Yes, compared to your prior Macbook I'm sure it was a revelation. A programmer friend loves his new M1, but he's also been an Apple user for decades.

As a Windows user, testing out my friend's Macbook Air M1 was an underwhelming experience. I've had bigger performance boosts from adding more RAM or switching out HDs to SSDs, and a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on the systems currently featuring the M1.

What are you even talking about? RAM is actually one of the few disappointing areas of these machines, capacity wise (though the RAM itself is fast and unified, so there's that).

Furthermore, one of the most stunning things about these devices is their long running battery life, which you'd hardly get much experience with in a quick test drive.

Bad take is bad.

How did you compare a Windows system with a Mac to conclude it was "an underwhelming experience"? were they similarly configured and running similar software?

> a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on the systems currently featuring the M1.

Not sure I understand your point. M1 systems have 8 or 16 GB RAM. There are no increased RAM compared to non-M1 Mac.

I'll try to find the review in the morning if I remember/care enough, but at least one of the reviews noted that the tested system had more RAM than the slightly older Mac it was being compared to, and that the performance gains between the two systems generally mirrored those found in PCs with differing amounts of RAM.