I beg to differ ;)
It will be worse at almost everything, except running my preferred OS (Linux). Being able to upgrade/repair RAM, storage and battery at home is quite a perk too.
My linux laptop (32GB ram / beefy gpu) barely withstand 40 min on battery, but can handle very daunting tasks, and obviously gaming.
These are 2 different use cases, but right now, for the ultra portable laptop, Air is the king, until x64 brings back the efficiency per watt. Even qcom can't compete. That being said, I am a big fan of the apple hardware and not the apple software, so whenever Asahi linux is ready enough (with good battery life), I am definitely jumping ship.
Sure, it's got integrated graphics so it won't win any gaming awards, but that's what the laptop with the beefy GPU sitting in the corner is for :) That thing pumps out enough heat to not be too pleasant sitting on a lap anyway.
Yes, the MacBook Air is unique-ish for having no fan at all, but a slow running fan that you can barely hear is going to get you more performance with basically zero added cost or compromise.
And for those users who don’t need top performance and just need an affordable office app machine, I’d argue that Snapdragon laptops have the same primary benefits as the MacBook Air.
In terms of competition against x86, Apple is only ahead of competition in their latest two or so generations and only in specific ways.
Want to play games sometimes like 936 million other PC gamers in the world? (The fastest growing segment of people who buy computers) You’ll pay a lot less for an Omen Transcend 14 than a MacBook Pro at the same specs and you’ll get a system with a very similar noise and battery life profile, along with far Better graphics performance.
I don’t personally think Windows is so bad compared to Mac in terms of annoyances. Mac nags you about all of Apple’s subscription services and you can’t even uninstall their apps like News and Stocks. Microsoft lets you uninstall everything including Notepad. It’s really not that annoying after about 5 minutes changing settings and uninstalling some things.
If we are talking about buying a used Mac we are also talking about buying a computer that will lose software support before the Windows equivalent historically. E.g., you buy an M2 MacBook Air and you’ve got about 7 years left or less before you lose major OS versions. Almost guarantee you that won’t be the case with any reasonably recent Windows PC that supports 11 today. My
And you're right, I can't uninstall Stocks or News, but I if I never open them, does it matter?
Windows is offensive, insufferable trash. From its CONTINUAL hounding about "your Microsoft account" to its bug-riddled, regressive, and shambolic UI. Things Windows users took for granted 40 years ago are simply gone.
Example: Select three PNGs in Explorer and right-click on them, and look for "Open with..."
When I bought my iPhone 17 the sales associate even tried to pitch signing up for the trial in person as he guided me through the purchase process.
When you cancel the trial it ends it immediately instead of ending it at the end of your trial period, a dark pattern designed to encourage you to forget to end your trial.
Apple devices also nag you about buying AppleCare in the system preferences.
I’ve never been hounded about my Microsoft account. Be specific. When does this happen? Yes, you need one to set up Windows 11 (just like a Mac and especially iOS are basically useless without an Apple account anyway), but after that I’ve never been hounded around anything related to it.
Never had problems figuring out how to open stuff in Windows. No idea what you’re saying.
Most of these extreme claims about Windows seem to come from people who don’t even use the OS regularly and have forgotten about the ways in which macOS does many of the same commercial OS practices.
I cannot install Windows without a Microsoft account unless I apply work-arounds.
It constantly offers Office 365, even adding dummy icons to the start menu.
There are adverts on the login screen.
To be fair I installed Bazzite there, but for a laptop I cannot find an equivalent device at the same price point even ignoring the need for linux drivers.
- When you open the respective apps they ask if you want to try the free trial.
- Apple once abused the Wallet app to send notifications about a theatrical release.
Other than that I'm not sure what the fuss is about.
Something like Framework is more expensive thanks to RAM abd SSD shortage, but Linux support is so much better.
Amen to that, my keyboard on my m1 air recently failed. I was horrified to find out it is literally riveted to the frame. I got this close to buying a new one. Something annoyed me about this perfectly good laptop being rendered compltely useless and I ended up buying a replacement keyboard, ripping out the old one and shimming this one with paper. Its not perfect but here I am typing from it.
But you are 100% right, there is just nothing better on the market. The gap is so big.
