> thermals

Apple has been consistently terrible at cooling design, the only reason m1/m2 systems don't have thermal issues is because they sidestepped the problem entirely by building a very thermally efficient chip.

Making a difficult problem irrelevant is pretty solid engineering.

Not having the problem in the first place is the best way to solve it. We are discussing finished products. My M2 air lasts a million hours and doesn't get hot. My XPS lasts 4 or 5 and burns the top of my legs.

I'm not sure yours is the criticism you think it is.

Ultimately, heat is waste, and the less of it you generate, the better. When I said "thermals" I meant chip design, not cooling system design. This is obviously one of the huge benefits of their vertical integration.

A chip that doesn't get hot sounds like pretty efficient cooling design to me.

So they treated the symptoms by treating the cause? Sounds like a win to me lol.

I struggle to understand this Goalpost. Thermals and power go hard in hand. Battery life and noise follow suit. Overheated legs and wrists are not much fun either. In any case, most other laptops in a similar form factor have equal or worse cooling. Thermal throttling shows up on laptop reviews a lot.

Actually Apples cooking has been pretty rock solid. What let apple down was Intel.

Intels mobile CPUs have been, and still are absolute trash.

they took entire class of problem and made it disappear, that's great engineering.

So.. they don’t have thermal issues?

The MBA is the best in performance per watt but there are better ultrabooks if you ignore the energy consumption.

> the lowest end MBA blows the highest end "ultrabook" out of the water

That's untrue

And remember the screen cracks?

https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/30/m1-macbook-screen-cracks/

It doesn’t really make sense to ignore energy consumption in a supposedly portable device. That’s like saying that a ship is more efficient way of transport, if you ignore that it can’t go over land.

Portable doesn't necessarily mean it needs to last as long as it takes you to hike accross a continent.

I use a laptop because I can move it from one room to another without shutting it down. While it would be nice to not have to plug it more than once a day, I'm fine with a 4-5hours autonomy.

But having more battery life definitely do not beat having functionalities such as external monitor, working internal webcam and sound.