In November 2024, I purchased my first MacBook, and it changed everything.

My previous laptops

Though I do love large screens and PC, laptop is the kind of device that I buy most frequently. They are highly portable. It’s a pleasure to just carry them around, place it on top of your lap or any table top, and just browsing or type random stuff :3

Before, I’ve only used Windows. Don’t get me wrong. Windows is just fine. Most softwares support Windows and not to mention it’s the best OS to play PC games on.

I’ve lost count of my old laptop. Most of them are from my father, who also loved purchasing new products. His old ones just end up with me.

I guess my first laptop is a really heavy, dumb, thick, ugly thing that has Windows XP installed. I had my fun playing games on it when I was around 13 years old, and the rest of memories with it are just a blur.

When I was in high school, I have a Dell Inspiron 13. It’s slightly over-priced and the performance was not so good, but good enough for me to complete a lot of open-source projects with it. I also played Minecraft and Don’t Starve Together on that laptop.

When I went to college, that Inspiron is more of a toy. I installed Manjaro (a linux distro based on Arch) on it, then got bored and tried Deepin OS. Now it’s collecting dust in the bottom of my drawer.

As a gift, my father bought me an Omen 9, a Windows gaming laptop. Powerful enough to run any game, this laptop also help me with tons of school projects. This blog was orignally built on that laptop.

My first MacBook

I have an iPad and an iPhone. I wear Apple Watch every day. I guess one of the many sins of Apple is that it makes you crave for the whole package once you tried one of their product. Anyway, I bought a second-hand MacBook Air (M1) after I had been wanting a MacBook for so long.

I spent 425 dollars on it. A fair deal, I think, since it’s a used product from 2021, and it only has 8GB RAM + 256GB disk.

Many might find 256GB really small. It’s even smaller than my iPhone! I’ve been thinking about getting a portable hard drive at first, but, after nearly 2 months, I realize that 256GB is enough for me.

Shocking, huh?

The thing is, I’m just an ordinary programmer. I don’t edit videos and photographs. Code just doesn’t take up too much space! Plus, I store all of my projects on GitHub, which can be safely deleted from my device since they’re backed up by GitHub.

And I have a 200GB plan for iCloud. Documents, slides, e-books, photographs go up there and can be downloaded whenever I need.

I don’t play video games on Mac. Let’s just be honest, when it comes to PC games, Windows always wins. Moreover, MacBook Air doesn’t really have that performance.

For entertainment like videos and TV, most of people like me perfer streaming than downloading like a caveman. Therefore, games and videos don’t affect my laptop’s local storage.

All of these make my laptop a place for processing temporary files. New stuff in and old stuff out, either archived on cloud or deleted permanently. 256GB is really sufficient if you are someone like me.

Why is this the best laptop

This MacBook is the first computer that I paid myself. And this 425-dollar purchase not only covered most of my usage scenarios, but also lead me into the wonderful new world of MacOS.

Well, of course, gaming isn’t the scenario it has covered. It’s a good thing, however. Separating work and entertainment can be a huge productivity boost. If you only play video games on Switch and the other computer, you just don’t get distracted or confused that easily working on the work-specific one.

Though this is an old MacBook, it has apple silicon. M1 might not be powerful enough, but the performance is just lovely.

For starters, with apple silicon, you can open almost any application instantly and all interations are just smooth.

The battery runs longer than Intel MacBook as well. If you use Safari instead of Chrome, the battery can last for a day without charging. If you’re developing, writing code nonstop for the whole morning or afternoon won’t be a problem.

Plus, I can’t stress this enough. It’s really really really really really cheap! The RAM and storage are enough, the performance is badass, it’s perfect for everyday use, it’s so thin and lightweight, it fits into my bag without me feeling anything in there… It’s only 425 dollars!

I really doubt it if one can get a Windows laptop like this with such a low price.

In the end

I bought this in China. I’m not sure if you can get such product in the second-hand markets in your region.

Second-hand laptops are not like refurbished ones sold on official stores. The warranty is usually expired. So, there’s a risk if the laptop needs repair some day.

If you’re looking to try MacOS, second-hand MacBooks might be a good choice.