My mum's mate has a brand new Mac M1 512GB 8/8 Macbook and she's offering for £300 as a sort of "mates rate" sort of thing and I'm wondering if it's still a good buy or if they're dead now? I know x86 Laptops are supported on Windows for decades, but Apple devices only last a handful of years.
Performance wise they're fine,
but support wise they are 5 years old, so don't expect Apple to keep giving macOS updates for more than a few years. ~7 years is typically around the time they stop getting new versions of macOS and totally dropped by 10.
Additionally the M1 generation is missing some AI related instructions in the GPU (BFLOAT16 if i recall - which i believe M2 and later include so that's a significant factor in future software support).
Being a laptop - the battery may or may not be in reasonable condition.
I think at 300 quid... that's halfway to a macbook air that's quite a bit newer. Shop around and see what an M2 air can be obtained for and make your choice. Maybe the UK market is different to elsewhere?
Not saying M1 generation sucks, etc. - i still have multiple M1 generation machines in this household, but for 300 quid i think its awfully close to probably an M2 Air which is a significant upgrade. Its just a question of whether or not 300 quid is a good price and what condition the battery is in. Performance wise for general user stuff
today the machine is still great.
That said i do really love that old classic Air form factor!
IF its an m1 pro - that changes things. But M2 and certainly M3 Air are in some ways faster than M1 Pro in light workloads due to the more recent CPU instructions.
ANY of these machines will be faster and more responsive running most
light-usage mac software than any intel machine (up to and including my trashcan mac pro) and it isn't even close.