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Am I crazy for selling my base MBP 16" and getting MBA M1 instead??

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Original poster
Jul 31, 2005
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The two things that pushed me to do so:

1. The excitement of M1
2. My vehement hatred for Touch Bar

The one thing I'll probably miss the most:

1. The luxurious screen real estate

I got the MBA M1, 8 RAM, 512 storage (not base, kinda middle of the road).

The apps I usually run (mostly open 3-5 at a time):

Safari
Mail
Messages
Chrome
Keynote
Lightroom
Photoshop
Sketch
Figma
Nova
Pixelmator Pro
Twitter

That's it, I rarely use anything else on my Mac.

So, the question: am I crazy for replacing my MBP 16" with MBA M1? Would you ever do something like that?
 
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Reactions: ThomasJL, limesmoothie, ilikewhey and 1 other person
Yes. Doing the same thing. My 16" is wonderful, but heavy, hot often and heavens I hate the touchbar. I tried to like it, I really did. But I will take any machine with the old fashioned F keys. I do have a 2020 iMac if something needs the horsepower, although I don't know how much more powerful it is now.....
 
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lcseds said:
Yes. Doing the same thing. My 16" is wonderful, but heavy, hot often and heavens I hate the touchbar. I tried to like it, I really did. But I will take any machine with the old fashioned F keys. I do have a 2020 iMac if something needs the horsepower, although I don't know how much more powerful it is now.....
Click to expand...
I hear ya. As I said in another thread, if Apple one day decides to offer Fn keys instead of Touch Bar as a $200 BTO option, I’ll pay in a heartbeat.
 
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Reactions: ThomasJL, limesmoothie and calstanford
You're not crazy. I've been on my new base air all day and it's everything I ever wanted in a laptop. I've owned the 16" (loved it but a bit too big for me) and the 4 port 2020 MacBook Pro and this thing just has a great balance of everything and is blazing fast without a fan or really any heat at all. The screen quality is on par as the pros albeit not quite as bright. You'll give up that sweet speaker setup and screen size, but for the money you pocket you can get a nice monitor, kb, mouse setup and still have some left over. Not to mention the battery life is a game changer.

I say go for it. I was just barely able to return my $1800 MacBook Pro and grab the base air and I am so happy I did. The only thing I miss is slightly better speakers but I'm usually using headphones anyway. No more heat, no more fan noise. Wedge shape. Yes please. Oh and finally being free from the ghastly Touch Bar is nice as well =)
 
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Well if you’re crazy I am too as I did just that and couldn’t be happier with performance. The 16” Pro would often get hot, stutter, and not so heavy workloads would trigger the fan, moreover it was too heavy to carry around. The only downturn for me with the Air is its smaller screen and not as great sound. I will be changing to a 16” Pro once they get M chips.
 
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I'm seriously considering ditching my 2016 MBP for an M1 Air. Buying the i7 MBP was a mistake because the battery life is horrendous, barely 3-4 hours. I thought buying the i7 would increase the useful life of this machine, but the new M1 has a higher single score benchmark than the multi-core score of my i7! And as others have said as much as I like the idea of the touch bar, I never find it more convenient than function keys.

So yeah, pretty sure I'm going to do the same thing soon. I am just waiting to see if there are any catastrophic issues as there sometimes is with brand new technology.
 
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eddjedi said:
I'm seriously considering ditching my 2016 MBP for an M1 Air. Buying the i7 MBP was a mistake because the battery life is horrendous, barely 3-4 hours. I thought buying the i7 would increase the useful life of this machine, but the new M1 has a higher single score benchmark than the multi-core score of my i7! And as others have said as much as I like the idea of the touch bar, I never find it more convenient than function keys.

So yeah, pretty sure I'm going to do the same thing soon. I am just waiting to see if there are any catastrophic issues as there sometimes is with brand new technology.
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I am exactly in the same boat, as I have the same config as you, bar the SSD (I have the 512GB version). My only issue is Citrix Workspace, I need that to work on a daily basis, so the moment I see that being brought to M1 MBA natively, I am game.
 
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Loving how many people are ditching the MBP 16 for the Air.

I've been using an early 2020 Air and my old MBP 13 (1st gen touchbar/dodgy butterfly keyboard) for work, but both are now sold and replaced with a Mini for working at home and a base model Air for on the go/in the office.

Battery life and function keys on the MBA are a big draw for me.
 
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Nope. Get money for your MacBook while you can. If the M1 is this fast, then next year with the M1X or M2 your Mac will be worth peanuts. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but I do think the resale value of Intel Macs will drop significantly. And the MacBook Air M1 is crazy good value.
 
teecuptech said:
Considering you're not using Parallels or Windows VM, I see no issue with this...
Click to expand...

Yes, that seems to be the main deal breaker for some at the moment (and probably the main reason some level of demand will remain for Intel Macs long term.) Like many i need to use Windows occasionally, but I ditched BootCamp and VirtualBox a couple of years ago in favour of a Microsoft Surface, which replaced my old iPad (that's another story, but I felt with already owning a Mac and iPhone, a Surface filled a bigger gap for me than a newer iPad would have done.)
 
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Reactions: BigMcGuire and circatee
Doing the same. Just ordered the base model air to replace my 16 I purchased in May. I like the 16 but overkill for me. As others have said for the loss of the speaker quality and screen size, you can pickup some great headphones and a monitor. Plus I want to sell my 16 while its still a current model.
 
teecuptech said:
Earlier this morning, I watched a few videos about said 'Touch Bar'.
That thing looks like a serious pain!
Click to expand...
I seriously hope they ditch that abomination ASAP with the new Macbook Pro redesigns.
I can't imagine what were they smoking when they thought about that.
I've been using my MBP with the touch bar disabled (via Pock app) 99% of the time, otherwise I would have returned it on purchase day.
It's impossible to do any kind of blind typing with the damn thing getting in between.
 
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azt33 said:
I am exactly in the same boat, as I have the same config as you, bar the SSD (I have the 512GB version). My only issue is Citrix Workspace, I need that to work on a daily basis, so the moment I see that being brought to M1 MBA natively, I am game.
Click to expand...
Saw a post from Citrix engineers saying they might try to make it a universal app in the future, but for now they're sticking with Rosetta. Bit of a bummer.
 
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