MacBook Air 11”

[just.in.time]

Picked up a 2015 MacBook Air 11” locally.

2.2 i7 and 8gb RAM with 256gb SSD. Pretty well equipped version. In generally good physical condition, no dents, etc.

Most likely will split the storage in two and put latest macOS on one partition with OCLP and Linux Mint on the other partition.

Battery is just under 130 cycles, but will have to run CocnutBattery to check actual capacity.

Anyone run into any issues with this particular version? Also, anyone try getting Windows 11 running on this version (or the 13” model of same specs)?

 

[just.in.time]

Also, fun find was that the serial number puts it as produced October 2016, during the final month of production 11” version from what I’m seeing in EveryMac database.

 

[akator70]

Nice find. I've got a 2015 13" i5 and it performs nicely with OCLP. Boot times are slow, but once that's done it runs Sequoia far better than I ever would have expected.

 

[just.in.time]

@akator70 very cool! I’ve read that Sequoia runs a bit faster than Sonoma on some of these older machines. Has that been your experience as well?

 

[akator70]

I think it does. Everything works remarkably well considering the processing power is extremely low compared to other and/or newer Macs. It wakes and sleeps perfectly and there are no graphics issues (as long as root patching is done, just follow the prompts). I started using this MacBook Air with Monterey and have no doubts that it's faster and more responsive than Monterey was, but each version between was definitely iterative improvement.

But as I mentioned before, booting/restarting is slow. I haven't timed it, but it's definitely slower booting than the more powerful Macs I'm using OCLP with. This doesn't bother me because I rarely boot/reboot and use sleep instead. Over the last several months the only time I've rebooted is when there are macOS updates.

That said, I also don't use it for anything like serious photo or video editing because I use other Macs for heavy tasks because of higher memory, larger resolution, and faster processors. I use the Air for web, notes, word processing, lighter stuff like that — I haven't tried using it with GarageBand or iMovie. I have, however, used more intensive software on other Macs running OCLP/Sequoia like a 2012 Mini i7 and a 2015 MacBook Pro i7 and those perform reliably.

 

[Byrd]

Yep another fan here, mine is a MBA 11" i7 something 8GB/500GB upgraded SSD. The non-OEM WD SSD had some issues at first (would boot to quesiton mark needed to boot off USB to reset startup disk) but later versions of OpenCore are working well with it. It's running 10.14.something admirably.

Agree can be slow to boot and it absolutely chokes doing multiple tasks at once (as in locks up!), as a just do browsing/video/office Mac it seems just as fast as higher end Intel Macs I have on hand. One day I'll put Sequoia on it as can't see it being much slower than 10.14.

 

[joshc]

I still really like the 11" formfactor, it was just a neat laptop.

 

[just.in.time]

Finally had a chance to format the drive, do a clean install of Monterey, then OCLP install Sequoia 15.5.

Overall impressions are that once the system is running everything is relatively smooth. General system responsiveness feels pretty quick (definitely slower than a MacBook Air M1 8gb, but very reasonable). I do agree that boot time seems a little longer than Monterey. Perhaps an extra 30 seconds if I had to guess. I do wish I had timed Monterey startup before upgrading.

I went ahead and installed Steam, then installed Civilization 5 and Kerbal Space Program to test out how well things run. Overall, KSP is very playable, as is early Civ 5 (haven't had enough time to get to mid or late game yet). In both cases, I'd check in on Activity Monitor and CPU still had a little headroom and memory pressure stayed in the green the entire time. Fan was definitely going at a high speed.

Also installed CocnutBattery, and it's reporting battery at 88% of it's original health, and confirms that this particular serial number was built in October of 2016, as well as the separate production date of it's battery in September of 2016.

Unfortunately, the power supply it came with is an aftermarket knock-off version. I'll be trying to order a new 45w original Apple version if I can find one. Temporarily borrowing my Early 2013 15" MBP's power supply. Also found a seller of tested-good Apple OEM 512gb SSD drives from part-out machines on eBay for $40, so one of those are already on the way. Drives are all the PCIe variant from 2013 to 2015 era MBP and MBA, but don't get the option to chose a specific part number. I'm looking into the bi-directional ThunderBolt 2 (mini-display port) to 3 (USB-C) adapter that Apple still sells for $50. I'm going to pick one of those up tomorrow. Will be interesting to see if that allows the computer to utilize basic USB devices like USB-C portable SSD/thumb drives.

Conveniently, I'd bought a new InCase sleeve for an 11" MBA almost 5 years ago from Amazon with hopes of eventually finding a clean version like this. Likewise, I had bought an Insignia (BestBuy) branded mini-display port to HDMI adapter for plugging into an external monitor. Those can finally be put to use now.

