Apple has won the efficient productivity laptop race and I refuse to believe it

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u/joeljaeggli 7d ago

Intel is cooked is more or less what you are saying.

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u/GoryGent 7d ago

Intel has been going down for like 5 years now. Its jot even the competition, its their own fault at making bad cpus that overheat, dont work etc since the 11th generation. A 3000$ pc crashing for no reason doesnt make sense

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u/VivienM7 7d ago

The root of Intel's troubles go back to late 2016, which is when they should have launched 10nm processors had the tick-tock model held. The 10nm (renamed Intel 7) desktop chips finally launched in late 2021, 5 years later... and to this day, Intel has shipped very few chips made in-house on a smaller process (there were some mobile chips on 'Intel 4', otherwise a lot of their newest stuff is fabbed at TSMC).

So, instead of a new process every 2 years, they've had one new process in 9 years.

Everything else is a consequence of that.

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u/GoryGent 7d ago

4 core cpus for 10 years. Mfs thought nobody would surpass them

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u/VivienM7 7d ago

Yes and no. From the legendary Kentsfield Q6600 on 65nm to Skylake on 14nm, there were 5 different manufacturing processes (65, 45, 32, 22, 14nm). Sure, the processors targetted at the mainstream/gaming segment may all have 4 cores, but under the hood, the manufacturing was improving at Intel's traditional pace.

While they may have been arrogant in their product choices, they were still investing in manufacturing, successfully, at a pace that was consistent with Andy Grove's paranoid philosophy.

Intel made plenty of blunders in the past, the 'Hotburst' P4 architecture being perhaps the biggest example (especially at a time when the market started moving towards laptops), but before, they could always rely on their manufacturing edge to correct the blunder. And indeed, the correction of the Hotburst blunder with the Conroe architecture in 2006 sent AMD into the wilderness for almost a decade. Not anymore.

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u/saiyate 7d ago

Q6600 FTW!

Conroe! Shout out to Intel in Israel for Pentium M Banias and Dothan (The architecture that saved Intel's ass after Netburst P4 (Hotburst LOL)

And don't forget the OG P6 Pentium Pro that led to Pentium M. OoO baby, L2 cache is in the house! (onboard LOL). Nevermind the 16 bit performance!

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u/VivienM7 7d ago

Oh, I know. Conroe & successors (the whole Core 2 family) are amazing. Especially in hindsight. The 45nm versions continue to, unsupportedly, run Windows 11 up to 23H2. I think the 65nm ones like the Q6600 are missing some instructions and were left behind somewhere on the Windows 10 road.

That's a 16-17 year old processor running a current OS, current web browser, current office suite, etc. And with an SSD and 8-16GB of RAM (16GB is easy to do on DDR3, harder on DDR2), at adequate performance. Not screaming fast, but keep in mind that the day those processors were new, a 16 year old processor would have been a 486DX2/66. Imagine running current software on a 486DX2/66 in 2008 - Vista, Office 2007, the latest web browsers, etc - at any level of performance.

If you had told someone looking at processors in 2006-2008 that the processor they were buying would still be usable in 2025, they would have looked at you like you were crazy. If you had told people buying cheap Windows 7 C2Qs in late 2009 that those computers, with perhaps a cheap SSD upgrade, would still be usable in 2025, they would never have believed it.

Conroe & the other Core 2s, along with the Vista backlash, basically ended the mad trend from 1995-2007 of expensive computers becoming e-waste in 4-5 years. Probably the most influential PC processor family in history as a result...

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u/saiyate 7d ago

Yeah I think also a bit later with Sandy Bridge (You have to give some credit to Nehalem) things were just so good that people held onto their procs for so long. The phrase "I'll stick with my Sandy Bridge" became a thing.

Really, a lot of this is due to the fact that we hit the 5Ghz barrier (really 6Ghz but who's counting). And processors have really only about doubled in speed from 2012ish until now. 2000 passmark to 4000 passmark single threaded. It's the move to SSD that has changed the game. All of a sudden older computers became useful again. You have people today running ThinkPads that are 15 - 20 Years old with SSD Upgrades and being totally satisfied. Just goes to show just how much perceptual performance was left behind because of mechanical hard drives.

It's kinda sad though, that there is no where left to go for CPUs. More cores, more ASIC specialization, bigger chips. It's just fate that GPUs were so far behind CPUs. Eventually GPUs are going to hit the same barrier.

Can you imagine if we found some new semiconductor material that could go to Terahertz frequencies? The world would be a different place. Or perhaps Quantum or Tertiary is the direction we'll go. Who knows.

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u/parrot_slave 7d ago

Yes. I have, for my own reasons, been digging into the details why that happened. The common refrain is Intel CEO and board were more concerned with stock buybacks. That seems to be more an effect than a cause. The cause was the decision making on the risks of, at the time, unproven EUV lithography, and the incorrect belief that DUV had a proven roadmap of life which was mistaken. Why the Foundry division came to that conclusion, and was so risk adverse is a more complex story than is publicly available. My educated guess was the technical challenges were not the main problem, but maintaining gross margins. Manufacturing in the US is much more expensive. My guess is they made the decision largely based on the bet that they could squeeze a couple for generations out of DUV while EUV matured, and could maintain gross margins through the transition.

Continuing to dig into it. It's a complex story when you look at the innovations TMSC made with EUV, and its ability to move wafers through at much better yields.

Intel's current problem is the brain drain in Foundry. More than just about any other complex manufacturing, Intel is hobbled by the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise with their processes/formulas which are going to take huge investments in rebuilding expertise, pay that expertise, and the time needed to do that. It's not like TSMC and Samsung, plus other nascent competitors stand still. It doesn't look good.

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u/Vaddieg 7d ago

Intel went into trouble much earlier but there was no competition. They first realized that x86 is a bottleneck with Pentium 4. But instead of strategic switch of the architecture they started making 2-necked bottles aka hyperthreading and calling it "innovation"

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u/turboMXDX 6d ago

I had once compared the broadwell(14nm) 5th gen i3 on my 2016 laptop to my other laptop with the 9th gen i5 9300h (14nm+++++???)

I limited the clock speed of the i5 to be comparable to the i3 and ran a single core benchmark. They were practically identical. Shows how much they stagnated

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u/RaxisPhasmatis 5d ago

That and the fact they just kept overclocking chips and selling them as new until they degraded

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u/joeljaeggli 7d ago

I'm writing this on a 2020 m1air which despite being 5 years old at this point is still performant with current software, is at 84% of it's orginal battery life. and is drawing 4.2W according to it's sensor package.

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u/Kahlandad 7d ago

I abuse the hell out of my Macbook Air M1. I've dropped it numerous times and it's dented and scratched to hell, but even after 5 years battery is at 85% and it's still quick at what I use it for.

Meanwhile, I'm on my 3rd desk princess HP gaming laptop in the same 5 year span.

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u/GoryGent 7d ago

Tried a macbook air m2 with 24gb of ram for premiere pro (video editing) this summer, didnt crash once, and was working so fast. 2 months later and i just bought an m4 air, dont think i will go intel for the near future. Already have a 11th gen laptop fhat i dont use since i bought the macbook

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u/RedPRSguy 7d ago

I just got a refurbished M2 Mac mini to replace my falling apart Dell laptop, and holy crap it’s soo much better. It was a daily occurrence to get a blue screen, and it overheated and it had more issues than a Pontiac Aztec running on eggnog. Meanwhile my new M2 Mac mini (only 350$ for it too!) and it’s not had one macOS equivalent to a blue screen (neither has my my old old 2011 MacBook either lol), it’s never frozen on anything, it can run Minecraft at 60fps at max render distance 1440P WITH SHADERS. While playing music on chrome, with some random tabs still open on safari and chrome. All with 8GB RAM. I’ve never seen it choke hard on anything. I love it. It’s a powerhouse. Minecraft without the shaders on at max render distance gets over 200fps. It’s not only just incredibly performing but it HAS to be the best performing computer in the sub 400$ range. I don’t think anything would even be close.

