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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

I own a 12" Retina MacBook and I am sad that none of the new laptops can really replace it. They're all significantly larger and heavier. The new MacBook Air is a replacement for the old MacBook Air, not the MacBook. It's a shame Apple have given up on the ultra-ultra-lightweight MacBook concept, considering that the M1 would be perfect for it.

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I own a MacBook Air 11'', and it's also a pretty unique machine in terms of small form factor and silent operation. I feel current MacBook Airs finally serve as a good replacement. However, the 11'' Late 2012 model was also quite unique in terms of being a perfect PC citizen. So one could run other OSes with zero effort. In fact, it was Linus' daily driver for a few years.

I wish other manufacturers like Lenovo or Dell tried to compete in terms of fanless design so that there were more options. Lenovo in particular seems quite unfocused as they release tons of devices all the time and good ones are much more expensive than Apple's offerings, at least in EU.

Totally agree. It’s just other CPUs don’t come close to the M1/M2. That’s what really makes the new MacBooks unique. It’s going to be like that for quite some time I think.

I think some Intel / AMD options are pretty similar. However, their performance per Watt is inferior which makes it tricky to come up with nice silent machines.

To be honest I don’t think the Mx platform in the 12 inch form factor will be good enough to be in an ultra lightweight class. I also own a 12 inch retina and while I really like that it is slient and very lightweight we probably need another generation to get that far to have good passive cooling and performance given that the form factor will have to put the battery and motherboard on top of each other. A bezel shrink with a notch would still work out though but it would need a high ppi and 500 nits brightness will further tax the battery.

Given that the M1 doesn't throttle in a 10 inch ipad with passive cooling I think Apple absolutely could build a M1/M2 11 inch air or 12 inch macbook. They either haven't gotten to it or are deliberately avoiding going down into ipad size territory with macbooks.

Or they just found that there's no enough market for lightweight Macbook, similar story as iPhone mini series. It's sad.

According to their page the Macbook Air is the world's best selling laptop so presumably there's some market. I also went from an 11" air to the M1 and miss the smallness of the 11".

The 11 was never a big seller though. I loved my 11 inch, but rarely every saw someone else with one. The 13 is the true hit.

The new Air is significantly smaller in volume, though.

The new Air is thinner, but still slightly larger in volume, and ~35% heavier than the last gen of 12" Macbooks.

2012 12" Macbook:

Height: 0.52 inch

Width: 11.04 inches

Depth: 7.74 inches

Weight: 2.03 pounds

Volume 44.43 cubic inches

2022 13" Air:

Height: 0.44 inch

Width: 11.97 inches

Depth: 8.46 inches

Weight: 2.7 pounds

Volume 44.56 cubic inches

Sorry, I meant in comparison to the previous MB Air, not the 12" Macbook. I apologize for the lack of clarity. :)

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