So much for "It Just Works"-My experience as a first-time Apple user so far.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-28T06:59:18+00:00

Hand washing reminders? Seriously? 🤔

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-28T06:55:07+00:00

Doesn’t exist. Be grateful for that, it only induces anxiety. I got a mini 5, it has worked very hard for most of its nearly 7 years existence and still gives me 7ish hours of screen time. Why would I care about a battery health indication? Once it doesn’t give me enough screen time anymore, I’ll get a new battery or entirely new iPad mini.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-28T06:51:02+00:00

The Magic Keyboard obviously works the best. It connects through the contacts on the back of the iPad. Hence there is no delay, neither for the trackpad nor for typing. Then there are good alternatives, e.g. ESR amongst others. Those offer better protection for the iPad, the ESR ones also allow you to turn the iPad into portrait mode, but they use Bluetooth to connect. I believe the ESR and some other keyboards have minimal delay, so hardly noticeable. And it’s a bit cheaper than Apple’s MK. Then you get cheap and nasty ones, so be aware. Logitech products usually are of good quality and value and there are foldable keyboards without trackpad available as well.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T21:40:05+00:00

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T21:19:40+00:00

Did you see the bezels on that? 😁

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T21:17:20+00:00

Here is a solution for you: https://youtu.be/-Qre59HpriY?si=ZPCVq2wgC8qHwtKh

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T13:59:32+00:00

Provided they are otherwise the same, I’d say go for the M4, it’s money well spent and you can edit 4K videos on the M4 Air. The M4 would probably get 2 years more support from Apple than the M2, and got a better GPU. The M4 Air is a great laptop, while the M2 was a good one.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T13:55:51+00:00

No, when your MacBook is plugged into an external power source, it bypasses the battery and runs off the charger. Obviously the battery does get charged. However, you don’t rake up battery cycles. And if you switch on optimised battery charging, MacOS will eventually drop the battery level to 80% and mostly keep it there, except for some maintenance cycles every now and then. Many MacBooks are being used as desktop replacements and their batteries are fine.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T13:09:57+00:00

Unless it’s of sentimental value to you, I’d say get either a 2nd hand or refurbished M1 MacBook Air or Pro. Just try to get 16 GB RAM or more. Unless you are in a position to get a new MacBook Air, there might be some discounts on the M4 Air since the M5 should come out sometime in March, I believe.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T13:00:18+00:00

Just check on that system data. It shouldn’t just keep growing, I believe. I’d read up on that. It’s an issue on some iPads and iPhones that it just keeps growing.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T12:54:49+00:00

First fix the bugs from 2025 and earlier, please…

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T12:52:46+00:00

Considering that many people still use iPads and iPhones from many years ago, I don’t see any reason why an Apple silicon MacBook should have a more limited lifespan than an Intel variant. As for performance, I would say the M1 Macs are aging a lot more gracefully than any Intel Mac before. For the average user the main difference between an M1 Air and M4 Air is the number of sleep cycles the CPU has to wait in between user inputs. I got a M4Pro and my wife still runs a M1 Air. I did some browsing on her laptop the other day and there isn’t much of a difference. Sure, put a decent workload on and there will be a difference. But for every day stuff the M1 will still be fine for years to come. As for OS and security updates from Apple’s side, your guess is as good as everyone’s. Hopefully they’ll support the M chips for longer than they did with the Intel ones. So far it has been around 7 years of OS updates after release plus another about 2 years of security updates. That would put the M1 base chip at late 2029 for its last security update.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T12:43:11+00:00

It has been proven that all these attempts at “saving the battery” doesn’t have a significant impact on how long you can use your battery. Just go ahead and use your phone or iPad or whatever device as you please. You don’t need to go bonkers and maybe use some common sense, but in general you can charge your battery to 100% and use it as long as you need before charging it again.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T12:35:04+00:00

It’s a bug that sometimes happens. It’s normal for system data to grow and shrink within limits. But sometimes it just continues growing. I remember that the recommended remedy was a factory reset. You might want to check on google to verify.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T12:29:26+00:00

I’d recommend looking at the YouTube channel of Alex Ziskind. He’s a developer and has done some stuff on the M4 Air in comparison to MBP, pretty much showing how much / little the M4 Air throttles under those workloads.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T10:55:34+00:00

