About a year ago, after multiple surgeries and/or botch jobs, it was time to finally retire my trusty Alienware m17 R2 laptop. It had started to run out of beans despite having thermal paste re-applied three times, new cooling fans, and a new battery. I reckon it saw at least 10,000 hours of use, which isn't bad.
It was time for a new laptop.
why not another gaming laptop?
I first got into gaming laptops because I didn't have anywhere to put a proper gaming PC, but that was no longer the case. This meant that a new laptop didn't have to cover gaming and could be used for general laptop-type stuff and productivity.
Also - this was my second gaming laptop, and as much as I loved using them, there were some things that I'd had enough of. They end up running hotter than the sun, the battery life is awful, and they are too heavy and huge to be truly portable. The last point is probably my own fault for going with 17" displays, to be fair.
When it was time to look for a replacement, I made a list of things I needed.
- Long battery life.
- Something that runs cool.
- 14" or 15" 4K display.
- Powerful hardware, but not bothered about a dedicated GPU.
what ticked all the boxes?
There were a couple of realistic options around the time I was looking:
- Windows on ARM laptop.
- Apple Silicon MacBook.
Both make use of ARM-based System on a Chip (SoC) architecture, where there is a single chip that incorporates all components of a computer (CPU, GPU, memory, etc.). This is the same thing that's used in smartphones and tablets. SoC devices are significantly more power-efficient than multi-component architectures, with a nice side effect being that they run much cooler.
Windows on ARM
There was a lot of hype around Windows on ARM laptops that were making use of fancy new Snapdragon X Elite chips. I did A LOT of research into this as I really liked the idea of having a Windows laptop that runs as efficiently as a MacBook, but it seemed like a bad idea with them being first gen.
Windows on ARM had been around for a while, but the whole Snapdragon thing seemed like the first big push by Microsoft to get people to buy into it properly. From what I could tell, though, many of the apps I use hadn't been ported to Windows on ARM, and the x86/x64 emulation wasn't very good at the time.
I narrowed the search down to a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 9, but decided against it to avoid the issues that come with being an early adopter. It was also unclear whether support for Windows on ARM would increase or not.
Apple Silicon
Apple, on the other hand, were up to the fourth generation of their ARM SoC cores. They gave software vendors no choice but to adopt the new architecture, which meant wide support for pretty much every app I use regularly. They also had four generations worth of improvements and were widely regarded as the gold standard for performance, efficiency, and long-term security updates.
The biggest issue with going for an Apple laptop was that I wasn't familiar with macOS or the Apple ecosystem at all. The only Apple devices I had owned up to that point were an iPod mini, an iPod touch and an early gen iPad mini.
I ended up YOLOing and going for a 14" MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro chip. It seemed like the right balance between future proofing and not going over the top with hardware that I wouldn't end up making use of. I was close to going for a MacBook Air but was put off by the display as it was nowhere near the same spec as the MacBook Pro.
so what's it like?
hardware
I finally started to understand why people bang on about Apple products so much. It felt like going from an oil tanker to a jet ski. The build quality and materials were very nice, the battery life and temperatures on the thing were genuinely incredible, and the keyboard reminded me of the Logi MX series keyboard I use for work.
The performance has been superb. It's handled everything I've thrown at it with ease so far, and I genuinely can't remember a time where I've heard the fans kicking in.
It was also a pleasant surprise to learn that MacBooks don't rely on the whole startup and shutdown thing that Windows laptops do. You can just close the lid, open it up again a couple of days later, and it's instantly ready to go with maybe one or two per cent battery lost. Whenever I've tried this with Windows laptops, they somehow turn themselves back on and pre-heat to 180c in my backpack, losing 40% of battery in the process.
The thing that has impressed me the most, though, is the trackpad. It's ridiculously intuitive. It does loads of nice little things that make using it so much easier than any Windows alternative I've tried. It's the first time I've preferred using the trackpad over having a Bluetooth mouse.
the learning curve
Even though I've used it most days for over a year, I still find myself glancing down at the weird hieroglyphics where the Alt and Windows button should be, which feels unnatural as a touch typer. I'll get there eventually.
Overall, though, adapting to the new keyboard layout and shortcuts hasn't been too bad. My brain has created a bit of a mental switch where it knows whether I'm using Windows or macOS. In the majority of cases I'm reaching for the relevant shortcuts without thinking.
I use the snap feature on Windows a lot, where you can drag a window to the edge for it to automatically resize and position itself. It was a bit annoying that I had to buy an app for the same functionality, but it was only a couple of quid.
I like to only have apps open that I am actively using, so it still does my head in that there is no way to close Finder. The icon on the app bar across the bottom makes it look like you've always got a window open. STOP IT.
ecosystem
I made sure to look up whether the apps I needed were available on a MacBook before purchasing, because I'm not just a hat rack. The only thing I use a lot that wasn't available was ShareX, but the built-in macOS screenshot utility does the job.
I can see the temptation of having Apple everything to make the most of their ecosystem. I was worried whether this would prevent me from doing certain things, but I haven't ran into any issues so far. It's more that there are some apps that I will never touch because I don't have an iPhone or other Apple devices.
gaming
The only time I've properly used it for gaming was to play Balatro on a flight. It stayed cool throughout and hardly lost any battery from what I remember. Looking at my Steam library, it's a bit hit-and-miss in terms of which games are available on macOS.
the verdict
I probably wouldn't go back to a Windows laptop. As far as I'm aware, there's still nothing out there that comes close to the efficiency or performance of a MacBook, and I can do everything I need to do on it. macOS also feels much less enshittified than Windows.
If anything, I'm more likely to find a laptop that works well with Linux rather than going back to Windows. I like the look of Framework's stuff.
and what about you?
Are you considering a switch from Windows to macOS or vice versa? Is anything putting you off? Feel free to get in touch if you want some bad advice!