Mark, thank you for being the voice of reason in a sea of chaos. The overreaction to the 'slower' SSD has been ridiculous.

The tech press problem is their benchmark is the previous model whereas members of the public might upgrade every 3-5 years (or more. I still use a 2012 Air and its still a good machine for my needs) .

If Apple had skipped the M1 completely and started with the M2 Air as their introduction to Apple silicon the press would be proclaiming the damned thing as the best thing ever.