> they probably use Mac or iOS simply because it's the best hardware/software suited their needs
Funny thing is I don't even disagree with them. The M1 Macs are amazing and if Asahi project is any indication it will have good Linux support soon. Apple makes great hardware and I absolutely want to buy their stuff... Provided I can actually own the device I'm paying lots of money for. Shame the iPhone isn't in that category. It's annoying and sad that we even have to argue that it should be.
That ARM chip isn't "amazing", it's a pretty good ARM chip, which took a herculean effort to even bring to very very rough compatibility par with a standard x64 chip.
The x64 chips shopping now -- those are "amazing".
I own a laptop with one of those "standard" x64 chips, one of those huge gamer laptops with a good processor, a graphics card and three huge noisy fans. Hell I even reverse engineered bits and pieces of it to make Linux drivers. The truth is this thing is a piece of shit. For a mobile chip, it's rather performant in benchmarks. In practice it thermal throttles itself to uselessness seconds after you start a compiler just so it can hover at 90+ degrees celsius. I'm literally afraid of using this thing because it feels like it's gonna melt down. It gets uncomfortably hot to the touch whenever I insist on using it.
That "pretty good" ARM chip Apple made has zero of these problems and higher performance. There's no way such a thing can be simply dismissed out of hand. As far as I'm concerned, Apple put other laptop manufacturers to shame. I seriously hope Intel stepped up their game as you're claiming but I'm not sure I want to take a chance. I really want to see Asahi Linux take off so I can buy one of those M1 macs.
Funny thing is I don't even disagree with them. The M1 Macs are amazing and if Asahi project is any indication it will have good Linux support soon. Apple makes great hardware and I absolutely want to buy their stuff... Provided I can actually own the device I'm paying lots of money for. Shame the iPhone isn't in that category. It's annoying and sad that we even have to argue that it should be.