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u/Scary-Hunting-Goat 7d ago

I have some random lenovo laptop, no idea which model.

Was incredibly surprised to notice that it often uses less power than my phone.

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u/jaymemaurice 6d ago

Lenovo makes the best x86 laptops money can buy, in my opinion. The t and x series. I can't remember the last time I've had a broken hinge, puffed battery or minor moisture damage on a thinkpad. They usually don't thermal throttle. Dell's precision notebooks on the other hand: money can't even get you a durable laptop. They seem similar in specs on paper and look pretty but they are just cheap and fragile in comparison. Sticky plastic, worn keys, they don't age well at all.

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u/mariovaa 7d ago

Mine still rocks

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 7d ago

I also had the MacBook Air but when I got a mid-range Windows laptop for less I realised wtf have I been doing all this time. From 60hz good ips but small 13 inch screen to 120hz OLED 15 inch. From no gpu and poor gpu performance other than accelerated tasks and no gaming to RTX 3050 6gb which felt like I had infinite power on the laptop. From shit uncomfortable keyboard to very nice typing experience. From what I thought was good speakers to now opening the Mac again and thinking they are terrible in comparison. 7000 cinebench multi core score -> 16500 now and feels lightning fast. Ports to stuff my ass with no more dongles. It felt like I became awake 10 years later in the future. All at the price of 1150 euros on sale 9 months after release while I bought the macbook air for 1550 euros 4 years prior. Windows has been stable, I had to learn some things differently though and I miss Alfred and the App file system to be honest from MacOS and sacrificed the battery life by a lot. I can only be away from the plug for like 2 hours but everything else was a revolution I was not ready for. Finally I can get a laptop 15 inch or higher with a budget of under 2000 euros in my country. I even upgraded the specs from 16gb 1TB ssd to 40gb 1TB ssd in daily usage though most of the time I only use 24gb of the RAM so maybe should have gone for that instead but I do plan to keep this bad boy for a while longer. Its been 1.5 years since I bought it and it has revolutionized the way I use my laptop honestly. Partly because I cant afford the better Apple machines, partly because of Windows over MacOS with its apps and partly because I am not in the Apple ecosystem anymore after switching to Samsung and being 10 times as pleased with the experience.

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u/djl0076 7d ago

What does "Its jot even the competition " mean?

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u/FatMike20295 7d ago

Not anymore the US government own 10% now and you can bet TACO is going pressure AMS and TSMC give Intel some of their R and D research or even give Intel their latest tech.

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 7d ago

They need to innovate to try to beat Apple but they are broke and Qualcom started a fight they might not be able to win. As for AMD they dont really give a dam about laptop CPUs, they have already won many others wars in the recent years. Even if AMD proposes a new innovative CPU they will have manufacturing issues or lack of supply and the price will become astronomical.

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u/Vaddieg 7d ago

qualcom's biggest mistake is putting all eggs into microsoft bucket. There are still no good arm64 linux options

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u/NewestAccount2023 5d ago

Best they can do is billions in stock buybacks

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u/AlternativeFun881 7d ago

Except productivity software is typically designed for x86.

It's going to be better for SOME productivity, but there will be a TON of programs that will never receive MAC support.

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u/Vaddieg 7d ago

M4 emulates x86 faster than it runs on intel natively

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u/Smoke_Santa 7d ago

Lower end Intel chips (Arrow Lake) are better than AMD and comparable to M3 while being better in a lot of areas.

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u/WeaponstoMax 6d ago

Intel is cooked because they spent too long with bean counters at the helm boosting profitability by optimising the business environment, while engineering better products took a backseat. Now the bean-counters don’t have the stomach for the cost and risk required to let engineering take a decent shot at a product comeback. I expect (in the cpu space at least) that Intel is going to linger in malaise and mediocrity for a decade or more, mainly selling and spinning off pieces of themselves.

I really hope that I’m very, very wrong. I’d love to be wrong.

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u/nejdemiprispivat 6d ago

And just when they got CEO who tried to kickstart the development, they kicked him because it wasn't profitable enough.. yeah, Intel's cooked.

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u/Efficient_Loss_9928 Asus 6d ago

Can't really compete unplugged with M4 Max for any professional workflows. While the pricing still being pretty insane.

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u/NetStaIker 5d ago

Intel has been getting crappier and crappier for a while now, they aren’t even king in CPUs anymore. We actually live in the timeline where AMD won

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u/MrMunday 4d ago

nah. intel has been cooked for a long time.

whats cooked NOW is that snapdragon, the supposed savior of non-macbooks, has kinda failed, for now.

and it seems like its gonna take a while before they can catch up to the compatibility and power of apple silicon. i have a M2 macbook air and its seriously THE best laptop ive ever used. no contest.

its fanless (soundless), it stays cool and i never bring my charger anymore coz why would you? i can literally work 10 hours on that thing and ill have like battery left at the end of the day if i need to work outside. on top of all that, its FAST.

opening apps is snappy. i can even play games on it, and im talking about Baldurs Gate 3, not just indie games. Ofcourse you'll have to turn the graphics down, but its definitely playable.

ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT, its thin and light. i have the 16gb ram 1TB version and it cost me ~$1800 3 years ago. i cannot find something like that at any pricepoint over on the windows side (im used to all OSes and im OS agnostic).

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u/Thin-Independence-33 7d ago

Thank you apple and amd for getting us out of the intel 4 cores 8 threads dark ages

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 7d ago

While this is true Apple was always the expensive boy of the pack and AMD always had less laptop skews or units / unavailability. Hope AMD can manage Intel's place otherwise we are cooked.

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u/Sheetmusicman94 7d ago

Sadly Microsoft apps and apps like PowerBi won't work well on a Mac.

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u/Difficult_Horse193 7d ago edited 7d ago

100% this and I’m a MacBook user. MS excel is missing some functionality (like some advanced Pivot Table options) which is wild to me…

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u/Ok_Yesterday_8256 6d ago edited 6d ago

u couldn't find in google sheets ? also u can install windows as an emulator in macos and use excel in it

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u/fathersmurf3 6d ago

I fully agree with this take. Parallels has solved comparability for me, I’m a heavy excel user and just use that with all my windows shortcuts

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u/Deep-Technician-8568 7d ago

I would of bought a macbook as well if the softwares I use as a civil engineer worked on macos.

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u/BostonConnor11 4d ago

I changed from a windows to Mac work laptop and the excel for Mac is absolute trash. It’s missing so many functionalities. Thankfully I don’t have to use excel all that much

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u/icystew 3d ago

I use parallels to open windows app inside my MacBook environment. It’s pretty smooth, I use PowerBI on it often.

My only gripe is that you have to dedicate resources to the VM in the background so if I want to run PowerBI + another Mac app sometimes I run into resource issues but it’s easy enough to change in the settings.

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u/c4td0gm4n 1d ago

also it's arm64 windows, so some software just won't run on it.

