Google's 2023 midrange smartphone, the Pixel 7a, is a tempting choice for those chasing after the Pixel experience without breaking the bank. Boasting specs that come close to its flagship sibling, the Pixel 7, the 7a rightfully earns its place among the best budget Android phones you can get your hands on. But let's get real no matter how pocket-friendly this phone or its price tag might be, it still needs protection.
If you're in the market for some of the best fitness trackers, display-equipped devices like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 tend to be among the top recommendations. However, displays are distracting, they leech away battery life, and, if you're fashion conscious, may not necessarily fit your style.
The idea of voice-based social networks isn’t new. Clubhouse boomed during the Covid era and floundered soon after. However, Clubhouse’s moment of fame led to several copycats and even spurred the addition of voice to existing platforms like Twitter.
On the face of it, Airchat (Play Store) is yet another take on the old formula. So, why has it gotten so much attention recently?
In 2023, Naval Ravikant, the co-founder of AngelList and early-stage investor in companies like Uber and Twitter, introduced the first iteration of Airchat. While I never got around to using it, a quick look around suggests that the original ambition erred towards a hybrid of Clubhouse and Instagram. It bombed. But Airchat is back, and this time, the approach is decidedly different.
Airchat trades text for voice, but its Twitter and Threads inspirations are obvious.
I managed to score an invite to Airchat earlier this week and have spent a fair amount of time on the network. The newly resurrected app still trades text for voice. Yes, you read that right. You cannot input any text, and all user interactions are via voice. Still in beta, the entire vibe is more early days of Twitter than the current hell hole that X has become. Airchat’s fresh inspirations are pretty obvious, too. Launching the app drops you straight into a home page that looks like a cross between Threads and Twitter. From there, things get interesting quickly.
The app will immediately start playing back the first conversation in the feed alongside replies to the chat. It’s almost like overhearing a water cooler chat. The built-in AI is quick to transcribe voice chats and is astonishingly good at it. In fact, you can see it making corrections in real time. Tagging other users works by calling out their handles after you’ve voiced out your message. And no, there is no text input at all. It’s voice or nothing.
I’ve observed that the voice-first approach adds a certain intimacy to the conversations I’m having on Airchat. It’s a stark change from the relative anonymity of platforms like Twitter, where your virtual and actual identity don’t need any correlation. And I say this as someone who has only now switched to a real-world profile pic on Twitter.
The small user base and voice-based interactions give the app a tight-knit community feel.
The incredibly small and community-like user base also fuels the casual intimacy of conversations on Airchat. It’s hard to gauge the exact number, but based on my experience, the active user base appears to be in the low thousands at best. The app is constantly being updated, and a subreddit-style community feature was launched just the other day. The fitness community, likely to be one of the most popular, currently has just over 1800 users, further signaling how small the user base is on the invite-only app.
However, where Airchat differs from other apps is in the level of engagement. I’ve come across deeply insightful conversations, and adding an element of voice to the mix makes it seem like you’re talking to an actual person instead of a talking head or internet guru.
Of course, there are restrictions. Voice posts have now been limited to 5 minutes, ensuring Airchat doesn’t get misused as a podcasting platform. It probably also helps get people off their virtual soapbox. Elsewhere, the latest update has added video support. I haven’t tried that yet, nor have I seen anyone else give it a whirl.
I can safely say that I’ve enjoyed using AirChat quite a bit, but despite that, I have my inhibitions about its future. A voice-based app faces one fundamental issue: privacy. Clubhouse gained steam when everyone was stuck at home and could talk freely. That’s not the case today. Sure, you can turn down the volume on your phone and read up on the latest conversations on the platform. But unlike Twitter, Instagram, or Reddit, you can’t actively participate in discussions without voice. This rules out sneaking in a conversation between meetings or even in a public space where talking aloud might not be acceptable. Late night doomscrolling on Twitter without waking up your partner just isn’t a possibility here.
Much as I'm enjoying my time with Airchat, it's hard to see it scale and compete against the existing juggernauts.
Moreover, I don’t see how this limitation can be addressed without changing the app’s fundamental ethos. And there’s no way the limitation won’t restrict the audience and scale. That said, I see nothing wrong with creating an app positioned towards a more niche and engaged audience. Airchat probably won’t be the Amazon of social media, but Etsy has a thriving user base, too.
My last four days with Airchat have been interesting, to say the least. While it’s too early to tell if it’s going to give serious competition to Big Social Media just yet, the new incarnation of Airchat might have enough staying power to become its own niche player.
No, an existing member needs to invite you to the platform.
Every user can invite five additional members to Airchat.
No, Airchat does not notify users when you take a screenshot.
No, you cannot view who viewed your Airchat profile.
Airchat can only be accessed via the Android and iOS apps.
It’s hard to gauge who has the most followers on the platform, but the founder, Naval, likely has the maximum followers. At the time of publishing, Naval’s profile reported 12,000 followers.
