Buying a five-year-old MacBook Air was the right decision for me

When I said I’d bought an M1 MacBook Air in 2025, I must confess I was rather expecting comments along the lines of “what were you thinking?” Instead, the prevailing view appeared to be that there really isn’t any reason to favor the latest and greatest model for my type of use. Having had the chance to try out the new machine in an Apple Store, I’m not 100% sure I’d favor an upgrade even if it were the same price … From backup device to mobile Mac I explained last time that the primary reason for having a MacBook Air at all was simply as a backup machine. I can’t work without a Mac (even if a couple of my colleagues somehow manage to do so on an iPad …), so for many years I’ve held onto an 11-inch MBA as a backup machine that mostly lived in a drawer – right up until it died. For travel, I consider my 16-inch MacBook Pro sufficiently portable to be worth taking with me, even on weekends away if I want to do things like photo editing. But it’s a bit chunky to carry more casually ar ... Read full article.