> Now the hardware is also gonna completely fall behind.
This may happen. For efficiency/battery life, it already has. But a handful of synthetic benchmarks where the M1 outperforms high-end AMD desktop chips in single core seems to have overshadowed the cases where those same desktop chips (and even some comparable 15W mobile APUs) outperform the M1 in other tasks.
Or the huge segment of PC gaming.
While they're more expensive to buy new than many Windows laptops, the general sentiment from those I've spoken to seems to be:
* It's worth the extra money for more reliable operation and fewer worries about malware.
* Buying used is much less of a lottery. They tend not to have hidden problems.
* Selling used means you actually get some return to put towards your next device.
I see people using Office and Chrome or Safari - and not much else.
I can't see the M1 making a lick of difference here. Home users aren't going to double their budgets to afford an Apple machine, especially one which can't even play most games.
If I were to switch to a Mac mini I would pay about $350 less than it cost me to build my main workstation/gaming machine. According to the benchmarks and real-world tests, I'd gain quite a bit in performance over my Ryzen build, with a fraction of the power consumption which is currently 120W idle, 310W maxed out as measured by my UPS. Per real world tests, the M1 mini never goes above ~35W and stays cool and quiet even when maxed out on stress tests. Given the fact I no longer play games much at all beyond WoW and a few indie titles, and my non-gaming workflow is 100% doable on macOS, I'm sorely tempted to switch even with my reservations about Apple as a company.
> ...especially one which can't even play most games.
No one buys a Mac for AAA games, that's a fact and probably won't change immediately. With that said, Blizzard has day one native Apple Silicon support for WoW, and the benchmarks indicate the performance (depending on the game engine) sits somewhere between the GeForce 1650 and 1660 for most of the games tested so far. That covers pretty much all non-AAA titles on the performance side, leaving portability as the only real issue. I've seen tests done with Steam games and most macOS native x86_64 games make the transition via Rosetta2 quite nicely.
Not to mention, M1 Macs can now run most iOS apps natively which opens up a horde of games to the platform immediately, including popular titles like Minecraft, Fortnite, and CoD.
On the flip side, the PC market is less and less relevant as phones have become the primary computing platform in the last 10 years.
Microsoft devices are already out-fashioned by apple. The Windows UX is also subpar comparing to Apple. Now the hardware is also gonna completely fall behind.
If all the young people get mac's for their home computers, will the next generations use Windows at workplace?
Im talking about 10-20 years landscape for Windows and Office.