Ordered a Macbook Air

With the dependance for workflows on X86 virtual machines diminished, it was the right time to lifecycle my Macbook Pro. As I am quite unsure what I need now in terms of performance, I went for a more portable and affordable option than the last time around.

So I went with a Macbook Air M2 equipped with 512 GB storage and 16 GB RAM, which is halve the amount of storage and RAM of what I ordered for my last Intel based Macbook Pro. Getting rid of big virtual machines on the laptop should save me a lot of space and memory. If this configuration is adequate time will tell.

First impressions are good. The machine is quiet, snappy, lighter and more compact. And no touch bar shizzle going on! Loving it already :-) After a month or so daily driving this machine, the verdict will be out. It is my first Macbook Air since I think 2012.

The machine was ordered through Coolblue which saved me some money compared to shopping the online Apple Store directly. Thanks Tweakers Pricewatch for this :-)

Migration

Migration was rather painless. I use an external SSD based drive for backups, so I just restored all my data (sans the existing virtual machines and iCloud photos backup) from the time machine backup. Only real issue I ran into is that this restored my existing homebrew data, which was x86 compatible. On the M series machines, homebrew of course is compiled for another architecture, but also moves from /usr/local to /opt/. So there were a few minor things to fix and adjust in my scripts and settings.

Update 26-jun-2023

One of our kids is very happy with this new MBA. Should serve him well starting September when his bachelor commences in Rotterdam.