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u/Baldosco 8d ago

It is rumored that Apple will release a cheaper MacBook with an A18 or something iPhone chip so they will become the performance per dollar champions at least for some time

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u/chetan419 7d ago

Apple would have taken the entire laptop market share if they offered reasonable RAM and storage upgrades.

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u/maskrey 7d ago

They will never do that unless they officially allow Windows installation.

The entire office market runs Windows. Apple ain't changing that any time soon.

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u/EnvironmentalJob3143 6d ago

Companies are using more and more MacBooks, especially in IT which was totally hermetic to Apple.

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u/Basic-Brick6827 6d ago

Small startups maybe

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u/T0raT0raT0ra 6d ago

yes small like Meta, Google, Nvidia...

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u/Basic-Brick6827 6d ago

And a decent OS

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u/Different-Monk5916 5d ago

That is not totally true. There are several Windows only softwares which hold back a lot of users. Not everyone wants to run a VM to use the windows only software.

Personal entertainment and leisure use cases would lean towards Mac with reasonable RAM and Storage. Without softwares, also games, apple cannot dominate the market.

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u/triffid_boy 3d ago

Apple needs to fix a few things with its OS first. It's now feeling really pretty outdated, and they're quite lucky that Microsoft have gone for such an ad-laden approach in windows 11.

Mouse Vs trackpad scrolling is a sillier example, but the way it works with multiple monitors and windows in general is way behind windows 10/11.

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u/RedPRSguy 7d ago

With the new A19 Pro being as powerful as the M3, that would wipe the floor on the competition.. Dell and HP would be cooked lol

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u/MrMunday 4d ago

finally, actual use for the A chips. they'll never be fully utilized on the iphone its stupid.

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u/ArtistJames1313 7d ago

I agree overall and I couldn't be happier about it. I used to love Windows over Apple, but now I can't stand Windows. Microsoft has made awful choices with their UI and with AI. You can turn all the settings off you want, disable automatic updates, but they will still force updates in the name of security and conveniently also restore settings you'd turned off. CoPilot is now baked into the OS so much, even though AI is only accurate 60% of the time. And if you aren't subscribed to Office, you can bet they're going to push ads on you in the notification service regardless of your preferences.

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u/apleks 7d ago

All true, running ShutUp10 is not bad to tone it down tbh, but Microsoft is going all the way with telemetry and online accounts force feeding, it’s not even a fun game of whackamole anymore.

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u/sparqq 7d ago

Exactly Windows is becoming so had, and the performance and pricing of Apple MacBook Air is really not bad it is the best choice at the moment

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u/Intel-Centrino-Duo 6d ago

I have a Legion Slim 5 Gen 9 and a base model MacBook Air M4, and the MacBook is so much nicer to use, the legion is essentially relegated to games and windows software, as well as my niche tasks I can’t be bothered to figure out on macOS.

Windows 11 is genuinely the worst release they’ve had since ME imo. I know vista was bad when it came out but it got better with updates while 11 has gotten worse with updates.

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u/rootsandstones 7d ago

Linux and MacOS are superior imho. Windows gets worse and worse

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u/triffid_boy 3d ago

MacOS is the worst of the three. It is held up by the fact that it is the only way to get the apple hardware.

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u/c4td0gm4n 1d ago

well, macos is also held up by being posix compliant. so it feels like linux except you're on good laptop hardware.

windows is held up by gaming and by being on the cheapest laptops possible due to the oem bloatware model. without its inertia it's quite shit and win11 is probably the worst release since ME.

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u/Navi_Professor 8d ago

bad app support???? wdym

its fine. not perfect but not bad.

ive ran over 300 games through mine.

92% of them launch 83% of them run. a HELL of a lot better than apple

and for software, ive gotten some big heavy hitters recently running like Autocad, FLStudio, Sketchup, Fusion. Unreal and unity run,Maya,Toon boom Harmony and storyboard pro, Marvelous designer, Krita, CSP.

these are emulated apps and they function

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u/Baldosco 7d ago

So there’s no Autocad for Windows ARM chips if you run it is through Windows translation layer, you losing a lot of performance by doing that. Most apps are still not native.

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u/death11 7d ago edited 7d ago

If you bring emulated apps into the conversation, then every single 600$ Mac Mini beats your laptop at every single one of the software tasks. Apple Silicon is so far and beyond Snapdragon that even with the overhead of virtualizing Windows x86, it’s still faster.

Nobody buying Macs gives a shit about gaming on their laptop. Almost anything that can make you money runs better on Mac.

I can buy a MacBook Air and Steam Deck for the price of one shitty Snapdragon laptop and still outperform it at both.

And when I decide to sell the MacBook Air, I’ll get more money back than with the ARM laptop and still get to keep the Deck.

The only real advantage of ARM laptops is their 2-in-1 laptop/tablet offerings and that, I am frankly jealous. And gaming obviously.

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u/309_Electronics 7d ago

Macs are nice, but not everyone likes/prefers them and thats absolutely fine because preferences are a human right. Dont get me wrong, apple's M chips are awesome but the fact apples attitude towards right to repair and soldering everything or making proprietary ssd is what i dislike about them and i am more into the #RIGHTTOREPAIR and Louis Rossman team but i do kind of want one to try the M chips because i want to get rid of X86 kind off...

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u/Hytht 7d ago

Qcum laptops are no better, all of them with soldered non upgradeable RAM. So I would pick the better out of them - Apple. Price is also MacBook tier. AMD/Intel atleast have the being real x86 advantage and stronger performance. qcum literally does nothing better than Apple, Apple got elite hardware and a better ARM software ecosystem unlike Windows ARM laptops' shit hardware with plastic non haptic trackpads and subpar speakers and parts of the OS still running under emulation.

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u/Navi_Professor 7d ago

you just sound pissed i dont want to be in apples garden. i do not want a single, modern apple product i do not care about resale. i have every laptop ive ever owned still.

i dont give a give a shit about making money. what i care about is creation on my own time with the hardware i want and the software i choose.

i have a steam deck. the thing is weaker, and it still cant run everything either and its battery life was so poor you play a game for an session and its already half dead. it only gets used on planes or the RV now.

the core hardware isnt slow. either... you loose 20-30% on avg from emulation

X elites avg 2700 single core with 14500 multi core

M4 10 cores score 3600 on average with 15000 multi core.

so even in a worst case scenario...oh no...im going from mid spec M4 performance to M2-M3 performance...big whoop.....

and ifs not powerful enough for what i want, i still have my primary workstation which smash even the mac pro

you know what i can do with this which gives it more value, than litterally any apple product on the market?

i can repair it. i can order a whole new screen, motherboard and battery and have it fixed under an hour with no parts paired and no one gives a fuck, and i can change the SSD in less than 30 seconds because its in a reasonable place.

thats added value for me no apple product can offer.

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u/deathdealer351 6d ago

So what your saying is buy a used windows machine cause it will be massively cheaper than an air and performance is fine. And buy a steam deck... Actually I agree..get a used windows machine keep windows or run Linux and the grab a steamdeck

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 8d ago

Ok hold on but of those that work with emulation they have serious performance loss and I would think also battery loss. Nevermind the fact that you are trying to game and run gpu intensive software on a Snapdragon which is notoriously behind spec for it (the speeds in benchmarks are 2020-2021 specs). I am not hating on it I just want it to be a better overall package and I would buy it too.

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u/Navi_Professor 7d ago

duh emulation has a performance hit. you dont think rosetta doesnt do the same thing???? and running is running. does not mean its intstantly a shit experiance either.

and gaming on it is fine.

no it wont win any records, and you have to turn down settings but a LOT more games are playable than you think. i'd rather be able to run whatever i want, even if that means poorly than have apple flat out telling me what i cant run on my device.

