Laptops, even those marketed as "mobile workstations", really can't compete with a proper desktop-experience - yes, a docking-station goes a long way with replicating connectivity options, but (in my life, at least) there's far too many qualiatative and quantiatative benefits to having a "proper" desktop for dev.
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A major point for me is that I treat my laptops and portables as though they could/will go missing the next day - which means I'm careful to avoid putting irreplacable data on my laptop (and have Bitlocker enabled, which does noticably impact disk IO, even today) - whereas my desktop is a different, and a more trusted, environment. I'm not going to compromise my daily computing experience by using a throwaway-ish environment.
I've only ever seen (and experienced first-hand) software companies and startups issuing laptops as-standard instead of desktops twice in my whole career, all other companies I've either worked for, or worked with, preferred desktops.
At my current company we interface with a lot of independent contractors and I have noticed that exclusive laptop use is far more common there - but it's still at-odds with my own personal experience.
If you don’t recall there was a worldwide pandemic a couple of years ago and a lot of people started working remotely.
But that's what I've found remarkable about the MacBook Pro 16 with the M1 Max. It absolutely does replicate a desktop computing experience with smooth performance... and it does it even on battery power. As I said in my other post I've just never seen anything like it. It's beyond just benchmarks to have an experience that just never hiccups or stalls on a laptop.
> A major point for me is that I treat my laptops and portables as though they could/will go missing the next day
You might need to recognize that you're the outlier in these conversations, then. The world has largely moved to laptops. Only those that truly need a desktop are issued one these days (and again, with the Max / Pro chips, even the need should be called into question for most use cases). Especially with hybrid work policies, I can't really imagine any modern corporate office issuing you a big old tower on your first day.
Even if there was a 3000-400 desktop Mac Pro I doubt many people would buy it instead of a MBP.
If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases.