Last year, we did something we'd never done before: put an Apple Macbook (the MacBook Air (M1, 2020) to be precise) to the top of our best laptops list. To be honest, I was as surprised as anyone by how much I loved Apple's latest MacBook Air. I have always preferred Windows devices for my personal use. Not necessarily because Windows 10 is better than macOS, although I prefer the more open Microsoft operating system is (despite Microsoft's best efforts at times), but because I've been using Windows machines since Windows 3.1. I know how it works, and when something breaks, which often can, I usually know how to fix it. But suddenly, a MacBook had become my favorite laptop, and not just while reviewing it, I also chose to use it as my daily device. It answered a lot of my problems with Windows 10 laptops. For starters, macOS worked like a charm, and almost any app I used on Windows could run in Big Sur, even though the app didn't have a native M1 version yet. I explained how impressed I was earlier with Apple's Rosetta 2 technology, which allows older Mac applications designed for Intel hardware to run seamlessly on newer Apple-made M1 hardware. Unlike Windows 10 on Snapdragon devices, which severely limited the number of apps you could run on ARM hardware, Apple's ARM-based MacBooks could run just about any app you wanted.
There's no comparison between specs (and price): The XPS 13 should destroy the Pixelbook Go. But I fell in love with the Chromebook. It did most of the things I needed, though I did have to look around for some Chrome OS/Android alternatives, its keyboard is a joy to type on, and again, the battery life is brilliant. When you want something to grab and write quickly, the fact that it could do it with the MacBook Air and Pixelbook Go was great. When I tried to do this with the XPS 13, and other Windows 10 laptops, most of the time I found the battery to be dead, so I had to find the power cord and plug it in. Now, in the grand scheme of things, it's not the biggest difficulty in the world, but Chromebooks and MacBooks have shown me that there's another way, and that meant I never wanted to use a Windows 10 laptop again. Now you might be thinking "what about games?" MacBooks and Chromebooks are good for everyday use, but they can't compete with Windows 10 machines. That's true, but here's the rub: I don't game on laptops. I'm firmly a desktop PC gamer, and on that front, I'll probably never leave Windows. As Mac and Linux game libraries grow (the latter due especially to Valve's commitment to Linux gaming), they just don't offer the breadth of Windows when it comes to gaming. So yeah, on my desktop, you won't be forcing me out of Windows 10 anytime soon.
Is this the end?
So am I no longer in love with the terminal of Windows 10 laptops? I don't want to go back there anymore? In fact, no, and this is largely due to Intel. After a year in which the company has seen its competitor AMD get better and better and continue to eat away at its market share, as well as Apple's highly publicized decision to stop using Intel chips and instead make its clean (very good) based on ARM. M1 chip, you might be surprised by my opinion that Intel could be the savior of Windows 10 laptops, but hear me out. For starters, at the recent CES 2021 tech show, Intel's presentation was the one that really impressed me with its vision of the future of laptops. Its 35th-gen Tiger Lake-HXNUMX processors in particular seem to be able to really deliver on the promise of thin and light laptops that are also incredibly powerful. I also really liked what I heard on the Intel Evo platform. Like previous Ultrabooks, the Intel Evo is a list of specifications that Intel says represent the next evolutionary leap in laptops.
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