Thanks for this. This is how I am thinking of it now. And seeing that it's working well for you I may as well join the bandwagon ;p)
Hopefully, Apple will have sorted out the mess with their laptops in 3 years which is when the extended warranty on my Air will run out and I will be in a position to take stock and get a new machine if needed.
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Can you explain a bit what you mean by "store unit"?
So how will ARM processor architecture improve the display? What other major difference should we expect when the ARM laptops start getting released?
ARM can't possibly 'improve' the display. Two are unrelated in context of one causing improvement in the other. I feel system snappiness and battery life should be areas where we see dramatic improvements. This is seeing as Apple chips would obviously share a much tighter integration between hardware and software than they manage with Intel. We have iOS backbone and that is slowly coming to macOS, it is only time that ARM makes the jump to the Mac too. Also, currently Apple product releases are tied to Intel releases. This will change.
One thing that I am hopeful for is that since Apple chips would be in-house development, we might see a rationing of product prices, although pricing of iOS devices with ARM chips does not reflect that possibility at all, therefore, my hope.
Now, by store unit I meant a display unit, one that is kept for the public to check out. It was a year old, just out of warranty, and I got it for under $600. $550 to be precise.
The machine is cosmetically worse than my 2011 15 inch MBP with couple of scratches under the belly and some marks on the screen that are only visible with the screen off, but I get a stable and reliable machine for some years at a great cost, and that is what I wanted. Had sold my 2016 13" MBP since it was neither representing great value nor stellar performance for the price I paid for it. With this MBA 2017, I get day-to-day performance at par with that 2016 machine for what I use the machine for, minus a good Retina display which was scaled anyway.
Yes, the 2016 machine with TB opened up avenues of usability that I appreciated (Touch Bar and ID), but for two years I lived with a machine I had to baby more than the usual amount of care I give to everything I use. In first year of use, the keyboard started fumbling, but got itself sorted out in some days of erratic use. I spent $300 for AppleCare (Not AppleCare+) to guard myself against the exorbitant cost of the keyboard replacement.
The keyboard failed in one and half years of use, just shy of when Apple formally announced a replacement program.
I am a writer and I just cannot live with something knowing I don't know what to expect from the keyboard the next morning I lay my hands on it.
Got myself the year old 2017 MBA 13 in 8GB/256GB configuration, 4 days short of January 2019, and till today I have a keyboard that I do not use a protector on, don't care about what will happen the next day, don't care about dust. I just use it and use it and use it without any worry. I feel that is what a computer should be, a tool that works for me, rather than me having to care for it like a neonatal to allow it to work for me.
