I've had an M1 Air for over a year and use it for development. It's the quietest and fastest machine I've had (and I've had i7s and Ryzen 7 Pros). I never need to worry about the battery life as it goes on and on. Despite only having 8GB I've never hit memory issues even doing C# development on it. Oh, and it never even gets warm.
And yet I've decided to sell it, and am now using a second-hand HP ProBook with an i5 processor. Slower, hotter, and only half a dozen hours of battery life.
But it's a trade-off for what I value the most, and for me that's one thing for two reasons: the keyboard.
Firstly, even on this ProBook the keyboard has better feel and a much better layout. Whilst the M1 Air keyboard beats the last few years of Intel machines it is a poor second on the keyboard to a fair number of otherwise average alternatives. Even such basics as having Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys and a hash symbol, and keys that actually travel.
And secondly how keyboard-friendly the OS is. Whilst this may seem controversial, in my admittedly personal opinion with decades of experience using both platforms macOS is not a patch on Windows 11 (or 10) when it comes to keyboard use. The macOS UI feels like a toy and requires constant use of the mouse/touchpad.
So yeah. Great machine. Far superior hardware in the main. Just for me the keyboard hardware and the keyboard usage is a Windows win (and Mint as it happens) and on balance that's important enough (again for me) to switch back.
YMMV of course.
Edit to add: Great performance. Great for development (other than the keyboard). Docker is usable. And the 8GB M1 seems to behave as I'd expect a 16GB Windows laptop to, so Apple have some very good memory management/paging.
I've had an M1 Air for over a year and use it for development. It's the quietest and fastest machine I've had (and I've had i7s and Ryzen 7 Pros). I never need to worry about the battery life as it goes on and on. Despite only having 8GB I've never hit memory issues even doing C# development on it. Oh, and it never even gets warm.
And yet I've decided to sell it, and am now using a second-hand HP ProBook with an i5 processor. Slower, hotter, and only half a dozen hours of battery life.
But it's a trade-off for what I value the most, and for me that's one thing for two reasons: the keyboard.
Firstly, even on this ProBook the keyboard has better feel and a much better layout. Whilst the M1 Air keyboard beats the last few years of Intel machines it is a poor second on the keyboard to a fair number of otherwise average alternatives. Even such basics as having Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys and a hash symbol, and keys that actually travel.
And secondly how keyboard-friendly the OS is. Whilst this may seem controversial, in my admittedly personal opinion with decades of experience using both platforms macOS is not a patch on Windows 11 (or 10) when it comes to keyboard use. The macOS UI feels like a toy and requires constant use of the mouse/touchpad.
So yeah. Great machine. Far superior hardware in the main. Just for me the keyboard hardware and the keyboard usage is a Windows win (and Mint as it happens) and on balance that's important enough (again for me) to switch back.
YMMV of course.
Edit to add: Great performance. Great for development (other than the keyboard). Docker is usable. And the 8GB M1 seems to behave as I'd expect a 16GB Windows laptop to, so Apple have some very good memory management/paging.