Well for one thing, you won't find a laptop with a notched display for absolutely no reason in the Windows world.
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Microsoft Says New Surface Pro is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook Air
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Well for one thing, you won't find a laptop with a notched display for absolutely no reason in the Windows world.
That’s certainly ‘an’ interpretation of what I wrote… albeit a fairly inaccurate one.
It’s obvious you’ve made up your mind about Apple, and no amount of evidence it logic will dissuade you of your opinion, so… 🤷♂️
A Windows PC can do way more things than a Mac can. Some of the best plugins and even my Access Virus TI hardware synthesizer only works with Windows now that Apple went to ARM.
My bad, I must have miss remembered Apple having a MacBook Pro and MacBook Air series, one designed for professionals, and one for consumers. Not sure what gave me that idea.
His point might be that you're taking the names too seriously. MacBook Air does everything that MacBook Pro does last I checked, just like the ford and bmw in your previous analogy.
The difference between a "For Professional" laptop and a "For Consumer" laptop is about the same as men and women's bar soap. They accomplish the same tasks, one is just nicer and more expensive. Again, just like the ford and bmw in your own analogy.
You said that Airpods don't have the best sound quality or noise cancellation or battery life, but they are the best because of the ecosystem. That's a paraphrase, but I'm sure you'd agree not a mischaracterization. How does the ecosystem matter to the average user, who may not even own any other Apple product at all besides their Airpods or Beats earbuds?
Yes they do the same thing, but my point was that they are different, and Apple markets them differently. And the MacBook Pro would out perform the Surface Pro (Or Microsoft would have compared it to the Pro). And his point was I made up the separation in my head, everyone knows that they are supposed to be two different classes of Laptop.
Let's break it down then.
Apple silicon gives MacBooks long battery life and great performance, while staying cool to the touch. On my MBA, I can zoom all day with it resting on my naked lap, without feeling any heat or discomfort coming from it. It also has a great build quality, great display, great keyboard, great trackpad (ie: it addresses all the essential fundamentals of what makes a great laptop). macOS also comes with a good amount of functionality out of the box, such as preview, iMovie, QuickTime and Notes.
My observation of windows laptops is that they tend to compromise in at least one or two of the aforementioned areas, not least because of the inherent limitations of intel / AMD processors. Till this day, I am not sure why Microsoft refuses to bundle a decent PDF management tool. On my work laptop (where I am not allowed to download third party apps), I have to either open a pdf in Edge in order to annotate on it, or in Adobe so I can view a pdf in two-page mode, and I can't perform basic pdf management like deleting or re-ordering pages.
I am also one of those users who genuinely prefer that the iPad does not run a desktop OS, at least for the things I do on it. So for me at least, this supposed "drawback" is actually a strength, and the iPad's key selling point. I have zero interest in my tablet becoming more of a traditional PC because that's what my iMac and my MBA are for.
I like AirPods because again, it does enough of the right stuff well enough. The case is small enough to fit inside the coin pouch in my jeans. It has good battery life, and I prefer earbuds because I wear glasses, and headphones would press the frame against my face. The stem of the AirPods make them easy to hold and handle, while they are comfortable enough for me to wear all day (and not feel a thing). Maybe each of these features by itself isn't "class-leading", but again, no one other product crams all these into one cohesive package for me. They all invariably compromise in one area or another, and that alone is enough to be a deal-breaker to make me not want to get one.
The strength of the Apple TV is that it is run by a company who, for now, has zero interest in try to serve me ads (looks at Roku) or sell my data (eg: pretty much every smart TV manufacturer out there). The integration with the apple ecosystem is also its key selling point, because if I use an iPhone, how else am I supposed to view my photos or listen to my podcasts on my TV?
Maybe what I have just said doesn't quite fit your definition of "class-leading", but my point is that I am using Apple products because they do tick all the right boxes for me, in a way that (I honestly don't think) the competition doesn't. Will Microsoft's new line of ARM laptops be able to run cool enough that I can rest them on my lap with zero discomfort? Maybe to the 99% of you, I am nitpicking. But it matters to me, and the beauty of it all is, the buyer is the end user and I don't really need to justify my purchase decisions to anyone but myself at the end of the day.
That's really where Apple shines, IMO. They can't go against the laws of physics, but they know where to make the right compromises (for me) so as the maximise the strengths while minimising the drawbacks of their products (again, for me).
Other competitors choose to focus on different bundles of pros and cons, which don't work for me. Perhaps it doesn't necessarily make them bad, but it's also why I probably don't see myself switching to them in the near foreseeable future. I just don't care for the product decisions they have made.
