They haven't ever been better than Apple laptop hardware, even in Intel-land.
There seems to be this common bias in PC laptop evaluation that excludes Apple machines from consideration when doing comparisons.
Apple makes the best x64 laptops, and has for years. Sadly, they will stop soon.
I believe the ability to repair or swap components has always been better with Lenovo.
Apple beats Lenovo in a lot of other ways though, audio quality being one that I personally experienced. On my old T430s the speakers were so bad I wished they had just not included them at all. They were like the speakers in those talking greeting cards.
It was good for about a year. Then i started having connectivity problems. The Letter in the keys wrote off quickly. And a few of the keys started becoming less responsive. The quality just wasn't there.
Luckily, by then Apple came out with its version, and it's been flawless for a few years now. It's worth the extra money to go with Apple, if you're getting that kind of keyboard.
There are many many many many mechanical keyboard options to use with a Mac. If you're legitimately having difficulty finding a solution, feel free to reach out to me via the contact information in my profile and I'll be happy to make some specific recommendations.
https://www.keychron.com/pages/keychron-k3-wireless-mechanic...
Obviously that's all anecdotal and may be an outlier, but I don't find a naked assertion that "Apple makes the best x64 laptops" very convincing.
Apple laptops are always a fair bit pricier for a given set of hw specs than any other manufacturer would be.
Additionally, they lack any level of reparability and a trip to the genius bar will often be quite expensive. Hell, look at the debacle that was the butterfly keyboard they pushed for something like 5-6 years.
Apple's keyboards, even before/after the butterfly keyboard, are inferior (in my opinion) than the keyboard on the Thinkpad line, and feel quite mushy by comparison.
The aluminum construction is quite solid, but not without it's issues. They seem to get far hotter in my experience, but perhaps that's them acting as heat sink so I'll give that a pass. The hard edges on the case are a pain-point to me.
I know a lot of people seem to prefer the apple touchpads, but I've never liked them. I prefer physical mouse buttons, and the click never felt right to me on apple touchpads. Part of it might be that gesture inputs with the touchpads aggravated my RSI, so I was never able to make use of them.
All said, I don't agree with Apple making the best x64 laptops, but they fielded a competitor like many others. They have the advantage of being the only true Apple laptop though, so if you're all-in on the Apple ecosystem, they're definitely the best choice. Otherwise, there are many laptops that might surpass the macbooks, depending on your individual preferences.
Yes, Apple did finally fix the awful keyboards on its laptops from 2016-2020, and their keyboards are once again quite good. The trackpad is what it has always been: the best on any computer at any price.
I'm not aware that Apple offers any kind of on-site warranty service, so that's a no, but the flipside is that you are much less likely to need it than you are with PCs. (Please, spare me the endless downvotes for saying this. I support hundreds of PCs and hundreds of Macs, and have for a couple decades now. I'm not just making this shit up for my health.)
Lets not promise the moon here. The M1's Linux support is far from complete and definitely not ready for general use.
Apple products (top case stickers notwithstanding) are fungible: just buy another one from any Apple store in the universe and restore your backup, and let AppleCare deal with the busted one on their own schedule.
There’s nothing special about your laptop except the data. The factory pumps out bazillions of them.
> Apple products ... just buy another one
I think you answered your own question. Buying a new laptop every time something is broken is expensive. Lenovo offers quite cheap extended warranty plus the next-day repair is great. (EU: I paid less then 50E for another year of warranty after the original 2 years)
I actually did this once and tried to submit a warranty support on day 1 of buying the new warranty and was turned down, but they called me about a week later saying they would waive the 30 days and ended up doing about $500 in repairs for $130 cost of the new warranty.
(the other condition is that you are only allowed one accidental repair event per year)
I doubt there are nearly as many people on HN making even one entry level Ford Focus a month in salary.
Along a similar line of reasoning, I totally understand if Coca-Cola bans soft drinks from Pepsi on campus. But I would be much less understanding of Ford banning non-Ford cars in their employee parking lots.
So will the Genius Bar. (If they don't, Apple has a 14 day return policy, so you can borrow anything they sell for free for two weeks.)
I need my laptop to work. If it doesn't work, I can't work. If I can't work, I'm not getting paid. That's why "next business day" is important.
My laptop contains sensitive data. Data which is encrypted at rest, but which I'm nevertheless not going to ship to goodness knows where, for goodness knows how long. That's one reason why "on site" is important. The other is that I paid a lot of money for a piece of hardware; I'm not going to faf about looking for some Apple Store (of which very few exist in my country).
Lenovo charges ~15% of the purchase price for 3 year NBDOS support, which is very much worth every cent. Tech shows up, replaces $part, leaves, and I can get back to work.
I'm the exact same way, which is why I have 4. Next business day is way too far away.
I always bring a mouse, I hate the little nubs even more :)
I experienced both on employer-provided MacBooks. Now, I may have been particularly unlucky here, but I think Apple hardware quality never having been surpassed is a bit of an optimistic statement.
Lucky you then, I literally just replaced an inflated battery on a Dell latitude, can send some cool pics of the thing being swollen like a wet nappy if you want.
I think the shielding of the power adaptor picks up some induction (or capacitance?) and you can feel that when you brush over it with your hand. If you use a grounded lead (the 3-prong cable that comes with the adaptor instead of the 2-prong duckhead) it doesn't happen. Because the voltage that will flow to ground and won't build up.
You can indeed feel it very clearly because it makes the surface feel rough and tickly. I'm also sensitive to it.
A lot of computers do this, my PC-XT did this back in the 80s. But Apple is one of the few with an all metal case. A lot of other makes have metal but it's usually just a sheet and not connected to the actual ground.
What I hate about Apple's current laptops is the sharp edges that cut into my wrists, and the keyboards that are too shallow to have real feedback. They seem made more to please the eyes, not the hands.