I do basic video editing, transcoding, front end coding and graphics, and usually push my machine pretty hard. But not for really long stretches. It’s bursty work, so an Air is ideal. If I were to need a desktop replacement I would get a 15" Air with 24 GB RAM.
Long compiles? Renders of 4k video over 30mins and on the clock? Get a pro.
You’re being downvoted but it’s true, they are very difficult to repair and non modular so some parts are crazy expensive. Broken display ribbon cable? $20 replacement cable? Nah it’s a whole new hi-res aluminum shell display for you!
But to be fair I don’t expect to be repairing many of the M1 Airs, it’s a very mature design, 10 years of form factor iteration and a small low power logic board. I’ve hardly worked on any of them, though I own one myself. A few abused batteries are starting to need replacing. It’s just the freaking batteries are glued in, so so stupid; not a reliability problem but an extra half hour of work over screws when replacing the battery.
Yeah it’s been in the ‘best deal going’ category since it came out. Very capable yet fist-sized.
It’s not just the low sticker price. It will save on electricity bills over its lifetime, and it is expected to be reliable like all the mac minis. Get less storage and add a nice fast external SSD drive to save money.
The base 16GB RAM is probably fine for most, but if you’re going to try and get 8-10 years out of it, like a lot of Mac owners do, go for 24 or more.
It can do moderate gaming and the emulation and virtualization future looks good.
It is very possible to limit your interaction with apple, avoid the App Store, not get an apple account, limit the telemetry leakage somewhat, and run software that’s open source or direct from its publishers.
Also: Asahi Linux will work. Eventually.
I have a bunch of old macs here with different distros onthem, mostly Mint, that I have been trying to give away to locals (without being obligated to provide support, which is the stickler apparently). They all run great. One could dumpster dive or curb cruise, or around here, lurk at Recycling.
This is an extremely regional problem to solve. Where I am, which is a village and exurban-ruural, you would go to the electronics recycling depot and see if they have any choice items. Also you could call the various independent pc repair people to see if they have anything no longer supported but functional for free or cheap.
Also there’s various thrift stores that sometimes have computers cheap.
The closest big city is Vancouver so to curb cruise there I would pick upper middle class neighbourhoods with alleyways, and drive around on garbage collection days. I wouldn’t really dumpster dive unless I knew of a likely source from hearsay.