I’ve been using MacBooks for almost 14 years. Call me a creature of habit, but six machines later, when it came time to upgrade my laptop, it was clear that my next machine would be yet another addition from Apple’s stable.
Previously, the decision had been easy. I’m a pro user with pro needs, and only a MacBook Pro would cut it. That’s not entirely the case anymore. Apple’s M-series silicon has flipped the game altogether and leapfrogged the Intel and AMD competition in all but gaming. The M3-powered MacBook Air piqued my curiosity.
A Pro-user needs a Pro-machine. The MacBook Air flips that thought on its head.
However, I’d burnt my fingers on a MacBook Air once. That machine barely lasted me weeks before I turned it in and upgraded to a — you guessed it — MacBook Pro. But despite my apprehensions, I decided to give the all-new MacBook Air M3 a shot over the Pro. I don’t regret it. Here’s why.
My work requires researching, reading, and staying on top of the latest news. Opening several dozens of tabs simultaneously isn’t uncommon. Plus, I’ll usually have an instance of Photoshop or Lightroom open and Spotify and Slack running in the background. Add Notion to the mix for note-taking and a few more utilities, and the workload adds up.
In the past, this workload alone would have my old MacBook Pro huffing and puffing. In fact, I don’t remember a time when the fan wasn’t spinning at full blast. Sure, I could learn to manage my computational load better, but chaotic good tends to be my default work state. I expect my machine to keep up with me, and I don’t mind pushing the laptop to its limits.
My working style is chaotic good, and I expect my machines to keep pace.
Lately, however, I’ve felt the itch for a different machine. With more and more travel and, well, age catching up, I’ve started appreciating the benefits of a lighter laptop. More importantly, with the pandemic long behind us, I like working out of cafes or while traveling. Long battery life is essential to me. It was clear that I needed an upgrade from my hulking Intel MacBook Pro, and the new M3-powered MacBook Air seemed like the obvious choice. I was prepared to compromise on performance if need be.
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. The MacBook Air runs circles around the my old Pro without even breaking a sweat. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who has used a recent M-series MacBook. But bear with me.
100 chrome tabs? No sweat. The M3-powered MacBook Air runs circles around it.
I’m a heavier-than-average laptop user. When I mention opening Chrome tabs, it’s not a few or even a dozen. I often have 50 or even a hundred tabs split across browsers and macOS desktops. I’m using the 16GB RAM and 512GB storage variant of the MacBook Air, and I’ve faced no slowdowns at all at any point. It keeps chugging along like any other day.
Sure, browser-based workflows might not paint the complete picture of a laptop’s performance, but creative apps can. Between Da Vinci Resolve, Premier Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom, I run the whole gamut of creative apps. And that’s where the performance improvements really start showing up. Apple knows its audience, and switching to the M-series silicon gave it the freedom to build in media accelerators and NPUs tuned explicitly to the needs of its customers.
Compared to my old Intel Mac’s hour-long thermal throttled meltdown while rendering a 4K video, the MacBook Air pulls it off in seconds. The difference is night and day.
The NPU-enhancements to the M3 silicon do a lot of the heavy lifting in tasks that take advantage of it.
Before looking into the M3-powered MacBook Air, I’d briefly considered settling for an M1 or M2 unit instead. Great as the M3 version is, highlight changes like dual monitor support and a new anodized finish didn’t seem all that critical. However, the thing about building a machine so far ahead of the curve is that generational improvements don’t seem like much. For the sake of fairness, I borrowed a friend’s M1-series MacBook Air. While the M1 silicon was still leagues ahead of my Intel MacBook Pro, placing the two next to each other painted a truer picture of the noticeable speed enhancements with the M3. In fact, the M3 MacBook proved to be almost double as fast as the M1 MacBook Air in many of my daily tasks.
One of the biggest upgrades this year has been to the Neural Engine. Optimized for machine learning and AI-based tasks, it is supposed to be up to 60% faster than the one on M1 Silicon. If there’s something to be said about the Apple ecosystem, it’s the fact that popular developers are quick to build features that push the hardware’s limits. Apps like Luminar Neo take full advantage of the NPU cores to deliver faster edits and Generative AI-style features. If that’s your use case, you’ll absolutely notice the year-on-year improvements.
But three weeks on, what truly boggles the mind is this laptop’s ability to pull off incredible performance without sacrificing battery life. Apple’s 18-hour claims are a bit hard to gauge as I don’t sit at my computer with a stopwatch in hand. However, I’ve been using this laptop for the last three days without recharging. In the meantime, I’ve penned down this entire feature, ideated and scripted two videos, edited them, and watched a movie on Netflix. That’s bonkers!
But despite all those positives, it is pretty clear to me that as far as M-series silicon has come, it isn’t perfect yet. For example, while the MacBook Air gets dual-screen support with the M3 refresh, you must close the lid to enable it.
