Apple has been in the portable laptop game for longer than I’ve been alive, with the
PowerBook 100 that was released back in 1991, and over the years, they’ve evolved into
what we know as the MacBook lineup.
Every Macbook since 2008 has come with a beautiful unibody aluminum chassis, which at the time
was revolutionary, but it came at a price.
For the past decade or maybe even longer, Apple’s MacBooks have been known for being
very expensive compared to the competition over on the Windows side, which used to all
come with plastic bodies.
And even though Apple’s MacBooks clearly had a leg up in terms of resale value, many
people still chose to go with cheap Windows laptops and chromebooks because they were
simply much more affordable compared to Apple MacBooks that would start at at least $1,000
or more.
We even made a video explaining why Apple MacBooks are so expensive, with the different
reasons ranging from having the best trackpads out there, the best speakers out there, better
microphones than other laptops, excellent displays, and much more.
But fast forward to today, and it’s pretty clear to me that Apple has completely juked,
or essentially tricked, the entire laptop market, and now they’re beginning to revolutionize
it in a totally unexpected way, as they begin to eat up the laptop market share, so let
me explain how Apple pulled it off!
In 2012, Dell decided to break away from the plastic chain and offer a laptop that would
feature premium build quality in an attempt to compete with Apple’s MacBooks on the
more expensive side of the laptop market, and that was of course, the XPS 13.
This design used premium carbon fibre materials to get the weight below three pounds while
being impressively thin and starting at a lower $999 price than Apple’s 2011 MacBook
Air which started at a pretty high $1599.
But over the years, Dell and other Windows brands kept improving their premium Windows
laptops, making them thinner, lighter and more powerful, even adding a Thunderbolt 3
port on the 2016 Dell XPS.
But then Apple did something that shocked the world. They completely scrapped all of
their ports on the 2016 MacBook Pro and went with a simple set of four Thunderbolt 3 ports,
which sparked the rise of USB-C, which eventually went mainstream.
And if you haven’t seen my video on Apple’s USB-C Master plan, definitely check it out
because it’s very eye opening!
But going to the Dell XPS, in 2018, they completely ditched their USB-A ports and went with Thunderbolt
ports, while at least still keeping an SD card slot.
Now at this point.. Something very interesting began to happen, premium Windows laptops started
to catch up to Apple’s MacBooks in terms of the pricing, especially with the 2019 Dell
XPS which got an even more premium chassis.
And just last year, we compared the latest Dell XPS 13 to Apple’s 10th-gen Intel MacBook
Pro, and the results were very interesting!
A similarly specced XPS 13 model was only $100 cheaper than the $1800 MacBook Pro, and
the XPS had many shortcomings, like having a much worse trackpad, having inferior speakers,
a worse webcam, much worse microphones, and only half the Thunderbolt 3 ports.
So at that point, Apple’s MacBook Pros didn’t seem like that bad of a deal after all, since
many premium laptops with matching specs were already getting close to the same price, so
the overpriced MacBook narrative started to die down a little bit.
The only real issue that remained was that Apple’s Intel MacBook Air was hugely flawed
with overheating issues that caused the fans to spin up, and the performance was pretty
terrible, forcing us to recommend Apple’s $1800 MacBook Pro if you really wanted a great
MacBook.
But then.. In November of 2020.. Everything changed.
Apple revealed the brand new M1 Chip that went into the Macbook Air, the MacBook Pro
and the Mac Mini.
This chip basically blew everyone’s minds, including ours, especially since it allowed
the passively-cooled MacBook Air to obliterate the previous Intel-based Air, almost matching
up to the performance of the MacBook Pro.
And not only did it have excellent performance, but it came with killer battery life, and
it was priced at only $999, with it being on sale on Amazon for only $899 right now.
So for the first time ever, we decided to compare the M1 MacBook Air to a fully-loaded
16” MacBook Pro for $3,899, and to our surprise, the M1 Air outperformed it in terms of multi-core
performance, it almost matched up in terms of Logic Pro Music production, it actually
destroyed the 16” for Xcode programming, almost matched up for Lightroom photo editing,
and it actually matched up or even exceeded it for some video editing tasks like HEVC
stabilization and 10-bit 4:2:2 rendering.
