What do you mean by no alternative?

All the current 13 inch devices have vastly underperforming cooling systems. Well every device except the Apple macbook pro.

If you're not willing to look outside of the exact form factor and specs that Apple happens to support, then open devices aren't a priority for you.

I use a 1 inch thick Thinkpad that's almost a decade old because it runs Libreboot. There is an alternative, but you need to be in the mindset where freedom is more important than hardware.

I do too, and that machine is a beast! Plenty fast.

Exactly you need to compromise significantly on speed and form factor. It's simply not practical for me to do that.

No computers available in the years preceding the present were practical for you? I doubt that.

Not in a 13 inch form factor.

If you desire the latest and greatest no matter how proprietary, that's your prerogative. But to then pretend you want open hardware but have your hands tied is silly.

No, its practical... you just don't want to do anything more than what's easiest, because that's how humans have evolved.

You could drive across country right now without a cell phone, just buy a Rand McNally road atlas. That's all you need.

You won't... because it would require you to pay attention to signs and exits, instead of having Google Maps do all that for you.

I don't have a smartphone so I do in fact use maps.

I agree with your message in general, however believe that the new M1 Mac mini has the best (and sufficient) cooling among the new line up.

What is worth what?

Serious question. Freedom / open computing

, or

Spiffy hardware.

Pick one. This is where we are right now.

Did you not own a computer prior to this month?

Of course I do. But there is no 13 inch laptop that fullfills my nerds.

> there is no 13 inch laptop that fullfills my nerds.

I choose to believe this is not a typo.

X86 based PCs are no alternative?

Unfortunately not. There are no 13 inch x86 devices on the market that don't throttle afaik.

Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) is a desirable feature. You're not getting a 60W CPU in a 13" form factor, but you can get a 28W CPU that will run at 28W indefinitely while also being able to temporarily boost to 60W when needed and thermally able to.

It's fine if I could get an ultra book that could sustain non boost performance. But even that is too much to ask for intel. I have't tested recently released AMD cpus to claim AMD also falls short.

AMD laptop chips are pretty decent: you can find laptops/ultrabooks for about $700 running on a Ryzen 7 4700U. Based on a vs comparison on CPU Monkey it looks like it gets about 80% of the performance of the M1, though only about 25-50% graphics. However, you have much better ram & storage options, all at a lower price, and the graphics are still 2x to 4x better than Intel's on board graphics.

You've been mislead if you think the 13" Macbooks run at full boost clock all the time.

It looks like the M1 does run all out all the time (maybe because it never turbos that much to begin with).

When plugged in, perhaps, but when on battery those slower cores are going to get used more.

No, if you run a heavy computational load on a battery powered Macbook Pro it runs all out on all cores. Lots of reviewers looking at this. Battery life is worse of course under heavy load but still incredible relative to x86 for identical tasks. Faster and less battery usage.