It’s still remarkable to me that it’s even possible to do it at all. The amount of tech and miniaturization crammed into that thing — it would be easier for them to rivet, weld, and glue every part, and cheaper. And if the build quality weren’t so high to begin with, it wouldn’t have withstood the repair at all.
A good friend has a Framework, and it’s cool as hell, but incredibly primitive compared with your M1.
For instance, the inability to write to NTFS filesystems without addons is annoying.
But I believe that for most users, the default MacOS experience is now much better than what Windows is with default settings.
I had a long string of Windows laptops that were basically OK from maybe 2013 to 2023 except for problems with USB that got progressively worse over time (for each machine.) I think some of them were were real hardware problems but I think also the USB 3 spec doesn't guarantee that you can plug in very many devices and have it work, it depends on the PCIe architecture inside the machine. That "ding" sound when a USB device disconnects from windows has traumatized me and I've turned it off anywhere where I can because it is like a gunshot to a Vietnam vet.
I found very little literature about other Windows laptops users facing these problems but endless posts by AppleCare frequent fliers who seem to spend their lives at the Genius Bar and getting their old defective laptops replaced with new defective laptops, I think Windows users just expect it to be all screwed up.
For a long time Windows has struggled with processes that suck down a lot of resources at boot time. At home it is things that do software updates and saturate my 2x20Mbps internet connection. At work it is the backup program that saturates my Ethernet.
That cycle repeated itself either two or three more times, up to today, and my current laptop is I think going to be the one that finally last long enough that I'll have to actually pay for my next upgrade.
My wife browses the web a lot on that Mac, she hasn't complained since I installed Firefox + uBlock Origin but maybe she expects it to be slow.
* My MacMini was constantly beachballing and, unfortunately, it took me a long time to realize that there was a problem with the device.
* I now have a 2023 MBP that screams like a "Formula Un" racing car.
I suspect you have a faulty device.
edit: Just saw that you live far away from an Apple store. I imagine you could mail it in for some type of service, but obviously, that's not optimal if you have no immediate replacement.
I had a Mac Studio that would kernel panic on a semi-weekly basis. Apple Care put me through the reinstall OS / remove all external devices tap-dance for weeks, insisting that hardware was the last thing to suspect - before Apple Silicon, kernel panics were almost always hardware, particularly RAM.
Ultimately I bought another Studio and swapped it in - kernel panics went away. With that evidence, Apple acknowledged the problem and exchanged my Studio for another one from the factory. I returned the swap unit within the 30 day window, so it didn't cost me anything but annoyance.
kextstat | grep -v com.apple
would show anything _maybe_ troublesome, but not guaranteed related.
The feeling is exactly like the way it was with Windows circa 2005 when you expected your machine to go bad like cheese in a few months.
Also airpods move instantly here. No issues.
Backup, reset to factory. Try using it, if it’s fixed, try restoring. If it’s not fixed it’s defective in some way.
If it’s broken only after you restore, manually import your data and install apps one at a time making sure nothing breaks before installing the next.
Ads and nags in the Windows World are drawn using the same HTML-based technology that has replaced Windows native apps since Windows 8, the ads and nags in MacOS are the 2025 anti-antialiased retreads of the 1999 MacOS X imitations of the modal dialogs from 1984 MacOS classic. It’s sad. When I set up a new Mac for my wife she was furious at how ad infested it was, especially to browse the web with Safari and if you want to add an ad blocked you need an Apple Account which is something she’s done without using macs for 20+ years.
But I do agree with you. Thankfully it is minimal relative to windows.
Plus you get x86_64 and vendor support for Linux.
X13 is probably the best equivalent in Lenovo's line.
I think the X1 Carbon line is the best direct competitor.
I was pretty pissed off when warranty accidentally replaced it with US layout (battery went under 80% which means top case replacement which basically feels like brand new laptop).
… if it’s not the power layer, it’s the network, video, Bluetooth that won’t power up anymore after a nap
On a current ThinkPad? Essentially perfect. Zero problems suspending and resuming, no matter what's going on, including weird cases like suspending while docked and resuming while undocked or vice versa.