In general, I really like the size of this machine. It's definitely my "slowest" modern machine and doesn't come close to my Apple Silicon MBA or MBP performance-wise. But still a cool little device to have and thanks to OCLP is up-to-date on the latest OS with all security patches in place.

I'm going to hold off on installing a Windows or Linux partition until the larger SSD gets here as 256 would be a bit limiting on size.

 

[just.in.time]

One thing I haven't done is sign into iCloud. With the system running so well right now I'm not sure if that would cause several other overhead processes to kick on and eat into the limited dual-core CPU's capacity. Thinking things like iCloud shared clipboard, AirPods handover, AppleWatch unlock, iCloud Drive syncing, etc. Nothing overly CPU intensive, but a lot of little things to be constantly checking/syncing in the background.

 

[CC_333]

I'm going to hold off on installing a Windows or Linux partition until the larger SSD gets here as 256 would be a bit limiting on size.

As a challenge, I once tried installing MacOS and Windows side by side on a 30 GB SSD. Yes, 20 gigabytes. That's not a typo!

Amazingly, it worked, but there was so little room to spare on the Mac side it was barely usable. I was able to trim down Windows pretty well, though, and If I remember correctly, it had a good 3-5 GB or so of room once everything was set up.

c

 

[lolo799]

I have an older model, a 2012 11" Air with a 64GB ssd, I installed Windows 10 on it directly, only used Bootcamp to download the drivers before erasing the entire storage.
It happily runs the Steam client now and some less demanding games.

I did try Age of Empires II Definitive Edition, to my surprise it did work quite well but the cpu temperature got way too high, above 85C°.
I quickly reclaimed all that space.

 

[just.in.time]

@CC_333 I had a 2005 iBook G4 1.33ghz back when still relevant (like 2007 era), and its factory 40GB hard drive was outgrown so fast by sudden mass usage of space for iTunes purchases (music and video). Only good news was I didn’t have to worry about my base iPod Video (30GB I believe) running out of space as I didn’t have that much free room to grow the library on my iBook. Didn’t have an external drive and later an internal upgrade until 2008 or so.

@lolo799 sounds like the CPU is up for the task. I’m wondering if it just needs new thermal paste to better move the heat out.

 

[CC_333]

30 GB SSD. Yes, 20 gigabytes. That's not a typo!

And I made a typo. That "20 gigabytes" should be "30 gigabytes."

c

 

[just.in.time]

Finding NIB thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 2 cables turned out to be harder than expected. Turns out they were discontinued at some point not too long ago.

Finally found some being clearanced at a local Staples for $18 for the 2meter version. Picked up two so I’d have a backup cable.

 

[Byrd]

Good price, yeah TB2 cables are surprisingly hard to find and expensive

 

[kastegir]

I also have the 2015 i& version of this machine with 8GB RAM and an aftermarket wd black 1TB SSD. I've been using this as my travel/backup laptop for a while, and it's great for that. It's so small and light that you forget it's even in your bag, and it's fine for basic email, word processing, web browsing, etc.

 

[just.in.time]

I also have the 2015 i& version of this machine with 8GB RAM and an aftermarket wd black 1TB SSD. I've been using this as my travel/backup laptop for a while, and it's great for that. It's so small and light that you forget it's even in your bag, and it's fine for basic email, word processing, web browsing, etc.

Agreed, definitely a great on-the-go basic system!

 

[just.in.time]

Alright, finally got to do some bench marks for this computer.
Blackmagic Design v3.4.2 disk speed test (best of 3 runs, all conducted from Sequoia 15.5).
Original 256GB SSD: 510MB/s write - 1021MB/s read
Apple 655-1859H 512GB SSD: 1346MB/s write - 1384MB/s read
For the SSD, the 512GB drive has significantly improved write speeds and notable improvements to read speeds over the original 256GB version it came with.

For boot times, I did a comparison of Monterey 12.7.6 (final officially supported OS for this model) and Sequoia 15.5. In both scenarios, I did testing runs 3 times to make sure times were consistent (they were in both cases, with variances around a quarter second at most which is probably just my response time to hitting the stopwatch button). For both OS versions, I had already installed the 512gb SSD mentioned above.
Monterey 12.7.6 - Time to password prompt: 32 seconds - Time from password to desktop: 7 seconds.
Sequoia 15.5 - Time to password prompt: 49 seconds - Time from password to desktop: 19 seconds. (OCLP auto-boot enabled, no device picker shown at startup).
My admittedly not-very-scientific time measurements, but method was consistent across testing, shows that Sequoia definitely takes a bit longer to start up and to log in than Monterey did on the same hardware (approximately 68 seconds vs 39 seconds, a difference of 29 seconds). Overall though, once running Sequoia feels just as responsive as Monterey did for doing basic tasks.