The great part about Apple switching processors is that the newer used Intel machines took a price hit. They’ve got great hardware, and last forever. I’m still using my 2013 MacBook Air for lots of stuff, though not my daily.

In terms of functionality, it works well. The main limitation is software availability. If you rely on anything that can't be built for the architecture then it's not going to be a good daily driver.

It's not an apples to apples comparison because the architecture is so different. Notice his observation in the article:

I am very impressed with how smooth and problem-free Asahi Linux is. It is incredibly responsive and feels even smoother than my Arch Linux desktop with a 16 core AMD Ryzen 7945HX and 64GB of RAM.

M1 architecture has a huge advantage being a SoC and having shared memory between the CPU and the GPU which avoids the need for a bus. I'm still using M1 macbook with 8gb of RAM that I got to keep at one of my jobs a few years ago, and it's incredibly snappy. I've tried x86 laptops with way better specs on paper, and they don't come anywhere close in practice.

my new laptop literally is more than double in each spec

13.6"

Where did you find a laptop with a 27.2" or larger screen?

Unified operations vs static resource operations. It’s like saying work smarter than harder. Container vs VM. Or even AMD vs Intel. They all accomplish the same things but do it differently. So you don’t need that much for Apple devices/workflows.

This is existing high performance hardware that you can buy. I'd love for there to be something equivalent built using RISCV, but there's not.

This is not meant to fight but to reveal an alternate perspective.

I never understand why people leave these comments. That is, I do not truly understand the objection. I assume these comments are anti-Apple or anti-corporate in some way but I am really just guessing.

Here is what I think could motivate people to work on Linux support for this hardware.

1 - people have this hardware or like it and want to run Linux on it. In other words, people with the skills are serving their own interests and not driving towards some great social outcome like the question “why not riscv” would suppose. This is the “scratching your own itch” aspect of Open Source.

2 - people with the skills find this hardware interesting or are attracted to the challenge that it has been made difficult. Similar to #1 with a different motivations but still a personal one.

3 - some people are drawn to “freeing” things that are closed. The more proprietary, the more attractive it is as a target.

4 - people with the skills are thinking of their impact on the world and realize that these are extremely popular devices that are destined for the landfill after really short lives if allowed to remain fully proprietary.

If I had the skills, honestly I would find all of these compelling. The last one would provide the greatest fulfillment. There are A LOT of these devices being sold. I think Apple may be the single most popular laptop brand. The social good that comes from providing Linux support for Apple Silicon may be greater than time spent on any other hardware.

I am somebody that will ultimately benefit from all these efforts. It has been years since I have given Apple any money but quite like their hardware. I have 4 old Apple laptops, 2 iMacs, and one Mac Pro. These were all bought used or acquired for free. They are amazing Linux machines. I do not have any Apple silicon but I almost certainly will at some point. And it looks like the M1 and M2 hardware is already a great experience. In my view, old high-end gear is far better than new low-end gear. An Apple M1 laptop today is still nicer than the lower half of the Windows market. Buying a used Mac keeps two machines out of the landfill.

But, if I had the skills, the joy of just getting it to work would also be a motivator. It would be a fascinating project. And it is one that brings a lot of positive attention and even employment opportunity as we can see from where Asahi Linux contributors have ended up. Making Apple Silicon work provides a lot of what draws people to write free software.

Developing the RISC-V ecosystem would also be fulfilling. But this even helps with that. Creating a large and vibrant ARM Linux desktop community helps diversify and mature Linux in all kinds of ways that will also benefit RISC-V. One of these is just normalizing for us users the idea of running on something that is not x86. Another is increasing the size of the software ecosystem that builds and runs on RISC (either ARM or RISC-V.

And if the objection is that Apple will see greater demand for their proprietary products as a result of these efforts, I think we are greatly overestimating the current size of the community as a percentage or the overlap between “mainstream”’ Apple buyers and those of us with the patience to wait or suffer the limitations.

Make sure to check the compatibility matrix before getting a model not (fully) supported.