I bought a 2012 MacBook Air when it was new with the 8GB RAM upgrade, and it's the best computer hardware I've ever purchased. The 2013 Macbook Air the author u

I bought a 2012 MacBook Air when it was new with the 8GB RAM upgrade, and it's the best computer hardware I've ever purchased. The 2013 Macbook Air the author uses was only an upgrade in CPU and Wifi. I still use mine almost daily, although I only do hobby projects on it. Upgraded the SSD last year and replaced battery a few times, and it's really still an extremely capable thing while being thin, light, with a great keyboard and trackpad. But I'm afraid Catalina is the end of the line for its major updates. This was the most expensive computer I've ever bought with my own money, and I've learned the lesson that it pays off to spend money on good hardware. But I can't seem to find to find a great true successor yet. I understand that Windows can service me just fine, but I really want to avoid paying money/time/attention/dependance into fixing its user privacy hostility. I use Linux on the desktop, but on the desktop I can tolerate its papercuts - coming from a seamless touchpad/software/wifi/battery life/display scaling experience on a Mac is hard sell to spend more time being a sysadmin (I know it's gotten better - but I think it would still require too much of my time). This year's MacBook Air looks actually great, but Apple looks to be replacing it with an ARM laptop next year. I'm actually excited for that change, but I'm not really super enthusiastic about being early adopter or the implications for the support lifecycle of their Intel Macs. In any case, being able to replace the battery or SSD is a big question mark (or just a big 'no') in any Apple hardware now. When I bought my Macbook in 2012 I never expected 1) to have it last for eight years and 2) that finding a replacement would be such a game of tradeoffs.