Apple MacBook Air 15-Inch M3 First Impressions

2024 is the year that I switch to Arm, and it starts with the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch M3, the latest version of what Apple calls the world’s most popular laptop. But that description is accurate no matter how you care to measure such things: In addition to being a perennial best-seller, the MacBook Air single-handedly created what we now know to be an enduring market for ultra-thin, ultra-light premium laptops. And this latest design has raised the bar yet again.

I’m searching for words that will make sense of what’s happening right now in my brain and my heart. But perhaps the simplest way to explain this is to simply remind you that I’ve been reviewing laptops for over two decades and that I now review roughly a dozen PCs each year, mostly premium models. It’s reasonable to believe that I’ve become jaded when it comes to such things, and that it takes something special to stir the old heart strings these days.

The MacBook Air is something special.

And that’s not just obvious, it’s painfully and confusingly obvious. There is a lot going on here, but the appeal of this device is somehow more than the sum of its attributes. The design is incredible, of course, minimalist and premium in ways that I adore. It is both thin and lightweight, but in a way that feels impossible given its large display panel. And it soars despite some obvious complaints related to its weird screen notch and limited expansion, all on the left side of the device. It’s so special, it’s like the flaws don’t matter.

When Apple moved away from the iconic wedge shape of the previous MacBook Air design—a design so iconic Apple kept it around, unchanged, for over a decade—I wondered whether it was a mistake. And I was further concerned that in mimicking the design of the newer-generation MacBook Pros that Apple might somehow diminish the Air, eliminating its uniqueness.

Those fears were misplaced. Apple differentiates the MacBook Air from its more expensive Pro stablemates in ways that make sense. The Air has adequate but more limited expansion. It has lower-end processors, with fewer CPU and GPU cores, but also no fans, so it’s quieter, thinner, and lighter. It can be configured with less RAM and storage, but both are reasonable for the target market. It comes in more colors, including the champagne-like Starlight that I chose. And it utilizes less technically advanced display panel technology—LED vs. mini-LED, 60 Hz vs. 120 Hz—but the Air display is nonetheless spectacular, a matte panel that’s ideal for productivity work.

As PC makers have explained to me many times, and I’ve passed along to you, every product is a study in compromise. As a consumer, we study the various attributes of each product we consider buying, and we make decisions based on some matrix of choices, weighing the pros and cons. But when I look at the list of differences between the MacBook Air and the Pro, and regard this stunning and seemingly impossible product sitting in front of me, the word compromise just doesn’t enter the conversation. None of limitations or differences I describe above matter to me, in the sense that I might be missing something by not paying more for a MacBook Pro. I’m glad those products exist, and I’m sure they meet needs that are more performant than my own. But the MacBook Air is special.

To get ready for this experiment, I broke out my previous Mac, an M1-based 13-inch MacBook Pro with the old design, a ridiculous Touch Bar, and just 8 GB of RAM. This product barely rose to the level of “Pro” when it was new, it was more of a glorified MacBook Air, but it met my needs for the past few years, especially for testing Windows 11 on Arm in Parallels Desktop. I brought it up-to-date, installed as many of my daily-use apps as possible (experimenting with the winget-like Homebrew and mas along the way), and just tried to use it every day.

I am writing something separate about that experience—macOS is different enough from Windows and other desktop platforms that it requires a bit of brain rewiring—but I was reminded of a story from my childhood, when I was probably 10 years old or younger and a fan of The Six Million Dollar Man. I had a Steve Austin action figure—OK, a doll, I was a kid—and it was this spectacular 13-inch tall with a bionic eye, a bionic-grip hand, and the character’s iconic red track suit. That Christmas, I was old enough to help build and set up my sibling’s gifts for my parents, but young enough that I was still getting toys of my own. And because I knew where the presents were hidden, I could go and look at one of those presents, a lame inflatable Mission Control playset for the Steve Austin action figure, every day leading up to Christmas, when no one else was home. I spent so much time with that playset before Christmas that it ruined the gift: By the time the day arrived, I wasn’t even interested in it anymore. And I quickly outgrew action figures and toys as I matured.

