Ever since Apple Silicon macs came out, it's been a real struggle. Almost 6 years later and there is still nothing on the market that:

* Has the same level of performance

* With the same or better battery life

* With the same quality of screen

* With the same quality of speakers and touchpad

* Runs as quiet or as cool

as the Apple Silicon macbooks. If you add in "needs to be able to run Linux" your choices go down from maybe 1 or 2 to 0.

They all have some sort of compromise. Either the speakers, screen, keyboard, touchpad, build quality, battery life, or thermals.

I have a Surface Laptop 7 with the Snapdragon X Elite, and it's pretty close. Checks the boxes for Screen, build quality, and touchpad. Loses out on speakers and battery life, and the fans need to run a lot more than my M4 Pro MBP does. It also loses on performance, and it doesn't run Linux. Windows on Arm also still has a lot of little quirks and bugs that start to become daily annoyances.

It's incredibly frustrating. I want, essentially, my 14" M4 MacBook Pro, but in a Linux laptop, and there's no OEM out there that's fulfilling that need without compromises.

Apple keeps pulling ahead in silicon and every other laptop OEM is just being left in the dust, shrugging their shoulders, and putting out the same old 1200p 16:9 plastic garbage they have always been putting out.