No it doesn't. It's essentially Air with just a few incremental upgrades, the same chip just with a few updates. It's a money grab. They will keep selling Air for $999 and pressure consumers into a higher price, as they typically do/and is their business mantra.
X1 is a Pro level device more comparable to MBP. Air is like a browsing the web laptop. It's in the class of laptops that should be $500. You are all so bedazzled by the hype machine that you don't even perceive how you are being fooled to pay a massive fee for EXTREMELY limited feature set of a laptop that's a class below. And Apple isn't even lying about that, Air is a hobby/not a pro level hardware. It's clear Air had more sales funnel than MBP and they wanted to tap into that money making funnel. Have fun with your 2 ports and single screen, and a phone like bezel with no FaceID LMAO. This is such a massive rip off lol, sorry to pour cold water on the hype, but that's just what it is.
Hell, they rewrote Google Work, hey, I'm Apple pay me $200 for rewriting software that has existed for 12 years already.
> "Air is like a browsing the web laptop. It's in the class of laptops that should be $500."
I do some volume purchasing of tech product (Lenovo / Dell Laptops and desktops + poweredge on server side + some networking on other gear). I like those products, they are fine.
That said, my wife has an air. I think folks are seriously underestimating the air if they are thinking it just something to browse the web.
The "pro class" X1 screen resolution is 1920 x 1200 / the "web laptop" Air is 2,560 x 1,600.
I mean, you just said it, your wife. X1 maybe went with this screen for whatever reason but there are other laptop options (XPS 13, Surface Laptop). XPS is even better than Air 3.5K 3456x2160. I think for newer consumers, they can more "easily" navigate through all these options to decide, well, I'm not a Pro (or not using it for Pro) and I will get Air. But in the end it's not a PRO level device and it's really sad that these GREAT devices are being overlooked due to this. As far as Air most PRO people wouldn't do with only one screen, or they want to us VM, or if they truly edit video Air won't have the AV1 and H264 extensions making it dog slow for that. In the end Air is REALLY marketed and sold to the web browser crowd, which is a laptop you can find easily for $500 and really great one around $700-$900 range, with the only thing you are losing is maybe that extra couple hours on battery life.
My sibling uses an air - built and sold one company, doing the same again with 8 digit funding. He could buy any computer he wants. He chose an air. This is unique a bit to tech world, my piece of this in IT side is not the SAAS tech directly and old IT they don't work so well so I don't buy them.
The upside, he handed off his huge tricked out machine to me. I think especially for folks who are not in one spot (ie, staying with a partner, vacation home etc etc) it works fine.
Yeah, that's the issue here, Apple positions itself as a luxury device. Personally, I think there's a halo effect from iPhone being good, but it doesn't mean that other Apple products are. It's just hype and undeserved hype at that.
Also, I just don't like Apple as an industry player, they rewrite and replace into CLOSED software (Embrace, extend, and extinguish), to use most of it, you need to be 100% Apple devices. This is terrible. As consumers, we've benefited GREATLY from vendors competing, and that's what has driven a lot of innovations on our table top. Apple goes against all of that, and this is why I don't/won't spend more money there. If you see WWDC at least 40% was about replacing already existing functionality of Google Docs.
