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The shortcomings of the M1 are the reasons I never bought one:

  • Lack of MagSafe - I enjoyed MagSafe on my old machine for 13 years. I almost caved and bought an M1 Air, simply because my ancient MBP was effectively no longer usable, but when the 14" and 16" Pro arrived with MagSafe, I figured the next Air would have it as well, and decided to wait it out. (I very nearly bought a 14" Pro earlier this spring, with MagSafe and immediate availability being the driving factors, but I am very glad I did not. I don't want to lug around the extra weight, and don't want to pay the kind of price I would have to in order to get the 1 TB of storage that I need.)
  • Form factor: the original MBA was essentially a very expensive toy. It then improved for several years, and subsequently regressed with the butterfly keyboard. Unfortunately, I'll always associate the wedge with that original toy computer, and with an awful work (Windows) laptop I had that mimicked the wedge design.
The M2 is the first Air I have ever bought, and I could not be happier with it.
appreciate the perspective. thanks for sharing. I don't have any toy trauma with the m1
 
"All the shortcomings" again makes it sound like it's kind of broken or something. I can only count two valid things.

* The new base SSD is slower, ok that's bad but I wasn't in the market for base storage anyway.
* It's not price competitive", true the M1 air makes way more sense for most. But that simply makes the M2 situated as the premium high performance thin n' light.

Not liking the new air design is of course subjective (and wrong ;))

I'm more into the the theory here though that M1 owners were out for not liking the successor in the first place because in a sense of the tech-enthusiast it "feels bad" not to have the latest and greatest. Any thread proposing some sort of shortcoming gets visited by some M1-people so that they can feed their world image.

In the end it's great that one stays off buying things they don't need, but they don't need to be insincere about it.
Add these to the list:

1. Bottom of the device easily gets bent, lots of threads on this. build quality feels cheaper than m1 air IMO. god speed over the next 3 years!
2. runs noticeably hotter than m1 air.
3. has lower PPI resolution than m1 air.
4. notch looks like crap on a non-XDR display.
5. zero reason to bump up to 10c intend of 8c, throttles before it starts to benefit.
6. price like you said, but on the upper end of spec'd out, same price as 14" pro, begging the question.

it's an ugly middle child IMHO

lol sorry but just saying how I feel about haha
 
Add these to the list:

1. Bottom of the device easily gets bent, lots of threads on this. build quality feels cheaper than m1 air IMO. god speed over the next 3 years!
2. runs noticeably hotter than m1 air.
3. has lower PPI resolution than m1 air.
4. notch looks like crap on a non-XDR display.
5. zero reason to bump up to 10c intend of 8c, throttles before it starts to benefit.
6. price like you said, but on the upper end of spec'd out, same price as 14" pro, begging the question.

it's an ugly middle child IMHO

lol sorry but just saying how I feel about haha
You're entitled to your opinions, of course, but so are we.

1) I've had the M2 for over two weeks. The chassis is very solid and stiff.
2) Again, over the course of two weeks, I've not noticed any heat. Literally none.
3) The difference is 3 pixels per inch. If you can make out a 3-pixel difference on a base of 224 or 227 across one inch, well, I was going to say that you could work as a jeweler without a loupe or something, but never mind, I'm certain that you can't actually differentiate between the two. Meanwhile, I'd much rather take the larger screen of the M2. Even without taking the menu bar/notch area into account, it's over a tenth of an inch larger than the M1's screen, on the diagonal. Add in the menu bar (which eats into usable screen space on the M1) and you've really picked up quite a bit of extra space. Unlike 3 PPI, it's truly noticeable.
4) I stopped noticing the notch about 3 minutes after turning on the computer for the first time.
5) I only bought the 8 core.
6) I need 1 TB of storage. To get that on the 14" Pro, I'd need to spend $370 more, plus more for AppleCare+, and I'd be stuck with the extra weight.

And I'm still not a fan of the wedge design of the M1. Its "thinness" is, at least in part, a gimmicky illusion. I'd rather have the all-around thinness of the M2.
 
Add these to the list:

1. Bottom of the device easily gets bent, lots of threads on this. build quality feels cheaper than m1 air IMO. god speed over the next 3 years!
2. runs noticeably hotter than m1 air.
3. has lower PPI resolution than m1 air.
4. notch looks like crap on a non-XDR display.
5. zero reason to bump up to 10c intend of 8c, throttles before it starts to benefit.
6. price like you said, but on the upper end of spec'd out, same price as 14" pro, begging the question.

it's an ugly middle child IMHO

lol sorry but just saying how I feel about haha
Genuinely curious on #1. I’m on the forums daily and this is the first thread I’ve seen about it. No YT or Reddit topics I’ve come across either.
 
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One thread is not 'lots of threads'.
the units I checked out on display at Best Buy had the same issue. if you don't mind bending/wavy metal panels, more power to you bro. When I spend thousands, I like it to be perfect.
 
