alt Hacker NewsIs raw perf considered Apple's moat? I think it's their software. I would buy a MacOS laptop even if the performance is ghastly ... in fact, I did: the MacBook Neo.
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Yes it is. I've bought a MacBook air despite despising MacOS (with the hope that Asahi support will come eventually) because the processor currently has no competition.
Yes it is. And it has been that way for more than a decade for typical consumer-oriented single-threaded workloads like running JavaScript on a webpage.
The general workload performance (browsing, text editing) is comparable for neo and m* MacBooks afaict.
Ghastly was macOS on an Intel MacBook Air.
the MacBook neo has faster single core perf than any x86 laptop (for the first 0.5 sec which is what matters for ui responsiveness).
I don't like Apple as a company or how they act around locking people out of the devices they buy.
I'm willing to pay double the cost of a MacBook Pro for anything that can run Linux, similar performance to M5, have a decent battery, good touchpad, be silent, have a good display, be light and portable.
It doesn't exist. MacBook's simply have the best hardware, but terrible software/philosophy of software.
So I'd say their moat is hardware in general. Performance, yes to an extent, but it's performance vs heat vs energy vs battery life and all their peripherals.