...except I cannot afford a macbook. The one I'm using now was paid for by my employer.
More generally, I'd love to see fast ARM platforms not built by Apple.
And even the build quality... a friend who's an Apple fan used to tell me "they are better quality, they have less problems" yet his macbooks seem to break down at about the same rate as my Dell, HP or Lenovo laptops, so...
I've decided macbooks look good, have good quality screens and the best touchpads. I'm unwilling to pay a premium for that, and I don't even like OS X/macOS...
> I'm afraid that when/if fast ARM alternatives arrive, they will probably cost 80-100 % of what the MacBooks cost.
Possibly! I wouldn't buy them when they are the latest new thing, either.
You know, the M1 Mac mini is $699…
And since you can attach up to 6 displays to it (or the MacBook Pro), you'd never have to look at macOS if really didn't want to. ;-)
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/24/m1-macs-able-to-run-six...
The macbook I was given costs, after customs, taxes and everything, $4000. Not $1000. Are there cheaper macbooks? Sure. Why would I want them, though?
First, this discussion is about the new MacBook Air that costs $1000 US which is why I mentioned that price point. I suppose tariffs and such would increase that substantially, so that's a fair point. My bad. That said, I believe there was discussion about the hypothetical situation where you did want a Mac.
More to the point, I checked your post history before I commented, and I gathered you are a developer, somewhere in South America (?). I suspect that the code I write is probably no better than the code you write. But your pay is presumably quite a bit less than mine. My point was that it's unfortunate that like work doesn't yield like rewards.
Now here I am going to make some assumptions... In all likelihood, people are amassing wealth off of your work in the same way they profit from mine. But due to local wage norms, they can pay you less and reap higher margins. They get to upgrade the yacht, but you might not even have enough free time time to use a boat even if you could afford one.
It's possible that I extrapolated too much and that your situation is nothing like what I have inferred. Sorry in advance if that is the case.