alasta:

 

Handle9:

What would they replace the Air or the entry level Pro with? They aren’t releasing M2 yet so there’s no reason for them to change either of them. 18 months would be a very short release cycle for a new Air.

They’ll release the new Mac Pro first, which was hinted at in the event today. That would remove Intel from all their machines, in line with what they said when they released the M1 Macs.

IMO an Air right now is a compelling machine for a user like you - great battery life, no fan and I don’t think you do anything too demanding. Given the thermal performance of the M1 machines it’d be a very good upgrade.

 

Fair call. I would quite like them to do a minor update of the entry level MacBook Pro to get rid of the Touch Bar, but I guess buying a MacBook Air instead would be an effective solution to that. As far as I can see the only downside to the Air is the 400 nit display brightness compared with 500 nit on my existing MacBook Pro. 

 

Maybe I should just grab the current MacBook Air as it's pretty cheap and, as you say, it would comfortably handle the basic stuff that I would use it for. 

 

Reports suggest there could well be a new MacBook Air this year but I'd guess it'll be a cosmetic upgrade at best. If you are buying the base model M1 Air I think you'll be delighted by it. My Mum bought one last year and loves it. It does everything she needs and no fan + great battery life is a very good experience.

I'm sorely tempted to buy one but can't really justify it, I have an M1 Mac mini and windows laptops (plus my wife has an Intel MacBook Pro) so there is no real justification other than they are vary nice and it would largely remove me from the Windows ecosystem.