But Apple's aren't? I agree with you but they are pricing it relative to what they can get away with and Apple set the starting point for ARM based laptops.
The M1-based Macs are faster, lighter, offer seamless compatibility, run iOS software, have better screens and better battery life than modern comparable laptops. It's also faster than this Snapdragon chip. And starts from $999.
It also runs a really good Unix OS. This laptop still won't run Linux out of the box.
While I agree WSL2 is pretty good, and it's great that it's available on Windows, you still have to put up with the day-to-day annoyances of the OS.
The general UX is the main reason why I don't use Windows. I actually gave it an honest try in 2020. I was pretty excited about Windows terminal, the inclusion of OpenSSH (I always hated Putty) and even went on the insider channel to test out WSL2, with Docker desktop and everything. And it was better that I had remembered.
But I just gave up after a few months. The laggy search in the start menu, which I had to fix with some registry change to prevent it from searching the web (!?). The random "quick access" folders in the explorer, which also required registry wrangling to remove. Bonus points for all these reverting randomly after an update.
The hidden taskbar, which would become permanently visible in case a window demanded attention, and no way (that I've found) to disable this behavior. However, it seems fixed on Windows 11.
The windows which would look active, with a blinking cursor and everything, but wouldn't actually be active, and input would go to some other random window. New windows starting up behind the active window, etc.
And my favorite: turning on the computer in the middle of the night for some reason if left in hibernation. I had set the GPO to NOT turn on to uninstall updates, so no idea what it was up to.
I moved back from a Linux zealot into Windows, because the day-to-day annoyances of the OS running on Laptops, and for graphics programming, are much more berable on Windows.
Running Linux on VMs since 2012, since VMWare made it painless to do so.
I've been running Linux on my work laptops since 2018, after a long stint on MBPs. They've both worked perfectly, even though the manufacturer doesn't support Linux at all. The only thing that didn't work was the fingerprint reader on the previous one. On the new one it works, but I don't use it since it's not in a practical position.
I'm getting the same kind of battery life as on Windows, Bluetooth headphones work great, it actually sleeps when I close the lid, etc.
The current one actually worked better on Linux than on the pre-installed Windows. For some reason, Windows couldn't get the brightness all the way up, even on battery power and "performance" mode.
I don't do anything graphics-intensive, though. I'm quite happy with the integrated GPUs. Although on my desktop, I have a Radeon that I use for gaming, and it also works great. But it's true that I specifically avoided Nvidia to not gamble on Linux support.
For the curious, the laptops are HP ProBook 430 G5 and 845 G8.
> It also runs a really good Unix OS. This laptop still won't run Linux out of the box.
That's misleading - these Macs don't run Linux well at all. I would love to see Linux fully and properly supported on these great new chips, but let's not pretend that is already the case.
Apple earned it - they don't charge you just for the laptop, it's for the entire ecosystem - For example, you can run iOS apps on Apple's ARM device. And what exactly does Lenovo bring to the table other than embedded spyware (which they've been caught in the past for)?
Windows also has an ecosystem, arguably made even larger with WSL2 and Android apps. This new ARM laptop is offering a fanless design and (they claim) 28 hours of battery. Don't forget that Apple have also sold plenty of "crap" laptops for four figure sums until relatively recently (e.g. customers beta testing new flawed keyboard designs).
Apple might still be selling Intel systems alongside ARM systems. But they’ve made it clear which side is the future. Their performance also isn’t a loss.
Probably the biggest factor though is in Windows land cross architecture comparability will be a much much bigger issue. If your legacy app only works on intel then arm is useless.
The M1 is literally the fastest laptop processor on the planet, by a large margin.
Current-year MBPs are a whole 'nother class of device.
This ThinkPad is going to chug in comparison to an x86 laptop because Lenovo doesn't have the technical capability or clout to design a whole new, hyper-fast ARM part and basically make arbitrary demands of the supply chain to get it into users' hands, the way Apple does.
