Interesting topic, and one that I've been mulling for a little while - especially since the M2's computational performance increase was rather mundane.
Intel and AMD are locked in a battle for supremacy. The competition has been such that the PC buying consumer benefitted. Meanwhile Apple has lost some of the brain trust that created the M series. The M2's computational performance increase wasn't as much as people were hoping (though the M2's graphic power is). I think the M3 definitely has to hit it out of the park to remain on par with Intel and AMD. If we see apple lashing CPUs together, ala M1 Ultra, then we know that they're not keeping up.
I think Apple's approach to having incredibly efficient processors benefits them in the laptop realm, but what makes the M series great laptop processors hinders them for being great desktop processors. The M1 Ultra is evidenced by this, instead of having a desktop processor going head to head with intel, they lashed two M1 Maxs togethers. The Mini and iMac are no faster or more powerful then the MBPs.
M2 family uses the same main processor cores as M1, so lack of performance improvements there shouldn't be surprising. But I wouldn't interpret this as Apple losing track of its roadmap. There are some impressive improvements in the M2 series as well, such as: doubled throughput of matrix coprocessors, much improved E-cores, significant improvements to the on-chip network and GPU scalability. Looking at this it is possible that the rumours about brain drain and design stagnation at Apple could be exaggerated.
But you are entirely correct in saying that the desktop game has been lacklustre. The M1 and M2 series are still very much mobile-oriented and cannot challenge the mainstream desktop CPUs in their current form. If things will not change in considerable manner with M3, then it's time to worry about desktop Mac future.
But this is not the case where each of the millions of customers wants something different. This is a case where some of the customers are happy with the change and some are not. Even if the dissatisfied part is only 10%, looking at Apple's revenues we are talking about really big money. As a shareholder, I wouldn't be thrilled.
Apple can afford to lose those 10% of customers, because they are likely to attract more. By moving to their own hardware, their devices gained unique value proposition that you can't have anywhere else. By the way, Mac sales have experienced rapid growth after they moved to Apple Silicon, and that's in a shrinking market. Their worst Apple Silicon Mac quarter has seen more revenue than the best Intel Mac revenue ever.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, Apple Mac shipments stood at 6.3 million units worldwide, an increase from the 5.9 million Mac shipments that were recorded in the fourth quarter of the previous year.
www.statista.com
In the first quarter of Apple's 2024 fiscal year, sales of Apple Mac computers generated around 7.78 billion U.S.
www.statista.com
Of course, none of this is any consolation for you. If you can't use a tool, you can't use it. As I said before, it's unfortunate. But there is not much you can do about it. By the way, Microsoft does officially support running Windows in a Parallels virtual machine on Apple Silicon. Don't know if this has been mentioned already. Maybe this would be a solution for you?
www.bbc.com
