How future-proof is the M1 MBA?

[Taustin Powers]

Thinking about picking up a refurbished one for my son's birthday. Performance wise, it will be plenty enough for his needs. But how long do we expect it to support new OS versions and features?

The alternative would be to buy a new M3 for me and give him my M2. We'd both be a little more future proof, but it's also more money plus the hassle of setting up a new computer for myself.

 

[mcru21]

I'm not sure how much longer support will continue for the M1 but I would guess that it should be supported for at least the next few years. As far as having to set up a new computer for yourself, apple makes it quite easy to clone your old machine to your new one during the setup process, if you wanted to take that route. It's usually a pretty seamless experience

 

[Howard2k]

Nobody knows for sure but I'd assume 3 years of MacOS support and then another 1 year of security updates. So 4 more years is my guess.

 

[hanser]

Normally Apple gives security updates for 2 years after the last OS update, so that would be at least 5 years. And then you will get no new features, but you can continue using the machine if you use another browser that gets security updates like Firefox.

 

[RRC]

They only stopped selling it last year so no time soon... but as said above, no one really knows. The apple silicone could in theory get a longer life than the previous Intel chip models as the M1 is still a superb chip even if it launched today!

 

[lsquare]

They only stopped selling it last year so no time soon... but as said above, no one really knows. The apple silicone could in theory get a longer life than the previous Intel chip models as the M1 is still a superb chip even if it launched today!

I couldn't agree more. Apple's chip design is second to none. The M1 is so powerful that even today it has fairly limited competition. Not even AMD and Intel can compete. Qualcomm just entered the market.

 

[MBAir2010]

Hopefully That M1 MBA will last much longer than the intel ones, we hope though!

i boxed mine up until today..... until i need that,
the MBA is great, just Monterey and  icloud does not agree with me now.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Thinking about picking up a refurbished one for my son's birthday. Performance wise, it will be plenty enough for his needs. But how long do we expect it to support new OS versions and features?

The alternative would be to buy a new M3 for me and give him my M2. We'd both be a little more future proof, but it's also more money plus the hassle of setting up a new computer for myself.

They are still selling them at Walmart, so it won’t be ending support anytime soon.

 

[HDFan]

But how long do we expect it to support new OS versions and features?

All of the above advice is right based on past history. However everything is changing with the introduction of AI. It requires major hardware resources. There is likely going to be a new hardware race and there is no way to predict how long until we reach stasis, a state which we have been enjoying for many years with traditional computer hardware.

If you don't care about AI then all of the advice sounds good. If you have interest in AI there is no way right now to predict the future.

 

[Torty]

All of the above advice is right based on past history. However everything is changing with the introduction of AI. It requires major hardware resources. There is likely going to be a new hardware race and there is no way to predict how long until we reach stasis, a state which we have been enjoying for many years with traditional computer hardware.

If you don't care about AI then all of the advice sounds good. If you have interest in AI there is no way right now to predict the future.

Even if you don’t care about AI it’s deeply integrated into the OS and it‘s part of OS will become bigger und bigger, eventually it’s not possible to deactivate it. So HW might become become obsolete more quickly and dropped from OS support.

 

[majkom]

If you buy m1 with 16gb ram you are much mire future proof towards AI than anyone with m2/m3 with 8 gigs of ram

 

[Thedragon67]

from a reliability standpoint I have found the Airs to have a lot of issues compared to Pros, I feel like rather than upgrades for future-proofing, I would just spend the money on a Pro (any pro)

 

[kitKAC]

from a reliability standpoint I have found the Airs to have a lot of issues compared to Pros

Oh really? Such as?

 

[eltoslightfoot]

from a reliability standpoint I have found the Airs to have a lot of issues compared to Pros, I feel like rather than upgrades for future-proofing, I would just spend the money on a Pro (any pro)

Tell me more.