> Intel power pcs

Had to do a double take there…

> So whilst Intel have not innovated at the speed us techies would have liked, x86 is here to stay in the non-apple world.

Not necessarily! A lot of office needs boil down to the Office 365 suite, Adobe and the SAP GUI - all of which now have native M1 variants. The only thing that's needed is someone other than Apple and Qualcomm actually putting out a desktop-worthy ARM CPU so that Microsoft can provide Windows-on-ARM for everyone (there are rumors of a secret deal between MS/QC that is bound to expire soon-ish). Once the price point gets low enough for corporate beancounters to buy a ton of ARM Windows devices for paper pushers, they will do so - and by that point, Intel is doomed. AMD is eating their lunch in the server market, and Intel doesn't have anything that can compete with ARM on power-per-watt and price.

What if Apple ended up supplying older M1 designs, not cutting edge but efficient on batteries and forced down to a really low price… to Google, for making chromebooks with? Bottom end craptops not even being handled by Apple anymore but still running an older generation of M1 cpus, with the lesser but still substantial benefits and the battery life?

On the extreme low end it's not only about Windows. Chromebooks are a thing. Eventually M1 chromebooks and Apple leveraging the fact that now they're a CPU designer? After they do some more upgrades to their own tech for their own purposes?

Who would be manufacturing these older M1 chips after Apple is currently having the later generations? Apple's current needs would mean TSMC capacity will be focused on these newer chips. It's not like there's a new fab with each generation of chips.

Office 365 for mac is not the same as office for Windows though. If you are a power user that might matter to you.

Then there are the applications not available on mac...Project, Power BI...

I know because amongst my estate is an rdp server for mac users to use some niche excel features and to use PowerBI desktop.

And MS is also trying to get parity between Office for Windows for ARM.

That’s a very Pyrrhic victory for Intel to be dominant in the personal computer space. Apple alone sells more ARM based devices than the total non server market and it only has a 15% market share in phones worldwide. Even in the server space, the cloud providers are moving toward ARM where it can.