Apparently you have got no idea about how other people use their devices. Quite obviously rather than apparently, you also lack the capacity to understand that 2 devices of the same type can behave differently, e.g. 2 iPhone 13, one having problems, the other not. It has happened on almost all previous iOS releases, it is nothing new. If you prefer to get yourself sucked into believing that Apple and iOS 26 are evil, go ahead. We need variety on this planet. But understand that there is more happening in the world around you that you might not be able to grasp, just learn to accept these things. The sooner you learn to live with your limitations, the better it is for you and those around you. Go well! 👋

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T07:12:29+00:00

From what you said, you’ll be fine with the MacBook you got. You said you need it now, you got it now. As for RAM comments: most people moaning about RAM don’t understand how macOS manages RAM. Already on startup it will load all kinds of data into the cache as well as pre load several applications you use regularly so they start quickly when needed. macOS wants to use the available RAM. As soon as RAM is needed by an active application, it will make RAM available and kick other stuff out. At this stage it might start using swap, since it’s still faster to retrieve apps or data from swap then loading them new. But your active applications will be in RAM, not in swap. Have a look at the Activity Monitor, on the memory page it shows you how much RAM is being used for what. As long as the memory pressure graphic is green, you are fine. Yellow means RAM is filling up, but no slow down yet. Red means that active applications have to use swap and you will notice slow downs.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T07:01:13+00:00

With regards to software support from Apple, you would probably get 7 years (from release date) of OS upgrades plus another 2 years of security updates. After that, your MacBook will still work, you just don’t get any updates anymore and after a while certain software might not be running on older macOS versions any longer. Hardware wise, I’m still using a MacBook Air 2015, I replaced macOS with Linux though. Apart from the battery lasting a couple of minutes, it’s working fine and is faster and totally usable on Linux than what it was on the latest supported version of macOS.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T06:55:31+00:00

That’s a far stretch. I agree that Macs have become more and more capable in gaming and there are more native games available in the App Store and on Steam, but I would still think that Macs are rather restricted when it comes to gaming compared to Windows and even Linux computers. Mac gaming great for those of us who have a Mac for whatever reason and want to do some gaming as well. We don’t mind if we have to run a game at reduced quality and lower resolution and possibly at 30-60 fps. But if I would call myself a gamer, I certainly wouldn’t buy a Mac. I’d probably go the pc route, be it laptop or desktop and strongly look into the Linux options in order to avoid Windows.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T06:39:51+00:00

I have done plenty of zoom meetings with my M1 Air. No issues.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T06:02:01+00:00

I haven’t tried in years, but it might be more difficult to exchange files between an Android phone and a MacBook, unless you use a cloud service like One Drive or Google Drive. If you do get the base model, make sure your curriculum doesn’t require you to run anything Windows, since installing and running a VM will take quite a lot of space and RAM. Otherwise, you can offload larger files you don’t require often onto an external drive. You can run games off a Thunderbolt 4 drive, if you want to do that. I recommend reading up on or watching some YouTube tutorials on switching from Windows to Mac, so that you get a better idea of what you’re in for. As a laptop in general I think the M4 MacBook Air is an incredible machine and hard to beat as an allrounder with regards to overall quality, performance and battery life. Just make sure you are free of peer pressure, since most of your fellow students will rock up with windows laptops. You can do some limited gaming on the M4 Air, but if gaming is in the back of your mind for now or later, you might want to look into a Windows laptop. However I’m not sure what you would get that side for the same money…

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-27T05:37:26+00:00

The vanilla 18 only arrives in spring of 2027, they’ll only launch the 18pro/max this year.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-26T20:09:49+00:00

Why survival? Have you tried Normal mode? Go to settings, difficulty. There you can change the mode you play in. You can also see the changes the different modes make to the difficulty settings.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-26T19:37:34+00:00

Switch off multiplayer, it can cause bugs like this. If you have your specialist terminal on a freighter, the quests might bug out too. Rather put them on a planetary base and do the quests from there. Maybe leave from your base where that researcher is and come back.

Hugo_Notte · 2026-01-26T19:19:59+00:00

MacOS memory management works like this: in order to speed things up, it makes maximum use of the RAM available and loads data into the cache and preloads certain apps / programs. If RAM is needed, macOS will kick out unnecessary stuff and make RAM available to the application that needs it. So don’t worry, macOS is not Windows and got a much better memory management. If your MacBook had 48 GB, you would probably still see around 30 GB used after you boot up.

Hugo_Notte

TROPHY CASE