On this note, the world where buying a Framework or really any other Windows PC meant getting roughly 1/2 the battery life of a MacBook really doesn't exist anymore like it did in 2020, so long as you do your research and buy the right system.

I think there's a lot of assumption among the group of people who have stuck with MacBooks since the M1 days that shopping the competition means compromising with a huge performance/battery life/value gap, but that reality that existed in 2020 is much different than the current situation in 2026.

If you are in the market for a MacBook Air for the kinds of things that most people use MacBook Airs for, the average user won't notice that the battery life or performance on a computer equipped with a Panther Lake or Qualcomm chip is different from a MacBook Air at all.

Are these chips exactly the same price/performance ratio of an M5? Maybe not. But, if it's close enough, it's close enough.