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the units I checked out on display at Best Buy had the same issue. if you don't mind bending/wavy metal panels, more power to you bro. When I spend thousands, I like it to be perfect.
Lol. If this were a thing, don't you think it would have been widely noted by many people, including the dozens or even hundreds of professional and semi-professional reviewers, who have gone over these machines with a fine-toothed comb? Here's what notebookcheck had to say:

"The thinner design does not affect the stability or the quality impression. Both the base unit as well as the lid are very sturdy and can hardly be dent or twisted at all. We did not manage to provoke picture distortions, either. The hinges are well-adjusted and there is no visible bouncing, but the maximum opening angle is limited to around 130 degrees."


Note that I even posted a review that says that for many people, particularly in the base configuration, the M2 is, in the reviewer's opinion, too expensive. That's a perfectly legitimate opinion to hold, of course, and I understand where it's coming from. To someone like me, who hasn't purchased a Mac since 2009, and got an M2 with 16 GB / 1 TB at basically the same price, adjusted for inflation, as my mid-2009 MBP that originally had a 160 GB spinning hard drive and 4 GB of RAM, my M2 comes across as a great value. Moreover, I keep computers for a very long time, as evidenced by my 2009 MBP's tenure, and consequently, it makes sense to me to purchase the very latest thing available when I do actually buy. As I have said elsewhere on MR, I don't think that the M2 was aimed primarily at people who already owned an M1, and of course it makes little sense (to me) to go from the M1 to the M2, unless you purchased the wrong configuration of M1 for your needs and aim to correct that with the M2.

We get it: you're pleased with your M1. But the more I read from you on this topic, the more your posts come off as attempts to convince yourself that you've made the right decision to stick with the M1. And you're probably right - don't doubt yourself! But don't doubt our choices, either.
 
Lol. If this were a thing, don't you think it would have been widely noted by many people, including the dozens or even hundreds of professional and semi-professional reviewers, who have gone over these machines with a fine-toothed comb? Here's what notebookcheck had to say:

"The thinner design does not affect the stability or the quality impression. Both the base unit as well as the lid are very sturdy and can hardly be dent or twisted at all. We did not manage to provoke picture distortions, either. The hinges are well-adjusted and there is no visible bouncing, but the maximum opening angle is limited to around 130 degrees."


Note that I even posted a review that says that for many people, particularly in the base configuration, the M2 is, in the reviewer's opinion, too expensive. That's a perfectly legitimate opinion to hold, of course, and I understand where it's coming from. To someone like me, who hasn't purchased a Mac since 2009, and got an M2 with 16 GB / 1 TB at basically the same price, adjusted for inflation, as my mid-2009 MBP that originally had a 160 GB spinning hard drive and 4 GB of RAM, my M2 comes across as a great value. Moreover, I keep computers for a very long time, as evidenced by my 2009 MBP's tenure, and consequently, it makes sense to me to purchase the very latest thing available when I do actually buy. As I have said elsewhere on MR, I don't think that the M2 was aimed primarily at people who already owned an M1, and of course it makes little sense (to me) to go from the M1 to the M2, unless you purchased the wrong configuration of M1 for your needs and aim to correct that with the M2.

We get it: you're pleased with your M1. But the more I read from you on this topic, the more your posts come off as attempts to convince yourself that you've made the right decision to stick with the M1. And you're probably right - don't doubt yourself! But don't doubt our choices, either.

just having some fun debating the topic... :) fun to debate as long as we don't get too emotional about it.

that said, the m2 is out of the picture for me here on out.

just picked up a 14" mbp after realizing the air line went the wrong direction for me. debating whether to keep this or the m1 air for my main portable work machine.

this is to complement my 16" max btw. first world problems.
 
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Just got my long-awaited MacBook Air (it's a custom 24GB model too) and I gotta say: I'm severely disappointed with it's build quality.

If you press down on the lid while it's closed, you can feel it flexing like crazy.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/058VY1qRS7X-rSUoVwcIvA4hQ

Also, when the lid is closed, at a certain angle in a certain spot you can see the light coming through the gap between the lid and the keyboard.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0f3VmqRIcQCXKD6bnibzM0B5g

Personally, I find it unacceptable for a $2k+ laptop to be built like this, so I wanna know if it's just me who got lucky or is it a larger scale issue?
Did you return it because of fingerprints too?
 
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I don't really understand the mocking of the OP by so many posters. It's very normal to have unrealistic expectations and to be hyper-critical when those expectations aren't met when you drop thousands of dollars on something, but then most people get over it after a few days/weeks or just return the product and look for something else. And while I think he's indeed being unrealistic with his expectations and blowing the "issues" out of proportion, I don't fault him at all for "venting" a bit here. It's not like he wrote a scathing polemic condemning Apple, saying he was selling all his Apple stock, and vowing to never purchase another product from them. And the sarcastic examples some of you are bringing up are obviously nothing like what he's doing here (e.g. comparing him pushing on the top with just mild hand pressure to running over a laptop with a 4,000 lb. vehicle? seriously?).

