I just bought a MacBook Air 11" from 2015. In 2026. On purpose.
People with one good laptop don't usually go shopping for a decade-old one. But I have an M4 13", and I kept noticing something: I wasn't reaching for it. Not for the small stuff. It's a wonderful machine, and it's also heavy, a little unwieldy, and slightly too much commitment for the thing I actually want to do, which is fire off one email, check a Slack message, or look something up.
The real use case is the gaps
My days are made of gaps. Small kids, part-time work, a household that doesn't run itself: meal plans, logistics, the endless background process of keeping everything going. Somewhere in there, while something's simmering on the stove, I get five or ten minutes. That's my window. That's when I want to answer the one email that's been nagging me all afternoon.
A five-minute window has no patience for setup.
Why not the iPad Mini
I know what you're thinking. Don't.
To actually work on an iPad Mini I'd need a keyboard. And a pointer. And a stand to hold it at a sane angle. I was genuinely eyeing a Moft Dynamic Folio ($50) just to prop it up. By the time everything's connected and positioned, my five minutes are gone and the pasta's done.
And iPadOS, for me, is an arcade. Every surface is one tap away from something more fun than the task at hand. It's a lovely media player. It is not where I get things done.
What I actually want is a BlackBerry
I'll say it plainly: I wish Apple made a BlackBerry. Not out of nostalgia, but for the convenience. A small, focused device that does the handful of things you need, instantly, and then stays out of your way. Nobody really builds for that anymore.
Why this little Air
The 11" Air is the closest thing I could find. It's small and light enough to live on the kitchen counter. It opens to a real keyboard and a real operating system. And there's no ritual: lift the lid, it's awake, I'm working. No pairing, no propping, no $50 folio. Five minutes in, five minutes out.
It's the right tool because it removes friction, not because it wins on a spec sheet.
The part that makes it last
Here's the bit that sealed it. Apple stopped shipping macOS updates for this model years ago, which on paper makes it a dead end. But it's Intel hardware, and Ubuntu runs on it nicely. So instead of a stranded, unsupported laptop, I get a light, fast, genuinely current machine I can keep using for years. A 2015 body with a 2026 operating system.
That turns a landfill-bound device into something useful again. And quite apart from the convenience, I just like that.
The takeaway
The best tool isn't the most powerful one you own. It's the one with the least friction between you and the thing you're trying to do. For my five-minute windows, that's a decade-old laptop running Linux on the kitchen counter.
The M4 is still the workhorse. But the little Air is the one I actually reach for.