In the pro market especially you have people who are stuck using some enterprise software that is only developed for PC like a few Autodesk programs. If you are into gaming many first party developers don't even bother making a mac port. The new call of duty and battlefield games are on every platform but switch and mac OS, and that's increasingly par for the course for this industry since mac laptops have been junk to game on for so long.

My counterpoint is that for the pro market, portability and power efficiency are not always that important. Yes, for plenty of people. But many pros are sitting at a desk all day and don’t need to move their computer around.

For these users, you’re not comparing M1 max to laptop CPUs/GPUs, but to the flagship AMD/Intel CPUs. Based on early results from the M1 max on geekbench, the 11900K and 5950X are still better. And the best GPUS for pro are absolutely still significantly more powerful than M1 Max.

This makes sense, because you have to dedicate a lot of power to desktop PCs, which you just can’t do in a laptop. But I think the pro question is still often “what gives me the most performance regardless of power usage,” and the answer is still a custom built computer with the latest high-end parts from Intel/amd/Nvidia, not apple.

Obviously Apple is basically offering the best performance hands down in a portable form factor. But Apple also isn’t releasing parts like the 3090 which draws like 400W, so it’s not yet competing for super high end performance.

Point being, I think Intel and AMD aren’t really left in the dust yet.

True, but there are plenty of pros that need mobility (eg: photographers, musicians, designers, etc).

Also there are many pros (most?) that do not have super high performance requirements and would rather use a laptop they can also use for casual use.

Agreed.

I think the big thing to remember is that "performance crown" at any moment in time does not have a massive instantaneous effect on the purchasing habits across the market.

I have no doubt that Apple will continue to grow their market share here. But the people that continue to buy PC will not expect ARM-based chips unless someone (whether Intel, AMD, Qualcomm or someone else) builds those chips and they are competitive with x86. And x86 chips are not suddenly "so bad" (read: obsolete) that no one will consider buying them.

> My desktop Windows PC has a 3700X which was very impressive at the time, but it is roughly similar in perf to the "low end" M1 aimed at casual users.

Still, your desktop can play AAA games at 120Hz with an appropriate GPU attached. No M1 device can do that. So once more, performance doesn't mean anything if you can't do what you want with it.

Exactly, but the Ryzen machine I use mostly for music production.