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I have a very common plan when a collection of Apple laptops reach the end of their lease or shipment life cycle. I want them to go ASAP. Usually, by the time a MacBook Air or Pro hits that four-year mark, it’s old, obsolete, and ready to be recycled. I don’t want to see them in my office, and I certainly don’t want to support them. I want them to be recycled, but the M1 MacBook Air completely broke that rule, and in a world where Macs are going up in price, that’s important.
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers has been Apple’s IT director since 2009. With his knowledge of operating and managing firewalls, switches, mobile device management system, business-grade Wi-Fi, 1000’s of Macs, and 1000’s of iPads, Bradley will highlight how Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to share Apple news, train IT users to improve their products, train IT users on IT products. IT departments.
Typical laptop life cycle
If you look back at Intel’s last era of Macs, a laptop from 2016 or 2017 was showing its age quickly when it was retired (especially if it had a butterfly keyboard). Batteries were severely damaged, fans ran constantly, and keyboards were a constant source of problems. Keeping old laptops around as backups was an IT responsibility. When they came out of work, I wanted them to be sold, recycled, or otherwise disposed of. This wasn’t the only season, either. Laptops were like that. They lived 3 to 4 years on the job. Not that they weren’t supported with newer versions of macOS, but most of those machines were so bad, you didn’t trust them at all.
M1 anomaly
The M1 MacBook Air was released in November 2020. Now we’re well into 2026, and this machine is still working amazingly well. In fact, I currently have 30-40 of these devices sitting in my active inventory. I keep them fully updated and registered in my device management platform, strictly using them as backups and backups for my users. If they forgot the machine at home, ready for hardware repair, etc.
No other Apple laptop in history is still as usable and beautiful so many years later. Because it has a fanless design, there is no dust accumulation. The keyboard is solid, and battery life on a five-and-a-half-year-old machine is still pretty good. If my main operating system failed right now, I could easily pick up an M1 MacBook Air and use it as my primary driver today without skipping a beat.
Finish it
We’re a few generations deep into Apple Silicon now, but the original M1 chip was such a giant leap forward that it completely changed the lifecycle of standard enterprise hardware. Apple built a laptop so good that it overcame the planned obsolescence of a large part of the market.
If you own a collection of Apple devices and have M1 MacBook Airs for lease or nearing the end of their prime supply window, don’t send them in for recycling just yet. Apple is still updating itself to the latest version of macOS. They are still powerful enough for information work, web browsing, etc. Keep them registered in your device management system for backups, loaners, or emergency replacements while waiting for a new device to arrive.
I’ll discuss this in a future article, but in a world where prices are rising and leases are getting longer, it’s possible, in a way, thanks to machines like this. If you’ve gone from 3 years to 5 years (which I think is coming), it’s okay with a 20% price increase because frankly the value of the M series laptops is worth it.
Apple @ Work is brought to you only by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that brings together in one professional-grade platform all the solutions needed to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage, and secure Apple devices in the workplace. More than 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work effortlessly and affordably. Request your FREE TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
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