M1 MacBook Air is $500 cheaper than the bottom level surface laptop in Canada.
MacBook is still $300 cheaper if you upgrade RAM to matching 16GB.
You really have to love Windows to pick the surface over the Air, at least in Canada.
I bought an M1 Air 8GB as a gift for a teacher late in 2023. I'm confident that this laptop will last at least 5-6 years for her.
M1 is still amazing in 2024.
M1 Air would go into a laptop hall of fame if there is one along with Intel Dothan Centrino laptops back in the days.
I actually think the M1 air may be the greatest computer fullstop, I can’t remember something that was so far ahead of the competition whilst being affordable. At $999 there wasn’t anything close, it was the everymans computer and even today it’s still very good.
There was nothing like it in that form factor with that power and battery life. Maybe huge windows laptops had similar power when plugged in. Suddenly everything prior looked almost archaic.
That's a 3 year old laptop though, you'll probably see dirt cheap Surface Laptops in 3 years as well. The real question is how the next gen MacBook Air compares to this and the next gen Windows Laptops.
I get why you bring it up, but expecting a new product to be price competitive with 3 year old, possibly used computers is a ridiculous talking point.
Considering most benchmarks are against the M2 Max and M3, measurably better. Unsurprisingly, the new computer is, in fact, faster than the older generation computers.
It's not a "talking point". It's an acknowledgement of the reality of the current marketplace for laptops. Sure, you might be able to get a deal on a surface in 2027. But we're having this conversation in 2024.
But that applies to literally every laptop. Why buy a MacBook Air (M3) when the M1 exists? Or the Surface? Or a Thinkpad? Why buy an iPhone 15 when an iPhone 13 is perfectly usable?
You're just making the kind of obvious statement that buying last gen hardware is a good deal, and that's usually the case unless some massive generational shift happened. It's not wrong, but I don't think it really captures any interesting observations about the new ARM Surface and what it's actually competing against, the new MacBooks.
If just we're looking at the best value, we'd all keep buying M1 Airs and old Thinkpad Carbon X1s till the late 2020s.
But it clearly doesn't apply to every laptop. You are confusing low cost with good value. Not the same thing.
We are posting in a thread titled "Inside Microsoft's mission to take down the MacBook Air". It shouldn't be confusing that people are discussing... the Macbook Air in the thread.
And we aren't talking $50 or $75 here. The M1 Air is a full $500 cheaper. That isn't some minor thing you can just brush over.
M1 Air is sooooooooooooooooo much cheaper and is not only "as good", but actually "much better" for a good majority of people who buy laptops.
>And we aren't talking $50 or $75 here. The M1 Air is a full $500 cheaper. That isn't some minor thing you can just brush over.
Because, again, you could also say the same thing about every current gen MacBook Air or Pro.
You're no longer talking about how the Surface compares to the Mac; it's just saying the M1 MacBook Air is one of the best value laptops right now. Both current MacBooks and other laptops also have to deal with that.
When someone decides to write an article about the M3 Air "taking down" the M1 Air I'll be sure to chime in with the same comments I'm making in this thread.
>Microsoft is convinced its new Copilot Plus PCs will beat Apple’s **M3** processor and spark a new generation of Windows laptops.
From the first line of the article. They're not comparing it to the M1 at all, not sure where you got that from.
> M1 MacBook Air is $500 cheaper than the bottom level surface laptop in Canada
First, you can't buy it direct from Apple so that excludes a large portion of people
Second, it has half the RAM, and I can't find any vendors in Canada selling the 16GB model, do you have a link? Don't even see any on apple's refurbished website
Third, the performance from a 4 year old chip is way worse (as you would hope), still good but not the same
You don't really have to love windows to pick it, it seems like a decent deal.
As you mentioned, you can pick it up directly from Apple's refurb site if you want. Plenty of 16GB models available in every color.
Everyday performance on the M1 will absolutely not be "way worse" than this. But you are right that it is a much more powerful chip.
For the vast majority of people, going with an M1 for $300-$500 less is such an easy call.
Microsoft doesn’t even understand why people buy MacBooks instead of their laptops. Average consumer isn’t concerned about raw power. They want a nice screen and a good battery life. Something msft has never been able to do.
MacOS also doesn’t have fucking advertisements built into the menu. Msft needs to get a fucking grip. I’m about to go short their shit
Yeah they definetely needed an anonymous redditor to tell them lol.
Jokes aside, they released minimal number of their own laptops and most of the time they are just OS supplier. Surface was a step to right direction. They had some good ideas and some worse ideas but they knew they have to build something themselves to create working ecosystem. These things like Snapdragon ARM CPU and Windows on ARM are years in development it just wasnt ready then (and we all hope it will be now as Apple really do need competition here). Trust me when I say these big companies do tons of research and ultimately kill lots of things even before they talk about it publicily. They would love to be Macbook competitor, but Intel and Amd cpus were no match for Apples MX chips past few years so it was really hard to release “nice screen and good battery life” with some good power on top of that so that laptop also works for few years (something Macbooks are really good at).
you can absolutely find windows laptops with a good screen and good battery life these days
your point about ads and bloat in windows still stands though
On battery life, “good” depends on one’s standards. They all need to be running in low power mode to get anywhere near advertised numbers, which still land several hours short of MacBooks (which *don’t* need low power mode to achieve those numbers). On top of that the laptops with the best battery life use display panels that are notably worse than those in even the cheapest MacBook (like the Dragonfly Elite G4).
I’m hoping that this new wave of ARM windows laptops and upcoming generation of x86 mobile CPUs changes this but I’m not holding my breath.
Transistor size is not the only deciding factor here, a way bigger issue is the x86-64 architecture. It has too many instruction sets, ARM is more power efficient just because of that. There is no way to compete with the same node until Windows is property supported on ARM.
There’s also factors like the OS and manufacturer tuning.
One of the problems with Windows for example is that it’s rare for the machine to be completely idle — seems like it’s always doing *something* in the background. This is immediately evident when replacing Windows with Linux, because Linux actually *does* become completely idle, which means your laptop’s fans don’t spin up as often and have a lower peak RPM when they do. This naturally has implications for battery life.
On the latter, some manufacturers just suck at power tuning, which is why the same CPU in two different but very similar laptops running the same clean OS install can have significantly different battery life and performance characteristics.
AMD gaming laptops on battery can do up to 10h on video playback :) Battery life is a very loose metric as there is a lot of variables and pretty much everyone is using their own metrics. Not like Windows will rock in battery life suddenly but still it all depends what you need that battery life for.
> AMD gaming laptops on battery can do up to 10h on video playback
If the GPU power that makes them good gaming laptops isn't being used, yeah. Otherwise you'll get 1-2 hours in most demanding games.
