Apple thrives on being different than the rest and this is very obvious in the way they design laptops compared to all the other Windows manufacturers.
It’s enough to browse the very frugal Mac section on BinaryFork and you’ll quickly realize I’m not an Apple fan. I quite don’t like the company, starting with their principles. But I have to give it to them: they rarely stray way too far from their principles.
This is so obvious to me when I’m looking at my ROG Strix Scar 15 Gaming laptop and all the gaming laptops released in the past years.
Manufacturers are compromising portability by using huge power bricks and claim 45-55 dB under load is a normal noise level under load, because “you can put a pair of good gaming headphones on”.
There seems to be no limit to how ridiculous Windows laptops can get.
I kind of get it why they’re doing it. Everyone else is doing it, and if you’re the one with a laptop that “only” draws 200 Watts from the wall consumers will jump to your competition.
But it’s not OK. My laptop weights about 2.3 kg, which is not terribly bad for a 15.6-inch screen, but when you add a bulky and heavy 1 kg+ power brick it’s another story.
I’m still pretty happy with my laptop, despite some glaring problems, but that’s because it’s not my only computer and I’m happy if the gaming performance is good.
And it is.
The truth is I could never use this laptop as my everyday computer. It’s too noisy when you actually do stuff, it can get really hot, it hurts my back if I have to carry it, and battery life is a joke. At the same time is much more powerful than my huge desktop that only one year older. I can’t ignore that.
In the end, the cost of being one of the best gaming laptops is ultimately paid by us, the consumers. And that cost is called a compromised user experience.
I don’t think the regular Apple fans will accept something like this, even if sometimes they accept a lot of weird or “not worth the price” products, and Apple knows this.
Macs are the most well-rounded laptops you can buy today.
I don’t think Apple will ever compromise most of the important features of a laptop so it can claim to be “the best” by a tiny margin at just one single thing. Making a product a lot less usable just to excel at something is rarely a good strategy.
Apple laptops are not the best at anything, maybe except speakers. I know this because I have an M2 MacBook Pro from work.
But that’s not the whole story.
Macs are the most well-rounded laptops you can buy today. Excellent build quality, tiny power bricks, very good screens despite not being gaming level panels, fast CPUs, above average GPUs, and ultra efficient. All in the same product.
You can find light and powerful Windows laptops, you can find power sipping Windows laptops, amazing Windows gaming laptops, very well-built Windows laptops, but you can’t find all these features in the same product.
It pains me to admit this, but that’s the truth.
Does this mean I’m becoming a Mac fanboy? No, because for me software matters even more than hardware, and here’s where the Mac falls flat.
I’m used to how Mac OS works (not quite to the level of a Mac expert), but I always find myself looking for ways to make my Mac behave like Windows.
And that’s when I just give up and turn on my Windows gaming laptop, with a happy smile on my face.
But when I do have to look for that huge charger, I can’t help by ask myself “What if the Windows world had more common sense?”.
