So I'd like you to post an example of a laptop that is indeed comparable and costs half the price of an M1 MacBook Pro or Air.
Either stand by what you said, or correct yourself.
>>The luxury laptop market is now an Apple exclusive.
Plenty of extremely expensive(more so than Macbooks) laptops from HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus. Saying that only apple makes "luxury laptops" is just....not true.
What is "Retina"?
Only Apple knows but it appears to mean more pixels than your eyes can detect. It is marketing more so than functionality. A lot of the high end Apple "features" or "specs" have little or no impact on real world functionality. They exist mainly to justify added expense and/or bragging rights.
Also, saying it has little or no impact on real world functionality is an opinion I strongly disagree with. I will never work on a low-DPI screen again because I vastly prefer the crispness of high-DPI screens.
>>Comparable real world "functionality" is a different story --- one based on need.
I will repeat my request for the third time then - please provide an example of a laptop at half price of an M1 Macbook Air/Pro that has comparable "real world functionality" then. Please observe how I'm completely open to working with your terms, so just go ahead and provide something, anything.
>>A lot of the high end Apple "features" or "specs" have little or no impact on real world functionality.
Like what? Please name one.
Now, I don't want to extend the rivalry here. For starters, I don't think this comparison makes sense.
What people value depends entirely on their own volition. And to be frank, there are intrinsic penalties you're willing to take when buying Apple products. As such, this debate will never come to a fair conclusion.
But that's another conversation entirely.
The Windows laptop will likely be bulky, have a terrible touchpad and sound like a portable jet engine (as long as it’s Intel at least).
As for the rest, touchpads have been getting better. Both in hardware and drivers. The latter is true in Linux land, at least. I don't use Windows, so I wouldn't know.
Unless it's under full load, and you've got a GPU mux switch, I don't think your fans will sound as a jet engine either. But either way, at that price, yeah... It'll be bulkier than a Mac. Aaand your fans will spin. Aaand your battery life will be worse, 'cause CISC lol. Still miles better than carrying a desktop though.
I'm happy for Apple, in all honesty. RISC is the future. I just hope that bigger and better open firmware projects keep coming, so I can keep tinkering (and having no x86 license to deal with, it does seem that future is bright). Unfortunately, x86 just has better support right now.