I was curious to see whether spending a lot of time with a fairly recent Mac—a good enough Mac, if you will—would dull my desire for this newer, far more expensive device: It was almost $1900 as configured for crying out loud (before a $550 trade-in). I was likewise curious if I would unpack the MacBook Air, be perhaps underwhelmed by it, and then want to return it immediately, and I could just chalk this up as another experiment in futility.

Neither happened, not yet anyway, and given my surprise at the quality of the MacBook Air, I’m thinking it’s here to stay. There are all kinds of things I don’t like about Apple, and the Mac has long been a bit of a sore spot for me, but this platform has to date not suffered from the same enshittification issues that are ruining Windows for me. More on that later, of course, but the short version is that, yes, Apple would love for you to sign up for all its services and use its apps, but it doesn’t harass you when you decide otherwise like Windows does now. It respects your decisions.

Anyway, my goals for the MacBook Air are manifold, and while I don’t see a Bizarro World future in which I become a Mac user, I will use it in many ways. The first step is to simply try and replace the workflows I’ve developed on Windows by using the same apps and services when possible and similar choices otherwise. I would like to develop a better, more educated view of where macOS is compared to Windows, and how the Apple ecosystem tie-ins are (or are not) advantageous. And I will of course reexamine Parallels Desktop with Windows 11 on Arm using a configuration that is perhaps more suitable for this dual OS use.

Longer term, I intend to get a new Arm-based PC later this Spring based on the new Snapdragon Elite X platform, ideally a 15-inch Surface Laptop 6, if such a thing happens as rumored. And then compare the two platforms head-to-head to see where things stand. As noted up top, I intend to move to Arm this year on the desktop either way.

I described this purchase previously, but it comes with an M3 chips with an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores), a 10-core GPU, a 16-core Neural Engine (NPU), 24 GB of unified (integrated) RAM, the max for a MacBook Air, and 512 GB of non-expandable SSD storage. I intended to configure it with a 70-watt MagSafe/USB-C charger and cable but realized after the fact that I had not. Instead, it came with the default 35-watt charger with dual USB-C ports, which is both goofy looking and small. And, to my tastes, underpowered. So I just ordered a separate 70-watt charger in the interim.

Getting it here involved a bit of drama.

It was originally scheduled for very late March or early April, but then the delivery date was scheduled more specifically for this coming Monday, March 25. So I would check the order page every few days, and on Tuesday, I saw something alarming: The shipment was on hold, whatever that meant. I clicked through to the DHL tracking information, which told me that it was awaiting customs clearance, presumably in China. All I could imagine was a MacBook Air, sitting in a box in a warehouse in China, not being delivered to me, much like my weird experience buying a PC display from Amazon in Mexico recently.

Giving in to my compulsion, I signed up for DHL’s text-based shipping notifications and immediately regretted it when I received several texts back-to-back within minutes. So I muted that and tried not obsess over it. But by the next day, I had received dozens more messages, and they were contradictory. Looking back at them now, I can understand my confusion, but it seems that the shipment had not really been delayed and that “clearing customs” is something that can actually happen after the package is physically in the United States.

Even more confusingly, it arrived yesterday, five days early. It had apparently flown from China to Cincinnati the day before, flown to Philadelphia in the wee hours of the night, was driven to Harrisburg, and then was put on a courier van for delivery. This all happened in less than 24 hours. The problem was that DHL was now telling me it was going to arrive between 7 and 9 pm, which seemed both late and unlikely, and we have standing dinner plans with others each Wednesday night. I tried to delay the shipment to the next day, but that didn’t work. And so I figured I’d have to miss dinner and sit at home, like an idiot, waiting for it.

In the end, it arrived at 4:45 pm or so, well before the time we usually leave for dinner, and I had been following the delivery truck around on a map as it went from place to place nearby. Soon enough, it was 3 stops away, and then 2, and then … ding dong … it was here. Huh.

The package delivery bit was weird, but I’ve experienced the Apple “under-promise and over-deliver” on product shipments before, and it’s a nice touch that other companies should consider emulating: That is, almost everything I’ve ordered from Apple in recent years has come earlier than promised. But this was an almost extreme example. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

More soon.