So, on the topic of sturdy.... I have the Macbook Air M1, bought it pretty much directly after it came out, and it is sturdy as shit.
Just to iterate on the kind of abuse mine has already endured - without even the slightest dent or crack:
1) I put the Macbook on a chair and, without thinking, put a blanket over it while cleaning, causing my girlfriend to sit on it with her full weight for over 2 hours
2) I have dropped the laptop two times while carrying it
3) The laptop has fallen off my desk also two times because of the lack of Magsafe
4) The laptop was, in its silicone case, in the passenger seat in a 25-30mph car crash, got shot full force against the middle console
Not a single dent. Just some scratches on one edge from the car crash.
I've also dropped mine several times (it did get a minor chip), beat it up a bit (despite trying to be careful), and even spilled water on it... liquid got behind a good 25% of the screen and I thought I would have to just suck it up and repair it, but it just evaporated/resolved itself after a couple of weeks.
Yup, forgot about that. I also spilled a glass of water over the keyboard, although not behind the screen like you. Evaporated after a while by itself... very, very happy with this laptop.
> A customer waiting to buy a decent laptop that is sturdy and comfortable to type on.
Dear Apple, your keyboard looks like an almost perfect arrangement of squares. The only problem is that it's not ergonomic. Humans prefer keys that are not flat, but slightly concave, for a more organic feel (for example). Style over function/ergonomics is not going to win me over.
Then don't buy an Apple laptop, simple. Buy a Thinkpad that is almost indestructible and you don't have these kind of problems, or as I did a Dell XPS 15 (though I can't talk about how solid it is, since I have it only since 2 months).
Surely I would prefer Dell for the support, I have 1 year of premium assistance (if there is a fault a technician will come where I am to make the repair, I don't have to bring it to a store that takes days to do the repair on a computer that I need for my job) and with like 20$ more I got the coverage even for accidental damage.
Apple doesn't have correct policy, first it doesn't recognize in warranty faults that should, and secondly repairs outside the warranty period cost more than buying a new computer, and it doesn't sell spare parts to others that are not Apple authorized repair center (that needs to apply the policy of Apple otherwise they will not send the spare parts): something called mafia.
> Then don't buy an Apple laptop, simple. Buy a Thinkpad that is almost indestructible and you don't have these kind of problems, or as I did a Dell XPS 15 (though I can't talk about how solid it is, since I have it only since 2 months).
Sure but now I have to use Windows if I do that, unless there are Thinkpads that come with support for Linux from the OEM.
I've had my M2 MBA for a few weeks now and it just feels flimsy. I am not surprised this is happening at all. I used the MBA'2013 for all these years and never once did I think it was heavy/thick. The aluminum shell it was in felt solid, this one feels like it's as thick as a coke can.
So slightly better than garbage is your barometer for quality?
I can easily contort/bend the frame with my hand if I wanted to. I'd have no confidence in this thing actually being on the go (in and out of bags). Even just a fall from the couch could RIP this thing is how it feels anyways. I could be wrong of course. But, I do feel that this vs quality is at odds and this one has stepped into the other end. I hope I'm wrong of course as I have never had to deal with getting an Apple product repaired and the whole idea of it is foreign to me (again, 2013 is my last purchase other than phones and since then I read about all the issues with keyboards, etc and it seems like they just don't give a damn anymore).
The original MBA is my ideal thinness goal for laptops honestly. It's just thick enough to make you feel secure, but thin enough and light enough to not hurt your back when you travel with it on the go, unlike a 17 or 15" typical laptop.
Thick? Sturdy? They're 15mm/0.61 inches thick. Most of that is used up by the base, the screen is a terrifyingly flimsy 3.6mm thin.
Comfortable? The key travel is 1mm. I'd hardly call that comfortable, that's a concession to thin-ness.
And they're not that fast just looking at power specs - the new processors are impressively efficient, but if they prioritized professional performance and effective heat dissipation over being skinny, just imagine what that efficient processor could do with 70% more power dissipation/heat removal.
Also, "fast" and "beast of a battery" may be true for now, but in a few years, when memory and storage are cheaper and faster, you won't be able to update, and when your battery starts to degrade you won't be able to click in a new one. Again, because long-term performance, upgradeability, and repairability have been sacrificed for the sake of thin.
I can see the merit in offering a “workstation” model that throws noise and heat out the window in favor of power, but as a native mobile dev who’s compiling all day I think the 14”/16” models make the right tradeoffs for the overwhelming majority.
No, my company provided work M1 Pro 16” isn’t going to beat my 5950X custom built tower or some of the high end Ryzen 6000 series laptops, but that’s fine. It’s still very fast and responsive while being inaudible 99% of the time, never hitting lap scorching temperatures, and having battery life measured in double digits.
I suspect that an unwieldy, hot, loud desktop replacement M-series machine would be very niche.
Further PSA: don’t buy the m1/m2 MBPs. It’s a weird machine now that the m1 pro/max MBPs are out, and the m2 air with its redesign is also out. Get one of those instead
Its okay to not have to make your laptops ultra skinny if it means you avoid these sort of issues.
Sincerely, A customer waiting to buy a decent laptop that is sturdy and comfortable to type on.