Indie Dev Old Demon Emerges from Its Cave | A Belated Unboxing and Ramblings on the 15-inch MacBook Air M4

Preface

Time flies. In the blink of an eye, it's time to write the year-end recap again—though I seem to have forgotten to write one these past few years 🤣

As I said in this article, I've been heads-down building a new product lately (as an indie developer, going months without shipping anything is just not acceptable 😂). Coming back to write after so long, I suddenly feel like an old demon emerging from its cave, hahaha.

Not writing articles for so long has really left me uneasy. Keeping up with sharing has become a habit, and with no new posts out for this long, I hope WeChat's recommendation algorithm still remembers me 😄

Anyway, back to the topic. The 15-inch MacBook Air M4 this article covers was bought in October this year. It was still summer when I took the photos; by the time I'm writing this, it's already winter 🥱

Last year I got the M3 MacBook Air. It was my first MacBook, and I was genuinely blown away by the trackpad. You really wouldn't believe how well Apple has polished the trackpad experience until you try it yourself. But after using it for about a month—my workflow was still on Windows, I wasn't quite used to MacOS, and I had no need to take a laptop on the go—I regrettably sold it.

The turning point came at the beginning of this year, when I jumped on the bandwagon and picked up the insanely good-value, most stripped-down Mac Mini M4. With prior macOS experience, I got up to speed quickly this time. After forcing myself to use it for half a year, the “it's actually great” law arrived late, but it arrived. Once I got used to it, I found the Unix command-line experience is just ridiculously satisfying for a developer. My workflow can now run smoothly on macOS.

So when I needed to work on the go in the latter half of this year, I didn't hesitate to get the M4 MacBook Air. This year the whole lineup starts at 16GB of RAM, and with the national subsidy it can be had for around 6,000 yuan—still pretty good value.

More than two months later, here's a look back at the unboxing 😄. I later also updated to macOS 26; I'll try to write about that when I find the time.

Packaging

Has this packaging not been changed in ages? Cook really has a knack for cost management.

Front + side.

Back. (This time I remembered to redact the serial number)

Unboxing

The blue looks nice

What's left is just the charger and power cable. Very eco-friendly.

Oh right, and this wafer-thin manual. Does anyone actually read this? 😄

MacBook

Here it is.

With that faint new-gadget scent.

Peeling off the protective film.

The M4's blue is pretty nice.

Sides and Ports

Check out that side profile.

Power and two Type-C ports.

The MacBook Air's ports are pitifully few.

They even left a headphone jack on the right.

Powering On

Forgot to take off the screen protector paper.

A 15-inch screen is just more satisfying.

PS: It was already past 1 a.m. when I took this. That shadow in the background reminded me.

Experience

Restored from the NAS with Time Machine, skipping the hassle of installing and configuring the system.

Apple really nailed this. The experience is excellent.

Let's talk about MagSafe charging.

How to put it... mixed feelings.

The “click” of it snapping on is satisfying, and it can keep you from yanking the laptop off if you trip on the cable—but deep down I really just want one more Type-C port!

Right now the two ports on the left: one for the display, one for the hard drive. There's really no room left. Teacher Cook, next time could you swap the MagSafe port for USB-C? Or... do I have to pay extra for a Pro? 😂

On Productivity

A lot of people ask me: if you're doing development, why not buy a Pro?

Honestly, M-chip performance is a bit overkill these days. As an indie developer, my daily work is running the full JetBrains suite, doing frontend in VS Code, and occasionally editing images. This Air can basically handle it.

Most importantly—it's really quiet.

Compared with the Mechrevo Infinity 14x I'm using now: both are thin-and-light laptops, but when the Mechrevo runs a pnpm install the fan sounds like a helicopter taking off, while the MacBook Air is both quiet and fast.

And 15 inches is truly the “sweet-spot” size for writing code. Earlier this year when the Mechrevo 14x was in for repair, I briefly used a 13-inch. Split-screening docs on one half and code on the other, the text was so small you'd need a microscope. Now 15 inches is just right: it still fits in a backpack for running around, and opened up it can serve as a proper workstation.

Wrap-up

Coming back to a Mac laptop this time feels like making peace with an old friend.

There's no perfect computer, only the tool that fits the moment. For me right now—I need to fix bugs anytime, anywhere (sad), I need something light, I need battery anxiety gone—this Air is the current “version answer.”

The product is already on its way, the tools feel right, and next up it's time to bury my head in work again. See you in the next version! 👋