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I've got an M1 Air and it's awesome, it's incredibly powerful and surprisingly efficient on the battery life. I've also got a 2014 MacBook Air that I still use from time to time and it's still going strong (granted it could probably do with a battery replacement)!
While there's certainly a massive jump in performance with the Apple Silicon chips, for basic web browsing/word processing, an older one will still do fine IMO (though as always, it's probably worthwhile looking at when they will stop receiving OS/security updates).
If anything, the advent on Apple Silicon chips has probably absolutely crashed the Intel Mac market so you can probably find some perfectly useable machines that are 'technically worthless' at this point.
mmccarthy
Heya. I’ve been wanting a very lightweight laptop for really nothing more than word processing (admittedly on the heavier duty end of that, long research reports kinda stuff). I’d like it to be apple because I’ve been using them most of my life, so naturally Im thinking of an MBA. Though I’d love to get an M2 1TB guy I can’t realistically afford a long term investment laptop at the moment, not enough work coming in, so I’ll keep using my 2015 MBP til it dies. But I’d like to stop lugging that around, both for its own longevity and also to make my everyday carry lighter. People keep telling me that getting anything prior to M chips is totally utterly pointless at this point, but I’m here to ask if this is really the case given I basically need an on the go word processor that will feel familiar, run ok, sync well with my main machine. Tldr, would a reasonably specced out pre-M chip MBA be worth getting for word processing and internet use if I can find one? If so what should I be looking for ideally? And are there things I could do to keep one of these machines running reasonably well for the next year or two if I got one? Thanks.
adendum: I don't want an ipad.