I use the rMBP almost entirely at the desktop and rarely use its keyboard. I've only taken it traveling when I knew I would be editing photos (Lightroom and Photoshop) and needed its power (vs. my old 2013 Air). I certainly didn't hate typing on it. I'm not sure how it would compare to this new Air. So far I'm liking the keyboard on the Air just fine.
As to performance of this new M1 Air, I've only used it a few hours and haven't done anything challenging. It's certainly fast, and I'm already using the fingerprint scanner more than I thought I would. However, I was also signing into some accounts, etc., during setup.
I haven't done any photo editing on this new Air yet, although I've installed Luminar and Aurora HDR and will eventually get my Adobe Creative Cloud apps on it as well.
On the downside, I'm finding Dongle World as irritating as I feared, and as if they weren't stingy enough to only have two Thunderbolt ports, they had to put them so stinking close together. Eff you too, Apple engineers.
Overall, I have no buyer's remorse. I don't know what your work needs are but unless you're doing some high-powered computing and/or need a lot of internal storage, this thing might work for you.
Mine is a deeper gold than, say, my gold iPad mini 4. I wouldn't call it pink, but it's a little more "orangey" than I'd expected. Especially under the artificial lights here at home. I will look more closely at it in daylight - but it's still more than an hour till dawn, lol. I think I'll get used to the color.
