Tempted to stick with my old Mac a bit longer

My latest post mentioned how perfect my current setup seems to be. Today, a week or two later, I must admit, this post holds up pretty well. I was expecting the post (and therefore the setup) to be updated drastically the minute I published it, as it usually goes, and yet, nothing of substance has changed since.

In this post, I listed my dear old MacBook Air from early 2020, rocking an Intel chip, as the weakest part of that setup, the one thing that was the most likely to get replaced.

It turns out that I’m now not so sure about that: My Mac feels fine. Sure, it’s not fast, the battery lasts around 40 minutes on a charge, and I can feel it’s struggling and getting warm when watching videos or visiting “heavy” websites. I remain cautious and very conservative with what I do with it, but for an almost six-year-old computer, it’s surprisingly usable.

Somehow, I like that my Mac is old, slow, and limited. This constraint forces me to stay vigilant, to keep things as simple, native, light, minimal, and optimised as possible. When the fan activates, I know something’s wrong. I’m calling this the “whoosh notification.” When my laptop starts to make a vacuum cleaner noise, this is the signal to close the guilty Safari tab (or to turn off JavaScript), or to get rid of the app causing the trouble, eliminating it from a potential consideration.

Maybe I have to thank this very limitation for finally achieving this “perfect” setup. Without it, I’d keep experimenting, tweaking my setup further and further, and potentially even adopting apps that are not indeed that efficient or completely optimised.

With a modern Mac, let’s say an M4 MacBook Air, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I wouldn’t be able to detect the inefficiencies and appreciate the efficiencies as easily.

For instance, occasionally, I’m eager to try Orion Browser, as it ticks almost all the boxes for me. But every time I play with it, my computer gives me the signal. When the fan starts to blow seemingly out of nowhere, I don’t investigate further, and I become very much aware that I have to stick to Safari. Another example: every time Eleventy builds the HTML for this site, I love seeing that it sometimes takes less than one second. With an M4 MacBook Air, such a feat would be unremarkable.

If I use yet another Lotus Elise analogy, my computer and setup rely on the chip equivalent of the simple four-cylinder Toyota engine, the one that was fitted in the latest generations of the car. These engines were finely tuned, decently powerful, but they couldn’t afford to deal with extra weight if they wanted to provide some sort of race car performance.

Race cars from other brands — and most sports cars currently on sales — on the other hand, mounted with engines two, three, or four times more powerful, aren’t optimised or even built the same way: they can handle to be fitted into bigger cars, they can support the extra weight of ventilated seats, more speakers, and more. When these manufacturers feel their cars can be a bit more fun to drive, they simply add more power; they don’t really bother fine-tuning every part for maximum efficiency because with such power, it’s rather unnecessary.

This is why, as I write this in January 2026, I’m more tempted than ever to enjoy my Mac — and lean setup — one more year.

Also, besides the much, much faster chip, the new MacBook Air is basically the same as mine. It has the same keyboard, the same screen, the same maximum brightness, the same form factor, and a slightly different design. The chip is the main star in these new models; it’s such a leap forward from mine that I’m not even sure I’d notice the other improvements, like faster memory and faster Wi-Fi.

Icing on the cake, sticking to my current Mac also means being unable to upgrade to Tahoe. I use “MacOS 26” on my work computer, and Tahoe’s Safari, a prime example among many others, is surely one of the worst versions ever of the browser.*1 I mean, look at this screenshot and try to figure out at first glance which tab is currently active. And don’t get me started on the rounded corners.*2

In March, Apple will probably release a new generation of MacBooks Air, and, depending on what else will be new besides the M5 chip, I may change my mind. But as I said, and as I am typing these lines in a perfectly capable laptop running Sequoia, with a confident and efficient setup, I’m more tempted than ever to keep this little guy around a bit longer.

Another outcome that is looking more and more likely due to the current international shit show: I may play it safe and buy a current M4 MacBook Air at a 150 euro discount on the 31st of January, the day before some potential tariffs may be added on, or not. I can also get 150 euros for trading this one in, which would make the purchase a lot more affordable than the newer model, especially if new tariffs on US products sare introduced. Very difficult to predict the future one week from now in that regard, as a lot of things have happened this week.

Either way, this Intel Core i5 chip is more resilient than I expected: one just has to handle it with care.