>The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...
So, really, what this is saying is that a brand new, constructor specific 5nm SoC that is tailor made with a CPU/memory quasi-direct link is about equal to a year and a half old 7nm CPU, while being twice as expensive. As much as the Apple fanboys can scream about pOwEr EfFiCciEnCy!1, making up a $1500 difference just in electricity costs is going to be hard. Battery life doesn't matter, just plug your damn laptop, it's throttling itself if it's not plugged in anyways.
Counterpoint: battery life and, for the first time in my life, being able to treat my laptop as actually portable and not have to carry a power brick and mouse (because other touchpads were so terrible) everywhere is the main thing that sold me on Macs, initially, after ~15 years of my computing life being totally Mac-free.
It sold me fast. Turned me from "pft, Macs, OK, whatever, they're nothing special" to "huh, maybe there's something to this" to "I'm never buying anything but a Mac again until competitors can match [list of features I now wouldn't want to give up]" in like a month.
Sadly, no other vendors seem close to closing that gap. Macs remain a category of their own. Not a great situation.
Confused. The MacBook Pro is also available from $2500.
I see you subscribe to the John Hodgman school of laptop design.
It isn't.
