... I am using this for online schooling mostly. The Asus laptop lasts me around 6-7 hours and is fine for my needs but I know the Macbook can last longer and way better support than what I will ever get from ASUS. I also work right near an Apple store. I am just worried about the 8GB of RAM because I don't want to worry about it slowing down because of the lack of RAM....
I'm retired now but after many years as a software engineer and the Aerospace industry, I retired and had a short second career as a high school science teacher.
For secondary education, the Chromebooks worked very well. We had better computers but they were no better for the intended use. My 9th grade students seemed to be able to use Chrome and Google Docs and a web browser with no help from me and none of them complained about the computer being "laggy" or slow.
Of course, the Chromebook is very poor if you want to play high-end games, edit professional 8K video or if you need to run virtual machines to support software development on various OSes. Chomebooks are not the best for 3D CAD or Blender either.
Generally, I find that selecting a computer is very easy when you can make a short list of tasks you will use it for. People who can't do that because (likely) that don't have an actual use for the computer, find themselves in a world of indecision.
Chromebook is likely the most cost-effective solution for secondary education. But if I were a student who was able to spend more and not so worried about cost. I'd use a 13" MacBook Air and keep a 27" monitor on my desk at home. I would never recommend a Windows PC. It has no advantage over ChomeOS or MacOS unless you want to play games.
As a retired "computer engineer" who has a robotics and AI hobby, I find I like my new M2-based Mac Mini with 16GB RAM. For truly "heavy duty" computing, I use the Cloud. Google's Cloud and AWS provide me with access to data-center class servers I could not possibly afford to own. These computers cost perhaps $50K each, and I can use them for either free or a few bucks.
On the M1/M2 Mac, 8 GB RAM works well for most people who are only running a web browser and the Apple Office apps or web-apps like Google's "Docs". 16GB is better if you are installing and running "heavy weight" apps.