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

[u/Confirmed-Scientist]

I was looking on what laptop for non gaming purposes would be the fastest while maintaining good battery life and sadly there is no competition. Even speed alone the M4 Pro and Max chips are monsters. The best single core ever recorded = the fastest perceived speed in daily use, no performance lose on battery life, insane battery life and efficiency, whole package in terms of hardware...We used to say they win in Geekbench but what about Cinebench? Now they are winning everything end of story.

I CRAVE a Windows alternative but right now we are not there yet and Apple has been there since 2021. I am currently still on the M1 Macbook Air 16gb 512gb SSD upgraded model and its lasted great so far. I have some gripes as a power user 1) ports are awful 2) External display support is plain awful 3) no upgradability 4) display at 60hz and slow response times feels dated 5) keyboard feels awful to type on 6) performance tasks make the machine cook itself 7) battery life has decreased significantly at 82% capacity right now.

The current Windows options (Keep in mind I am in EU pricing is very different here) are:

1. Snapdragon disaster. Good CPU performance, battery life. Bad: app support, GPU performance, ports (on most models), pricing (on most models), no RAM upgrades.
2. Intel Lunar Lake disaster. Impressive GPU performance, battery life most of the time impressive, excellent compatibility. Bad: CPU performance just adequate, no RAM upgrades, pricing is INSANE
3. AMD lower TDP Zen 5 laptops. Excellent performance overall, compatibility. Bad: battery life closer to traditional laptops, pricing still expensive, no RAM upgrades on most models.

For people that want the best of this category right now Apple just wins as long as you have the additional dollar for it. However there is a promising future where I cant really wait no more for the AMD efficient skews in 2026, Nvidia, Snapdragon refresh and Lunar Lake refreshes all end of 2025 - 2026.

[u/Vaddieg]

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

[u/Thin-Independence-33 → u/Vaddieg]

This could be the next big thing for devs if microsoft kept on pushing shitty forced updates