Let me preface this by saying I’ve never bought any Apple device and I probably never will. Their hardware is great but the company sucks and their policies and decisions somehow suck more. I dislike macOS more than I dislike Windows (although Microsoft is trying its hardest to change that) and I can’t help but at the many recommendations for third party software macOS users share to bring the OS to the current decade, like it’s some kind of Linux distro.

Mac users don’t upgrade, they replace. A Mac is usable for about five to seven years and then you buy a new one. If your drive dies, you recover from iCloud backups. If all else fails, you go to someone who knows how to use the weird boot device shit and pay them to solve the problem for you.

If you need to enter the BIOS or hoot from an external disk, Apple doesn’t target you, and doesn’t care about you. Most people don’t, so it doesn’t make their products any worse. All headaches are externalised to either techies who will curse Apple’s name or to the recycle bin.

Macbooks provide a combination of amazing screens, amazing speakers, amazing performance, amazing battery life, and an OS that is better than Windows (thanks, Microsoft!). You can get better performance if you only need an hour of battery life and use headphones, sure but the M1 is fast enough for the coming years. There are a few laptops with better speakers. They cost more or about the same as a Macbook and their battery life sucks. There are a few laptops with better screens, and they suffer from the same problem. Then there’s the integration, whatever Microsoft is doing with their My Phone app doesn’t come close to Continuity. You sort of get decent sync through KDE Connect, but that’s still not as seamless. Find My is also something no other company has managed to build a competitor for, let alone integrate into a laptop. Sure you can install some kind of tracking software, but there’s no way your phone will find it reliably because the thief turned off the Bluetooth before they took off.

There is no replacement for the Macbook, the Macbook provides the full package 90% of computer users need, for a hefty price. If you don’t need a Macbook, there are plenty of cheaper alternatives. A Chromebook and some cloud applications will do fine for most people if they need to get work done and don’t care about media production or consumption.

As for Apple’s all-in-ones and NUC competitors: they perform admirably for a fine price. The Mac Mini is quite a good deal for a desktop computer if you pick the right configuration. Their video encoder and ML trickery make it attractive for certain tasks as well. Plus, if you’re compiling an iOS app, you’re going to need one of those. Their all-in-ones are a bit harder to recommend, but compared to competing AIO computers, they’re excellent. I’d personally stick a NUC to the back of a monitor, but if you want decent speakers, a built in webcam+mic, and a high quality display, it’s hard to find an alternative for a reasonable price. Then again, who needs a webcam integrated into their computer, anyway.

If you need support, Lenovo and Dell are better. Instead of a “genius” telling you to throw out your laptop and buy a new one, Lenovo and Dell will send someone to your house and either replace parts or loan you a laptop while they get shit fixed. This is something where Apple has fallen behind, but their cult still lives in denial.