I am the quintessential Apple fanboy, and it's a badge of honour that I will gladly wear with pride. 😊
The AirPods do indeed shine in Apple’s ecosystem, but that’s not all that makes them great, and I never insinuated that all that makes them class-leading is because they apart of the Apple ecosystem. You’re purposefully twisting my words to fit your own opinions.
Somewhat ironically (in that you have seemingly and summarily disregarded Apple’s ecosystem), Apple’s ecosystem is an off itself class-leading. There isn’t a single tech company that is as vertically integrated as Apple, and that brings a ton of benefits. You claim the ecosystem doesn’t matter to the average user, whereas I would argue it absolutely matters to the average user. Unlike nearly any other brand, those who own an Apple product tend to own more than just one product (if you don’t believe me, 9to5 Mac has a good article on it: https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/08/how-many-devices-apple-customers-own/#:~:text=Speaking to how enticing the,by far the most popular), precisely because of how well all the devices work together. In fact, other companies have tried and failed to replicate the Apple ecosystem, that’s how important and class-leading it is.
An iPhone is still fantastic without a Mac, but it becomes that much better when you have a Mac (and vice versa). That’s not a knock on Apple, that’s a genuine praise of their ecosystem.
However, even without the ecosystem, many of Apple’s products are indeed class-leading as I have written multiple times above.
I look forward to you again twisting and misinterpreting my words to fit your worldview!
It was certainly dreamland where you imagined only "pros" buy MacBook Pros and iPhone Pros. 🤦♂️ It's comedic that you claim products are no longer "consumer grade" once the Pro tag is applied.
Dell put the XPS front camera at the bottom so they could shrink the display bezels. That camera was atrocious and nobody found this to be useful in any way. "In every video conference coworkers see up my nose"
I much prefer the increased display size on my notched Macbook and keeping the camera at the top where people don't see up my nose. If you were to use a Macbook you'd quickly find that the notch is in a spot in the menubar that mostly remains unused anyways. And if it still annoys you to see it you can edit your background so the menubar remains black or set a black background entirely and the notch will no longer be visible to the naked eye whatsoever unless you look for it close up.
You people are just trying to find issues with the Macbooks where there are none. Do you want the camera at the bottom? Or do you prefer Apple decreased the panel size from 14" back to 13"? I'd rather keep the camera where it is and have the bigger screen thank you very much.
That's exactly it. Macbooks combine the best displays, speakers, trackpad, build quality, battery life, workstation class performance, size/weight/mobility and round it off with a unix OS on top of it.
You don't even need to buy a Macbook Air to get the quiet passive cooling advantage. My 14" Pro remains dead silent 99% of the time. Even for short intense bursts the fans are not audible. And if I do need the extra power and don't mind the fan noise then I get more performance than on the Air.
There are some laptops that come close like the Zbook firefly but they don't even have equal performance configs missing a 128GB RAM version entirely and the display's limited to 500 nits with worse contrast. Marketed as high-end mobile workstations these are the best devices in the Windows world yet they're much worse than my MBP. And my Mac is from 2021 whereas these zbooks and others I just looked up are a 2024 refresh. I doubt if they even had a configuration equivalent to my 64GiB M1 Max back in 2021. They certainly don't have bright displays and macrumors users are already asking when Apple will drop the tandem OLED into their Macbooks.
Apple remains ahead and once they do put in the more power efficient OLED panels they can make the Macbooks lighter and thinner as well like they did with the new iPads. At that point I'd upgrade my 14" as it is a bit more heavy than I'd like it to be. Or if they don't reduce weight and thickness it would just have better battery life.
Whichever way Apple does it there is no doubt they'll remain far ahead of the competition.
If they use OLED to make the screens even thinner on Macs, that'll make the cameras even worse, and we're even less likely to get FaceID...
Your data is several years old, Dell now has bezels just as slim as a MacBook Air in their XPS line - yet they have a 1080P webcam (with facial recognition, no less) in the top bezel. No notch.
Apple's gigantic notch only houses a pedestrian webcam, not even Face ID. What is their excuse, other than lazy engineering?
They are supposed to make the chassis thinner due to thinner batteries because of the more efficient OLED panel and M4. The display lid isn't that thin but the majority of the weight is in the bottom chassis for sure. Apple should be careful with making the display lid thinner as it needs to remain robust enough to deserve the Pro workstation classification. I don't need a device where an accidental hard bump against a doorframe totals the display.
Perhaps Apple could use the reinforced materials from the M4 iPad for the display lid. They won't put Face ID in it right now regardless, I'd assume they have a much newer smaller/thinner Face ID tech in the making for many years now and might have made the notch like that knowing that it will be ready to be put in there, eventually.