All of the above is true but this, actually, is not entirely: they use a lot of DSP. If you try the same speakers with regular Fedora Asahi with no DSP profile (i.e. vanilla sound), they're very mediocre and do not handle bass well. So, like with many aspects of Apple hardware, this is an example of their software/firmware complimenting the hardware.
- no Linux support
Otherwise I agree, it is a wonderful machine. I'd replace my crappy thinkpad if I could.
My 2014 Air is still going strong for light web browsing and terminal use.
This gets mentioned a lot, but I do quite a bit of dev work on my M4 MBA and have never even felt it get warm. Sustained heavy loads are extremely rare with how quick this thing is.
With the way most consumer laptops have their fan curves set, you open a new web page and get an annoying ramp up. It is not just a hardware thing, but mostly a self inflicted wound of having a fan curve that is way too aggressive.
I use clang to compile on both machines. The M1 mac has noticeably faster compile times.
linux does not apply here. General consumer doesn’t even know what linux is.
Sure, there's no single device that has Apple's blend of attributes, but who need that in this age of VMs and broadband Internet? My 32-core HEDT workstation outperforms anything Apple branded. I have a Chromebook when I need to be unplugged (<10% or the time)
Your high end hardware is not their target market / competition until you get into very purposeful tasks.
The market segment that exists for Macbook Pro is one where competitors battery life sucks, windows isnt the preferred OS, and high performance on a portable device on battery is beneficial. Its one where they have acceptable performance vs a dedicated desktop but remain portable and a good expected lifespan, as a portable.
Here's the kicker: it cost about the same as the highest end Macbook pro before the RAM madness.
> The market segment that exists one where battery life sucks, windows isnt the preferred OS, and some high performance on a portable device on battery is beneficial.
I agree the market exists, but think it's much smaller than it appears: most people do not work under these constraints most of the time; a cheap laptop + beefy desktop could do a better job in aggregate, wirh greater flexibility, especially for people who spend most of their time at the desk with their computer plugged in - which is most people.
I suspect the portability requirement is sometimes aspirational, similar to the people who buy trucks overestimating the number of times they'll need to cary stuff on the truck bed.
I’m really happy with bringing my local workstation with me to a cafe, a coworking space, or on a trip. I love conveniently having one device for nearly everything, from AI fine-tuning to general development to gaming. And I love having a 12-hour battery life under normal use and USB-C charging. The screen is beautiful and great for watching movies on, too.
If you want one computing device, in total, a MacBook is a great choice. It’s overkill in most areas for most people, but it’s not deficient for anyone, and that matters a lot.
You can, with Tailscale! I had edited my original comment to remove how I occasionally[1] remote to the workstation, but I found out empirically that I typically don't do anything that needs more than 2 cores at a cafe - a $300 Chromebook or $100 second-hand laptop will do.
By all means, if the Macbook hits your sweet-spot of trade-offs, more power to you. Car brand A may have the quickest, most-fuel-efficient, all-wheel drive, convertible coupé, but there are other vehicle types. Perhaps a bicycle and an SUV is a better combination for some other people.
1. I'd say abuut once per year.
I do dishes with an MBP next to the sink. I wouldn't put it under the faucet, but it's ~fine so far.
At last check my 2008 unibody still boots. It can vote in the fall.
I remember the old keyboard because I got so sick of it I snapped the laptop in half in a rare fit of disgust (I was under a lot of stress at the time).
Overall, Apple blew it out of the park, and I happily forgive the earlier problems. Now I hope that Tahoe is just some kind of planned demolition phase before they introduce a totally new unsurpassable stable OS.
And I do work as a software developer, so anyone doing lighter usage not in this camp will feel the same.
M5 Air should be pretty much the same.
Recent Pros have miniLED with high freq PWM.
MacOS absolutely has annoyances, ads, and broken stuff all the time.
When macOS shows an ad, it is sometimes harder to get rid of or disable than the ads built into Windows. For example, the ads to upgrade iCloud to a paid account.
I regularly run into bugs in macOS, both visual/cosmetic and functional, some of which have existed for multiple major versions with no fix.
It seems the M5 air still has non non-reflective screen option, which is very unfortunate.