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Comment by soheil | Hacker News Reader

Just a quick note, the MacBook Air is by no means "ultralight" even by Apple standards, 2017 MacBook for example was more than twice lighter. Thinkpad laptops are also measurably lighter than any current generation MacBook.

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Yes, Apple's current lineup is a little confusing. The 13" Pro and 13" Air are so similar, and almost the same weight.

I still use a 12" MacBook, and it's just amazingly small and light. If Apple makes a 12" MacBook with a M1, it would be awesome. A dream machine for me.

Agreed! Even dreamier if they bring back the magsafe and upgrade to the current keyboard with function keys.

> M1

I don't have any insider knowledge but I am fully convinced (and so are many others) that we will see a newer Apple ARM based processor before the end of 2021. If you are a programmer and you have a machine to work on, I'd say hold out for the next one.

Apple hardware resells extremely well and if you don't want to deal with the hassle of reselling privately you can can also trade it in for a decent return.

If you're not on a super tight budget it's not terrible to just pick up the new machine and swap it out for the next one that ships if you want to.

In my mind the resell value of intel macbooks dropped significantly with the M1 release. Not sure if that's reflected in the second hand market already, but I think it will.

I'm curious about this too. I actually think it won't because even with the huge amount of marketing for this new chip that apple is doing, the average consumer doesn't explicitly care about the cpu.

I am typing this on M1 Air, and it's noticeably smaller and lighter than our 2013 MB Air. I'd say that in terms of size it's quite close to 12" Mb which we owned previously, and maybe just a tiny bit heavier.

> I'd say that in terms of size it's quite close to 12" Mb which we owned previously

If true, then neither are close to the 2017 12" MB.

> and maybe just a tiny bit heavier.

It's almost a pound heavier.

> If Apple makes a 12" MacBook with a M1, it would be awesome.

I wish Apple would make everything" MacBooks with M1. I hate that I have to wait another year or whatever for a 15/16" screen and will have to pay a measurable weight penalty to get it when nothing stops them from making a 15" ultralight model now that they don't need fans for stunning performance.

They might go with a processor bump for the 15”. And maybe more thermal headroom and an external GPU. Hard to predict.

But most people don't need or even care about those things. Making the MB or Air body bigger (not thicker) and just increasing screen, battery, and heatsink size proportionally while keeping it fanless would knock everything else out today for like 99% of people.

The X1 Carbon, which is what I assume you're referring to with Thinkpad, is 2.6Lbs vs 2.8Lbs for the 2020 Macbook Air.

That's 90g of difference ... I'd say that qualifies for Ultralight still.

The new X1 nano is 907g (1.99 lbs), so the Macbook Air at 1.29kg is 42% heavier.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/coming-soon/ThinkPad-X1-Nano/p/...

Ah, wasn't aware of that!

Still running last-century processors though.

Only in the sense that your car is running on 4000 BC wheels.

From the page linked to:

> 11th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-1130G7 Processor

From https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/...

> Launch Date: Q3'20

Current gen X1 Carbon is 2.4 lbs: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x1/X1...

> more than twice lighter.

Under half the weight?

Non-native English speakers (depending on their native language) will often use phrases like that. As that is how they say it in their native language.

Plenty of native speakers too, I've been hearing it all my life. "Twice as cheap" is another.

That's not true though, the air weighs at 1.27 kg whereas the 12" macbook weighs at 0.92 kg.

That's about a quarter lighter but not anywhere near half.

What does 'more than twice lighter' even mean?

It surely wasn't less than half as heavy. So what do you mean?

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