My only reason for posting this is if anyone in my situation is on the fence about pulling the trigger on an M1 MacBook Air.
I am admittedly an Apple fanboy and have an embarrassing amount of Apple stuff (some of these are several generations old though)- iMac, iPad Pro, iPhone, Mac Mini as HTPC, not to mention ATV x2, HomePod, HomePod Mini, Apple Watch... not to mention my wife’s stuff. I really didn’t need another Apple product and this was totally an impulse purchase.
That being said, I am absolutely in love with this MacBook Air. I got the education discount and splurged on the fully loaded configuration. Totally unnecessary I’m sure, and I was prepared to have massive buyer’s remorse, but this thing is a beast.
For my use case, which is some gaming (mainly WoW and Apple Arcade stuff), accessing various aspects of my work remotely via Cisco AnyConnect VPN, Citrix Workspace, and Microsoft Remote Desktop, office suite work (typically Office 365 for work and Apple’s suite for personal use), web browsing, streaming, some light photo/video editing, occasional GarageBand use, managing my home network and tinkering with a Linux server over ssh/VNC... all of this is flawless, snappy, near-instant whether Rosetta 2 or native.
I have found at night while lying in bed, when I typically reach for my iPhone or iPad to doomscroll on the Apple News app or Twitter or Facebook, I’m now reaching for the MacBook. It’s comfortable to hold on my lap for hours without negatively affecting my fertility or roasting my thighs. I have used it for both work and fun for the last 3 days, relatively heavy use, on a single charge.
I haven’t once regretted getting the MBA over the MBP - the display is gorgeous, the performance is outstanding for my use case, I’m not a huge fan of the Touch Bar, and I personally feel that the wedge shape is more comfortable to type on as far as wrist angle. I’ve also never regretted fully loading the MBA with 8-core GPU, 16GB RAM, and 2TB SSD. Was it completely unnecessary and a waste of money for my uses? Probably... maybe certainly... but no regrets.
I’m actually thinking about selling mine and my wife’s iMacs, selling my wife’s 1-year old 16” MBP to get her own M1 MBA, getting a couple of TB3 docks and UltraWide monitors, and calling us good on computers for awhile. She is supremely jealous of the MBA currently.
I am admittedly an Apple fanboy and have an embarrassing amount of Apple stuff (some of these are several generations old though)- iMac, iPad Pro, iPhone, Mac Mini as HTPC, not to mention ATV x2, HomePod, HomePod Mini, Apple Watch... not to mention my wife’s stuff. I really didn’t need another Apple product and this was totally an impulse purchase.
That being said, I am absolutely in love with this MacBook Air. I got the education discount and splurged on the fully loaded configuration. Totally unnecessary I’m sure, and I was prepared to have massive buyer’s remorse, but this thing is a beast.
For my use case, which is some gaming (mainly WoW and Apple Arcade stuff), accessing various aspects of my work remotely via Cisco AnyConnect VPN, Citrix Workspace, and Microsoft Remote Desktop, office suite work (typically Office 365 for work and Apple’s suite for personal use), web browsing, streaming, some light photo/video editing, occasional GarageBand use, managing my home network and tinkering with a Linux server over ssh/VNC... all of this is flawless, snappy, near-instant whether Rosetta 2 or native.
I have found at night while lying in bed, when I typically reach for my iPhone or iPad to doomscroll on the Apple News app or Twitter or Facebook, I’m now reaching for the MacBook. It’s comfortable to hold on my lap for hours without negatively affecting my fertility or roasting my thighs. I have used it for both work and fun for the last 3 days, relatively heavy use, on a single charge.
I haven’t once regretted getting the MBA over the MBP - the display is gorgeous, the performance is outstanding for my use case, I’m not a huge fan of the Touch Bar, and I personally feel that the wedge shape is more comfortable to type on as far as wrist angle. I’ve also never regretted fully loading the MBA with 8-core GPU, 16GB RAM, and 2TB SSD. Was it completely unnecessary and a waste of money for my uses? Probably... maybe certainly... but no regrets.
I’m actually thinking about selling mine and my wife’s iMacs, selling my wife’s 1-year old 16” MBP to get her own M1 MBA, getting a couple of TB3 docks and UltraWide monitors, and calling us good on computers for awhile. She is supremely jealous of the MBA currently.