AMD does just fine competing with Apple, they had chips competing with the M1 on 7nm silicon, 18 months before the M1 hit shelves. Intel is shaken, but their roadmap is starting to look competitive again for the first time since Skylake. Apple's only defense was their control over the 5nm node, which is gone now. We have 4nm GPUs that make Apple's offerings look like toys, and the 5nm AMD APUs are highly competitive with even Apple's highest-end chip.

Apple made the right choice abandoning Intel on the 10nm node, but they don't have a roadmap from here besides "get better silicon". The competition is hot, and I don't think either my next laptop or desktop will be ARM based (unless someone out-performs Apple).

> AMD does just fine competing with Apple

Right now, AMD is showcasing a processor, the Ryzen 7040, and proudly comparing it to last year's M1 Pro using cherry picked benchmarks. That's how its going to go from now on. They have nothing to compete with M1 Max or Ultra, or Apple's current flagship processor, M2 Max, and by the time they do, Apple will have left the M2 Ultra behind and will have the M3 Max as their flagship processor. That isn't competing, that is chasing.

Is that not impressive? AMD is proving that they can engineer an x86 CPU that's comparable to ARM on the same silicon. That's kinda crazy, especially once you consider that it's roughly the same power envelope as M1/M2.

If we're only getting more 20-30% spec bumps every 18 months from Apple, it sounds like the race is pretty close.

I honestly don't see ARM as an advance in performance over Intel/AMD. It's more an advance in efficiency. Intel and AMD can make faster processors, I just don't think their power draw can compete with ARM, and I don't understand why they don't abandon placing such a premium on backwards compatibility. Just who is running 35yo platform-specific software?! They're holding everything up. EOL them. Move on.