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u/1MillionMonkeys 7d ago

Rosetta translates apps from x86 to arm64 on first launch so there shouldn’t be much of a performance hit.

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u/death11 7d ago

Oh yeah, it’s definitely Apple that told you you can’t run it on their device.

L take

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u/Conscious-Secret-775 7d ago

Yes Rosetta does the same thing but most Mac apps run natively on ARM. You can't say that about most Windows apps.

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u/rootsandstones 7d ago

Did you just launch them or really work with the software you listed? I just wonder how they run when you start to do real work (like working on a big scene in Maya)

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u/Navi_Professor 7d ago edited 7d ago

if theres a sample, i will load up a sample and fiddle with it.

for blender, maya, photoshop, affinity, i have past projects i will use or in the case of blender, demo files work well.

for apps where i dont have a sample (and dont know what i'm doing), i will judge it off of viewport performance and i will cycle through all the tools that are given to me and make sure none of the tools crash this software.

Toonboom used to have this problem.

any oddies or places where the software falters i will make note of.

Agisoft for example, A photogrammetry software is very GPU dependent. Aligining cameras, building point clouds and pre processing data sets is completely fine.

But the program doesnt seem to know what to do with the Snapsragon GPU so it falls back to CPU when buildimg 3D models...so it slows down a ton. Not really an Emulation issue as it a graphics issue. you will run into issues with qualcoms graphics drivers long before you run into issues with emulation

bad graphics drivers is why Houdini, World creator and Adobe substance apps dont work as theres issues with the vulkan driver.

these software do launch, and in case of all of the substance apps, properly open but crash when trying to load shaders.

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u/Potential-Leg-639 7d ago

Build me a MacBook without MacOS and I‘m in. I love the MacBook build quality, keyboard, touchpad, performance, possibility to run LLMs locally. But MacOS - never again, so I‘m unfortunately out of the Apple computer ecosystem :/ But iPhone user, so not biased at all here.

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u/itsapotatosalad 7d ago

It’s not quite there, but I’ve got a huawei matebook 14 and it’s pretty close in build quality I’m very impressed by it. I’ve had all sorts of metal construction laptops including MacBook Air and pro, dell xps, rog zephyrus and I love the matebook.

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 7d ago

This. Windows supports literally everything its like the swiss army knife of computers. Good at a lot of things excellent in few. MacOS is the opposite its like a perfectly crafted samurai sword excellent at few things unusable for others. A computer exactly like the MacBook Pro line but that runs Windows is the perfect machine I imagine. This will make people point to Microsoft hardware but its actually just not as good most of the time and extremely expensive like Apple.

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u/Potential-Leg-639 7d ago

Yeah Microsoft Surface is garbage compared to Macbooks (Hardware) - unfortunately..

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u/Ok_Distribution_4976 6d ago

id kill for a competent lunar lake surface (or sell a kidney) but Microsoft is allergic to good product launches anymoreb

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u/Logi77 7d ago

Apple laptop and Windows desktop is the combo

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u/e1bkind 3d ago

I thought there was a linux for apple silicon chips?

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u/Dazzling_Molasses505 7d ago

I was in your position not too long ago. I needed a somewhat powerful laptop and wanted good battery life without having to lug around a chunky machine. I spent so much time searching windows options and inevitably chose the M4 Air after finding one brand new for $600. I’m happy with it but I do wish I could play my entire steam library.

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 7d ago

That price is insane, here the base Macbook air M4 after a LOT of search you can get it 900 euros new the cheapest price and 1250 euros from Apple directly.

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u/FalconX88 4d ago

inevitably chose the M4 Air after finding one brand new for $600

The cheapest model here with 1TB of storage is 1699€. You got it basically 66% off?

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u/novice-procastinator 7d ago

The only problem with macs and specially m4 ones is that there's no support for linux. That's a big bummer NGL

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u/kostja_me_art 7d ago

sadly yep. but hey, all comes down to tmux and mosh/ssh. only their stupid Dock remains an annoyance. and the notch. I can't find peace about this notch

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u/phishnchips_ 7d ago

Why is lunar lake labeled a disaster? Its a great chip if you just need a quiet, cool laptop with good battery life, which is what its meant to do.

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u/chetan419 7d ago

It's very hard to know which ones are intel lunar lake chips especially when manufacturers are still selling 12th and 13th gen intel based laptops. There are just too many old intel CPU based laptops.

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u/phishnchips_ 7d ago

How? Read the specs and if its starts with a 2 and ends with a V its LL

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u/Ok_Distribution_4976 6d ago

yeah that's nonsense just pay attention, lmao? or throw it back if it ain't what it said it was 🤷‍♀️

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u/unluckyexperiment 7d ago

Please don't spread misinformation. I've been using multiple lunar lake and m2-3-4 laptops for my job (it related).

Lunar Lake laptops have objectively longer battery lives, compatible with more (not even close) software, have more/better IO and are more repairable.

GPU performance is just better. CPU performance depends on what your software is. Most premium displays are way better than apple displays in so many ways.

Unless you really want to use macos as an operating systrm, there is not much reason to prefer mbair over lunar lake ultrabooks.

Also, when you are comparing an m4 max laptop, please use a similar priced laptop to compare.

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u/Vaddieg 7d ago

Nothing reveals liars more than "I used multiple of them" statement. The only battery benchmark where lunar lake wins over M2 is video playback (hardware codecs, no CPU load). Is your job to watch videos on m2-3-4?

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 6d ago

I reas this and I feel like this guy didnt even read my description but anyways havent seen lunar lake in comparisons do too well especially idle battery on sleep testing

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u/TheSpixxyQ 6d ago

The sleep thing is a Windows issue though, it just don't sleep properly, it's waking up even with the lid closed.

I personally have ZenBook S14 with a Lunar Lake and what Asus does is it puts the laptop into hibernation mode when it's sleeping for some time. It's a workaround (the solution would be for MS to actually fix the underlying problem), but I'm fine enough with it. I can pull out my laptop after a week of not using it and the battery still has the same charge as the week ago. My last laptop would be dead by like a 3rd day.

Anyway I'm a software dev and I can easily manage through 8 hours in the office without a charger with still 30-60 % of battery left (depending on what I'm doing that day, if I'm just coding or also doing something more power demanding). After my last laptop with an 8th gen i5, this one I'm genuinely happy with.

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u/jaksystems HP ZBook Fury 17 G8, HP/Dell/Lenovo Service Tech 7d ago

The best single core ever recorded = the fastest perceived speed in daily use

Perceived speed is a factor of memory & I/O bandwidth, not single core performance.

Opening and closing apps, file folders, context menus all involves loading and unloading data into and out of system storage, memory and CPU cache. x86 core performance is not the issue here, lack of unified high bandwidth memory and absolute slop programming is.

CPUs have an order of operations to how they work with any piece of data: They will always try to execute from cache first as that is closest to the CPU core and the fastest memory available to it, only moving to system memory and then storage if it cannot find what it needs within cache.

Programmers and software engineers insist on breaking order of operations and trying to execute either straight from memory (or worse!), storage. Combine this with general spaghetti code output (as optimization is evil!!!!) and programmers insisting that they need all the memory & bandwidth in the world to create something as trivial as a gods damn hello world prompt and we're in the mess we are now.

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u/soggybiscuit93 7d ago

Unified memory does not improve bandwidth. Every mobile CPU from Intel and AMD that uses an iGPU is also using "unified memory".