While not a dealbreaker, that’s absurd to me as I’m used to keeping the laptop screen open as a third monitor. Additionally, it’s not just screen real estate that you’re losing out on. The MacBook Air uses its keyboard to dissipate heat. With the screen shut and the laptop presumably doing computationally intensive work across dual displays, there’s a noticeable dip in performance due to reduced heat dissipation. For example, video rendering time almost doubled for me in a quick test. It was still plenty fast, but the difference is noticeable and negates some of the advantages of the faster chip.
Even Apple must see the ridiculousness of shipping a $1100 laptop with 8GB of RAM.
Elsewhere, Apple’s penny-pinching still bites. Shipping 8GB of RAM as the default in a 2024 laptop is hilarious but not as ironically funny as Apple’s RAM upgrade prices. Here’s the thing: I can see Apple’s reasoning for the default amount of RAM. The tight software and hardware integration and fast RAM mean you probably wouldn’t run out of RAM under common use cases. I borrowed an M2 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and was surprised by how well it could manage a higher-than-average workload. The system seamlessly manages memory swaps, making any RAM limitations transparent to users.
In fact, it takes deliberate effort and very heavy use to drop into page swap territory on my 16GB machine. There’s also a point to be made that someone buying a base-level MacBook Air likely isn’t an enthusiast user anyway. But Apple’s choice to stick with 8GB as the default is sheer stubbornness. It would cost the company pennies to upgrade the base amount of RAM and simultaneously eliminate all the bad press stemming from it. At a time when phones ship with more RAM than your laptop, shipping the bare minimum and charging an arm and a leg for an upgrade just reeks of capitalism.
The dire port situation is made worse by the flaky backwards compatibility.
Finally, I’ve had my fair share of issues using legacy hardware with my new MacBook. For example, my mechanical keyboard tends to lag when plugged into the Air. My OWC Thunderbolt dock refuses to work with the MacBook Air. My guitar amp, too, doesn’t work with the laptop. If it were one device that acted flaky, I’d blame it on the peripheral. However, a series of devices not working correctly suggests backward compatibility issues with the Mac.
It’s hard not to be impressed by the MacBook Air. Apple has seemingly performed magic to deliver performance akin to a high-end laptop from a machine with the form factor of a glorified Chromebook. It also represents a whole new era of portable computing. As far as Apple’s laptops go, based on my experience, the distinction between user demographics has never been more apparent.
The MacBook Air has clearly transcended from its ultrabook origins and is the obvious choice for all but professionals and big spenders.
The MacBook Air isn’t just Apple’s entry-level battery-life-focused laptop anymore. It’s got more than enough power to satiate enthusiasts. Meanwhile, the Pro lineup is genuinely for the Pros. If you’re a professional whose living depends on ultra-fast edits, capable music production, or compiling large code bases, by all means, go for the Pro. Or perhaps you want to splurge and get the best there is. There is no harm in that, either. But, by and large, the average hobbyist YouTube creator, Soundcloud music producer, and weekend photographer will find it hard to stress the limits of the current MacBook Air lineup.
Early adopters of the M-series silicon might be chuckling at me going gaga over Apple’s latest laptop. However, I’m just one of thousands, if not millions, of users who will finally be upgrading to the new MacBook about five years into the last Intel MacBook Air’s lifecycle. And with the M3 range, Apple has perfected the formula and released a laptop that caters to the 90%. I’d go as far as saying that for the sheer amount of power on hand, this is the most value-for-money machine Apple has released.
Sitting smugly between the diminutive but affordable S24 and reassuringly expensive Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Galaxy S24+ has the perfect credentials to snag some significant sales for Samsung. There are special features like UWB, which the base S24 lacks, and the size of the screen is ideal for those who like a larger display and the clarity this brings in reading some websites.
The Kindle Scribe is an excellent e-reader for those who want more than just an e-reader. As Amazon's biggest Kindle model to date, the Scribe incorporates stylus support and advanced productivity features, so easily switching from note-taking to reading is possible. However, with its 10.2-inch display, the Scribe's unprecedented size makes it the bulkiest and least portable of the Kindle family, which could point to a higher risk of drops, scuffs, and scratches.
The idea of voice-based social networks isn’t new. Clubhouse boomed during the Covid era and floundered soon after. However, Clubhouse’s moment of fame led to several copycats and even spurred the addition of voice to existing platforms like Twitter.
On the face of it, Airchat (Play Store) is yet another take on the old formula. So, why has it gotten so much attention recently?
I’ve been using MacBooks for almost 14 years. Call me a creature of habit, but six machines later, when it came time to upgrade my laptop, it was clear that my next machine would be yet another addition from Apple’s stable.
Previously, the decision had been easy. I’m a pro user with pro needs, and only a MacBook Pro would cut it. That’s not entirely the case anymore. Apple’s M-series silicon has flipped the game altogether and leapfrogged the Intel and AMD competition in all but gaming. The M3-powered MacBook Air piqued my curiosity.
Whether they're tracking your child's whereabouts or encouraging a more active lifestyle, smartwatches for kids are just as relevant as they are for adults.
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