Agreed. On the computer hardware side:

* x86 chips can surpass the M series cpus in multithreaded performance, but are still lagging in singlethreaded performance and power efficiency

* Qualcomm kinda fumbled the Snapdragon X Elite launch with nonexistent Linux support and shoddy Windows stability, but here's to hoping that they "turn over a new leaf" with the X2.

Actually, some Snapdragon X Elite laptops do run Linux now, but performance is not great as there were some weird regressions and anyway newer chips have caught up [1].

On the build quality side, basically all the PCs are still lagging behind Apple, e.g. yesterday's rant post about the Framework laptop [2] touched on a lot of important points. Of course, there are the Thinkpads, which are still built decently but are quite expensive. Some of the Chinese laptops like the Honor MagicBooks could be attractive and some reddit threads confirm getting Linux working on them, but they are hard to get in the US. That said, at least many non-Apple laptops have decent trackpads and really nice screens nowadays.

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x-elite-linux-eoy...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46375174