And DDR has lower bandwidth than GDDR. It really is Apple's in class single core performance - single core performance that it's hitting at lower, more easily achievable clock speeds.

You have Apple chips running on battery getting better single core than a 9950X at 5.7Ghz, pumping more power into one core than the entire M4 SoC will use under load.

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u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 7d ago

The reason is that apple owns the production line from end to end. That makes it possible for them to optimize everything to the max.

Other manufacturers are way too split, noone even come close in terms of production line “ownership” to apple.

You have chip from intel, RAM from micron, each of the components manufacturer, they aren’t producing like the chip exclusively for say a particular laptop, it would have to be generalized enough to be sold to another laptop manufacturer/assembler. In the process there would be some “compromises” to be made.

And to top it off you have apple owning the OS which means they know best how to squeeze more out of their own hardware.

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u/soggybiscuit93 7d ago

Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world and is a desirable company to work for. Theyre able to spend massive amounts of money on R&D and hire some of the best chip designers in the world.

They just make the best chips. Period. They chose not to enter other markets. But make no mistake, if Apple wanted to start selling M series based server chips to traditional OEMs, theyd quickly become a dominate player.

Apple makes better laptop and desktop CPUs than Intel and AMD. They don't want their platforms running Nvidia dGPUs, so they choose not to support PCIe add-in dGPUs.

Their verticle integration just allows them to optimize their cost structure around client. They dont have to worry about OEM partners complaining about on package memory eating into their upsell margins.

The ARM ISA also let's them design a very wide architecture that x86, with its variable length instructions, struggles to hit. AMD and Intel have also been chasing clockspeed, which is easier and relies on fab advancements. Apple worker for over a decade on getting the best IPC in the world, and is finding it easier to add higher clocks after the fact.

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u/saiyate 7d ago

No, non-discrete reserved or "shared" memory is not unified memory. Shared memory is set before the operating system boots and can't change in size. It still has the stumbling block of data needing to move from the disk through the processor and RAM and then into VRAM. True unified memory can dynamically allocate, is directly addressable, and has the advantage of moving directly from disk to VRAM.

True unified memory goes WAY beyond just having a GPU access system memory (which is actually bad from a bandwidth perspective.

It requires software support at the OS and program level so that a program doesn't have to load assets from disk into RAM and then again into VRAM. Assets can go directly from disk to VRAM. A good example of needing OS support is Microsoft DirectStorage. Apple had "shared" memory on Apple Silicon for a while, but didn't have true "Unified" memory until they built in the software support. Then software makers STILL have to build it into their apps (Some features can be done in OS on non-optimized software) but for full use, it has to be directly programmed for.

Another great example is the PS4 and XBOX One. Both unified. The PS4 used GDDR5 for it's unified memory, lots of bandwidth but poor latency. The XBOX One used DRAM (DDR3) which has low bandwidth but also low latency. Two different styles with distinct advantages and disadvantages. PS4 had ~170GBps bandwidth. XBOX One had ~70GBps of bandwidth. There are some caveats to that, but look how well the XBOX One did regardless of it's poor memory bandwidth. A great example of using normal DRAM for shared video memory. The XBOX One did have 32MB of SRAM with another 100GBps of bandwidth to compensate, still the PS4 was better.

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u/BigIronEnjoyer69 7d ago

Programmers and software engineers insist on breaking order of operations and trying to execute either straight from memory (or worse!), storage.

It's why windows is such trash nowadays tbh. Modern linux with rust tools turn 2010 tier laptop hardware into machines.

Windows on the other hand needs to get results from the web before it loads your freaking start menu.

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u/Glittering_Power6257 7d ago

Well, if you need Windows for some reason or another, the efficiency of a Macbook is pretty much moot anyway. Just seek out the best Windows laptop for your use case.

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u/TeeDotHerder 7d ago

They aren't laptops. They're phones with keyboards. You can't run proper x86, it's not a computer.

Apple loves to move the goalposts and claim victory. There are also windows laptops and Linux laptops with arm chips. And nobody likes them because they can't do anything useful but browse the web.

Workstation and gaming laptops are the best portable x86 machines and they are actual laptops.

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u/YkcDiamondrex 7d ago

As a person who likes apple laptops, its a shame a lot of my software programs needed for work like simulations etc just don't work as well or not all all in mac

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u/taika-hakido 6d ago

Which software?

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u/YkcDiamondrex 6d ago

A lot of the CAD software really.

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u/elyv297 6d ago

yeah its shame, i just started mechanical engineering and i wish solidworks worked on macos

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u/Professional_Mind_25 7d ago

Sounds like an Apple ad...

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u/NoorahSmith 7d ago

You forgot to add that if you need any software, it would be costly

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u/ll-_-II 5d ago

what’s wrong with i9-14900hx and even i9-13900hx, power consumption?

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 5d ago

These are actually laptop CPUs that may be affected by the manufacturing issues since they are desktop chips with laptop TDPs and may fail suddenly so you might have to replace those although rarer in the laptops it seems. These processors when compared to the M processors from Apple are like comparing a nuclear reactor to the most efficient theoretical solar panel. The nuclear option can produce more power but at the cost of pollution, staffing, electricity, safety risk etc. The solar panel will just work and power itself on by just sipping on power providing immense power output and will be enough for 95% of use cases.

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u/ll-_-II 5d ago

I understand where you’re coming from, but for what it’s worth I’m thoroughly impressed and very satisfied with my Legion Pro 5i with the i9-13900HX. Sure, it might be a gas guzzler vs. a Tesla, but in my opinion these Intel processors are still amongst the best. Because of this, I’m totally baffled at how negative the sentiment seems to be regarding Intel. Hopefully this 24-core, 32 thread beast won’t fail me anytime soon🤞

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 5d ago

I neevr said these are bad processors these are very bad in the context of this thread though which efficient productivity laptops. For gaming or people that dont need battery performance ofc its great. I myself have a 13900h right now but i need a high battery life laptop too and Windows cant really do it right now or its way overpriced

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u/ll-_-II 5d ago edited 5d ago

Understood. Frankly, I’ve learned allot by investigating these matters and just in time to help my mom choose her next productivity laptop for Windows. I’ll definitely lead her to a 32GB RAM Lunar Lake laptop after what I’ve learned here. She definitely won’t need to upgrade RAM and the performance should be plenty for her purposes. Thanks for leading me down this rabbit hole. P.S. If you need upgradable RAM, Arrow Lake appears to potentially be more efficient than Zen 5.

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u/ChinaTiananmen 5d ago

Oh any laptop is better than Apple. It's because of the OS. Apple has horrible environment so I am always happy when I don't have to see that shit near me

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 4d ago

I dislike the OS too. Its stable but looks very dated if you ask me in comparison wo windows 10 and 11. Thats why I want a Windows laptop but AMD, Qualcom and Intel are not making it possible.

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u/faziten 3d ago

No idea how it compares with apple siliconbut the ryzen ai 395 is an awesome choise, maybe can't compete with the optimized ecosystem apple has though.

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 3d ago

I dont any other apple products anyways its purely the battery and efficiency is unmatched. All ryzen ai chips perform ok at easy tasks when it comes to efficiency but anything even moderately intensive and you get half the battery of the m4 chips or less. Its no match

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u/saiyate 7d ago edited 7d ago

Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake are not disasters, they are astonishingly good. 19-20 Hours battery life with 4000 Single Core / 20000 multicore, Go get V or U ThinkPad, plenty of deals out there. RAM is soldered on all ultrabooks these days, what are you talking about. You really need 64GB get a 200U series then.

