Gaming is not professional. GPU 3D rendering a PC may have an advantage but thats a very small niche. You talk about obscure tasks like video editing and then use 3D rendering as an example. Video editing is 1000 more common from everyday users than 3D animation is.You oddly verified exactly what I said. For people that do real work or even gaming and not just make TikTok, YouTube videos, these computers are definitely not the best choice for development or 3D render studios. They benchmark nicely with exclusive software like logic and final cut as they are highly optimized for metal. For anything else, a PC performs the same or better. There is no advantage and in most cases poorer performance. Real professionals do not purchase Mac's when they need to get real compute intensive work done. At least not yet.
Apple did not even compare the M2 to intel gen 13 and Nvidia/AMD GPU benchmark results this launch because the results are severely underwhelming for price/performance. And when you have a serious 3D render project that needs to be done by the end of the day, no one cares that it cost 3 dollars more in power if it gets done 5X+ faster. Throwing 2-3090 to do a render vs a single locked in M1 chip is laughable in comparison. The recent benchmarks are showing The M2 Max are finally catching up to 3070 ti / 3080. (this is metal vs direct x though) This a positive thing, but still nearly impossible to justify for price/performance especially when 4090 is now available. This is not to mention when the 5090 cards come out you can buy it and add it to the 4090 for massive render performance advantages and not have to buy a new 5-6g computer that has the performance of a single 2 generation old PC equivalent card.
I am not saying apple won't catch-up eventually, who knows. If you are convincing yourself that these are the best machines out there for home or for work... I fully disagree. These machines are status symbols. If they released MacOS, right now, into the wild for anyone to install, apple's hardware division would be out of business. Don't kid yourself.
And yes, when I get my clients asking me what Mac they should purchase now, they have no idea where to begin. It is about dollars to performance and life cycle. They aren't going to be buying $20,000+ Mac pro's, I can tell you that. I have a printshop clients running 2012 iMacs still with Adobe software and branching to PC's now because they simply can't justify affording Macs that are locked in and not serviceable. Operating system upgrades no longer being allowed to be installed. They really can't afford the lock down and non-serviceable aspect of apple MacMini's or iMacs anymore. They run their machines in a locked mode until upgrading is absolutely required. They can't afford a single day of downtime. They run file servers off raided old MacPro's and adjust storage as required.... Their is no flexibility like this in apple anymore unless you start buying expensive thunderbolt enclosures and planning to upgrading the OS constantly to keep your browser compatible and supported. MacOS Server is gone, so some customers I have migrated to TrueNAS boxes. Apple makes toys for celebrities and YouTubers now it seem. Definitely not the same creative "business" focus from back in the late nineties.
You can say all you want, I have seen apple for over 40 years now. This current business model they have now is completely back to sealed pretty boxes for maximized profits with celebrities and YouTubers being used by marketing to fill in the deficiencies.
There are a ton of different apps and industries that work very well on Apple Silicon. Every corner of content creation from graphic designers to 3D artists using CPU rendering. Everyday users benefit as well because let's be real not very many everyday casual users use even a fraction of the power these machines have. Thats why the base M1 MBA was such a big seller for Apple. An affordable machine and yet could do just about anything anybody threw at them with flying colors.
There are very few apps or tasks that run faster on a PC unless you also spend big bucks on the PC. Gaming is the one example and I'm sorry but gaming is not a profession. It's a hobby. Sure some earn money gaming but their ability to earn money gaming has nothing to do with the realism or quality of the render of the game. They can achieve their goal without anti aliasing or using ultra settings. Yeah it looks better but it has zero impact on the ability to earn money gaming. The only argument could be made for fps and yes in that rare case a really fast fps could improve reaction time in a competitive environment.
The reality is the number of tasks a PC can do faster minus gaming is actually very small. Of those tasks most are for a very niche group of users.
Besides I'm not entirely sure a 3D Studio would buy a bunch of Mac minis. Seems like an odd move and a really odd example to give. I work in 3D and if I was building a render farm a Mac would be my last choice. Doesn't mean I wouldn't use one for everything else I do however.
You are basing your examples on GPU 3D rendering which I'm going to assume means Blender Cycles GPU rendering and gaming. I use Blender and I follow very closely the development of the Metal support. Yes it's not there yet. I have a PC desktop I use for that when I need it. A lot of times I use an online render farm service because it's utterly ridiculous to bog down the main and likely only computer to render for hours/days. I use a service that can render something my 3060 GPU PC would take 42 hours to render and they get out done in 20 minutes for about $50. Just pass that cost off to the client. If the 3D is your own personal projects you have to factor in that render cost vs a 4090 for $2,000. You can render 40 large projects to equal the cost of that 4090. Not to mention like I said they get done in minutes vs hours. It's neat to do your own 3D rendering but it's also kind of ridiculous the cost and time involved to do so. By the time one renders that many projects the render farms likely will have updated their hardware meaning the renders can happen even faster and for less cost. In the end owning the GPU yourself doesn't save much unless you are a super power user and thats all you do. If that is the case then yeah sure a Mac mini is a poor choice. Damn Apple, how dare they not make a computer that can do everything. They should be ashamed.