Apple’s M1 Pro/Max MacBooks are actually good news for all laptops
A win for Apple is a win for everyone else in this case…
Almost a month ago, Apple unveiled the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros. The collective internet blew up adequately in response too. Here was Apple unveiling incredibly fast, impressively powerful machines with beautiful, albeit notched displays, improvements across the board and literally almost every spec you’ve ever criticized on a MacBook catered to or upgraded in ways that would make even the most devout Windows users at least a little envious. And as likely expected, the majority of Apple fans talked at length about how these machines will blow Windows Laptops out of the water. Yet a very key observation was missed here: Apple’s new machines aren’t going to kill competing Windows machines, in fact they’ll likely rejuvenate them, along with all other laptops on the market.
Now as we already alluded to, Apple has hit it out of the park with these machines. It’s rare that any company make claims that exactly match their product’s performance, but as the Verge review above probably shows, that’s mostly been the case here. Both in the case of the M1 Pro and M1 Max models, Apple’s claims about performance, battery, and screen capability have held up. Simply put, these machines are very powerful, and hold battery for a very long time. And yes, they put almost every competing Windows machine on notice, but we also want to bring up something else they’ve proven: Apple admitting it was wrong. The biggest thing people have talked about with these machines next to the power they bring, is the ports. Apple famously made the MacBook Pro a controversial machine back in 2016 by making it only have USB-C, removing function keys for the even more polarizing Touchbar, and even causing thermal and battery issues that made the more powerful models need to be run inside a refrigerator in order to run properly(we kid you not).
In its newest machines however, Apple has essentially walked back every controversial laptop decision it’s made in the past 5 years. These new M1 MacBook Pros are a little thicker (despite having processors that could make them slimmer) for the sake of bigger batteries, the brought back function keys and laid the Touchbar to rest, and most importantly brought back ports! As in ALL THE PORTS. After being told to use dongles and USB hubs for years, Apple’s brought back the full-sized HDMI port, an SD-Card reader and even a Quad-DAC headphone jack for true Pro creatives along with three ThunderBolt 4 USB-C ports. Now could they have maybe brought back just one USB-A port? Probably, but honestly with everything we just listed here, we can give them a win anyway. Apple was the company that caused the now terrible situation of high performance laptops using only USB-C or having a port selection that makes everyone consider buying a hub or never having basic niceties like plugging your laptop into your TV. Even Microsoft’s latest Surface Laptop Studio makes this mistake, and no one has been pleased by it. Which is why everyone loves that Apple is doing this because it’s very likely it will cause the same type of pressure for manufacturers to bring back ports too. Some like Razer had stuck to them due to the gaming audience, but now it’s more likely everyone else will follow suit just to keep up with the trends everyone is happy about.
And this ports situation is representative of why these new MacBooks are great for the whole industry. Apple made great machines with great specs, and now whether everyone else likes it or not they have to follow suit. The M1 processors have raised new highs for power to performance ratios, and while Intel and AMD competitors have just started to catch up to the normal M1 processor with machines like the Surface Laptop 4, we know they’ll likely eventually catch up to the M1 Max and Pro as well, even if Apple keeps leapfrogging them for a while. That’s the exact kind of kick in the backside Intel and AMD need, NVIDIA as well too. And that just means at the very least in a year we’re getting Windows PCs that bring out similar numbers, if not better in some regards, because after all Apple specialized these machines for workloads people run the most or the best on Macs. They’re not your new gaming machines or convertible touchscreen devices, but they’ve definitely become a reminder for machines that specialize in that, like the Surfaces and Razers of this world, to pull up their socks really quickly. And that’s exactly what we all need. We’ve complained in the smartphone space that the flagship part of it had stagnated due to Samsung and Apple’s dominance, and while the PC space isn’t made the same way, it had kind of hit some stagnant points. This changes that. Now Dell needs to start offering 8TB storage options and 128GB RAM for the XPS 15 and 17 models , NVIDIA needs to up their graphics performance even more for laptops, everyone needs to up their speaker and screen performance, and Microsoft definitely needs to make Windows on ARM an actual thing not an example on how not to do an ARM processor.
Simply put, if the first M1 Macs where a wakeup call, these machines are a banging on the door for everyone else to up their game. And that’s the best thing that every laptop buyer could get right now. Simply put, just wait, and see the rewards from Apple shaking everyone up. I personally know I’m very excited about that. I hope the rest of you are too.
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