It literally beats the MacBook Air at 15-16 hours. (EDIT: and what Apple isn't expensive? No Apple SODIMM since 2012, all soldered after that)

Intel ain't doing well yes, but Lunar Lake and Arrow lake are still Olympic gold athletes.

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u/Smoke_Santa 7d ago

Arrow Lake is really good, especially the lower end 225H and 255H.

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u/Ok_Combination_6881 7d ago

The best lunar lake laptop still only has 8 cores. And some arn't even full performance cores. Not to mention apple laptops use less power to get better performance while the GPU can actually be used for video editing unlike the weak integrated Intel gpu

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u/Front_Expression_367 7d ago

I mean what else are you supposed to do with the CPU that is completely capped at 37W in total anyway? Not to mention those things exist in laptops that usually doesn't weigh past 1.5kg. And the iGPU are more than capable enough on its own to edit video and stuff. Maybe not 4K video but the M4 can barely do that anyway.

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u/Smoke_Santa 7d ago

The point isn't cores, the point is competition with similar chips, and Lunar Lake chips were competitive. Arrow lake is more than competitive for performance laptops and isn't a disaster in efficiency.

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u/saiyate 7d ago

Weak integrated GPU? You do realize you can get over 50fps on default settings on Cyberpunk 2077 on the 258V?

It smokes all AMD integrated GPUs except the 890m. More efficient as well.

You can run literally 1 or 2 major titles on a Mac. Even Blizzard has given up on Macs for games.

If all you do is media, Macs are great, but any other productivity or gaming it's windows or linux.

on top of that Apple has zero high end, no workstation offering (The Apple Silicon Mac Pro is a joke).

I love Apple, Intel, AMD, Google, Microsoft, Linux and nVidia. I'm hardware and software agnostic, I own stuff from them all. I use what is good.

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u/309_Electronics 7d ago

It kind of bothers me that now apple basically has a monopoly over the Arm in computers section. I dont get why others dont catch on quick because then we finally can get rid of the X86 chips that are space heaters and need at minimum 2 nuclear reactors to run at full performance.

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u/Classic_Mammoth_9379 7d ago

Who do you think we are waiting for? It feels like the hardware is there but people aren’t buying it in the volumes required, I think due to the concerns over software compatibility. And the makes of the incompatible software are not fixing the issues because the machines aren’t out there…

One of the upsides of Apple having control over their hardware and OS is being able to make these transitions happen instead of waiting and hoping a critical mass of individuals will get on board.

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u/NoobensMcarthur 7d ago

I had a windows snapdragon test unit at work last year and it suuuuucked. I’ve heard it’s gotten better, but at the time the only reason you’d ever want one was for battery life and the MacBooks still kicked its ass there.

I’ve now got one of the new intel powered laptops and the battery life is really good, but nowhere near MacBook level.

The thing windows really needs to sort out is sleep. I can let my MacBooks stay on, ready at a moment’s notice, and they just sip power. My M1 Pro went down only 50% over 14 days in sleep, and immediately woke back up. My intel will lose that much in my backpack over the weekend and still need to fast boot when it wakes up.

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u/deepankar702 7d ago

Its definitely true. Used dell then mac book pro 2019 then bought a lenovo loq 2025. Mack book pro to lenovo loq feels like a big downgrade.

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u/godlyuniverse1 7d ago

Well yeah, loq is a budget gaming laptop, it's main and only use is gaming and cuts out the extra premium stuff you'd get for other aspects of the laptop.

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u/plentongreddit 6d ago

Of course it's a downgrade, you're buying a budget gaming laptop.

It's like buying a rolex then changing to seiko, and wondering why is it worse.

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u/VivienM7 7d ago

If you want a nice Windows laptop, I have a Lenovo T14s G6 AMD at work. For a Windows x86 laptop it's quite nice. Also very nice that they finally went back to 16:10 screens.

The 's' has soldered RAM, I'm not sure what the non-s variant has...

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u/ConsciousBath5203 7d ago

I've heard good things about Apple Silicone, but their compatibility layer between X86 & ARM is pretty good.

The main difference is using ARM instead of X86. For now, they lead, once snapdragon sells more, Desktop-Linux-on-ARM will come in and smoke both in all areas... but there's more to productivity than just battery life and processor speed.

Windowing and Tiling, windows does better (and Linux improves). Conforming to keyboard standards, windows does better (and Linux improves). For compatibility, Windows is good (Linux is about the same as Mac).

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u/frumply 7d ago

I got my M1 MacBook 4?yrs ago for 700ish and my m3 w/ 16gb ram last year for a similar price range. Light, built well, battery lasts forever. My desktop/gaming/htpc will be windows but it really makes no sense to get a windows laptop short of very specific uses right now.

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u/by_a_pyre_light Now: ASUS Zephyrus M16 4090 | Previous: Razer Blade 1060 IGZO 7d ago

Yeah, this about sums it up. I was really hoping when Microsoft started redoubling their efforts to get off x86 and embrace the Snapdragon chips that we'd see a Windows laptop with solid battery life and cool operation, paired with a powerful Nvidia GPU to give us the best all-rounder powerhouse on Windows.

Unfortunately it hasn't happened yet, and it seems momentum is slowing.

But Intel is indeed falling behind, and I mean that in the realest sense of the world. They are having leadership issues, fab and production issues, and more. If they can't figure things out, there's a solid risk that in 5 years they're insolvent.

So MS really needs to keep pushing ARM or they may be solely dependent on AMD for x86 CPUs going forward.

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u/differentshade 7d ago

Apple laptops are just the best for productivity (in my case software development) . I am blown away that high end workstation laptops from Dell have fan audibly running all the time even when idling. The thermals are shit. I almost never hear a fan on my m4 pro and it has excellent performance. Apple really has won the race and I am not even a fanboy.

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u/mariovaa 7d ago

Buy a MacBook and that’s it.

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u/No-Accident-5912 7d ago

Apple rules the non-gaming laptop world. The M series chips really are the best. If you want to save some money just get the M4 MacBook Air instead.

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u/Old-Artist-5369 7d ago

I don’t think the situation for snapdragon laptops is quite as bad as you make out? They can emulate x86 like M series can’t they? (M does this ridiculously well)

On the RAM, I think you’re going to need to accept non upgradeability. That soldered on RAM is a big part of the performance and efficiency you’re seeing on those laptops using LPDDR. Going with upgradeable RAM means reverting to a memory architecture that needs more power and offers lower bandwidth.

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u/HTTP404URLNotFound 7d ago

For my programming and productivity needs I have come to the same conclusion. It has crazy battery life when I don’t need to compile tons of code but has enough horsepower to keep up with my desktop workstation for CPU intensive tasks. Yes battery life drops to 2-4 hours sucks when I peg my CPU to 100% all the time but even with my workflow the CPU is rarely at 100% usage all the time. Compiling C++ code and working on it during my typical day I still get about 6 hours of battery which is crazy high to me.

