My old 2015 MacBook Pro has finally been retired. The battery was looking suspiciously bloated and I’d rather not start a fire on my desk (or worse, on an airplane).
The replacement is a 2020 MacBook Air M1. I debated whether or not it was worth going to a higher end model, but I don’t do much beyond Office apps. My calculation might have been different if I did video editing or something but the most I’ll do is compile a project in XCode and that’s pretty quick.
So far, I’m very impressed. The battery life is incredible. I can work unplugged all day and not even worry about it. The screen is good. The keyboard isn’t quite as nice as the one on the 2015 MBP, but it’s fine.
The only problem I’ve had so far is that you need an advanced dock to drive multiple monitors. For now, I’ve just got it set up on one monitor and will upgrade that monitor by swapping for the bigger monitor that I have on my Linux box.
Apple still makes really good hardware. I can’t imagine using another sort of laptop.