Well regardless of some of their opinions, this machine is almost godly. I won't need another computer for many many years.
I don't play World of Warcraft anymore, but I was able to play it on max graphics settings with 50fps. That's pretty amazing. I never have seen any computer that can run it at full. And still the almost instant boot up time and almost instant app load (arm apps) is just insane.
I've said for years that the iPhone processor is leaps and leaps more powerful and more efficient than processors in computers. I didn't understand why this transition didn't happen sooner. I'm glad it's finally taking place and that Apple is doing it so smoothly.
WoW isn't really a system-intensive game, especially given that the base technology hasn't changed much from the original version. The game has also been M1-native since the day the M1 system hit the market, so Blizzard has been working on this project for a while now. I run the game on my MSI gaming laptop with graphics settings on max (standard 1080 resolution) and average right around 100 FPS, even in a raid scenario. On the M1 Pro, I can run it at medium-high settings and get right around 60FPS consistently.
I think that there are two main reasons why it took Apple this long to make the jump to their own silicon. First, Intel had been doing a fairly adequate job of producing mobile processors until they started running into production and yield issues with both 10nm and 7nm processors. At that point, Apple was basically stuck on Intel's timeline of putting out new processors when they were "ready" instead of being able to consistently innovate their hardware. Intel's issues also forced them to run their CPUs faster to achieve the targeted performance gains, which means systems using those chips run hotter and consume significantly more battery life in the process.
The second reason was that Apple does not do CPU/SoC transitions on a whim. They have been working towards this goal for several years now, as evidenced by the WWDC presentation last year. This is no different from the PPC to Intel transition in the early 2000s, as they had been developing both PPC and x86 versions of OS X for a while prior to the formal announcement. For Apple, making the transition as smooth as possible on their end is of paramount importance. This is why Rosetta 2 recompiles x86 code either at time of initial installation or first launch of the app, depending on how the application was originally installed on the system. On the hardware side, Apple needed to develop and iterate the A-series architecture to the point at which new silicon could be developed for a desktop-class OS such as Mac OS. This is a big reason why Apple has picked up so much talent from competitors in the chip design space, including Johnny Srouji. Partnering with TSMC also has allowed Apple to take advantage of their advancements in silicon fabrication, without having to invest heavily in facilities, equipment, and the R&D needed on that side of the equation. TSMC benefits from booking its production capacity on any given process node well in advance, which provides a steady revenue stream to continue developing new processes. TSMC is already at work on both 3nm and 2nm processes, while Intel is still struggling with 10nm and outright fighting with 7nm at this time.
