What Linux computer can you buy with the battery life, quietness, lack of heat and speed of a modern ARM based Mac?
Battery life, probably none. For the rest it's pretty ok now - I recently got a ThinkPad T14. Performance-wise it's in M1/M2 territory and yes the fans can spin up, but they are not very loud.
I have used MacBooks since 2007, but I have started using the ThinkPad more and more. Why?
I put in 64GiB RAM and a 2TB SSD and it cost me almost nothing. The laptop plus these expansions was 1400 or 1500 Euro, a MacBook with 64GiB RAM and 2TB SSD would cost me 5000 Euro. When the battery has had its time, I can replace it by removing a few screws. I added a PCI cellular modem. The expandability and maintanability is just great.
Even though the GPU in my MacBook Pro (M3 Pro) blows away the ThinkPad's GPU on paper, the ThinkPad with Wayland actually renders everything super-smoothly on my 120Hz 4K screen, while on the MacBook the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz is barely noticeable. On the ThinkPad I can run NixOS, which is generally much nicer than macOS.
The primary thing that my MacBook has over my ThinkPad are battery life and a bunch of really good Mac applications like the Affinity Suite. But since more and more applications are switching to Electron, it has become less of a problem. Heck, I even have 1Password with fingerprint unlock, etc. like if it was a MacBook.
As far as phones - your alternative is to buy an Android phone with an operating system by an ad company that is also pushing AI just as hard.
Or I don't know, you buy a Pixel, install GrapheneOS, and you have better privacy than on an iPhone? And no F1 movie ads too.
I think there are a lot of offerings out there now. Maybe not to the minute with respect to battery life but Apples chip advantage is steadily evaporating. I typically don't need more than 8 hours of battery personally.
Have heard good things about framework computers. As a more efficient chip or battery comes out you just upgrade that component if your use case requires it.
By the way, it's not a lack of heat in the Air. The M4 will hit 105°C and start throttling pretty soon in sustained workloads. At any rate, modern Ryzen laptop CPUs have narrowed the gap with Apple Silicon performance-wise. It's mostly battery life that's still lagging behind. It not only requires a mainboard optimized for power use (which is pretty good nowadays on modern laptops), but also very strong OS integration. I am not sure if non-Apple laptops will get that far, because Linux and Windows simply have to target much more hardware.
At any rate, non-Apple laptops have other benefits, like being able to get 64GiB/128GiB memory and large SSDs without breaking the bank.
In the end it's all a trade-off. If you are a sales representative that needs all-day battery life, MacBook is probably the only option. If you are a developer that needs something portable to hop between desks or on the train, but usually have access to a power socket (yay, Dutch/German trains), a few hours of battery is enough and you might prefer to get an insane amount of memory/storage, a built-in cellular modem, and an ethernet port instead.
Most people don't really need more than 2 hours of battery life anyway[1] as their laptops barely ever leave the house. >8H of battery is nice to have but it is really an important parameter for a specific population while for others it is just convenience. I wouldn't trade an OS/desktop I don't like over my linux setup just because it last longer when I never need more than a couple of hours on battery[3].
[1] which means you need a 4 to 6h range when new if you don't plan to replace the battery too often
[2] students, construction companies, people who are always on the road...
Is that where we are going? Most people don’t need a laptop that has more than 2 hours battery life?
When I was in the office full time in the bad old days, you would be in a conference room and every one would plug their laptops in.
After I started working remotely and still doing business trips, one charge could last a full day either going back and forth between conference rooms, in “war rooms” etc and no one with M series MacBooks even worried about charging.
Heck my MacBook Pro (work laptop) can last a full day on power with my portable USB C powered external monitor where the power and video come from one cord.
I spent almost 10 hours at a coworking space and didn't even worry about charging my M4 MacBook Pro. Apple Silicon is a game changer: incredible performance and long battery life, generally totally silent, no thermal throttling. 10 hours may be extreme, but it's nice to be able to go to a coffee shop and not worry about not having charged your laptop since last week.
I used to run Linux on a laptop (10+ years ago) and you couldn't even close the laptop lid without risking it not going to sleep and overheating in your bag.
It is exactly what I am saying, it is nice, a convenience. But that's it.
I don't worry about closing my thinkpad lid. Well I do because I disable sleep on lid close and prefer using the dedicated button for that. But my thinkpad goes to sleep when I ask it to.
I have an Asus Vivobook S14 laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 258v processor. In Linux, it gets 12-15 hours of real usage (i.e. not manufacturer "playing videos off local storage with wifi off and the screen all the way down" battery life numbers). If I'm doing something like web browsing or streaming videos, the laptop doesn't get hot and the fan doesn't turn on. I've only had the fan turn on when I'm doing something intensive like compiling GCC or video encoding. It feels just as fast as my ARM Macbook Air.
I'd sacrifice some battery life to have a Thinkpad (example: T14 gen 5), with the superior keyboard, Touch point and smaller touchpad (the Mac one is annoyingly too large).
I have stopped caring so I caved in to work policy and got an iPhone, and I really do not see the point. It is just a thing no better or worse than an Android...
As far as phones - your alternative is to buy an Android phone with an operating system by an ad company that is also pushing AI just as hard.
And you still end up getting most apps from the Google Play Store.
By the way, iMessage supports SMS/MMS/RCS for interoperability. What else do you want?