EDIT: And the mocking continues. smh...
 
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I put the M2 in my book bag with a Bowling Ball.
Now the lid is scuffed and the screen is cracked.
There is also a distinctive light bleed along the crack
Oh and finger prints.
Apple needs to do better.😅
 
I put the M2 in my book bag with a Bowling Ball.
Now the lid is scuffed and the screen is cracked.
There is also a distinctive light bleed along the crack
Oh and finger prints.
Apple needs to do better.😅

How does that relate at all to the OP? He's describing the product as it arrived to him brand new. He did not damage/abuse it and then complain about its condition after that.
 
I just got mine and I love everything about it. However, I just noticed that there is what appears to be a smudge on the inside of the display glass or some kind of discoloration. It literally looks like a smudge from a fingerprint but I have cleaned the screen and it's not on the outside of the glass.

I went to a monitor testing website and the colors are not affected by this so the display itself seems to be fine, it's just something on the inside of the glass. My OCD will drive me crazy thinking about this.

Not sure if I should bring it in to the store or what? I don't want to return it and have to wait another 30 days for a BTO.
 
I just got mine and I love everything about it. However, I just noticed that there is what appears to be a smudge on the inside of the display glass or some kind of discoloration. It literally looks like a smudge from a fingerprint but I have cleaned the screen and it's not on the outside of the glass.

I went to a monitor testing website and the colors are not affected by this so the display itself seems to be fine, it's just something on the inside of the glass. My OCD will drive me crazy thinking about this.

Not sure if I should bring it in to the store or what? I don't want to return it and have to wait another 30 days for a BTO.
Return it if you know it will bother you. Better to wait 30 days than be annoyed by it for the years that you’ll own it. I‘ve also read some people were able to request Apple to keep their device while waiting for their replacement.
 
How does that relate at all to the OP? He's describing the product as it arrived to him brand new. He did not damage/abuse it and then complain about its condition after that.
“If you press down on the lid while it's closed, you can feel it flexing like crazy.”

If you’re not happy with what you purchased, you don’t need to break it, return it.

No group no matter how large is going to change your perception or standards.
 
“If you press down on the lid while it's closed, you can feel it flexing like crazy.”

If you’re not happy with what you purchased, you don’t need to break it, return it.

No group no matter how large is going to change your perception or standards.

Um, that's not breaking it. You're acting like he pressed with all his might, cracked the display, and then came here to complain about the cheap build quality. He was simply complaining about the lack of rigidness in the lid and demonstrated it by gently flexing the top. No harm done.
 
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Gently bending, like jumbo shrimp. It doesn’t “flex”, it displays.
‘The upper housing isn’t hollow and it’s not plastic
There is a delicate glass panel behind that metal skin

‘If he had ’visibly’ damaged it who would be at fault ?
Apple for not designing a $1200 shock absorber or Mr Flexgate ?
 
Gently bending, like jumbo shrimp. It doesn’t “flex”, it displays.
‘The upper housing isn’t hollow and it’s not plastic
There is a delicate glass panel behind that metal skin

‘If he had ’visibly’ damaged it who would be at fault ?
Apple for not designing a $1200 shock absorber or Mr Flexgate ?

I'm not sure if you're being purposely obtuse to avoid admitting your analogy was poor or you actually don't understand this. The hood of my car does the same thing when I press on it. Are you going to claim I damaged it my pressing it within its limits of flexibility? Of course not. Only if I press it to the point of causing a dent could you fault me for that. The fact is he damaged nothing. Not sure what else to tell you except to repeat it's ridiculous to compare him demonstrating the flex in the lid to smashing his MacBook with a bowling ball 🙄

I'm done with this exchange 👋🏻
 
Interestingly I received my BTO and its not something im going to return it for but the trackpad on my base model was silent when clicking. The BTO makes more noise.
 
I don't really understand the mocking of the OP by so many posters. It's very normal to have unrealistic expectations and to be hyper-critical when those expectations aren't met when you drop thousands of dollars on something, but then most people get over it after a few days/weeks or just return the product and look for something else. And while I think he's indeed being unrealistic with his expectations and blowing the "issues" out of proportion, I don't fault him at all for "venting" a bit here. It's not like he wrote a scathing polemic condemning Apple, saying he was selling all his Apple stock, and vowing to never purchase another product from them. And the sarcastic examples some of you are bringing up are obviously nothing like what he's doing here (e.g. comparing him pushing on the top with just mild hand pressure to running over a laptop with a 4,000 lb. vehicle? seriously?).

EDIT: And the mocking continues. smh...
agreed
 
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