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As someone who generally makes a point to buy laptops with as much upgradeability as possible, I ended up going with an M1 Pro then M2 Max MBP.
I really don't like how much Apple charges for RAM and storage and that I'm stuck with 32GB and 1TB until I buy an entire new laptop, but I just can't ignore how ridiculously powerful and efficient Apple Silicon is for programming, compiling, and even limited gaming.
It also helps that it's made of metal, unlike most PC laptops at similar prices. I've always had terrible luck with plastic bodies: broken hinges, broken traces on the motherboard from excessive flexing, etc.
In my fantasy utopia, Apple would have slots for adding extra storage and "slow" RAM to all its computers, but that's not happening.
The raw performance isn't everything for me. I already have a gaming laptop that pumps out heat like a 1500W space heater even when it's not doing anything. I really didn't want that in a second laptop, especially with how bad my experience has been with Windows' Connected Standby, where the laptop will just sometimes decide to fully wake up in a bag and overheat and drain the battery.
There were a lot of reasons I went with a Mac for this, but one of the biggest ones was how efficient Apple Silicon is. The M2 Max may take an extra minute or two to compile a large project vs an i9-13900HX, but it also manages to not give me first degree burns if I want to use it on my lap.
I have a lot of problems with Apple and their decisions around macOS and hardware pricing, but for me, that efficiency ratio was really important. I'm not trying to say everyone should buy a Mac, but if we're "saying it like it is", Apple Silicon is years ahead of Intel, AMD, and even Qualcomm for high performance portability. That trade-off might not be worth it to you, and that's fine, but there's literally no competition for what I needed.
The fact of the matter is that the M2 Max rarely goes above 70C under load, even with Apple's ridiculously conservative fan curve, while pretty much every x86 laptop I've owned idles right around there.
Every other post is about how shitty of a company HP is, I'm not sure you'd be winning any integrity points.
A lot of people who talk about how bad Apple laptops are ignore how the rest of the industry is basically moving towards Apple's design language, but doing it cheaply. If you hate apple, you'll hate HP even more.