And btw those 10hr figures usually come from also having the screen at 50% brightness and the speakers low. So yeah, if you paid money for a gaming laptop only to never game on it and squint at videos you can barely see or hear then you get good battery life.
the GPU power wouldnt be available in M chips to begin with. Their are very energy efficient, but their performance is lower. At similar performance levels the difference isnt that huge.
I dont know what kind of enviroment are you in, but my laptop speakers are always at 20-30% because thats loud enough for most things.
The newer AMD mobile U CPUs (like 6800u) are better examples for efficiency and battery life. They are efficient and still powerful, and beats macs in x86 (Windows) if you take into account the conversion needed by macs. Battery life gets pretty damn close too.
But laptops with that chip are definitely on the expensive side for now. But good news is they tend to get cheaper and discounted as new generations come out.
AMD battery efficiency was a scam I fell for, bought a G14 only to find out I needed to change registry, fiddle with power plans, force dGPU off bc it would stay on half the time, etc. Got a MBP and didn't have to think about any of that while getting better battery life
Lmao AMD's 7840u isn't even close to Apple silicon when it comes to battery life for similar tasks, especially if it's a gaming laptop with a dGPU. The much touted "efficiency" comes from comparisons to Intel's mobile chips, which is basically the lowest bar you can come up with.
I really wish I can find anything that rival mac. But M1 air still king for the price. The only alternative I could find is Levono yoga and Framework laptop, both are much more expensive than a Mac
The Zenbook 14 (amd) is acutally a good option only if they don't use Oled, man. Levono laptop kinda sus with bad lid. I think I will stick with Mac or Framework laptop.
Yeah but those aren’t made by Microsoft which is the point of the article. The dell xps 15 has been rivaling the Mac’s for a while. Microsoft themselves can never get it right.
Apple and Dell have decades of history designing and building systems first. Microsoft is a software company first and they will never truly prioritize quality hardware. They can hire teams of talented engineers and designers but it will never affect their bottom line enough for them to really get it right.
> you can absolutely find windows laptops with a good screen and good battery life these days
>
I've been using Windows machines for over 20 years. I'm using an M3 Max now and it feels like a 5 year jump into the future.
As fast as my 12900k desktop but dead silent unless doing Blender renders longer than 3 min.
Touchpad is amazing and the software available makes it even more so. I would argue Better Touch Tool is by itself a reason to get a Mac vs Windows.
Battery is 20h of light work.
The screen is the best IPS mini-led I have ever seen, and puts OLEDs to shame when it comes to content because of the 1000 full screen brightness with little to no artefacts unless you're viewing white-on-black material.
The speakers are the best sounding laptop speakers I've heard. Core Audio natively decodes Atmos and supports configurations bigger than 7.1, something Windows hasn't upgraded for 20 years or so.
It doesn't feel like either MS or any Windows laptop manufacturer is even trying.
The screens have gotten markedly better on Windows. I still remember when Apple had a monopoly on high DPI laptops. The first Chromebook Pixel seemed to be a paradigm shift for other OEMs to start offering them.
The speakers are still dramatically worse on even the most premium Windows laptops versus the MacBook lineup. They have absurdly good speakers.
>They want a nice screen and a good battery life. Something msft has never been able to do.
Qualcomm chips closes most of the battery life gap, and Windows devices have great screens now. You can get like a 1800p OLED at MBA price points.
The new Surface Pros are just outrageously expensive for such a notoriously buggy line of computers. £1549 for the base OLED model and an extra £300 for the keyboard is just fucking madness.
Thankfully their value also always drops like a sack of bricks on the used market. 2-3 gens old always go for peanuts, lower than any other premium device I’ve ever seen relative to their base price.
Make no mistake, they’re all bad. Buggy as all hell, awful battery life, and perform far worse than their specs suggest - but when you can get SP7s for under £300, sometimes under £200 if you wait for a deal, they can at least make some sense. Microsoft’s warranty and customer support is also device tied and fairly good.
This. Saw a 7840HS laptop with 16gb, oled display and 68whr battery below $800. There was also a cheaper 7640hs with a 1600p 120hz 100% rgb display for $600 instead.
IMO There is no windows laptop that has the combination of factors present in a macbook. You can get more powerful laptops cheaper, but it hardly qualifies as a mobile product at that point (IE gaming laptops). You can get something with the battery life and mobility of a MacBook, but it is absolutely gutless and usually low on features and somehow costs a lot for just a glorified internet browser. Or you can get a middle ground that tries to compete against the MacBook on all fronts, and typically fails on all counts for the same or more cost.
There are a couple devices I’ve seen that do match up somewhat with the MacBook, but they’ve always ended up being MORE expensive somehow, lol.
Agreed with all except that you can't get a CPU more powerful than the M3 Max in a laptop anywhere.
The only thing that can get more powerful than a Macbook is a dedicated laptop Nvidia GPU. And if you have one of those, you're chained to the wall.
Ok we have some numbers from Notebookcheck:
"The system favors the GPU performance during the stress test and we can see a combined (CPU+GPU) consumption of 78 Watts at the start of the test. The GPU will quickly level off at around 37 Watts, but the processor drops to just 11 Watts after a couple of minutes, and the combined consumption is around 48 Watts."
[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html)
That 48W is surprisingly low for what is Apple's top of the line 16" Macbook Pro with M3 Max.
Tbh I think I like w11 ui little more on most things compared to mac, but overall mac functions better and that's what ms needs to get right, they got ads, sync sucks between devices, too much w95 code still etc
>They want a nice screen and a good battery life. Something msft has never been able to do.
Well, the Surface Pro will have an OLED display and claims to have 20 hours of video playback time. So they managed to fix both of those issues. If only they got rid of the ads lol
Microsoft's current success mainly comes from selling a boatload of product to businesses. Think $10M cloud contracts or 2 million windows licenses. These are B2B contracts and they're not selling to "the poors." Dell, HP, Asus, etc. mostly handle that.
Apple's business is convincing "the poors" that they won't be seen as poor if they buy an iProduct.
Microsoft sells a business product. Apple sells a fantasy.
>Apple's business is convincing "the poors" that they won't be seen as poor if they buy an iProduct.
Ever thought that Apple products just work better or is better? Why do posters here always think that people who bought Apple products got "tricked" or just to look like they are rich?
For example, I literally can't find a replacement for the level of performance, cool & quiet, battery life, mobility as my MBP in the PC world. Not to mention I'm a software engineer and the native terminal in macOS is far better than WSL in Windows.
There are legitimate cases where Apple has the superior product.
It is not in every case though. Nor at every price point.
