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Comment by atdrummond | Hacker News Reader

I’ve spent years trying to get back to the sub-12” notebooks of that era.

I’ve recently settled on using an iPad Pro 10 inch. I would prefer a proper OS but 95% of what I do I can do with iOS.

I was really happy with the now discontinued 12" macbook. Yes it was dog slow, but I did a lot of development on it* and it happily traveled with me around the world and back and forth. It was so light I would often have to check my bag to see if I'd forgotten it. That happens very occasionally with my MBA as well, and is a reason I didn't upgrade to the 15-incher.

I think the ipad pro with the "magic keyboard" weighs more than a macbook air...?

* Note: I do all my development in Emacs, not a heavyweight development system and generally do the builds on a remote linux machine so the slowness of the machine wasn't the big deal for me that it might have been for others. But sometimes, if the network was slow, I compiled locally and it was still fast compared to the much older machines we used to use!

I would love to see Apple revisit this form factor with the much more capable Apple Silicon processors. I had the 12in 2017 Macbook, and it was just about perfect in every way except performance. A remarkable little machine.

The current MBAs are actually fairly close to this category of laptop:

12 inch Powerbooks: 4.6 lbs., 1.18" H x 10.9" W x 8.6" D

12 inch Macbook: 2.03 lbs., 0.14-0.52" H x 11.04" W x 7.74" D

Current MBA M2: 2.7 lbs., 0.44" H x 11.97" W x 8.46" D

So widest of them all, in the middle for weight and depth.

I wish Apple make Air lighter. It's no longer a lightweight laptop in the market, despite it's fanless.

I loved my 12" Powerbook, but I recognize that the size/weight tradeoffs make somewhat larger laptops more desirable these days. For example, the bezels are much smaller, so a laptop that has the same size footprint as my old 12" PB would actually have a larger screen. Laptops are also much thinner now, which means that part of what I loved about the 12" PB (it's relatively light weight) can now be achieved in a larger form factor.

That said, I do also use and enjoy my 10.6" iPad Pro with magic keyboard. It's unfortunate that the keyboard has to be so heavy, so the whole thing doesn't tip over. It doesn't end up being much lighter than my 13" M2 MBA as a result.

I loved my 2015 Retina Macbook, though it sometimes feels like it's a minority opinion given the first gen butterfly keyboard and the single USB-C port, but it was exactly what I wanted a the time: an iPad-sized device with a keyboard and a proper OS.

The current Macbook Air IMHO completely misses the whole point of what the Air line stood for, it's really just a Macbook Non-Pro, while the Retina MB was the proper Macbook air in the lineup.

I'm very happy with my One Mix 4:

https://liliputing.com/one-mix-4-mini-laptop-review-10-inch-...

Not sure if its still available, but there are other machines like it, such as those from GPD.

https://gpd.hk/gpdwinmax2

I still use my 2011 11” MacBook Air. Only had to change the battery 5 years ago. iPad with keyboard just added one more device to charge.

Now that machine was very slow IIRC. Glad it works for you!

It’s perfect for Scrivener, which is the most I need on it.

I think this is underappreciated by the "tech press" and by a lot of people who buy on specs and fashion (feels like the first is a subset of the second): most peoples' computing needs are overserved by what's on the market.

Calling a machine a "Pro" version was brilliant, because most people don't want to consider themselves an amateur.

And here we are, bunch of tech nerds who really are pro subverting the paradigm!

You might like the ThinkPad X230 which is a pretty nice compromise between compactness and modernity (can run latest Linux/BSD, probably Windows though not sure why someone would want to do that lol) .. has been my daily driver for a couple years. :)

I also have an X230 that I bought from a local recycler. Its small but also a bit on the chunky side when it comes to weight and thickness. I do enjoy using it though. I put a SATA SSD and a mSATA SSD in it, upped the RAM to 16GB, replaced the Bluetooth adapter with a USB plug that I have a Logitech Unify Adapter plugged into, and replaced the stock BIOS with Skulls (which also nuked most of the Intel ME) https://github.com/merge/skulls/

Since its running Coreboot/SeaBIOS now it won't boot Windows. That's fine though became it runs the XFCE edition of Manjaro just fine.

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