Apple could also leave the weight unchanged which would simply improve battery life. Or they might want to restrict the thinner chassis to the 16" which is pretty heavy for a laptop right now and in my opinion already too heavy.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane here! Yeah the Xerox Star system out of their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) labs…just wow! We had a two-dozen node system as a test bed for a year or so in the early ‘80s. Screens were large, black & white, attached mouse, excellent and intuitive graphics with the mind-blowing new buzzword “GUI,” all networked together with Ethernet cabling about 1” thick. The computer part of the desktop set up was huge, about the size of two of the old Gateway computer towers next to each other, and it generated a truly awesome amount of heat. The joke was how long it would take to toast bread on top of the unit in the morning while also heating the coffee. Separately our team used Wang word processing products with many terminals set up in common area rooms for use, as well as the brand new Apple IIe, Lisa, and the absolutely game-changing IBM Personal Computer. Game-changing because this was the first single-user computing device from the mainstream company IBM that every large enterprise was very comfortable with given mainframes and the ever-delightful yet pervasive 3270 TSO terminals. Yes, desks were full of technology in those days.
Fair enough, so is my current Macbook, I don't have much reason to look at what Apple's competition is doing. At least they already realized the mistake and fixed it.
I did look at Dell's XPS website now and there aren't even any specs listed for the display other than the resolution and the fact that the only high resolution panel offered uses OLED and supports P3. No info whatsoever whether that panel is dark or bright like Apple's tandem OLED. Since Dell doesn't list a brightness I'll assume it is trash.
...smaller bezels for bigger screen size? The Macbooks actually don't have a 16:10 display but a slightly taller 16:10.39 display. So overall you still get more display for the same size than in something like the XPS. The notch is right in the middle of the menubar where nothing would be in most situations anyways. I just don't get the notch hate when it allows for a higher amount of pixels overall.
And why would I want a great 1080p camera like in the XPS when that forces me to choose between a cheap 1080p panel that's probably not very bright and an even darker high resolution OLED panel? Not to mention I don't know the actual brightness because Dell can't be bothered to list the specs of their own devices they sell.
But sure Apple's the lazy one here.
Game over before it began.
Apple Silicon makes Snapdragon look two years old. Per core performance is way behind the M3 before we even include M4.
GPU performance will likely be far behind Apple.
Apple Silicon makes Snapdragon look two years old. Per core performance is way behind the M3 before we even include M4.
GPU performance will likely be far behind Apple.
10th of June will proof if Apple is up for the future. Apple has let the competition leapfrog it on most aspects and not to forget they’ve neglected their loyal customers for years. Remember how long it took them to come out with a new Mac Pro? Or how slow their innovation was with their other devices? Looking at the new iPhone 15… it looks the same as the 14, 13, 12. How lazy this company has become.
Apple is lazy and not innovative for years. Some day it will bite them. In China Apple can’t compete anymore with other brands. Mac-fans give the boycot from the government the reason. But when you look at it you’ll see that competition is offering much more bang for the buck. Sure… they copy, but so does Apple. I hope nadeljah (sorry if I misspelled) from Microsoft will force Apple to react or there isn’t much money to count for Timmy in the foreseeable future.
Nowhere did I say only pros buy Pro, you imaged that.
I’m saying that’s how they are marketed. Or at least Pro = better, and in this case, Surface Pro compared to entry level Air, means mircosoft is comparing there “better” version, with Apple‘s lowest end option.
You didn't verbatim say "pros buy pros" but you did claim that pros are not intended as "consumer products". Please stop.
Compare price points and features- don't worry about meaningless names.
I also have been guilty of "falling for" Pro branding, and arguing that Apple shouldn't label the gimped base MacBook Pro with a tablet chip and poor RAM and storage, along with reduced ports and half the fans, as "Pro" while charging £1,700.
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We are not. People here seem to act like the M3 is the only chip that Apple produces, and that more powerful offerings like the M3 Pro and M3 Max don't exist. I suspect this is what will be the case here. Microsoft's snapdragon laptops may beat the M3 MBA in a few very specific scenarios (which may end up not being all that relevant to end users), while losing in virtually every other metric that matters, and they flat out won't be able to hold a candle to the other laptops that Apple sells.
A lot of this "Apple has grown complacent and the competition has now caught up" rhetoric will end up aging pretty badly, IMO.
I have had two Surface Pros (3 and 7 or 8). It was a cool machine, but overall a compromised laptop and a more compromised tablet. I liked my Surface best when it was docked to a display, which defeated the real point of the Surface. I prefer Windows on a real laptop or desktop. Just like I like MacOS on a Mac and iPadOS on an iPad. The hybrid OS just does not work well IMO.