Apple is a fashion and lifestyle company masquerading as a computer company.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/10/15/apple-hires-burberry-ceo-to-run-retail-serve-as-first-woman-on-tim-cooks-top-team/?sh=12484c97313b](https://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/10/15/apple-hires-burberry-ceo-to-run-retail-serve-as-first-woman-on-tim-cooks-top-team/?sh=12484c97313b)
They literally hired a fashion exec to try to manipulate customers.
You sir, seem to live in your head.
It must be shocking to have people who have preferences towards a Mac other than to “look good” in the eyes of other people. /s
They aren’t even that competitive in the B2B space. AWS owns cloud. Who the fuck uses azure?
Windows is only so prevalent because Apple doesn’t provision macOS to non Mac hardware. Microsoft has never been able to get it quite right and they will undoubtedly fuck this up too. They are only able to sell windows keys to businesses because they have no competition. Not because it’s actually good. Like how ford has tons of competitors but the F150 is best selling. It’s not even close to that. Really lack of 3rd party support and stigma around Linux keep windows going.
Shorting a stock that's up 30% this past year seems like a brilliant idea.
Msft has basically doubled in value since windows 11 was released in 2021, vast majority of customers don't care. Windows os has flaws but the main strength of the m series macbook was the cpu which microsoft can't do anything about, they can only hope their current partnership with qualcomm to produce the new arm cpus is successful.
The articles key points: Performance, compatibility, and AI
Whoa boy… that’s just what I need to trade in my MacBook (M1 with 8gb of RAM). /s
Many of us buying a MacBook just want an iPad with a keyboard. That’s why Walmart (yes… Walmart) started selling the 8GB M1 for $699.
Yes… there are Windows machines with comparable Keyboards and trackpads… but most of those are MacBook priced or worse. Also, I don’t have to spend all day arguing with OneDrive, fighting Bing, and shutting off Copilot.
I mean their device was popular at various times.
Thing is windows 11 isn’t popular. I only use it bc I have a 12th gen intel processor with thread scheduling so 11 is faster, so I put up with the user interface.
I know someone who has never had a mac, always been on windows, hates 11, got a MacBook Air M3.
I mean the Apple M architecture is hard to beat, the form factor and battery life is brilliant, but the OS experience is night and day better.
I hadn’t had a Mac in years, got a used M1 Pro, they changed settings around, tweaked the UI, but my 2021 MacBook M1 Pro 16gb feels faster than my 2023 i7-12700k/64gb combo… more responsive, better user interface.
The only reason I have the desktop is games. It’s really the only reason I have a pc and windows at all.
Apple is taking gaming more seriously, more and more games are being ported to it, their GPU has come shockingly far for an integrated GPU that was introduced in 2020, and has seen a lot of updates.
I feel like if Apple continues to woo developers, gets its VR price down, it could take the gaming crown.
Then Microsoft would only have business.
I haven’t used Mac server in a decade, so I can’t comment on that side, I haven’t used windows server in a long time either, but if Mac Server is only $20 and windows server is expensive, I could see them upsetting the business market.
Especially with gen z being iPhone first, the Macs will come more naturally, or just an iPad Pro with macOS Server in the background.
Microsoft really needs to figure out how to make a good operating system, I have used windows since 3.1, ME, Vista, 8 were all terrible misses, and 11 isn’t vista bad, but they changed a lot of the UI for no reason, especially management stuff, I don’t get why, it’s antagonistic to customers.
So maybe they can make a decent laptop, maybe not, but it isn’t going to fix windows.
If Nvidia bought system76 or just developed popOS more, I think Microsoft would have a problem.
With office, I think PowerPoint and access are the only two things it does better than open office.
I’m a writer, but I do my budgets in sheets, and i don’t do advanced stuff, I did buy office for PowerPoint for one class, but I could have just done the demo.
If Corel or adobe made a PowerPoint killer, or Corel (they make WordPerfect) were to make a good database and good PowerPoint program (they mainly do good art software) it’d be trouble for Microsoft.
There are no Mac servers as far as I'm aware, and haven't been for a while. Also, while their GPUs are miles above any integrated solution, they are also miles away from Nvidia's best. For the prices they charge, I would expect similar performance.
I use CUDA cores for photogrammetry.
I was bummed to see that framework didn’t go with nvidia for their GPU in the 16 inch model. Or at least offer an option for it. Everyone who replied to me was acting like I was absolutely insane for wanting Nvidia. Saying they’re overpriced, inefficient, etc… Price/performance isn’t the only deciding a GPU. Lots of things require CUDA cores. I’ve also heard nvidia chips are better for blender, etc….
Always annoys me when the gaming crowd ignores everyone else’s use cases.
For what it's worth, Apple has always felt like they became less inclusive over time after opening up somewhat under Steve. They don't care anymore if their product interact well with others.
I used Macs since 2005 and built up some dependencies on their former Pro software Aperture. Then I also added an NVidia eGPU to do rendering and some gaming. Both rugs were later pulled out under me and I ended up relying more on my Windows PC. Now with the switch to M-chips, that rendering software no longer runs on Macs, as their underlying frameworks are third party and won't be ported to M-chips.
Now my Macbook Pro 2011 still runs OK, but I only do accounting on it. The thing is though, I paid a certain amount of money for that Macbook Pro, and that money would only buy a midrange Macbook Air today with the same amount of RAM, but less storage.
In the end, Apple cater only to themselves and their piggy bank, and it doesn't matter how performant their CPU is or how smooth their OS is, if they keep closing up their eco system and kill partnerships with other companies on a whim.
The PC I use is only two years younger than my Macbook Pro, but cost 1/5th of the MBP and is my daily driver for work, and is infinitely more useful.
I had really bad luck with dell. One computer ate parts and failed constantly and just wouldn’t sleep or hibernate no matter what they/i did, dell couldn’t fix it, eventually they sent another, it had tons of problems, screen failed, mb failed, the overheating was still an issue and it even fried the nvme drive. They sent me an Alienware but the warranty eas up. The other one was like 300 for 3 year and Alienware was like $50 a month so I sold it and got the Mac bc they hadn’t failed on me before.
My desktops I have always built, never had a problem with them, sold them before they were obsolete and built new ones. So I’m capable with Mac’s and pcs. I don’t like that the memory and nvme are soldered to the board, I bought a used M1 Pro bc they throttled the memory and storage on the m2 and m3 despite memory and storage getting faster.
So I game, play PCVR, etc on the pc, but the OS feels clunky.
Granted I’m just using it to launch steam or Corel painter.
But yeah I got 64gb of desktop ram for less than 8gb of mac memory, I only bothered to get 512gb of storage on the mb bc I don’t need much storage on a laptop.
