And if you are comparing against an M1 or M2 you can find numerous PC laptops that will beat that out in performance and still have a quiet/cool/long battery life operation.

Yes, the MacBook Air is unique-ish for having no fan at all, but a slow running fan that you can barely hear is going to get you more performance with basically zero added cost or compromise.

And for those users who don’t need top performance and just need an affordable office app machine, I’d argue that Snapdragon laptops have the same primary benefits as the MacBook Air.

In terms of competition against x86, Apple is only ahead of competition in their latest two or so generations and only in specific ways.

Want to play games sometimes like 936 million other PC gamers in the world? (The fastest growing segment of people who buy computers) You’ll pay a lot less for an Omen Transcend 14 than a MacBook Pro at the same specs and you’ll get a system with a very similar noise and battery life profile, along with far Better graphics performance.

I don’t personally think Windows is so bad compared to Mac in terms of annoyances. Mac nags you about all of Apple’s subscription services and you can’t even uninstall their apps like News and Stocks. Microsoft lets you uninstall everything including Notepad. It’s really not that annoying after about 5 minutes changing settings and uninstalling some things.

If we are talking about buying a used Mac we are also talking about buying a computer that will lose software support before the Windows equivalent historically. E.g., you buy an M2 MacBook Air and you’ve got about 7 years left or less before you lose major OS versions. Almost guarantee you that won’t be the case with any reasonably recent Windows PC that supports 11 today. My

▲

themadturk 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Wait, my M3 MacBook Air nags me about Apple subscription services? Where? When?

And you're right, I can't uninstall Stocks or News, but I if I never open them, does it matter?

▲

MoonWalk an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Not true. Mac OS does not nag you about subscription services. What are you talking about?

Windows is offensive, insufferable trash. From its CONTINUAL hounding about "your Microsoft account" to its bug-riddled, regressive, and shambolic UI. Things Windows users took for granted 40 years ago are simply gone.

Example: Select three PNGs in Explorer and right-click on them, and look for "Open with..."

▲

dangus an hour ago | parent [-]

Literally the moment you buy a Mac. Apple hardware comes with 3 month trials of various subscriptions, and you get a notification about it. They try to get you to sign up in hopes you’ll forget to cancel.

When I bought my iPhone 17 the sales associate even tried to pitch signing up for the trial in person as he guided me through the purchase process.

When you cancel the trial it ends it immediately instead of ending it at the end of your trial period, a dark pattern designed to encourage you to forget to end your trial.

Apple devices also nag you about buying AppleCare in the system preferences.

I’ve never been hounded about my Microsoft account. Be specific. When does this happen? Yes, you need one to set up Windows 11 (just like a Mac and especially iOS are basically useless without an Apple account anyway), but after that I’ve never been hounded around anything related to it.

Never had problems figuring out how to open stuff in Windows. No idea what you’re saying.

Most of these extreme claims about Windows seem to come from people who don’t even use the OS regularly and have forgotten about the ways in which macOS does many of the same commercial OS practices.

	▲	sitharus 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Every time my Windows gaming PC updates it nags me about setting up backups to OneDrive. I cannot install Windows without a Microsoft account unless I apply work-arounds. It constantly offers Office 365, even adding dummy icons to the start menu. There are adverts on the login screen. To be fair I installed Bazzite there, but for a laptop I cannot find an equivalent device at the same price point even ignoring the need for linux drivers.