alt Hacker NewsThis is really the only reason I have a MacOS system around. The M4 Air feels like what I imagined a laptop could be 15 years ago. No fans to block, can grab it and carry it around almost like a tablet, works great as a thin client into a more powerful system over Moonlight, it's light enough that I don't even think about carrying it around in my backpack even when I'm also carrying my work laptop, and it was cheap enough that if anything happens to it I won't be too concerned.
Compared to the last XPS I had, it's substantially better for my use case, since I'll generally be remoting into systems anyway.
I find my M2 Macbook Pro so much less pleasant to use than my x220 thinkpad (running Debian) that I only use the Macbook for CPU-bound activities to which the x220 thinkpad is unequal.
I find the Apple offering's keyboard worse to type on, its enormous touchpad is a chore to engage with compared to the venerable Trackpoint, and the operating system feels contrived to make simple things difficult.
The x220 thinkpad is 14 years old now. And has a 500 GB SSD and 16 GB RAM. Perhaps in another 14 years Apple will be able to match it feature for feature.
One might well ask why I own Apple hardware at all. The answer is to buy entry into their walled garden as a developer.