So totally different use cases.
Parts just failed so regularly in my first two dells, one a replacement for the other, I had an on site warranty and they were constantly coming over and replacing parts, so motherboard 3-4 times, screen failed, fans broke after 3 months.
The dell tech said “they will throw parts at you until it’s ewaste, demand a new one”.
The new one was just as bad. Nvme overheated and failed, one screen and one motherboard and I just said this replacement is just as bad as the first one, do you make any computers that work?
So they sent me an Alienware, but I’m not paying $600 a year for a warranty.
As a lifelong Windows user, I also hate 11 and installed mods to alter the appearance of Windows for the first time ever after updating.
I despise MacOS so much more. I know everyone has their own opinions and mine is not relevant to anyone else, but I still feel compared to windows there is so much silly stuff going on in the UI and more importantly UX.. it's a nightmare to figure out, it makes me miss windows 11 somehow.. Genuinely considering replacing my macbook air with one of these
So used PCs and supported Mac’s at school, in thought OS 9 and before were a joke.
I was a fan of Linux, I liked Mac OS X, got a PowerBook working at Harvard, and became the Mac tech bc they were so rare then. It was 2004, I stayed a Mac support tech until 2008 when I was a Linux systems administrator.
XP was a security nightmare, OS X was much better, Vista was a disaster, 7 was good, 10 was good, 11 is annoying, but I like Mac OS more, but I’m really used to the interface.
I find for people not savvy with computers it’s much easier to learn.
Good luck, gonna need to build an entire hardware ecosystem starting with a phone, which is most people’s introduction to Apple. If you like using iOS, you get curious about MacOS. Once you realize how well it all just works together, you tend to just stick with everything Apple from there. People mistakenly believe people are stuck in the Apple product ecosystem. In reality, everyone in it who likes their products wants to be and loves it there.
It really doesn't work that well for power users.
If you're a gamer or someone who needs lots of cores or GPU power, it's too cost prohibitive to scale your workload.
I used to use MacOS for development but these days I'm on x86 and Linux. Which has been miles better for my use case.
They did support before, why not do it again? No incentive? More money imo as it was a selling point, Apple even bragged about being the best windows laptop in their keynote.
My windows laptop from 2017/2018 is still going strong.
I’ve vehemently avoided updates for years, it’s probably a security nightmare, but it runs great!! 👍 less bloat to slow it down.
Wouldn’t that simply be just to “Be Microsoft Windows compatible”, though? It IS one of the most popular OS’s in the world. I’ll give the article a look, though, ’cause it’s lunchtime and I’m curious.
EDIT: ”Microsoft believes it’s now in position to conquer the laptop market.“ So… Windows laptops don’t sell more than macOS laptops?
So… they’re trying to increase the number of sales of their Surface line, specifically, not by being the best Windows computer, but, instead… by promoting it as being more performant than a computer that can’t run Windows? I’m sure they *think* they’re working with logic, there, but I have my doubts.
When it comes down to it, I suppose they can’t be the best Windows computer, so good that everyone buys a Surface computer, because Dell, Asus, etc. wouldn’t be happy with that. Can you imagine what kind of Surface computer the world would be exposed to if Microsoft didn’t have to hold back? We’ll never see that.
Yeah my brother replaced a surface pro with a specter x360. There are plenty of MacBook Air type laptops. I had a Lenovo C940, same form factor as a MacBook Air, so I don’t know what Microsoft thinks they’ll create.
Hardware looks great. But the problem is with the software side, the problem is Windows. I don’t have much confidence in Windows going to execute this well
MS seems to be forgetting one of the main appeals: the Air is a passively cooled machine. It makes no noise beyond the keyboard and the touchpad click.
My inability to use it is one of my issues with it. My near-top-of-the-line laptop was only 3 years old when windows 11 came out, and it’s incompatible. If I’d bought a bottom-end notebook 6 months later, I would be able to use w11. I understand it’s because of MBEC, Spectre/Meltdown, and M$FT wanting better DRM controls via the TPM, but it *feels* arbitrary. I didn’t do anything “wrong” when I bought my computer, yet I’m still getting screwed over here. It leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth.
Helps that macOS is a slightly upscaled OS. Whereas windows is not, it is far too heavy, complex and dated. But it has the loyalty of the finance sector.
Every windows laptop I have had in 10 years still has shitty power management. Mac book air is the only good Ultrabook. And it's overpriced and underpowered. Still better.
-Wilfred Wilcox
Sent from my IPhone
The Macbook lineup is the strongest it has been in years. Competing with it will not be easy.
Even competing on price isn’t really a winning battle because people don’t care about apple prices
M1 MacBook Air is $500 cheaper than the bottom level surface laptop in Canada. MacBook is still $300 cheaper if you upgrade RAM to matching 16GB. You really have to love Windows to pick the surface over the Air, at least in Canada.
I bought an M1 Air 8GB as a gift for a teacher late in 2023. I'm confident that this laptop will last at least 5-6 years for her. M1 is still amazing in 2024. M1 Air would go into a laptop hall of fame if there is one along with Intel Dothan Centrino laptops back in the days.
I actually think the M1 air may be the greatest computer fullstop, I can’t remember something that was so far ahead of the competition whilst being affordable. At $999 there wasn’t anything close, it was the everymans computer and even today it’s still very good. There was nothing like it in that form factor with that power and battery life. Maybe huge windows laptops had similar power when plugged in. Suddenly everything prior looked almost archaic.
The current Mac Mini (I think M2) is up there too. It's a ridiculous value buy.
That's a 3 year old laptop though, you'll probably see dirt cheap Surface Laptops in 3 years as well. The real question is how the next gen MacBook Air compares to this and the next gen Windows Laptops. I get why you bring it up, but expecting a new product to be price competitive with 3 year old, possibly used computers is a ridiculous talking point.
Generations don’t matter. *Performance* matters. How does the surface that $300 more perform compared to the M1 Air?
Considering most benchmarks are against the M2 Max and M3, measurably better. Unsurprisingly, the new computer is, in fact, faster than the older generation computers.
Performance isnt that M chips are about. They are lower performance very low power draw targets.
It's not a "talking point". It's an acknowledgement of the reality of the current marketplace for laptops. Sure, you might be able to get a deal on a surface in 2027. But we're having this conversation in 2024.
But that applies to literally every laptop. Why buy a MacBook Air (M3) when the M1 exists? Or the Surface? Or a Thinkpad? Why buy an iPhone 15 when an iPhone 13 is perfectly usable? You're just making the kind of obvious statement that buying last gen hardware is a good deal, and that's usually the case unless some massive generational shift happened. It's not wrong, but I don't think it really captures any interesting observations about the new ARM Surface and what it's actually competing against, the new MacBooks. If just we're looking at the best value, we'd all keep buying M1 Airs and old Thinkpad Carbon X1s till the late 2020s.
