I'll agree that Gurman is smoking some strong stuff here.
Let's start with the subhead (which to be fair to Gurman, might have been written by an editor like the headline, but just for shits and giggles
An exclusive look at the Surface Laptop, a $999 machine
Ok, at the $999 price point we have the 13" MacBook Air.
...so does the Air...
The MacBook Air weighs 2.96 lbs. This isn't a massive difference. It's still lighter than the ridiculously light new MBPs, for instance.
and runs a sportier version of Windows
You know how everyone screams at Apple for daring to "lock down" the Mac? And Microsoft is generously giving you a version of their operating system that can only run Windows Store apps. That's right, their storefront that's like iOS, except with shittier apps and the ability to constantly fail to update anything, necessitating a trip to the command line and a restart to get my damn Minecraft W10 Edition beta to update. Yeah. Awesome.
But no! It's "sporty" instead of "feature incomplete so we can get money from you for an OS update in 2017".
But let's move to the actual article.
What are you getting for your $999? Definitely a nicer screen, so the Laptop wins there. Supposedly, 14 hour battery life. We'll see. But you're also getting a laptop with 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM, less than the MBA. Configure that to 8GB/256GB SSD, and your price has jumped to $1299—the price of a retina MacBook. So already we're not really comparing apples to apples, and if we do it's not the Surface Laptop versus a MacBook Air, it's a Surface versus a retina MacBook. That is competitively priced.
(By the way, an i7 Surface with 512GB of storage and 16GB is $2200. So it's at best $200 less than a roughly-equal MBP 13" with the storage and i7.)
This bit is badly-worded enough to be deceptive:
The Air hasn't had a serious makeover since 2010, just a modest upgrade two years ago. Stung by the criticism from the disgruntled faithful, Apple has pledged to do better.
Apple pledged to do better about the Mac Pro. They really haven't walked back anything with their laptops besides discounting TB3 dongles. The thought line in the article is linking their lack of MacBook Air updates with Apple promising to do better, which isn't at all the case for a cause-and-effect.
And... that's it. Microsoft has crafted a laptop... that is essentially similar to Mac laptops in specs. And is not much cheaper. And is still flimsier. And will come with a shittier OS (unless you pay an extra $50.) There's no real explanation given as to how this is supposed to lure people, especially since the big complaints with Apple recently have been from pro users, which this laptop is clearly not marketed for (they're talking about students, and the obvious price is the MBA.) What else have people been complaining about on Apple's laptops? Oh yeah, the single port on the retina MacBook. But guess what, the Surface Laptop also has a single 5GBps USB port, and it's freaking USB-A, so that's a future-proofing forward move if I've ever seen one.
There's plenty of valid criticism to level at Apple about their Mac line, or how even with the retina MacBook and new MBPs, there's a U-series ultrabook-shaped hole in the product lineup cost-wise. But the Surface Laptop isn't going to get Microsoft any serious traction at eating Apple's lunch.
I think the major issue for Microsoft is even if their hardware is compelling and it's aimed at users Apple isn't adequately serving, they aren't picking up the slack. Mac Pro users aren't buying Surfaces. They're getting boring HP towers.
