No wonder, I don't particularly like Apple, most of their stuff is way too overpriced imo, but the new M1 MacBooks are pretty great. Every single laptop I had before the M1, whether it's Apple, Dell or whatever is simply crap compared to it.
I'm not really sure what AMD or Intel were doing in these past 10 or so years, but they need to change ASAP. The M1 Mac is great, but a similar linux laptop would be incredible.
Apple only sells Apple Silicon through proprietary, locked-down, non-upgradable hardware paired with Apple's choice of operating system.
Even if Intel/AMD processing power was not competitive with Apple Silicon (which it is), there is a laundry list of reasons for many people to continue buying PCs.
To be sure, Intel has struggled "these past 10 years or so", taking their sweet time pushing PC processing power forward, and then making a series of mistakes in engineering. AMD also struggled prior to 2017, but they've been riding a series of successful engineering ventures recently. In the meantime, Intel will likely succeed well enough in remaining competitive with their massive resources and investments in research and development.
While the impressive performance, and especially efficiency, of Apple Silicon brings Apple into the mainstream as eligible devices, there's still, as I said, plenty of reasons outside of performance (and efficiency) that make PC's worthwhile options. Of course, if you're a fan of macOS, there's already no reason for you to consider a PC, but if you really do like Linux, then I'm not sure what it is about the current state of AMD/Intel processing hardware that you dislike so much.
> Of course, if you're a fan of macOS, there's already no reason for you to consider a PC, but if you really do like Linux, then I'm not sure what it is about the current state of AMD/Intel processing hardware that you dislike so much.
On PC, Intel and AMD is great, the desktop M1 is not that great vs. those CPUs. The problem is the laptop form factor. All Intel and AMD laptops I owned so far were noisy, overheated, had worse trackpad, and didn't last long on battery. Those are not a problem with PCs.
Laptops. Apple is the undisputed king of laptops, and no PC can achieve quiet power in such a light enclosure. I mean, the Macbook Air doesn't even have a fan!
I'm reading this on an M1 Air. Not only doesn't it have a fan, it doesn't even get hot. Disclaimer: I'm sure it can be made to get hot. If you want to play intensive games or compile gigabytes of code, get a Pro with a fan. If you want to read, watch movies, write, create documents, the M1 Air is about perfect.
Not OP, but I think that the consumer market for laptops is basically Chromebooks and iPads for anything < ~$700 and a MacBook for anything over. I would imagine that the number of high performance "gaming" laptops sold in the consumer space would be in the minority comparatively.
I think that's a fair price. But it was overpriced before the M1 CPUs. You could just buy a non-Apple for way cheaper that was noisy, weak and overheated just like the MacBook Air.
You might want to hold off if it's not of immediate need. Should be a new product release in september, or possibly at WWDC this summer. Then you can decide whether to get the M1 for cheaper or M2 for same price.
Not everything is supported yet. Depending on your workload/device it could be usable if you're okay with the limitations. See their feature support page:
I'm not really sure what AMD or Intel were doing in these past 10 or so years, but they need to change ASAP. The M1 Mac is great, but a similar linux laptop would be incredible.