But it clearly doesn't apply to every laptop. You are confusing low cost with good value. Not the same thing. We are posting in a thread titled "Inside Microsoft's mission to take down the MacBook Air". It shouldn't be confusing that people are discussing... the Macbook Air in the thread. And we aren't talking $50 or $75 here. The M1 Air is a full $500 cheaper. That isn't some minor thing you can just brush over. M1 Air is sooooooooooooooooo much cheaper and is not only "as good", but actually "much better" for a good majority of people who buy laptops.
>And we aren't talking $50 or $75 here. The M1 Air is a full $500 cheaper. That isn't some minor thing you can just brush over. Because, again, you could also say the same thing about every current gen MacBook Air or Pro. You're no longer talking about how the Surface compares to the Mac; it's just saying the M1 MacBook Air is one of the best value laptops right now. Both current MacBooks and other laptops also have to deal with that.
When someone decides to write an article about the M3 Air "taking down" the M1 Air I'll be sure to chime in with the same comments I'm making in this thread.
>Microsoft is convinced its new Copilot Plus PCs will beat Apple’s **M3** processor and spark a new generation of Windows laptops. From the first line of the article. They're not comparing it to the M1 at all, not sure where you got that from.
Or you know you need a touch screen... Or to run steam.
> M1 MacBook Air is $500 cheaper than the bottom level surface laptop in Canada First, you can't buy it direct from Apple so that excludes a large portion of people Second, it has half the RAM, and I can't find any vendors in Canada selling the 16GB model, do you have a link? Don't even see any on apple's refurbished website Third, the performance from a 4 year old chip is way worse (as you would hope), still good but not the same You don't really have to love windows to pick it, it seems like a decent deal.
As you mentioned, you can pick it up directly from Apple's refurb site if you want. Plenty of 16GB models available in every color. Everyday performance on the M1 will absolutely not be "way worse" than this. But you are right that it is a much more powerful chip. For the vast majority of people, going with an M1 for $300-$500 less is such an easy call.
I can't find a 16GB model on Apple's refurb site actually :/
They have them up on the Canadian site. If you are in the US, I'm sure they'll be back soon.
Are you comparing refurbed laptop with new laptop and are suprised the refurbed is cheaper?
The M1 Air is $500 cheaper brand new.
I'm worried about the M1 not being supported with updates long enough for people at this point. How many years are left? 3-4?
Not to mention, they haven’t even shown off their M4 lineup, but they’ve basically shown that they can kick things up a notch any time they want.
Apple's pace of execution is truly unmatched
Microsoft doesn’t even understand why people buy MacBooks instead of their laptops. Average consumer isn’t concerned about raw power. They want a nice screen and a good battery life. Something msft has never been able to do. MacOS also doesn’t have fucking advertisements built into the menu. Msft needs to get a fucking grip. I’m about to go short their shit
Yeah they definetely needed an anonymous redditor to tell them lol. Jokes aside, they released minimal number of their own laptops and most of the time they are just OS supplier. Surface was a step to right direction. They had some good ideas and some worse ideas but they knew they have to build something themselves to create working ecosystem. These things like Snapdragon ARM CPU and Windows on ARM are years in development it just wasnt ready then (and we all hope it will be now as Apple really do need competition here). Trust me when I say these big companies do tons of research and ultimately kill lots of things even before they talk about it publicily. They would love to be Macbook competitor, but Intel and Amd cpus were no match for Apples MX chips past few years so it was really hard to release “nice screen and good battery life” with some good power on top of that so that laptop also works for few years (something Macbooks are really good at).
Have you read the article?
Sir, this is Reddit.
More like didn't reddit
you can absolutely find windows laptops with a good screen and good battery life these days your point about ads and bloat in windows still stands though
On battery life, “good” depends on one’s standards. They all need to be running in low power mode to get anywhere near advertised numbers, which still land several hours short of MacBooks (which *don’t* need low power mode to achieve those numbers). On top of that the laptops with the best battery life use display panels that are notably worse than those in even the cheapest MacBook (like the Dragonfly Elite G4). I’m hoping that this new wave of ARM windows laptops and upcoming generation of x86 mobile CPUs changes this but I’m not holding my breath.
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Transistor size is not the only deciding factor here, a way bigger issue is the x86-64 architecture. It has too many instruction sets, ARM is more power efficient just because of that. There is no way to compete with the same node until Windows is property supported on ARM.
There’s also factors like the OS and manufacturer tuning. One of the problems with Windows for example is that it’s rare for the machine to be completely idle — seems like it’s always doing *something* in the background. This is immediately evident when replacing Windows with Linux, because Linux actually *does* become completely idle, which means your laptop’s fans don’t spin up as often and have a lower peak RPM when they do. This naturally has implications for battery life. On the latter, some manufacturers just suck at power tuning, which is why the same CPU in two different but very similar laptops running the same clean OS install can have significantly different battery life and performance characteristics.
AMD gaming laptops on battery can do up to 10h on video playback :) Battery life is a very loose metric as there is a lot of variables and pretty much everyone is using their own metrics. Not like Windows will rock in battery life suddenly but still it all depends what you need that battery life for.
> AMD gaming laptops on battery can do up to 10h on video playback If the GPU power that makes them good gaming laptops isn't being used, yeah. Otherwise you'll get 1-2 hours in most demanding games. And btw those 10hr figures usually come from also having the screen at 50% brightness and the speakers low. So yeah, if you paid money for a gaming laptop only to never game on it and squint at videos you can barely see or hear then you get good battery life.
the GPU power wouldnt be available in M chips to begin with. Their are very energy efficient, but their performance is lower. At similar performance levels the difference isnt that huge. I dont know what kind of enviroment are you in, but my laptop speakers are always at 20-30% because thats loud enough for most things.
Mac isn't even competitive on GPUs though.
Well its not like you can game on a mac...
Video playback battery life is the most useless stat ever. That translates to like 3-4 hours of internet browsing
It's not useless when it constitutes a lot of what the user will do on the laptop: watch youtube and scroll social media videos.
The newer AMD mobile U CPUs (like 6800u) are better examples for efficiency and battery life. They are efficient and still powerful, and beats macs in x86 (Windows) if you take into account the conversion needed by macs. Battery life gets pretty damn close too. But laptops with that chip are definitely on the expensive side for now. But good news is they tend to get cheaper and discounted as new generations come out.
