....it doesn't though. If you think it does, then I invite you to post an example please, for instance of anything that can compete against an M1 MacBook Air or Pro at half price - and by compete I mean anything that offers the same performance, same battery life, all in an aluminum body.
High DPI screens are a godsend when you are reading text on them all day, I’ll never go back to a 1080p screen. And I’d hardly say a MacBook Pro is suffering in the battery life department for the choice.
Besides, the claim was comparable at half the cost. We’re not now going to shift the goal posts by playing “not comparable but I like it better”. It’s comparable or it isn’t.
Sure, but Macbooks have retina(their stupid resolution) screens and yet still work 12 hours+ on battery. So it's not like your only options are 1080p(which is very low nowadays, I'd argue it actually limits productivity) and 4K power hungry high-brightness OLED panel. There are options in between those two.
You very specifically said "cost at least 2x more than comparable.".
So I'd like you to post an example of a laptop that is indeed comparable and costs half the price of an M1 MacBook Pro or Air.
Either stand by what you said, or correct yourself.
>>The luxury laptop market is now an Apple exclusive.
Plenty of extremely expensive(more so than Macbooks) laptops from HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus. Saying that only apple makes "luxury laptops" is just....not true.
It's hard to find a laptop nowadays with comparable "specs" --- and this I believe is by design. You can't get a "Retina" display anywhere else. Comparable real world "functionality" is a different story --- one based on need.
What is "Retina"?
Only Apple knows but it appears to mean more pixels than your eyes can detect. It is marketing more so than functionality. A lot of the high end Apple "features" or "specs" have little or no impact on real world functionality. They exist mainly to justify added expense and/or bragging rights.
I think you are just trying to avoid answering the question, because you realized the original quote is just not true in the slightest.
>>Comparable real world "functionality" is a different story --- one based on need.
I will repeat my request for the third time then - please provide an example of a laptop at half price of an M1 Macbook Air/Pro that has comparable "real world functionality" then. Please observe how I'm completely open to working with your terms, so just go ahead and provide something, anything.
>>A lot of the high end Apple "features" or "specs" have little or no impact on real world functionality.
You can get some laptop with an high end i7, and RTX 3070 at half the price with comparable performance while costing ~1300$.
Sure, it doesn't have the same battery life. But at that cost it's a penalty that most are willing to take.
Now, I don't want to extend the rivalry here. For starters, I don't think this comparison makes sense.
What people value depends entirely on their own volition. And to be frank, there are intrinsic penalties you're willing to take when buying Apple products. As such, this debate will never come to a fair conclusion.
I was simply answering the question made by my post's parent.
As for the rest, touchpads have been getting better. Both in hardware and drivers. The latter is true in Linux land, at least. I don't use Windows, so I wouldn't know.
Unless it's under full load, and you've got a GPU mux switch, I don't think your fans will sound as a jet engine either. But either way, at that price, yeah... It'll be bulkier than a Mac. Aaand your fans will spin. Aaand your battery life will be worse, 'cause CISC lol. Still miles better than carrying a desktop though.
I'm happy for Apple, in all honesty. RISC is the future.
I just hope that bigger and better open firmware projects keep coming, so I can keep tinkering (and having no x86 license to deal with, it does seem that future is bright).
Unfortunately, x86 just has better support right now.
There are plenty of other high-DPI laptops (don’t get distracted by “Retina”). Just search for a 4K laptop. It’ll have the same(ish) pixel density as a MacBook Pro.
Also, saying it has little or no impact on real world functionality is an opinion I strongly disagree with. I will never work on a low-DPI screen again because I vastly prefer the crispness of high-DPI screens.
MS, Dell, IBM and I guess a bunch of other companies sell more expensive laptops than Apple with objectively inferior 'specs' (obviously they
have other advantage besides Linux/Windows support, like different screen selection, upgradeable RAM and/or storage (sometimes) etc..) it's just that people seem to rarely buy them compared to Macbooks.
