The MBA is an absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs. I use it (MBA 15" M3) with a large complex TypeScript code base, and it is fast and amazing at 24GB of ram or more.

PS. The biggest speedup I got this past year (10x) was switching to native TypeScript (tsgo) and native linting (biome or oxlint).

I don't get it either. I've rolled out well over a hundred of these in a higher education setting and I have never had one have a hardware issue or needed to retire it other than wanton damage. I still have a ton of M1s in circulation and they are great still. I had to just replace a Dell with only 2.5 years of service, they tend to fall apart.

This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years

The MB Air M line is a personal contender for best product of all time: Fantastic performance without fans, amazing battery life, high res display and build quality at that price point.

When the M1 came out it was quite frankly unbelievable. And, even after all these years, I still don't see who would beat it across those dimensions.

> The MBA is an amazing value, and appears to have only gotten slightly cheaper.

Looks to me like the base model went up by $100, no?

The whining is just whining. It's a fine laptop, but it's not significantly improved from the one they shipped a year ago. Add to that the fact that laptops as a whole are well on the way down their commoditization slope and the general HN desire to cheer about Great New Apple Devices, this is for sure a backwards step.

>I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread.

Which negative tone? 90% the mainline comments I see are positive.