Apple MacBook Air M1 2020

I really feel this, and it is so disappointing. Since 2012 my primary development machine has been a MacBook Pro, and my 2020 M1 MacBook Pro is maybe my favorite workstation ever (they brought back the good keyboard, the M1 processor is so fast, and the battery life is insane—even at three years old I will get through half a day of work and zoom calls and only be down to 80%). But at the same time, I see a slow creep of operating system and interface changes. Especially worrying is the push to make macOS look and operate more like iPadOS. I've loved macOS as a development platform because it's Unix-y enough, but with a polished desktop interface where everything just works without fiddling and tweaking. Perhaps I'm missing something in their vision or perhaps I'm being too myopic, but I don't understand the obsession with adopting mobile/tablet-style interactions and restrictions. Will I still be able to plan on using this operating system for development in the next 12 years? I've begun revisiting Linux as my desktop operating system on the side, because I fear the answer is no.

Yes, it does, and it's one of the very few system metrics that Apple still feels worthy enough to list on its store page, so... Praise Be, I guess? It's quite obvious that RAM capacity in the M# world is closely tied to die space occupied by the CPU/GPU cores, and... it's not entirely obvious that this is unreasonable? (unlike, say, an iPhone with 64GB flash) My lowly 2020 M1 MacBook Air has 8GB as well, and it runs Outlook, Teams, Firefox, Xcode and JetBrains Rider just fine, concurrently, for up to an entire workday, on battery, without fan noise. Is that a "Pro" workload? Maybe, maybe not, since that moniker doesn't exactly have a fixed meaning, but it's definitely competitive with laptops in the same price range. If you want to run VMs/containers/whatever, or do heavy AI processing, you know you need more RAM, and, guess what, you can conveniently order an SKU containing just that from Apple. Or, you know, from MSI, Alienware or Lenovo in case 'RTX 4090' is the key to unlocking your "Pro" workflow...

I recently purchased a new M1 Macbook Air 2020 model) on Amazon for $750 and it is great. I had previously owned this same model but with 16GB of ram instead of 8GB so I was a bit nervous, but it has been a non-issue. I suspect Apple is using Amazon to test selling the Macbook Air at a significantly lower price than you can get on their website. The only thing I think they could do to make it cheaper would be to make it out of plastic instead of aluminum.

Who is buying macbooks every year though? I'm using the M1 2020 for work and it still feels like a brand new laptop.

this is exactly my issue. I was able to get an opened but unused macbook pro M1 2020 from Amazon for £799/€909 in 2021, with 8GB ram and 512GB SSD. It's been an excellent purchase, and I've been happy with it but faced with paying much more, I'd likely opt for something else.