Air Envy, part 2

[canyonwalker]

A few weeks ago I wrote "Air Envy?" about considering whether to replace my beloved MacBook Air, which is almost 5 years old, with Apple's exciting new M1-powered model. At the time I decided I would stick with my current laptop a bit longer. Now there's an compelling Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale on it that's got me reevaluating everything again.

B&H is selling various models of the new Air for basically 10% off. In terms of discounts on current-model Apple products, particularly just-released models, that's huge.

The reason I haven't already jumped at this deal is that upgrading to a new Air would entail costs and frictions beyond just buying a new machine:

1. I still use a few 32-bit apps. The new Air comes with a new version of Mac O/S in which support for 32-bit apps has been dropped. I would have to buy newer versions of these apps. Expense + hassle.
2. The app I use that is most performance sensitive is not written for the M1 chip. I'd have to run it in Apple's emulator (Rosetta 2). While I've read that works, its performance is not stellar. To get top performance out of it I'd have to wait for a new, M1-ready version to be released and then buy it. Expense + hassle.
3. I'm still dissatisfied with losing the great ports on my older model Air and having to having to carry and use a dongle practically constantly to connect anything other than power. Expense + hassle.

I'm torn about what to do here. The discount is nice, but the prospect of having to immediately re-buy a few apps and buy and use a dongle makes me think I'd rather see how well I can stretch my current computer another year.