I have to use for work, which are heavy and hot and regularly fail to manage basic things like customizing sleep/wake behavior…
… but I personally am completely unwilling to use a Mac unless I'm getting paid and forced to.
I hate MacOS. I hate the UI, I hate the fiddly little ways that it hides information about real file paths and makes it unnecessarily difficult to uncover the tall ones. I hate hate hate all the broken stuck-in-the-80s non-GNU CLI tools, and the kludged-together stupidness of the networking stack compared to Linux.
Windows 11 is arguably worse than MacOS in many of these ways, but Linux with a Gnome or Cinnamon or XFCE desktop is far far better.
I hate the lack of full-size USB ports and HDMI. I don't care if it makes the laptop 3 mm thicker. I want them, in particular to be able to plug in my Logitech wireless mouse adapter and all my 10-15-year-old USB devices which still work fine.
I hate the keyboard and trackpad. I want a pointing stick and a trackpad with physical buttons. I want page up/down buttons and separate delete/backspace.
And 16GiB VRAM insufficient for games:
https://videocardz.com/newz/pcgh-demonstrates-why-8gb-gpus-a...
Also, 3nm M4 is going head-to-head with older Ryzen AI 365 in everything except for power efficiency: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m4-vs-amd-ryzen-...
When compared in multicore against Ryzen AI Pro laptops (high end), even Apple M5 are behind in the dust...
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-amd_ryzen_ai_max_p...
Despite awesome progress with its latest ARM processors, Apple was caught behind Ryzen, and is threatened by next generation of Zen processors.
For that price I see multiple gaming 15-16" laptops with good CPU and GPU in the range of 4060-5050 mobile, same memory 16Gb and more storage. With 144-165 Hz FHD gaming displays.
Next I see Vivobook 15" with OLED HiDPI display, top Intel CPU and again more storage.
Yet another smaller Vivobook 14" with weight the same as Mac, good Intel CPU, FHD OLED, more storage again.
Zenbook 14", good Intel CPU, OLED HiDPI screen, even lower weight, more storage.
HP with Snapdragon X Elite CPU is also in the same range, HiDPI screen, low weight.
Basically there are around half a thousand SKUs in that price range (+-50$) and I wouldn't call them mid range really. There many laptops with top CPUs, top GPUs (for that weight) and top display panels.
And I'm not even comparing high memory models. Kit out your Macbook with more RAM and more storage, clearly made out of unobtanium and unicorn tears, and comparison to x86 will fail completely.