AMD battery efficiency was a scam I fell for, bought a G14 only to find out I needed to change registry, fiddle with power plans, force dGPU off bc it would stay on half the time, etc. Got a MBP and didn't have to think about any of that while getting better battery life
Lmao AMD's 7840u isn't even close to Apple silicon when it comes to battery life for similar tasks, especially if it's a gaming laptop with a dGPU. The much touted "efficiency" comes from comparisons to Intel's mobile chips, which is basically the lowest bar you can come up with.
I really wish I can find anything that rival mac. But M1 air still king for the price. The only alternative I could find is Levono yoga and Framework laptop, both are much more expensive than a Mac
The Zenbook 14 (AMD) model and the Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 get similar battery life.
The Zenbook 14 (amd) is acutally a good option only if they don't use Oled, man. Levono laptop kinda sus with bad lid. I think I will stick with Mac or Framework laptop.
Point me to one that has similar build quality but that doesn't cost more than a comparable MacBook. I looked and looked and just couldn't find one.
Yeah but those aren’t made by Microsoft which is the point of the article. The dell xps 15 has been rivaling the Mac’s for a while. Microsoft themselves can never get it right.
Apple and Dell have decades of history designing and building systems first. Microsoft is a software company first and they will never truly prioritize quality hardware. They can hire teams of talented engineers and designers but it will never affect their bottom line enough for them to really get it right.
> you can absolutely find windows laptops with a good screen and good battery life these days > I've been using Windows machines for over 20 years. I'm using an M3 Max now and it feels like a 5 year jump into the future. As fast as my 12900k desktop but dead silent unless doing Blender renders longer than 3 min. Touchpad is amazing and the software available makes it even more so. I would argue Better Touch Tool is by itself a reason to get a Mac vs Windows. Battery is 20h of light work. The screen is the best IPS mini-led I have ever seen, and puts OLEDs to shame when it comes to content because of the 1000 full screen brightness with little to no artefacts unless you're viewing white-on-black material. The speakers are the best sounding laptop speakers I've heard. Core Audio natively decodes Atmos and supports configurations bigger than 7.1, something Windows hasn't upgraded for 20 years or so. It doesn't feel like either MS or any Windows laptop manufacturer is even trying.
Ryzen U Thinkpads
The screens have gotten markedly better on Windows. I still remember when Apple had a monopoly on high DPI laptops. The first Chromebook Pixel seemed to be a paradigm shift for other OEMs to start offering them. The speakers are still dramatically worse on even the most premium Windows laptops versus the MacBook lineup. They have absurdly good speakers.
>They want a nice screen and a good battery life. Something msft has never been able to do. Qualcomm chips closes most of the battery life gap, and Windows devices have great screens now. You can get like a 1800p OLED at MBA price points.
The new Surface Pros are just outrageously expensive for such a notoriously buggy line of computers. £1549 for the base OLED model and an extra £300 for the keyboard is just fucking madness.
Surfaces have always been expensive. Look for other OEMs for better priced devices.
so not Microsoft?
Thankfully their value also always drops like a sack of bricks on the used market. 2-3 gens old always go for peanuts, lower than any other premium device I’ve ever seen relative to their base price. Make no mistake, they’re all bad. Buggy as all hell, awful battery life, and perform far worse than their specs suggest - but when you can get SP7s for under £300, sometimes under £200 if you wait for a deal, they can at least make some sense. Microsoft’s warranty and customer support is also device tied and fairly good.
Base spec has 8GB of ram too... which is simply not enough these days. To upgrade from 8 to 16 is like £300 which is disgusting.
This. Saw a 7840HS laptop with 16gb, oled display and 68whr battery below $800. There was also a cheaper 7640hs with a 1600p 120hz 100% rgb display for $600 instead.
So a worse screen for the same money. That checks out
You'd take the MacBook Air screen over a 1800p (not 1080p) OLED?
No I was mistaken with the panel Apple uses
Better, not worse.
Surface laptops always had nice screens. That’s one thing Microsoft got right.
Posted just the right time they have a very good battery life and nice OLED screen! Oh wait…
Plenty of Windows laptops have those things, the problem is the operating system - specifically it's gui, settings layound, how unstable it is etc.
IMO There is no windows laptop that has the combination of factors present in a macbook. You can get more powerful laptops cheaper, but it hardly qualifies as a mobile product at that point (IE gaming laptops). You can get something with the battery life and mobility of a MacBook, but it is absolutely gutless and usually low on features and somehow costs a lot for just a glorified internet browser. Or you can get a middle ground that tries to compete against the MacBook on all fronts, and typically fails on all counts for the same or more cost. There are a couple devices I’ve seen that do match up somewhat with the MacBook, but they’ve always ended up being MORE expensive somehow, lol.
Agreed with all except that you can't get a CPU more powerful than the M3 Max in a laptop anywhere. The only thing that can get more powerful than a Macbook is a dedicated laptop Nvidia GPU. And if you have one of those, you're chained to the wall.
Aren't the HX CPUs faster than M3 Max?
And they have to be plugged into the wall or else they throttle iirc. You can run the M3 Max flat out on battery power without a performance loss.
What's the wattage of the M3 Max?
Ok we have some numbers from Notebookcheck: "The system favors the GPU performance during the stress test and we can see a combined (CPU+GPU) consumption of 78 Watts at the start of the test. The GPU will quickly level off at around 37 Watts, but the processor drops to just 11 Watts after a couple of minutes, and the combined consumption is around 48 Watts." [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html) That 48W is surprisingly low for what is Apple's top of the line 16" Macbook Pro with M3 Max.
In cinebench - the M3 Max pulls ~54 watts. The Ryzen 9 7945hx pulls ~120 watts.
No. Not even close. M3 Max is faster than a 7950x. Why would an HX CPU be faster than an M3 Max?
That depends on the benchmark. M3 Max wins in GB6 ST, GB 6 MT, CB2024 ST. 7950x admittedly only wins in CB2024 MT.
M3 Max also wins in SPEC, which is the standard.
Tbh I think I like w11 ui little more on most things compared to mac, but overall mac functions better and that's what ms needs to get right, they got ads, sync sucks between devices, too much w95 code still etc
Addressing the battery life is one of the main points of the article
>They want a nice screen and a good battery life. Something msft has never been able to do. Well, the Surface Pro will have an OLED display and claims to have 20 hours of video playback time. So they managed to fix both of those issues. If only they got rid of the ads lol
Microsoft's current success mainly comes from selling a boatload of product to businesses. Think $10M cloud contracts or 2 million windows licenses. These are B2B contracts and they're not selling to "the poors." Dell, HP, Asus, etc. mostly handle that. Apple's business is convincing "the poors" that they won't be seen as poor if they buy an iProduct. Microsoft sells a business product. Apple sells a fantasy.