This basically blew our minds and at this point, it was clear that Windows laptops were
in deep trouble.
At this point, Apple’s $1300 M1 MacBook Pro was greatly outperforming Dell’s more
expensive XPS 13 options while also getting MUCH better battery life.
We also tested Razer’s brand new Razer Book 13, which was actually more expensive, at
$1600 compared to a similarly specced $1500 M1 MacBook Pro, and the M1 smoked it across
the board.
And then we compared the M1 MacBook Air to Microsoft’s brand new Surface Laptop 4’s,
both the Intel and AMD models, and the M1 basically destroyed them, being a much better
value for the price.
And the nail in the coffin was us comparing the $999 M1 MacBook Air to LG’s brand new
Gram 14 laptop for $1199, and the M1 was better in basically everything from performance to
build quality.
And at this point, I realized that Apple had succeeded with the first phase of juking the
Windows laptop market by getting them to follow in their footsteps by improving their materials
which led to laptop prices almost as high as Apple’s MacBooks.
And out of nowhere, Apple swooped in with the M1 chip, causing their lower-end MacBooks,
especially the MacBook Air, to outperform, out-value and out-last the batteries of the
Windows laptop competitors all at the same time.
This is a massive issue for the Windows brands out there because they don’t currently have
access to high-end ARM chips like Apple does, so if they want to stay competitive, they
need to lower the prices of their laptops.
And because Apple juked them into using higher and higher quality materials and parts, they’re
kind of in a box because they’re either gonna have to accept lower profit margins
if they lower the prices, or they’re gonna have to lower the quality or the specs of
their laptops compared to their current models, which is gonna cause outrage within the community.
And that’s probably why we’ve recently been seeing many life-long Windows users finally
decide to switch over to the Mac, all because of the groundbreaking M1 chip.
And with every day that passes, more and more software companies are continuing to optimize
their apps for Apple Silicon, like Adobe which just announced native M1 Apple Silicon support
for Premiere Pro, Media Encoder and character animator.
And get this, the M1 MacBook Pro is now twice as fast as a Windows desktop PC with the best
of the best RTX 3090 GPU in terms of Scene edit detection in Premiere Pro.
But all of that was just the first phase of Apple juking the laptop market, now let’s
get into the second future phase.
Apple’s M1X MacBook Pros are getting released within the next couple of months, and they’re
literally going to shock and revolutionize laptops forever.
Unlike with the M1 Macs, Apple is now gonna be focusing on maximizing performance with
the M1X chip, and based on reports from Mark Gurman, the most reliable Apple leaker out
there, the chip will come with 8 performance cores, 2 efficiency cores and either 16 or
32 GPU cores.
And based on my calculations, it will outperform every laptop chip ever made in terms of CPU
performance with a Geekbench multi-core score of over 14,000.
On top of that, we’re expecting the 32-core GPU model to score around 80 to 90,000 points
in the Metal graphics test, performing around as well as an RTX 3060 gaming laptop, but
keep in mind that the GPU is gonna be fully integrated into the SoC, providing extra benefits
due to the unified architecture.
But on top of all of that, the M1X MacBook Pro is gonna once again juke the premium Windows
laptop market by bringing everyone’s favorite ports back!
Based on reliable reports from Mark Gurman as well as leaked Apple schematics, Apple
is bringing back the SD Card slot, the HDMI Port and the MagSafe charging connector on
the M1X MacBook Pros.
And meanwhile, Dell’s brand new XPS 13 is still stuck with two Thunderbolt ports and
a microSD card slot, so it’s pretty obvious that they’ll be following in Apple’s footsteps
again to bring back some more ports.
And once those M1X MacBook Pros are on the market, they’re gonna shake up the entire
industry and cause Windows laptop brands like Dell to scramble, trying to get their hands
on ARM-based chips to throw into their laptops so they can compete in terms of performance
and battery life, and that right there is gonna be the laptop revolution that Apple
masterminded.
Now if you totally disagree with my thoughts, then go ahead and comment your thoughts down
below, but if you enjoyed this video, click that circle above to subscribe for more videos
like this one and definitely check out one of those two videos right over there. Thanks
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