Need help choosing a MacBook Air upgrade

Download etrecheck.

Run it and post the report it generates here using the "Additional Text" button in the toolbar when composing your message.

There is no reason that machine should be running that slow. Realistically, the machines you're considering are not enough of an upgrade to warrant spending that kind of money unless you have money to burn.

Get rid of Microsoft Defender and Malware Bytes. Turn security updates and Apple's security software back on.

You're using Western Digital software to manage an external drive. That is not necessary and counterproductive.

You have a number of system extensions running that are very old and most likely serving no purpose. Probably inherited when migrating from older installations on older Macs.

My recommendation is back up your data. Erase the machine and re-install macOS. Restore your data, NOT your apps. Re-install the apps you need from scratch.

Since you would have to go through that process on a new machine anyway to avoid bringing over the garbage that's been migrated from machine to machine over the years, it's not like it will take any more time to do this.

This is a perfectly capable machine.

It's unusual that an M3 MacBook Pro should be running slow given the fairly casual use that you make of it. It's very likely that you have inadvertently installed some bit of malware from the web or even have installed some app or utility that is conflicting with the OS. Common apps that can do that are anti-virus, security, cleaning, optimizing and VPN apps. None of these typically need to be installed and can cause slowdowns and freezing.

EtreCheck is a safe and highly regarded utility from a trusted developer and respected ASC contributor. I suggest that you use it to evaluate your Mac, its drives and the installed software. We’ll use your EtreCheck report to look for clues to what may be causing your problem and advise how to correct it.

Please navigate to EtreCheck.com to download the utility. Be sure to Allow Full Disk Access when you install the app. Once you’ve run the app and created your report please post the report with your reply to this message using the “Additional text” button at the bottom of the message window. The generated report will not include any personal info. It simply gathers specifics about hardware performance and installed software that might be in conflict with the OS.

Please note you must upload the full report. To see how, please click >  How to use Add Text when posting… EtreCheck Report.

It will give us detailed information on exactly what may be bogging down the system (It contains no personal information).

It is extremely useful in isolating both potential hardware and software issues. It's written and maintained by one of the senior members on these forums.

wiccan13 wrote:

What exactly will this show me about my MacBook that the apple support team member couldn't find? The last time this happened about 10 yrs ago it was a corrupted file in the MAXOS upgrade and it took a high level tech to find the problem.

EtreCheck will provide info about the performance of your drives (read/write speeds), the storage and volume configurations and the RAM use. Most importantly in this situation it will show info about startup items, launch daemons, startup daemons and other softwares that are installed and may be causing conflict with the macOS and the proper operation of your Mac. All of it is anonymous. This tool is used very often to track down problems that users here in the Community experience.

wiccan13 wrote:

What exactly will this show me about my MacBook that the apple support team member couldn't find?

when you talk with apple support, you are talking with one person at a time. each of which may not know exactly what your issue is. especially with the limited research they can do on the phone. but if you share your EtreCheck report with us, there are many people looking. out of those people, someone is bound to see the issue if it is indeed a bit of rouge software causing the issue. there is NO one person that knows everything.

I'll start with the biggest things I see in the report.

Security updates disabled - Security updates are disabled. This computer is at risk of malware infection.

 Apple security disabled - Apple security software is disabled. This computer is at risk of malware infection.

for someone that needs to access secure sites, why on earth would you totally disable the built in security apple provides? you need to reenable both of those.

and also bad things to use. on a Mac:

More than one antivirus app - This computer has multiple antivirus apps installed. (Microsoft Defender, Malwarebytes)

why would you rely on third party antivirus? apple has the very best protection already baked in on macOS. third party apps like those are well known to cause MAJOR issues with macOS, while providing ZERO protection or benefit.

at the very least, you should completely uninstall Microsoft Defender. and if you have malware bytes running in the background, you should either disable or uninstall it. malware bytes is OK to use on a Mac, but leaving it running in the background is useless. it does not provide "real time" protection, anduses system resources needlessly.

Why do you feel you meed a new machine?