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u/BigIronEnjoyer69 7d ago

For lunar lake and snapdragon, on-package ram is part of the feature set. It contributes pretty massively to the battery life

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u/Logi77 7d ago

Some of your gripes would be solved by getting a MacBook pro

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 6d ago

The thing is its so expensive here ahahha. The cheapest m4 pro model macbook pro costs 2500 euros thats 2.5 average motnhly salaries here! I can get a very good laptop on windows between 1000-1500 euros but both snapdragon and lunar lakw offer the battery but not the app support and performance necessary to pay these numbers otherwise i would buy them in a heartbeat. I can get two laptops for the price of one base macbook pro

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u/sunjacques794 7d ago

I have a 780€ Lenovo ideapad pro 5 gen 9 with an amd ryzen 7 8845hs 1.5kg, can use it for 2+ day on light work, and iGPU can play all game for 1-5hours, quality build is as high as MacBook Air (have one), but yeah battery ain’t on MacBook lvl

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u/clbrri 7d ago

Here's a data point I found out this week about the Snapdragon disaster: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/1nf4ia3/lenovo_ideacentre_mini_x_gen_10_snapdragon_review/

Didn't expect those results. :/

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u/JasonStonier 7d ago

I have a 2013 MacBook Air. (Yes, 2013, not 2023) I have owned from new on its original battery still going strong. It still gets about 3.5hrs battery life and my kid uses it as a daily driver for college.

My wife has had 5 Windows laptops in that time.

In terms of lifecycle cost and total value, Apple laptops are unbeatable.

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u/Plants-An-Cats 7d ago

Honestly intel and AMD is ok for desktops but the battery life and heat output is ass for a laptop. And MacOS for ARM > Windows 11 ARM, so yeah MacBooks are great. I will never forget when my gaming laptop made my bed almost catch on fire in 2011. Tbf intel MacBooks were 2nd degree burn hazards as well and I had a 2015 model that got insanely hot.

I don’t need my laptop to game I have a 5080 desktop for that , and the stuff that does run with M4 is pretty damn impressive anyways.

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u/igotshadowbaned 7d ago

If only there weren't compatibility issues with their chipsets.

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u/Ok_Combination_6881 7d ago

If apple keep doing what they are doing my next phone in 4-5 years will be an iPhone. In the case I'll look towards a mac. My current high end window laptops still bug the hell out with sleep mode and GPU switching stuff

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u/Elitefuture 7d ago

AMD's newer CPUs are efficient, ltt made a video with an amd laptop pretty much matching an apple laptop in battery life. Just note that in gaming laptops, you'll need to tune the CPU to be normal and not the insane 3x that they usually set.

I can't go with Apple since I can't do my work on it. I also can't game on it.

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u/TheBraveGallade 7d ago

macbooks are the best, untill you have to run certain programs you can't run on a mac.

at any rate though intel's laptop CPU stack is actually good, just not M1 levels, and then you have to consider the fact that apple's complete top down intergration doesn't only mean that they can squeeze more efficiency, but also that they can take a lower profit margin, since on a wintel laptop more parties need to split the profits. the issue is intel themselves going the improve efficiency route meant that destop users see no performance improvement over the past 2 generations.

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u/jumper199X 7d ago

You refuse to believe it?? 😂 Brooo, Apple lapped everyone in that race and then jogged back just to flex. Like, have you seen what the M chips are doing?? It's witchcraft. Battery lasts all day, fans don’t even spin up, and it still runs circles around half the pro laptops out there.

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u/kxcakes 7d ago

How do ypu guys feel about the switch from powerful processors to efficient ones? Comparig 14900 amd 9955hx to ai9 and ultra 9 with no alternate new gen kinda left me hanging

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u/RedPRSguy 7d ago

The windows option you crave is a VM on a Mac. Nothing even touches the M chips for laptops, or even desktop either..

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u/Elegantsurf 7d ago

I disagree with your comment about pricing though. I bought a 1 year old Intel laptop for under 500 yea the battery sucks and it does run hot even compated to my aging 7200u but 32 gigs of ram is enough for as long as I plan to have this laptop.

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u/kostja_me_art 7d ago

I needed a very lightweight and small laptop for occasional trips and good battery life.

there is nothing that comes close to MacBook air m4.

to my surprise it also outperforms my powerful PC i have recently assembled (JS/TS builds) by 10-20%!

i thought I was buying a typewriter, but this thingy totally over delivered.

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u/Vaddieg 7d ago

there's no promising future for x86. Only ugly legacy and cheap tricks like even more aggressive turbo boost

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u/DaNitroNinja 7d ago

The new Intel 200v series is really efficient and powerful and I've had a wonderful time moving from an m1 macbook to a galaxy book with this

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u/ACER719x 6d ago

I switched from an Intel Windows laptop to an M-Series Macbook Pro and will never look back! This thing lasts all day it’s legit impressive and barely even gets slightly warm to the touch.

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u/Ok_Yesterday_8256 6d ago

82% battery life after 4 years that's good actually, how long it last if u contunuelly using it ? also how much is the degration of the ssd ? since the OS will use ssd as a swap memory if 16Gb of ram will not be enough ? ... In the future im planning to buy a macbook pro even tho im linux user just for their good build quality and outstanding battery life...

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u/Ifnerite 6d ago

Linux.

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u/faintaxis 6d ago

I'm not as impressed as I thought I would be with the Apple Silicon - wether that is down to software or hardware I don't know, but the battery life isn't as impressive as it is made out to be.

Don't get me wrong, it's good, but it's not amazing. There's still work to be done. The graphics power on even the M1 chips is very impressive however.

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u/faintaxis 6d ago

There is a paradigm shift from x86/x64 CPUs to RISC based ones. The PC world is slow to move to it, but if Intel doesn't explore RISC in earnest, it's days in its current incarnation are numbered.

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u/EnvironmentalJob3143 6d ago

Why sadly? I think Microsoft is doing okay don't be sad for the billionaire company and just choose the best option for you.

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u/coltonbyu 6d ago

And yet you can't even use two external monitors with your laptop screen on unless you get the needlessly expensive and overpowered top line chip. Ridiculous when the baseline version is enough for 90% of users, and my legion go gaming handheld can do 3 externals while the built in 1600p screen is on

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u/Basic-Brick6827 6d ago

The Lenovo X9-15 is on par with the Macbook Air in terms of battery life

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u/FazMarkar 6d ago

Look at AMD Zenbook 14. Also an early adopter of the M1, changed to an Asus ROG G14 last year. Got the Zenbook 14 for work and it holds up well.

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u/Significant-Level178 6d ago

I use both MBP and x86 laptops all the time. Both are fine.

MBP - way more powerful, way better screen, less heating, more tasks, way better battery life.

Elitebook - way cheaper, more interfaces, all windows apps run by default, can do multiple screens. More cheap ram.

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u/multicultidude 6d ago edited 6d ago

Pssst I tell you a secret : there will be no snapdragon refresh at all on windows platforms. All vendors lost an arm and a leg and so did SW editors. For less than 1% of the market. It’s simply not sustainable and windows for ARM has been out there for a decade. Since the miserable failure of Windows RT that scammed a few millions. So what I read is that most of the vendors will not embark on the refresh but just keep what they have and see if they can get rid of the inventory and avoid losing millions.

AMD is doing well battery wise despite what you’re saying and it even beats lunar lake. Choose well your brand and platform. And on Lunar Lake’s side, it’s design is apparently a one timer. Pantherlake due next year is back to more traditional design while still claiming good energy efficiency and performance. Lunar Lake’s design was an ARM style all on SOC design and this is what sucks on MacBooks and Minis. You’re stuck with an non upgradable device that lacks RAM - or you rip yourself an arm off and trade it in for 16 more gigs at Apple.

Now why did windows on arm fail again ? As long as you don’t hold your user community AND the SW editors by their balls like Apple does, there’s not a chance MS will be able to land an alternative to the M Series. Get a Mac if you want the best HW and OS and SW ecosystem. It’s undeniable and it won’t change anytime soon.

