This seems to be key. People must want Windows or Linux so badly they will pay 25-30% for a thinkpad with a track pad that is almost as good. Don't these manufacturers sell more machines than Apple and could benefit from better economies of scale. Maybe the scale is just at the low end and the iPhone subsidizes premium Mac hardware.

I have yet to read about someone who priced out something "as good" as the MacBook Air in terms of component quality and efficiency. What would the price premium be... over 50%?

BTW, I bought a 15" Chromebook, 1080p but is better than the really bad ones my kids used at school. It runs android apps for streaming video and Chrome browses faster than on my Mac.

> People must want Windows or Linux so badly they will pay 25-30% for a thinkpad

Yup, I got Thinkpad X9, the idea being "Air 15 but with Windows". It does the job. I still think Air 15 is better (and cheaper), but the software compatibility and not needing to switch platforms outweighs that.

I love my 15 Air (M2). I’m curious how the Air 15 is better in a way that may or may not be available as an upgrade in the X9 or some other option.

Better SoC, no spinning fans. Also the screen won't die after 2 years of light mode usage.

The remaining stuff... I'd say Lenovo has caught up for the most part.

Yeah, I'm waiting for the panther lake (or similar) ones to become mainstream and I'll get a higher end laptop with those next. The latest framework once they open their parts marketplace in india is my first choice for now.

I've been wondering for a while, how much of macos can you strip out and still run a VM with something like linux in it?

Ideally passing through as much of the hardware as possible, and booting right into that config. Running it natively is ideal, but projects like Asahi are forced to play catch up porting another OS to new devices.

Probably as good as that can get is something like WSL. Microsoft put a lot into that but still not the same as just using Linux. I wish Apple / MS would do the opposite and build their OS on top of Linux but of course that will never happen.