My Ryzen puts that M1 to shame since it can run any Linux distro with full graphics acceleration natively. An M1 can't even do that yet.

What a fair comparison. My Android phone is shamed too, given it can't run Windows.

Sure, but the M1 generally has a high-quality Apple screen (this laptop from HP advertises only “FHD” so - presumably 16:9 1080p and not Retina-quality 16:10…) and the Ryzen, though much less constrained than Intel still likely has a “boost clock speed” and power throttles itself when disconnected from power or due to heat. By comparison, it’s hard to call the M1 the fastest computer I’ve used - desktops are plenty fast - but it’s certainly the most consistently performing laptop chip I’ve ever used, and is entirely quiet and cool to the touch at all times.

It’s hard to compare the values of macOS and Linux because they are very different, but it’s still easy to say that an M1 has excellent uses on macOS and everyone interested in non-Apple machines is (to some degree) waiting to see what Qualcomm or Nvidia can come up with in the ARM chipset space for non-macOS laptops… I think ChromeOS laptops prove that iPad-like performance is possible, but so far only the Apple M1 has shown that traditional x64-like performance is possible on laptop/desktop from ARM chips.

> Sure, but the M1 generally has a high-quality Apple screen (this laptop from HP advertises only “FHD” so - presumably 16:9 1080p and not Retina-quality 16:10…)

This looks like their current generation Pro/EliteBook lines. I have one of the higher end ones (EB 845) and oh boy does the screen suck. Not just compared to my 9 yo MBP. But even on its own. Very low angles, washed out colors. It's only advertised as 72% NTSC IIRC. Cheaper models have 6-bit panels on which you can see the dithering in the window shadows. It's laughably bad. And it cost more than similarly-specced MacBook Air.

Other than that it's a usable PC, plenty fast for my needs, and the RAM and SSD are easily upgradeable. Battery life is OK-ish (I get around 6 hours).

Also, everything works under Linux and is even less of a hassle to get going than on Windows (you need an external mouse to install it).

> but so far only the Apple M1 has shown that traditional x64-like performance is possible on laptop/desktop from ARM chips

FWIW, ThunderX will sell you a 96 core arm64 desktop that definitely offers x64-like performance. And Ampere will sell you a 256 core arm64 2U server node that matches the performance of the fastest AMD Epyc Milan CPUs. AFAIK there is no desktop case that supports the motherboard of the latter, but there is no reason why you couldn't make one.

These things are a bit niche, since the main benefit of arm64 is the reduced power demand at a given performance level, which desktop/workstation users seldom care much about. In the data center though they are killing it, I believe Azure is using the Ampere Altra stuff for their Graviton2-competitor.

The actual real-world usage experience of M1 laptops far exceeds anything else on the market today.

macOS is pretty close to garbage for my needs, so it varies by the person. Of course I'm looking forward to Asahi becoming more mainstream (I do need Thunderbolt support for example).

Does anyone use an Apple m1 and just run a virtualized linux fulltime ?

Most people just don’t care about that.

It's $999 but it has half the RAM and a quarter of the storage.

If you want to match those specs it jumps up to $1,649 which is $550 more than the HP.

Is the Mac better though? Of course it is, but not everyone needs the latest and greatest and not everyone needs to pay $550 more for it.

The storage on Macs seems a bit mean for the price but story with RAM is more interesting.

From the benchmarks I’ve seen the M1 chips swap so fast that the penalty for less RAM is much less that I would expect on an Intel based laptop.

I’m pretty sure that if I was to move back to a mac right now I’d get 16Gb over 32Gb because there just isn’t much advantage to doubling the RAM.

I mean there’s a bit but to honest I don’t think I’d notice day to day.

Not when you run Linux on the HP, though. For most tasks, it’s much more efficient than MacOS, even on M1.

Then again, if you get to run Linux on the M1 some day, this might be slightly different.

Even before the M1, you paid a small (IMO) premium for better build quality, a great trackpad and (before the butterfly) keyboard, a solid Unix with really great tailored applications, etc…

With the M1 dominance (and inflation) there’s basically no premium at this point (although there is little to no low-end options).

As long as you don't need more memory or storage, at which point you'll pay about a 4X markup for each upgrade and will need to make sure you prepay that when you buy the laptop as everything is soldered.

If only the MacBook Air was user upgradable like the old 2017 models. There’d be little reason to buy anything else.

There's a reason the RAM is soldered on: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1460108068637712384.

SSD is very annoying, though.

So Apple wins by default with their two year old M1 Macbook Air and especially when they are already discounted for as low as $949 and you get better battery life and quality compared to that overpriced snake-oil contraption HP is selling.

For that Macbook Air, it is still a good deal but I'd wait for an M2 version. As for that HP laptop, no thanks and no deal from me.