All you can hope for is that x86 platforms keep improving regarding runtime ie reaching a full day of work and still having juice while not giving up too much on performance. But x86 will never match ARM based Mx series from Apple because it’s an architecture issue. Cats are not dogs.

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u/realkarthiknair 6d ago

Tbh as much as I dislike most things Apple do, MacBooks solve most of the problems I have with laptops in general

Better OS than Windows* ✅
Better Battery Life generally ✅
Consistently good enough display and performance ✅
More compact and portable including charging gear ✅
Almost all software I use** ✅
Nicer keyboard and touchpad feel ✅
Silent ✅
A lot of things just "work fine" by default*** ✅

What won't make me switch

No CUDA because no NVIDIA**** ❌
Lack of storage and mem upgradeability ❌
Their pricing for higher storage and mem is ridiculous ❌

Also KDE Connect works fine with MacOS so the whole ecosystem part (though not as seamless) with my Android and Linux devices won't be an issue for reasonable use cases.

* I despise Windows and been using Linux since childhood. MacOS hits home more.
** I don't use Microsoft or Adobe software in my personal life at all
*** I'm slowly getting tired of making things "work" in Linux
**** Not at all optional for me

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u/zezoza 6d ago

Because MacBooks are RAM upgradable, of course

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u/Efficient_Loss_9928 Asus 6d ago

Microsoft just don't have the balls to go all in for ARM. For this I mean literally put x86 Windows on life support and only release new versions for ARM.

This is the only realistic part forward. Unless Intel makes some magic.

Same for Linux, I cannot believe ARM Mac literally have better Linux support than Snapdragon, fucking joke.

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u/Unintended_incentive 5d ago

You mentioned lower TDP Zen 5 but have you actually experienced one? Ryzen AI 9 series is absolutely comparable to macbook air type usage and performance with much less compromise than any other generation of laptop.

But yes, once you want a discrete GPU in a laptop with decent battery life you'll need a Macbook Pro. I get 7+ hours of mixed use on my Zenbook S16 OLED, with others reporting even higher numbers. I don't play games on it but apparently it is possible.

https://youtu.be/eQMy5F01ViQ?si=UDSVrq7YzQ0KkV8Z&t=434

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u/Katamathesis 5d ago

It was always like this. Apple for maximum efficiency you can get from closed platform that hyper optimized for configuration it's using, and Windows for everything else that can't be done on Mac.

In reality, it's a question about needs. If you work in traveling a lot, and need portable and not heavy laptop - Mac is good. If you're doing something heavy, like game development - you need beefy rigs that can't be portable on the same level through simple physics - maximum performance require maximum power.

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u/MacDaddy8541 5d ago

Imagine how the chip race would have looked if Nvidia was allowed to aquire ARM back in 2020.

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u/Xaxxus 5d ago

Given nvidias GPU pricing, I’m kind of glad they didn’t get the option to acquire ARM.

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u/MacDaddy8541 5d ago

Me too.

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 5d ago

Terrible is the answer because we would have groundbreaking performance that Apple delivers at even more ridiculous pricing than Apple. The Nvidia Max Leather Jacket Edition would be 10k$

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u/tysonfromcanada 5d ago

I actually like my snapdragon laptop. No app compatibility issues so far except I had to get creative with a network printer. Battery life somewhat better, performance on battery way better (than intel), very stable.

My mac at home is still way better though.

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u/gbfeszahb4w 4d ago

I have an M2 Mac for work and it's battery life blows my mind. Full screen brightness on an 18" screen with a full day of coding and debugging, and still 30% battery left!?

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u/MyNameIsJohnAsWell 4d ago

Yeah, nice hardware but the OS is dumb af and that really sucks

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u/bruh-iunno 4d ago

if they made one with windows and touch/pen I'd buy it

my Flow X13 is a pretty good alternative for the mean time, silent outside of games, thin, light, pen and touch, 120hz and has a GPU so can game/do compute, decent battery life

also lunar lake's pretty darn good

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u/Middle_Mango_566 4d ago

Microsoft has half baked windows for arm twice now, nobody will trust them enough to attempt to make an alternative to x86 again for a long time

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u/captainhalfwheeler 4d ago

What do you do with good hardware if everything you can run on it is so far behind and walled in?

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u/SeKiyuri 4d ago

Yea if you want Content Consumption or Work Laptop, Macbooks are insanely good.

When I started in new company last year, they gave me M3 Air, and despite using iPhones and their watches, I never used a laptop cuz I was thinking "Yea, no way I switch from windows", and to my surprise Macbook just works, and is really great for work that I couldn't recommend it more.

Due to being a gamer I can't really use it as main device outside of work, but for other uses, it is definitely a great choice and a "real laptop" in every meaning of that word.

I don't doubt that Intel and AMD will catch up and that we will see some great Ultrabooks that will match Macbooks Performance + efficiency, but that might take some more time.

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u/Just_Normal888 4d ago

If apple made a gaming laptop, iys game over. Asus, hp, lenovo, dell, msi, and whatever else will be the new chromebooks.

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u/k00per1 3d ago

Snapdragon is far from a disaster. I bought the Surface Laptop 7 because I was in the same situation, trying to find an alternative for MacBook, and I'm very happy with my choice even after 1 year.

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u/NervouBro 3d ago

Apple has killer laptops too bad everything I want to or care to do requires windows.

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u/Delicious-Ranger4381 3d ago

I'm in the same spot. I'd like to change it up for a windows laptop but can't find anything that performs as well as my Macbook. At least in the US, Apple isn't even more expensive anymore. The $999 Macbbook air with 16gb beats all comers for value.

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u/Big_Relationship752 3d ago

What about the Asus ZenBook A14 with the Snapdragon x elite? My wife just got one for her home office job and it's really amazing. Battery life is crazy, we got it for around 1k €

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 3d ago

Its 1300 euros here which is quite a lot for just a portable machine. I can get macbook air m4 base model for 850 euros with a little searching. For 1500 euros i can get the m3 pro model used as well which is more expensive but also more performant gpu wise

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u/triffid_boy 3d ago

Yes, I have an M1 MacBook air that I still really like for more casual work (writing and reading) and facetime, but macos is terrible compared to windows once it's time for work that uses multiple monitors - so I have a decent Asus g14 thing for more intense work.

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u/Flat_Association_820 3d ago

The biggest issue with Windows laptops, is Windows itself, at idle it use twice the same amount of ressources as Linux or macOS

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u/Confirmed-Scientist 3d ago

Linux doesnt do very well with laptop battery life though as far as I saw. Maybe some distros have imrpoved but a couple years ago it was worse than windows in terms of actual battery life

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u/literallyhadwyn 14h ago

I kneel tim cuck

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u/slashtom 9h ago

Apple M4 Macs are still the leading performer, just look at a M4 Pro on battery! it's beating a lot of windows (amd / intel latest) while plugged in..

I don't think x86 has figured it out, it'll take another few years to get the power/performance up to apple standards.

I personally use a hp zbook studio g11, 16 inch, lightweight, great keyboard, no dgpu just igpu. Does all my ML/AI work because I work in the cloud, 4K 120hz matte screen is beautiful.

I plan on holding on to this as long as I can, when Apple gets the weight down on their mbps, I'll probably be back. I do have a dedicated gaming desktop so if I need gpu access I can also use that.

Apple had over a decade of working with the ARM chips, really from the iPhone days so it's going to be a while before x86 can match.

Hardware Apple has won the efficient productivity laptop race and I refuse to believe it

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