The first thing I remember when purchasing this laptop is the delay in shipment. It took like 3 months to finally receive it. I remember calling the customer service after like 2 months asking for an update. They sweet talked to me for an hour (they could have simply said we have supply-chain related delays (which was the standard reason in 2022 for any item that had a chip in it)) and then added a free pair of airpods to my order as an apology for the delay (I’m not complaining). I’ve now had my Macbook M1 Air for 3 years and have some thoughts on it.

I’ve had other laptops before, the Windows experience is universally terrible. It’s always been slow, buggy for me. It updated at inconvenient times. There’d be some basic feature that would spike CPU usage. There’s crapware on it that randomly opens up. No wonder, I’d rip out Windows for Ubuntu after a month. I’m never going back to it

Ubuntu¹ on the other hand, while lightweight and super configurable, has the problem of a terrible native desktop software ecosystem (If all I had to use was CLIs and web software, Ubuntu really is great). Plus it was fragile in one random dimension (Like randomly breaking my wifi, plus no pathway to figure out the issue is and fix it). Whenever I went to a service center, the technician unfairly blamed Ubuntu for my hardware problems and wiped my Ubuntu system.

Coming back to the Macbook M1 Air. It just works for me. It’s Unix based, so the command line tools are familiar (and Linux tools are mostly installable). The native desktop software is just so good and well made: like Zed, Linear, Obsidian, Slack. You don’t really see the random CPU spikes, etc. The settings software is a mess though.

The hardware is solid and feels great in your hands. The keyboard functions well after 3 years of heavy usage. The trackpad is out of this world. The screen is pretty high-res for my usage. I would like more storage than 256 GB (but this is adequate), but the 8 GB RAM is more than enough. I can go a solid day on the battery. This laptop has never really given me any issues and just all-round been a great tool without getting in my way.

It’s crazy that I’ve been doing serious software development² on this laptop for the past 6 months and it’s held up.

This really should be the standard of what is considered a decent laptop. It’s been super reliable for me, it’s the most bang-for-the-buck and reasonably priced (₹ 60k in 2025)³ you can get. The software ecosystem is so good. For folks who use their laptop a lot, it’s a no-brainer to get.