Well $2700 for the 14", but you have to understand that 64G of ram is ~$110, and a 4TB ssd is ~$200, and one can get within striking distance of the M2 with a $1200 AMD machine. Ex, base framework laptop + $300 is a much better situation for linux users given the mac is still solidly in the WIP category. Nevermind windows users.
So you can argue about how much better the mac is for costing nearly 2x as much, but it sure isn't 2x unless your already stuck on OSX.
Apple silicon does extraordinarily well in CFD, it does extremely well at compiling, it does extremely well at any sort of JVM workload (IntelliJ) or JavaScript workload.
Also worth noting that as of cinebench 2024, the numbers have really changed, it was unfairly favoring x86 because of a small scene and short dependency chains, CB23 was basically just measuring Simd performance.
The trends seems to be that heavily multithreaded benchmarks seem to do better on the amd machine, and one could argue that the m2 + linux benchmarks aren't quite right due to power mgmt, which is why some of them are run with different governors. And one could argue the 7945hx is a bit big for a laptop, but people have repeatidly shown that hard limiting the TDP by 1/2 or so only takes 10% or so off the top of line per. So, its not at all clear that apple is leading the CPU field at this point. I have a smaller zen based machine that can easily pull ~15H with light usage under linux, so the incredible battery life of the mac's isn't unreachable on the amd either. I personally suspect a large part of the poor battery life on amd/windows machines is largely a windows problem (and on some machines a firmware issue, or the use of nvidia graphics).
So, this isn't to say that the mac isn't a good machine for macos, just that they picked a good time to launch a product, and people now have this idea that their product is world beating, and while its better than much of the trash at your local big box retailer, there are a lot of products in the x86 space. And particularly if your a linux user your going to be alot better served staying away from the mac.
$2999 For the 16”. That’s a great screen and tons of space. Mac has great integration. Everything just works seamlessly between all the devices. The older I get, the more I am willing to pay for convenience.
While using macOS is a much better experience than GNU/Linux, it isn't always it just works.
And people that never used Apple stuff only have to listen to a couple of rants on ATP Podcast, Under the Radar, Swift by Sundel, among others, to validate that.
Specially how they handle Radar issues, and stuff that breaks between releases.
So you can argue about how much better the mac is for costing nearly 2x as much, but it sure isn't 2x unless your already stuck on OSX.