> 3) Apple support devices for longer than Android, that's nice!
> 4) God, why do their benchmarks compare devices that are 3-5y old?!
2 and 4 kind of contradict each other.
I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.
My personal laptop is a 2014 MacBook Pro. I'll be buying one of these new M4 Airs, and comparing to an 11-year-old computer.
I now have an M2 Air and have zero complaints, it’s the best computing device I’ve ever owned. You’re going to really enjoy the M4.
Each year when Apple came out with new machines, we would make a game of putting together a dream machine --- ages ago, that could easily hit 6 figures, these days, well, a fully-configured Mac Studio is $14,099 and a Pro Display w/ stand and nano texture adds $6,998 or so.
Not surprising considering the CPU in the fastest "desktop" Mac before today was slower than an old Intel chips you can buy for ~$350 (e.g. the 14700k).
Sample size one: My spouse is using either a 2013 MBA and wants to upgrade, mostly b/c the enshitification of web sites. Basic productivity was okay-ish for her work (document creation, pdfs, spreadsheets, etc), but even Gmail now suffers with more than a tab.
Edit: thinking more, I don’t know if I agree with myself here.