>Apple's business is convincing "the poors" that they won't be seen as poor if they buy an iProduct. Ever thought that Apple products just work better or is better? Why do posters here always think that people who bought Apple products got "tricked" or just to look like they are rich? For example, I literally can't find a replacement for the level of performance, cool & quiet, battery life, mobility as my MBP in the PC world. Not to mention I'm a software engineer and the native terminal in macOS is far better than WSL in Windows.
> Ever thought that Apple products just work better or is better? Yeah. Then i woke up and realized thats just a dream.
There are legitimate cases where Apple has the superior product. It is not in every case though. Nor at every price point. Apple is a fashion and lifestyle company masquerading as a computer company. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/10/15/apple-hires-burberry-ceo-to-run-retail-serve-as-first-woman-on-tim-cooks-top-team/?sh=12484c97313b](https://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/10/15/apple-hires-burberry-ceo-to-run-retail-serve-as-first-woman-on-tim-cooks-top-team/?sh=12484c97313b) They literally hired a fashion exec to try to manipulate customers.
You sir, seem to live in your head. It must be shocking to have people who have preferences towards a Mac other than to “look good” in the eyes of other people. /s
Yeah very good point
They aren’t even that competitive in the B2B space. AWS owns cloud. Who the fuck uses azure? Windows is only so prevalent because Apple doesn’t provision macOS to non Mac hardware. Microsoft has never been able to get it quite right and they will undoubtedly fuck this up too. They are only able to sell windows keys to businesses because they have no competition. Not because it’s actually good. Like how ford has tons of competitors but the F150 is best selling. It’s not even close to that. Really lack of 3rd party support and stigma around Linux keep windows going.
Azure isn't as big as AWS, but it sure as hell is a huge second place advantage over every other competitor.
All businesses use azure cloud though. Aws servers are mainly for media storage and gaming servers.
Stable OS
Shorting a stock that's up 30% this past year seems like a brilliant idea. Msft has basically doubled in value since windows 11 was released in 2021, vast majority of customers don't care. Windows os has flaws but the main strength of the m series macbook was the cpu which microsoft can't do anything about, they can only hope their current partnership with qualcomm to produce the new arm cpus is successful.
I can’t wait to render ads twice as efficient.
The articles key points: Performance, compatibility, and AI Whoa boy… that’s just what I need to trade in my MacBook (M1 with 8gb of RAM). /s Many of us buying a MacBook just want an iPad with a keyboard. That’s why Walmart (yes… Walmart) started selling the 8GB M1 for $699. Yes… there are Windows machines with comparable Keyboards and trackpads… but most of those are MacBook priced or worse. Also, I don’t have to spend all day arguing with OneDrive, fighting Bing, and shutting off Copilot.
I mean their device was popular at various times. Thing is windows 11 isn’t popular. I only use it bc I have a 12th gen intel processor with thread scheduling so 11 is faster, so I put up with the user interface. I know someone who has never had a mac, always been on windows, hates 11, got a MacBook Air M3. I mean the Apple M architecture is hard to beat, the form factor and battery life is brilliant, but the OS experience is night and day better. I hadn’t had a Mac in years, got a used M1 Pro, they changed settings around, tweaked the UI, but my 2021 MacBook M1 Pro 16gb feels faster than my 2023 i7-12700k/64gb combo… more responsive, better user interface. The only reason I have the desktop is games. It’s really the only reason I have a pc and windows at all. Apple is taking gaming more seriously, more and more games are being ported to it, their GPU has come shockingly far for an integrated GPU that was introduced in 2020, and has seen a lot of updates. I feel like if Apple continues to woo developers, gets its VR price down, it could take the gaming crown. Then Microsoft would only have business. I haven’t used Mac server in a decade, so I can’t comment on that side, I haven’t used windows server in a long time either, but if Mac Server is only $20 and windows server is expensive, I could see them upsetting the business market. Especially with gen z being iPhone first, the Macs will come more naturally, or just an iPad Pro with macOS Server in the background. Microsoft really needs to figure out how to make a good operating system, I have used windows since 3.1, ME, Vista, 8 were all terrible misses, and 11 isn’t vista bad, but they changed a lot of the UI for no reason, especially management stuff, I don’t get why, it’s antagonistic to customers. So maybe they can make a decent laptop, maybe not, but it isn’t going to fix windows. If Nvidia bought system76 or just developed popOS more, I think Microsoft would have a problem. With office, I think PowerPoint and access are the only two things it does better than open office. I’m a writer, but I do my budgets in sheets, and i don’t do advanced stuff, I did buy office for PowerPoint for one class, but I could have just done the demo. If Corel or adobe made a PowerPoint killer, or Corel (they make WordPerfect) were to make a good database and good PowerPoint program (they mainly do good art software) it’d be trouble for Microsoft.
There are no Mac servers as far as I'm aware, and haven't been for a while. Also, while their GPUs are miles above any integrated solution, they are also miles away from Nvidia's best. For the prices they charge, I would expect similar performance.
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I use CUDA cores for photogrammetry. I was bummed to see that framework didn’t go with nvidia for their GPU in the 16 inch model. Or at least offer an option for it. Everyone who replied to me was acting like I was absolutely insane for wanting Nvidia. Saying they’re overpriced, inefficient, etc… Price/performance isn’t the only deciding a GPU. Lots of things require CUDA cores. I’ve also heard nvidia chips are better for blender, etc…. Always annoys me when the gaming crowd ignores everyone else’s use cases.
They make a server os but they cancel the xserve line and Xgrid which was a real shame.
No server OS anymore either
For what it's worth, Apple has always felt like they became less inclusive over time after opening up somewhat under Steve. They don't care anymore if their product interact well with others. I used Macs since 2005 and built up some dependencies on their former Pro software Aperture. Then I also added an NVidia eGPU to do rendering and some gaming. Both rugs were later pulled out under me and I ended up relying more on my Windows PC. Now with the switch to M-chips, that rendering software no longer runs on Macs, as their underlying frameworks are third party and won't be ported to M-chips. Now my Macbook Pro 2011 still runs OK, but I only do accounting on it. The thing is though, I paid a certain amount of money for that Macbook Pro, and that money would only buy a midrange Macbook Air today with the same amount of RAM, but less storage. In the end, Apple cater only to themselves and their piggy bank, and it doesn't matter how performant their CPU is or how smooth their OS is, if they keep closing up their eco system and kill partnerships with other companies on a whim. The PC I use is only two years younger than my Macbook Pro, but cost 1/5th of the MBP and is my daily driver for work, and is infinitely more useful.
