I'm asking because I've been thinking of getting a MacBook Air in the future with the intent to use it for writing.
- For native M1 apps like Pages, Sublime, or Highland there's no lag at all. For example, with Highland 2 from double-clicking a file to editing it is less than a second and there's no lag during use even with a 49,000 word book manuscript open.
- For x86 apps like the not-quite-latest Office there's a couple of seconds at first launch (for that session) whilst Rosetta does its x86 translation work, but after that it launches without lag for the remainder of that session and it stays snappy in use (snappy for Word that is).
- Native VS Code goes from launch to editing in under two seconds and never lags, even with something like side-by-side Markdown preview going.
- If you're using Vellum for publishing it's about 1.5 seconds from double-clicking a file to editing it.
Battery life is, indeed, impressive.
Last night I spent around 5 hours doing C# dev in VS Mac, with multiple projects being built every few minutes, cross-platform binaries for Intel Mac, Windows, and Linux being produced every half hour or so, plus Highland 2, Word 2016, and Vellum. With all that it used 28% battery across that 5 hours (and never got warm). On full brightness too (for my sins).
I know the question isn't about dev, but writing uses less resources and gives even better battery life so 18 hours (for example) is definitely possible.
The only issue I have is the keyboard. Far better than the 'broken' ones of a few years ago but I really wish they'd go for thicker machines and increase the travel. I've just got rid of my last ThinkPad and it's the one thing I miss.
Oh, and there is no longer a hotkey to control the backlight brightness; it's automatic. Which genuinely works perfectly except that it doesn't come on for your very first sign in at boot-up, so entering your password then can be tricky without ambient light (though after that you can use the fingerprint reader). It's a really strange UX flaw. Not related to your question, I know, but you don't say whether you're already on a Mac or switching so I wanted to be honest about this as it is really annoying but rarely mentioned.
It's shocking how an OS update can still take upwards of an hour on what is otherwise such a fast system.
My 8-core 64GB Windows machine fares no better.
Switching between OLVWM desktops on my 200MHz Pentium Pro twenty years ago was instantaneous.
(I'm on an M1 Air and I think the performance is great)
Come again? I think anything beyond 60hz still qualifies as niche. Vendors are still selling 720p laptops.
These are not niche markets.
Sounds a bit like the, 'Never meet your heroes', thingy.
My phone (POCO X3 PRO) allowed me to turn on 120Hz but when I do I don't notice any change except if I really look at it, like scrolling up and down very quickly while looking behind the phone I notice a difference, but otherwise I don't notice it, so I just have it turned off, should give more battery life.
I'd also prefer the sluggishness gone if I had my choice between the two.
I still remember how fast console based computing, an old gameboy or a 90's macintosh would be - click a button and stuff would show up instantly.
There was a tactility present with computers that's gone today.
Today everything feels sluggish - just writing this comment on my $3000 Macbook Pro and i can feel the latency, sometimes there's even small pauses. A little when i write stuff, a lot when i drag windows.
Hopefully the focus on 100hz+ screens in tech in general will put more focus on latency from click to screen print - now when resolution and interface graphics in general are close to biological limits.