I Bought a Macbook Air
I've used Apple products for a long time. It started with a iPhone 3G and then a 4, which I had as work phones, and after a few years in the Google camp, I returned to fruit-fold when I bought my own iPhone 12 Pro. I've also had a couple of iPads, and still use an iPad Air 2 from 2014/15 to watch videos around the house (and not too far from a power outlet).
Speaking of that iPad, it was obviously starting to get rather long-in-the-tooth, so I thought it might be time for an upgrade. But getting a new device just to watch the odd YoutTube video seemed a bit wasteful, so I started wondering whether I should get something that could have some other uses as well. I came to the conclusion that it might be time to look at a Macbook instead.
Apart from a short stint where I occasionally had to operate a Macbook in my workplace, I didn't really have any experience using macOS. I always liked the idea of trying it, but could never really justify the expense. Also I mainly use Linux at home these days, so the thought of moving to a less open OS was not that appealing to me. From using their mobile devices for years, however, I could see the positives too, namely the quality of the hardware. I've had my iPhone 12 since launch, 4 1/2 years now, and apart from the battery fading it looks and operates as new. I could not say the same for Android devices I have used. Also, despite it's possible shortcomings, having macOS as a backup option to Linux felt better than sticking with Windows.
Anyway, as I was not sure how I would get along with macOS in the long term, I thought I'd start with the cheapest Air model. In the event that my expriment failed miserably, I could always pass on the device to a family member, or even sell it. At 16GB RAM and only 256GB of storage, this was quite a step down from my current laptop, which boasts 40GB of RAM and 2 x 1TB drives. However, I knew that until recently Apple had been offering base devices with 8GB of RAM and that they were fairly efficient with memory usage so I figured 16GB would be sufficient, plus I use cloud storage extensively, so the 256GB storage wasn't a concern either. The 128GB on my iPhone has never been problem, and I can't envisage any situation where I would want to be carrying around 200GB+ of unbacked-up data on a portable device.
I've only had it two weeks but so far I'm impressed. Obviously macOS takes some getting used to, but the terminal is at least familiar coming from Linux. In the Macbook family I understand the 13 inch Air is somewhat looked down upon as having the worst screen and speaker setup, but coming from Linux machines I found both these things impressive. I was slightly concerned that a 13 inch laptop might be a little too small, 14 is my sweet spot, but at 13.6 inches and 16:10 it actually offered more screen height than my other 14 inch 16:9 laptops. The high resolution also helped fit more on the screen (with some adjustment for font sizes).
The sound quality compared to my other laptops was like night and day. The Metabox (my System32-like machine) and Thinkpad both have notoriously bad sound, even when compared to other Windows/Linux laptops. It never bothered me in the past that a laptop might have terrible speakers, as I always thought I would only ever use them with headphones. I did see a Reddit post recently from someone saying they were switching back to their Macbook Pro after trying the Air as the speaker quality was not good enough, but coming from my other laptops I got completely the opposite impression. The sound is so good, it's the first laptop I've had where I can enjoy watching a video without headphones. I'm sure the 15 inch Air and certainly the Pros are even better, and I wouldn't necessarily listen to music on it, but for watching YouTube, or even a streaming service, they are great.
Overall this laptop seems a pretty good all-rounder. It's light.. ish (I think I've been spoilt somewhat with my 1kg metabox), small, has a good screen and great speakers. I could see this being the one-and-only laptop that someone might need. Personally though, I'm not quite ready to give up Linux just yet.