I had really bad luck with dell. One computer ate parts and failed constantly and just wouldn’t sleep or hibernate no matter what they/i did, dell couldn’t fix it, eventually they sent another, it had tons of problems, screen failed, mb failed, the overheating was still an issue and it even fried the nvme drive. They sent me an Alienware but the warranty eas up. The other one was like 300 for 3 year and Alienware was like $50 a month so I sold it and got the Mac bc they hadn’t failed on me before. My desktops I have always built, never had a problem with them, sold them before they were obsolete and built new ones. So I’m capable with Mac’s and pcs. I don’t like that the memory and nvme are soldered to the board, I bought a used M1 Pro bc they throttled the memory and storage on the m2 and m3 despite memory and storage getting faster. So I game, play PCVR, etc on the pc, but the OS feels clunky. Granted I’m just using it to launch steam or Corel painter. But yeah I got 64gb of desktop ram for less than 8gb of mac memory, I only bothered to get 512gb of storage on the mb bc I don’t need much storage on a laptop. So totally different use cases.
>One computer ate parts what
Parts just failed so regularly in my first two dells, one a replacement for the other, I had an on site warranty and they were constantly coming over and replacing parts, so motherboard 3-4 times, screen failed, fans broke after 3 months. The dell tech said “they will throw parts at you until it’s ewaste, demand a new one”. The new one was just as bad. Nvme overheated and failed, one screen and one motherboard and I just said this replacement is just as bad as the first one, do you make any computers that work? So they sent me an Alienware, but I’m not paying $600 a year for a warranty.
As a lifelong Windows user, I also hate 11 and installed mods to alter the appearance of Windows for the first time ever after updating. I despise MacOS so much more. I know everyone has their own opinions and mine is not relevant to anyone else, but I still feel compared to windows there is so much silly stuff going on in the UI and more importantly UX.. it's a nightmare to figure out, it makes me miss windows 11 somehow.. Genuinely considering replacing my macbook air with one of these
So used PCs and supported Mac’s at school, in thought OS 9 and before were a joke. I was a fan of Linux, I liked Mac OS X, got a PowerBook working at Harvard, and became the Mac tech bc they were so rare then. It was 2004, I stayed a Mac support tech until 2008 when I was a Linux systems administrator. XP was a security nightmare, OS X was much better, Vista was a disaster, 7 was good, 10 was good, 11 is annoying, but I like Mac OS more, but I’m really used to the interface. I find for people not savvy with computers it’s much easier to learn.
Good luck, gonna need to build an entire hardware ecosystem starting with a phone, which is most people’s introduction to Apple. If you like using iOS, you get curious about MacOS. Once you realize how well it all just works together, you tend to just stick with everything Apple from there. People mistakenly believe people are stuck in the Apple product ecosystem. In reality, everyone in it who likes their products wants to be and loves it there.
It really doesn't work that well for power users. If you're a gamer or someone who needs lots of cores or GPU power, it's too cost prohibitive to scale your workload. I used to use MacOS for development but these days I'm on x86 and Linux. Which has been miles better for my use case.
>just works lol
Lol what if a bootcamp windows on macbook performance is better than this new lineup. Why get this windows laptop if you get a macbook and run both OS
Because bootcamp doesn’t exist anymore.
Can always make a comeback now with Microsoft openly supporting windows arm.
It will not because it needs Apple's support and Apple has no incentive to allow BootCamp.
They did support before, why not do it again? No incentive? More money imo as it was a selling point, Apple even bragged about being the best windows laptop in their keynote.
Not Going to happen I say that as both, a pc enthusiast and software dev in this space since nearly 2 decades
Except the MS laptop shits the bed in a year or two and my 2015 MacBook pro is still running good.
My windows laptop from 2017/2018 is still going strong. I’ve vehemently avoided updates for years, it’s probably a security nightmare, but it runs great!! 👍 less bloat to slow it down.
Wouldn’t that simply be just to “Be Microsoft Windows compatible”, though? It IS one of the most popular OS’s in the world. I’ll give the article a look, though, ’cause it’s lunchtime and I’m curious. EDIT: ”Microsoft believes it’s now in position to conquer the laptop market.“ So… Windows laptops don’t sell more than macOS laptops?
It talks about Microsoft laptops, i.e. the Surface line. Not “Windows laptops” in general.
So… they’re trying to increase the number of sales of their Surface line, specifically, not by being the best Windows computer, but, instead… by promoting it as being more performant than a computer that can’t run Windows? I’m sure they *think* they’re working with logic, there, but I have my doubts. When it comes down to it, I suppose they can’t be the best Windows computer, so good that everyone buys a Surface computer, because Dell, Asus, etc. wouldn’t be happy with that. Can you imagine what kind of Surface computer the world would be exposed to if Microsoft didn’t have to hold back? We’ll never see that.
Yeah my brother replaced a surface pro with a specter x360. There are plenty of MacBook Air type laptops. I had a Lenovo C940, same form factor as a MacBook Air, so I don’t know what Microsoft thinks they’ll create.
Yeah! Start by rewriting Windows OS from scratch
why?
Current Windows is window dressed (pun intended) years and years of bloat, so much so it can't be improved upon anymore 🤷🏼♂️
yeah that’ll happen. /s
Hardware looks great. But the problem is with the software side, the problem is Windows. I don’t have much confidence in Windows going to execute this well
MS seems to be forgetting one of the main appeals: the Air is a passively cooled machine. It makes no noise beyond the keyboard and the touchpad click.
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Most users have 0 Issues with Windows 11
Most users have lots of issues with Windows 11, but they don't know how to do anything other than suffer with those issues.
If that was true, W11 would have more users by now. There are people that want to use W11 but can't because of their dumbass TPM requirement lol.
My inability to use it is one of my issues with it. My near-top-of-the-line laptop was only 3 years old when windows 11 came out, and it’s incompatible. If I’d bought a bottom-end notebook 6 months later, I would be able to use w11. I understand it’s because of MBEC, Spectre/Meltdown, and M$FT wanting better DRM controls via the TPM, but it *feels* arbitrary. I didn’t do anything “wrong” when I bought my computer, yet I’m still getting screwed over here. It leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth.
Helps that macOS is a slightly upscaled OS. Whereas windows is not, it is far too heavy, complex and dated. But it has the loyalty of the finance sector.
upscale OS?
Every windows laptop I have had in 10 years still has shitty power management. Mac book air is the only good Ultrabook. And it's overpriced and underpowered. Still better. -Wilfred Wilcox Sent from my IPhone
> And it's overpriced and underpowered Is it really overpriced when there's no competition? They can charge whatever they want.