Unpopular related opinion: I wish Apple didn’t move to ARM SoC’s. The inability to use third party GPU’s (even though Apple cut ties with nVidia) and RAM esp on the Mac Pro is criminal while creating a disposable lineup that creates more waste.
Just my opinion so don't flame me or anything. But, I think a better way to state this is that you wish Apple didn't "have to" move on from intel/AMD/nVidia. If we go back to the AIM days (Apple IBM Motorola). That worked well for awhile. Then Motorola couldn't deliver G4's at increasing clock rates. Not that the chips didn't perform. Just getting left behind by brute force (intel and AMD). Apple worked with IBM's Power series chips. It had more legs, so they moved to the G5 (Power 4 variant). That took them as far as IBM could take it. No 3GHz chips, HOT, not going to work in a mobile device. Performant yes, but not going to be for long. Again, Intel/AMD just brute forced their way to the top. So, Apple worked with intel. Reliable and eventually they would lead the pack. It was a really good run. Lots of new Mac's. Having Nvidia was also a great option. But, we are back at the same point again. Intel stopped producing more performant chips. Both Nvidia and AMD GPU's had their "issues" on the Mac side. And again, TOO power hungry. The only option left was to go their own way. They have the tech to do so with ARM and they had already been designing A series chips for some time. It gives them the full control they want (It's Apple after all). They make a chip that is performant but not power hungry. They can fully design it to fit the systems they make. They only have to wait on themselves (COVID and supply chains not withstanding). To quote Steve Jobs, who quoted Wayne Gretzky "we can skate to where the puck is going".
Certainly, they’re faster with much less power but at a larger cost. I wish Apple kept working with Intel as they did when the MacBook Air was released with a custom CPU only Apple had. I wonder if Intel and Apple would have benefitted longterm yet I sense Cook wanted to push for already used ARM SoC’s from iDevices to Mac’s to increase profits.
They did try, but intel sells to the broader world/market. Not just Apple's needs. It wasn't going to work the way intel was setup at the time. And they didn't have a means (like they are working on now) to really customize it they way Apple wanted. Plus being stuck on 14nm for some time didn't help. Again, faster but less power. We want these things in laptops just as much as desktops. All performant laptops on the x86 can't run full tilt without being plugged in. They need more power than the battery can put out. If you go custom x86 you get a less performant chip (Atom, Celeron, early MacBook Air). Once A series chips became as performant as any "normal" laptops. It was a no brainer to move to their ARM custom chips (M series). Profits are great (they have to do this), but those later intel laptop MacBook Pro's are power hungry, HOT, and can't produce peak performance due to the design of the laptop. Even the M SoC are thermally challenged, but not as much as the intel chips are.
I’ve used PowerMac’s and Mac Pro’s for years and this was my first time not upgrading to the new one ($7000 for an SoC system??? Ridiculou). Love my Mac Studio Ultra but miss upgradability and being able to cold boot Windows. Intel offered a truly all-in-one system that businesses loved; that sector is gone.
Dual boot was nice. But you can still run it as a VM with ARM versions of Windows. So it's not totally gone. And, if Microsoft decides to allow it. We may get that feature back. As Apple isn't preventing it. I currently run Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux on my M1 Max Studio. Works great. I'm not gaming on it, so if that is your use case then its still more work to get it up the way it was. For that, I would wait for the new porting tool kit to assist in getting native games over to the Mac. Since Apple is at least putting in more effort in that area now. It may work out for us all.
Upgradability. RAM and storage on a laptop upgrades was nice. But something I personally did less and less overtime. My current intel 2019 MBP has 32GB. I haven't needed more. My studio has 32GB of ram in it. I maybe use half. If you need more than the 128 or 192GB they have today. That's a very specific use case, and even fewer people need it. It is something Apple will need to address overtime. I think they have the time to design the SoC's to handle more. They would need a more Xeon/Epic like M series chip. No efficiency cores, no built in GPU, and upgradable RAM. I'm only guessing that they will do something like that for future MacPro towers. The volume they have to make these chips at may have prevented them from doing it already. Since they don't sell it outside of their own computers. It will cost them more for limited use CPU's. Tradeoffs.
I hope Apple finds a way to allow eGPU’s/discrete GPU’s and RAM upgrades using a middleman controller of sorts - I doubt latency will be hit that hard and even so, I’ll take a speed hit to be able to add more to my systems and keep them longer. nVidia is still a necessity for many.
You will lose the speed. You will gain heat, and need more power to run the system. It works well for a tower design. Not for a thin and light laptop. As I type this up. My laptop's fans are kicking in. I can't wait for next year to upgrade this thing for an M2 Max. Or if I am lucky a new M3.
