>However, I ran into a number of (firmware?) compatibility issues with Thunderbolt docks and dongles that made the journey harder than anticipated.
The advertising and hype kind of masks this issue. The reality of the new Mac architecture is that it is a "gaming console" compared to a normal PC. It's hyper optimized for a specific type of use and cuts corners in implementing hardware protocols and IO because there's no need for the average apple customer. As long as you only use the M1 console how it was intended it's amazing and fast. But attempt to do anything outside the normal with it and the console's glaring hardware short-cuts come to light.
thats just blatantly false claims. At least document those supposed hardware short-cuts then.
The main problem is that specs nowadays have become meaningless. Thunderbolt has so many variations, same with displayport and hdmi and usb. Anything in the chain can choose to embed whatever spec in whatever way they want. Its almost impossible to predict upfront if someting will work out of the box or not, especially with things like docks and dongles.
This is a very common thing that all PCs can do and you'd expect a top end ($$$$) laptop to be able to do. But because of proprietary choices in the boot process M1 consoles can't.
If you’re going to make claims like this, you should back them up. What hardware shortcuts were taken, specifically, and how do they relate to the topic at hand?
The advertising and hype kind of masks this issue. The reality of the new Mac architecture is that it is a "gaming console" compared to a normal PC. It's hyper optimized for a specific type of use and cuts corners in implementing hardware protocols and IO because there's no need for the average apple customer. As long as you only use the M1 console how it was intended it's amazing and fast. But attempt to do anything outside the normal with it and the console's glaring hardware short-cuts come to light.