If the rumours are true, the new M1X MacBook Pros being announced this Monday look perfect:
- high performance + battery life
- exceptional build quality
- great screen, sound, and webcam
- decent port selection
They also introduced a crazy bug which when you plug in a USBC charging cable you can twig the temperature sensor on the macbook sending the whole CPU to 100% and it was a software issue not a hardware issue. Still not fixed.
I intend to get the nex M1X for the simple reason that it will be better integrated with the mac's and OS. I don't love Apple, but I consider them to make the best laptop so i'll be excited to see what they release on monday.
Given the privacy advantages, I'd prefer systems without onbard video or audio capture.
(I'm aware advanced methods can be used to capture some audio signal via, e.g., speakers or device vibrations. I'm looking at risk minimisation / mitigation, not elimination.)
I would argue this is almost impossible with a laptop. Even if the webcam could manage to capture a decent resolution, it would almost always be placed at an awkward position relative to your face compared to an external webcam.
External microphones are so far superior to internal ones that once you start noticing it’s all you hear when people talk via their echoey noise-suppressed-via-magic internal microphones.
I get it; I’m nitpicking. But my point I guess is that even good laptops have a lot worse remote conference setups than most people think.
It should have a better camera, that much I agree with.