Airtime
May 11, 2021 at 9:16 AM by Dr. Drang
I suspect a lot of us who bought M1 MacBook Airs are thinking about the next generation low-end MacBooks (whether Apple calls them Airs or not) and wondering if maybe we should have waited a year for a step up in Apple Silicon power. That’s certainly the common regret in computer buying—that if we’d just held off a little longer, we’d have gotten something much better. But recently I’ve been thinking that regret may work the other way this time.
These are the things I’ve been putting together:
- The current MacBook Air is an M1 system put into a shell made for larger and more power-hungry Intel guts.
- As a result, I get actual all-day battery life from my Air. Not Apple’s idea of all day, but a full 16 hours with no concern about having to plug in. To me, this has been even more pleasing than the speed increase.
- Apple’s tendency to go thinner and lighter—along with it’s traditional definition of “all day”—suggests that the next generation of low-end MacBooks will have less battery than today’s Air. Shaving three-quarters of a pound or more will feel good in the backpack, but when it’s late in the day, you’ll have to rummage around in that backpack for the charger.
Undoubtedly, there are people who will happily trade five of six hours of battery life for a significantly lighter machine. And there may come a time when I’ll be one of them. But not now. Because of Apple’s weird interim Air design, I may have stumbled into the ideal computer for me.
