Thick? Sturdy? They're 15mm/0.61 inches thick. Most of that is used up by the base, the screen is a terrifyingly flimsy 3.6mm thin.

Comfortable? The key travel is 1mm. I'd hardly call that comfortable, that's a concession to thin-ness.

And they're not that fast just looking at power specs - the new processors are impressively efficient, but if they prioritized professional performance and effective heat dissipation over being skinny, just imagine what that efficient processor could do with 70% more power dissipation/heat removal.

Also, "fast" and "beast of a battery" may be true for now, but in a few years, when memory and storage are cheaper and faster, you won't be able to update, and when your battery starts to degrade you won't be able to click in a new one. Again, because long-term performance, upgradeability, and repairability have been sacrificed for the sake of thin.

I can see the merit in offering a “workstation” model that throws noise and heat out the window in favor of power, but as a native mobile dev who’s compiling all day I think the 14”/16” models make the right tradeoffs for the overwhelming majority.

No, my company provided work M1 Pro 16” isn’t going to beat my 5950X custom built tower or some of the high end Ryzen 6000 series laptops, but that’s fine. It’s still very fast and responsive while being inaudible 99% of the time, never hitting lap scorching temperatures, and having battery life measured in double digits.

I suspect that an unwieldy, hot, loud desktop replacement M-series machine would be very niche.

You don't have to imagine, the same processors are available in the Mini line and direct comparisons have been made in detail.

tl;dr if you have a use case where it's a significant difference you already know that.

Further PSA: don’t buy the m1/m2 MBPs. It’s a weird machine now that the m1 pro/max MBPs are out, and the m2 air with its redesign is also out. Get one of those instead

I think the keyboards are sub par on the pro and Air models.

The keyboard on the 16" M1 is my favorite laptop keyboard Apple has manufactured, of the ones I've used.

Which is all types, and the majority of models, they've produced since the aluminum 12" G4 Powerbook. YMMV.

The keyboard on the M2 Air is probably the best laptop keyboard I ever had.