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No, it’s not that the new Air has lost it’s iconic shape because they don’t need to play games to make it appear thin.. it’s only about money and that customers won’t care. They just made it look like MacBook Pro because it’s cheaper that way to manufacture it. It’s the same design, body, it’s just thinner. That’s it. All the originality is gone.
 
I had one of those god awful 12” Retina Macbooks for 3 years,it looked and felt amazing but it was the most unreliable computer I ever owned.
And it was extremely slow.

The keyboard was a true disaster.
Keys kept getting stuck and each time Apple had to replace the whole chassis.(replaced 4 times! under extended warranty).
Until I finally got rid of it.

The 11 inch non retina MB was WAY better designed and extremely reliable machine.more powerful too.in fact I still have one since 2015.no issues whatsoever.
I agree completely about the keyboard. Had the same experience with the replacements. The speed didn't bother me, my needs are not for power. But I need a reliable keyboard. I've nearly pulled the trigger on a good Thinkpad dozens of times since that 12 inch was released. The old Airs, 11 and 13, had better keyboards than anything since.
 
Not only was it extremely slow it was also extremely expensive. But at least it lacked all of the ports! And let's not forget the keyboard. Win-win-win!
 
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I honestly miss the wedge-shaped/tapered design of the MacBook Air. The wedge-shaped/tapered design is what made the MacBook Air so unique. The New MBA design looks like a slimmer version of the MacBook Pro.

Hopefully, in the future, Apple will consider bringing it back.
I didn't like the tapered design. It seemed to light up front. A few friends had them and the closure magnets were so strong that I you couldnt open it one handed. I had to hold the bottom down to lift the screen up.

I wonder if any others had this problem. That was mostly on the smaller 11in one though.
 
I like the new Air. The height of the old Air is what pushed me to a 13" Pro (that is now 6 years old and will most probably be replaced by an Air).

Price ? Frankly the market today is such that the Air will sell like pancakes, even at that price.

BTW, 12" was a great design, but too small for my old eyes.
 
I'm reserving this post space for after the reviews and performance tests for either:

(A) a glowing praise of how Apple matched a fantastic looking re-design with
proper focus on performance and improvements to internals, or
(B) an angry rant on how Apple is back to their old practices of neutered products and talking BS about their design aspirations and ***** "basalt" colours.

Thursday and Friday will be fun 🤩
 
I wonder how much of the 'non-wedge' design choice for the M2 MBA was to improve air flow and, hence, performance?
 
I wonder how much of the 'non-wedge' design choice for the M2 MBA was to improve air flow and, hence, performance?
It's passively cooled so barring you working outside in windy conditions, there's not going to much of an airflow in either the M1 or the M2 Air.

Edit: joking aside, the flat design will
give them more options to add passive cooling components - ref. the Surface Pro 7, that had the most crazy, packed and very effective, passive cooling setup.

Edit 2: but will Apple improve meaningfully on the thermal solution for the M2 Air - given recent 'developments' I'd say we're at 50/50 😆.
 
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The keyboard wasn't great, but much worse was the single USB port, without a separate charging port.
Yeah that was a drag too. But you could kind of mitigate that a little bit. There was no mitigating the faulty keyboard design. If a key started acting up, you were pretty much forced to get it serviced right away at the expense of time & travel to an Apple store.
 
I like the new Air. The height of the old Air is what pushed me to a 13" Pro (that is now 6 years old and will most probably be replaced by an Air).

Price ? Frankly the market today is such that the Air will sell like pancakes, even at that price.

BTW, 12" was a great design, but too small for my old eyes.
The pixel density on the 12" is the same as the 13" M1 MacBook Air, and is <1% higher than the 13.6" M2 MacBook Air.
 
Much like the iPhone Mini, I definitely liked the idea of the 12" MacBook, but not enough to actually go and buy it!
 
In that case it should have been cheaper than the Air, not more expensive!

Depends on whether or not one views this machine like the original (2008) Macbook Air, which was considerably more expensive than the Macbook of the time because its degree of portability was innovative and expensive to manufacture. It was a problematic machine to use in practice though AFA battery lifetime and lack of power.

One could make the argument that the 12" Macbook was more or less the evolution of the 11" MBA which came out some 4 years before it and should have been priced similarly, which is fair, but OTOH, it did set a new benchmark for an Apple ultraportable.
 
I'll speak up for the wedge design. The tapered appearance is very pleasing, and I love the way the MacBook Air closes itself gracefully past a certain angle, and doesn't feel at all like it's going to lift off the table when you open it. It's just a very nice little package.

But then they added the Midnight color option to the new one and I don't care, give me that dark MacBook.
 
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Now I use it around the house to read and write. It's so lightweight! Works great with Monterey for now, but I know it's on its way to the vintage list soon.

Like you, I still use my old 2012 MacBook Air 11" around the house, to watch TV, and YouTube videos, do some quick searches, read articles, and do other quick tasks.

Strangely, I love my new MacBook Air M1 performance and design, I work with a MacBook Pro but I still feel that the MBA'11 is the "best" designed Mac I ever had/used/touched!
 
Designs, performance, etc. are great, but offering no laptop under $1,000 seems like a bit of a miss...
Exactly when I first was pondering a MacBook, they were just north of $1k, then BAM, the prices went out of control. I would just like to get a MacBook with a bigger screen that isn't triple to quadruple from a PC laptop price. Wish they had an Air that was bigger. Even the specs in an Air probably destory what i need. I just want the bigger screen.
 
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