I had a similar thought, maybe they should have compared it to MBP, but at the end user is looking at how they can spend their money in the best way possible. For $999 you can choose between MBA 8-Core/8GB/256Gb or Surface 10-Cores/16GB/256GB. It seems like Microsoft does have a better deal here. It is similar weight to MBA, similar size, better battery life, and seems like more performant.
But there are numerous issues, that might be discovered later:
1. Similarly to the MBP because Surface will be more powerful than MBA, after you install all the default apps you need, and various Electron apps (like Slack) and updater like Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, will keep running in the background, you will never see 20 hours on the battery. This is the reason why I like MBA comparing to my MBP M2 Max, just because this chip cannot drain battery that fast.
2. Microsoft did a smart thing, announcing those laptops a few weeks before WWDC, but planning to ship them only after WWDC. So apple cannot play back and release M4 MBA on WWDC and show how much faster it can be comparing to Surface. Just because there is nothing to compare.
3. The quality of the Surface devices seems like it was always questionable.
Anyway, I am really excited about ARM powered Windows laptops, for multiple reasons. At the end I hope to see Bootcamp again, maybe games will be optimized for ARMs, and we will be able to play games on MBP with Bootcamp :D
But there are numerous issues, that might be discovered later:
1. Similarly to the MBP because Surface will be more powerful than MBA, after you install all the default apps you need, and various Electron apps (like Slack) and updater like Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, will keep running in the background, you will never see 20 hours on the battery. This is the reason why I like MBA comparing to my MBP M2 Max, just because this chip cannot drain battery that fast.
2. Microsoft did a smart thing, announcing those laptops a few weeks before WWDC, but planning to ship them only after WWDC. So apple cannot play back and release M4 MBA on WWDC and show how much faster it can be comparing to Surface. Just because there is nothing to compare.
3. The quality of the Surface devices seems like it was always questionable.
Anyway, I am really excited about ARM powered Windows laptops, for multiple reasons. At the end I hope to see Bootcamp again, maybe games will be optimized for ARMs, and we will be able to play games on MBP with Bootcamp :D