Which clouds any common sense.
Both on and off paper. Lets be honest here, We're only talking laptops, apple make terrible work stations, and if you wanted to throw £5k at a PC you'd have something likely more powerful than the £40k Mac versions you can spec up on the apple configuration tool. Mobile processors always compromise on performance for battery life, at least Apple laptops
Always do. Where as there are still the odd AlienWare or Legion Laptop that throw a desk top Processor in there and they will totally blitz anything with a mobile CPU,
Total myth in my view, these days any company that makes software only for use on a mac limits its audience and so any professional level software for a Mac you can also buy for a PC and the world these days is powered by PC.... lets be honest it always has been.
Now many software packages are realising there power by pushing massive amounts of processing power through unused GPUs which Apple laptops don't tend to have, the M1 is a System on chip which means it does everything, where as the likes of intel might have some intel graphics on the chip but then throw in an Nvidia GPU with masses of extra processing power. The likes of many 3d Programs love to use GPU power and the More GPUs the better, which is why people put multiple graphics cards in workstation PC's, do you have any idea what that costs to do on any sort of mac?
For the costs they have to at least make things look better on the surface, but what does an all aluminium body make in terms of difference in performance, compared to a plastic cased laptop, you just pay more.
I never use a track pad, hate them can't stand them and you'll be hard pressed to find any serious professional who does anything significant on a track pad, Get yourself an external mouse what ever you're using.
Apple used to be highly regarded for there screens, but they use screens that really are no better than anything else and in professional circles if creating and you want really accurate colours on your work station computer you don't buy an Apple monitor.
Apple don't make anything for themselves, bear that in mind, the monitors are usually made by Samsung or sharp, The Memory chips for RAM and SSD are all made by the same factories, its just Apple solder them to the boards in factories they contract to make there laptops, iPhones are made by the same Chinese companies that make Samsung phones, there is nothing special in the way an laptop is nailed together.
At least if I want a bigger SSD in my laptop I can just fit one and not have to go to the expense of buying a whole new laptop, actually with this laptop, its do big I took the DVD drive out (which no one uses these days) and I have put another HDD caddy in, so when prices come down some more I'll be treating it to a second 2TB SSD.
how much is 4TB in an apple laptop?
It still is and has put a lot of people off the cheaper M1 powered laptops from apple, More expensive Intel powered machines will still sell, but the cost of an M1 mac means people are moving to Windows to stick with intel power and as you've pointed out the Surface line are very capable machines.
Microsoft even have there own "Microsoft store" a few shops up from the flagship apple store on Regent Street in London
I'm not arguing they are bad, I have no experiance with the M1 specifically, but they are not any better than the best from intel, what they are is Apple throwing their toys out of the pram about having to rely on intel, who don't favor apple over any other company that buys chips in bulk.
You can't say this is apples first attempt they have been making these chips for years for iPads and phones, they use the ARM architecture which can be traced back all the way to the BBC Micro....
It will be interesting to see what they do, if uptake of the new chips is bad then Apple might end up ditching the M1 entirely? If its acceptable they might carry on using them in lower end machines.
I honestly can't see them ditching intel at the moment for there £3k+ laptops and machines being used by high end users.
If you look into it you'll see that Apple have already had problems with people bricking their laptops because of issues with the USB ports and other issues with the processors.
People use to say exactly the same for years about the Power PC based macs of the 90s and early 2000's that the next G..... would wipe the floor with intel, it never happened and eventually apple gave up and switched to intel to stay competitive.
Now thats not to say they don't have some aces up their sleeves but the main thing I can say about apple is they have not been making very good choices and decisions over the last 10 years, they have lost a lot of there customers over to Android and windows, and they have alienated a lot of people with there constant need to feel they know what people want, hell they even removed the SD card slot from the macbook at one point, How absolutely idiotic was that!!
The latest iPhone came with a USB-type C to lightning cable and no charging brick..... yet no one has a USB-type C charger! To do attach anything now to a mac you'll need a special dongle that will be specific to apple and cost anything upwards of £100.
You could go round and round like this all day, it wouldn't get you anywhere because all you're doing is Fan boying, you've not applied any common sense or logic to any of your arguments, you'll just claim its the best add Infinium contrary to all other information out there.
It all goes back to when you use to do the same about your panda... your panda was the best car in the world and you could not understand why anyone would buy anything else, why they would need anything more and use to claim that anyone buying anything other than a panda was only doing it for the looks...... then you went out and bought another car for the looks and gadgets....
You could turn it around and argue that your prejudice against German car manufacturers and people who prerfer to guy a German car, because they "know what they are getting" they are "familiar with the product" they are "buying it for the looks or to look good in other peoples eyes" all arguments that I could throw at you about apple, you don't actually need an Mac over any other laptop, there is no benefit to an apple laptop and nothing to gain, its just your preference as you're obsessed with the brand and looking good.
Other people prefer to shop about for a better deal.