Mark,

This was almost as exciting as watching the finals at Wimbledon! Ok. Maybe not the finals -- but definitely as solid as many quarterfinals I have had to sit through, family tradition and all, but I digress.

I come not to bury this great review, but to praise it, albeit, with a very slight adjustment. despite my non-expert statuts. The Macbook Air slowdown was not surprising or mysterious.

Less RAM means less multi-tasking, by definition. A faster chip does not change the overall way these tools work (if I'm not mistaken). When you click on a program it drops files into RAM. When you task a program it gets data from RAM. No matter how fast the chipset does the math, if it has to wait in line to drop files into, or get data from, RAM, you'll notice.

Your random access memory will not be random enough, and it won't provide enough access to memory, if it's rationed.

Ever year there is a firesale of the latest iPads, iPhones, and MacBook Airs on GroupOn, Amazon, Best Buy and the like, and they all have one thing in common -- they are the lowest rung memory in each category. Apple cannot bear to leave the aspirational money on the table, so they put that 16 GB iPad in there for the would be user who can barely raise the entry level price. They tell themselves it's cool. But it never is.

They could eliminate that lowest rung with zero damage. They never will. Similarly, to imply that a faster chip means you need less RAM seemed wrong when I saw the almost-claim on the Apple page.

Of course, I'm a civilian with zero knowledge dividend -- so, you know, grain of salt. Thanks for an engaging piece anyway. I'm so ready to trade in my 2020 MacBook Pro for the M1 MacBook Bro (That was a typo, but oddly, exactly how I feel, so, the error stands!)...

Michael