Didn’t own a Apple lappy before. Hence would like to find out more on their products.
Q1- the cycle count means what?
Q2- their i5 good enough for photo processing editing?
Any diff btw their icore 5 and normal laptop i5? Is it coz they using iOS so much smooth and efficient?
All batteries have charge cycles.
Apple has published information on how they calculate charge cycles, but the gist is, Apple considers a full 0-100% charge as 1 charge cycle. So if you discharge to 50% and charge it to full twice, it's one charge cycle. This is apparently different from how PCs calculate charge cycles (based on my testing with Dell and Lenovo laptops that I regularly use now, more than my Mac.
). AFAIK, the Lenovo ThinkPad and Dell Latitude laptops I've used also provide charge cycle information, but you might need to look deeper.
Apple's OS architecture is very different from Windows. Windows carries a lot of legacy crap, and this is also why it isn't optimised. The same goes for Android vs iOS. You can say macOS is properly optimised for the hardware. Apple by nature is not afraid to cut off old dated technologies and embrace newer ones, ensuring that customer OS experience remains a focal point.
Resource sufficiency is subjective. If it comes to processor, it's usually only a factor of time to complete the job (usually seconds more on the i5 vs the i7). For most users, this difference isn't an issue. For professionals who go through hundreds of photos/videos a day, all those seconds add up to hours. So it depends on your use case and what you are willing to accept.