Macs inherently faster than PCs?

[ZircoBen]

I work in tech support, in a company that deploys exclusively Dell laptops to its employees. We've had conversations with employees that suffer with these Dell laptops, and their comments are boggling to me - Macs can't be THAT much better than these new Dell PCs that we give them? Here's some of their talking points:

• 1 hour battery life for even relatively new Dell Latitude laptops
• Fans whirring up and overheating for basic tasks
• Computers become incredibly slow when adding 30 to 40 tabs on separate Chrome instances. (to the point of the mouse pointer being frozen/jittery, and text input being choppy and difficult)
• Computers get hot and kill battery while "sleeping."

They report that their personal M1 MacBooks are not only faster, but handle multiple Chrome windows and 40+ tabs without an issue. All this with all-day battery life. Another user says that her 2017 MacBook Pro (13", 7th gen i5) is faster than her 1 year old Latitude 7430 with a 12th gen i5.

I get the Apple Silicon hype, but I simply can't believe that Macs are inherently this much better, especially in comparison to the "latest and greatest" from Dell. The 2017 MacBook especially confounds me.

Does anyone have any additional perspective on why Macs subjectively or objectively are so much "faster"?

 

[chabig]

Macs do work better. All of your bullets sound about right to me. Though I think 1 hour battery life might be an exaggeration, a modern Mac laptop will absolutely outclass any PC on battery life.

At a past Windows-only employer, I could come to work, turn on the PC (it was SOP to shut it down every night) and literally walk away for ten minutes before the machine would present a usable desktop. I blamed the IT people for loading the machine with so much crap monitoring software, anti-virus software, and such that despite having good to average specs, the machine ran like molasses.

 

[Juicy Box]

I don't think it is just AS, but MacOS.

My my experience, my work provided laptops have been two Dells and one HP, and both, while much newer than my personal Intel Macs, have been slower, and similar experience to what you have described with the battery life, fans, and slowdowns.

I wonder if the Chrome tabs is an exaggeration, though. Only two? IDK, I never use Chrome on any of my computes, Macs or PCs, so maybe it is that bad.

My latest work laptop, is what my work considers a "High Performance" Dell, which it actually has decent RAM and a 7th gen i7 (got it in 2018), but it still has issues, just not as much as my older work computers.

I suspect that the reason why people say that their work computers suck compare to their Macs has more to do with the OS (Window for my work laptops) and the security SW that is added than the actual HW.

Another reason could be the SW licenses used. For example, my work has the newer MS Office, but only has licenses for the 32bit version of these apps. Probably fine for most users, but sometimes I get out of memory messages for Excel.

 

[Juicy Box]

I will also give my wife's experience when she had to stop using her base model Mid 2012 MBA for a "new" HP laptop her work made her use back in 2019.

She only used Macs since me and her got together, so she didn't know anything else. She figured that all computers were basically the same, and her new work laptop was going to be similar to her MBA. She was mistaken.

You would think that a 7 year old entry level Mac couldn't come close to a new HP in terms of performance, but my wife would literally yell at her work laptop. It would constantly crash, slow down, had weird problems, and the battery life of this new HP was a tiny fraction of her aging MBA.

And, her work laptop was huge and heavy.

At first, she thought she had a lemon and asked the IT people for a different one, which they did, but her experience was still terrible.

She ended up leaving that practice, partly because of the bad experience of their mandatory work equipment.

My wife is now working for the VA, and again has to use their equipment (another Windows laptop), which again, she is complaining all the time with the battery life, the size, and how slow it is.

 

[Juicy Box]

I will also give my wife's experience when she had to stop using her base model Mid 2012 MBA for a "new" HP laptop her work made her use back in 2019.

She only used Macs since me and her got together, so she didn't know anything else. She figured that all computers were basically the same, and her new work laptop was going to be similar to her MBA. She was mistaken.

You would think that a 7 year old entry level Mac couldn't come close to a new HP in terms of performance, but my wife would literally yell at her work laptop. It would constantly crash, slow down, had weird problems, and the battery life of this new HP was a tiny fraction of her aging MBA.

And, her work laptop was huge and heavy.

At first, she thought she had a lemon and asked the IT people for a different one, which they did, but her experience was still terrible.

She ended up leaving that practice, partly because of the bad experience of their mandatory work equipment.

My wife is now working for the VA, and again has to use their equipment (another Windows laptop), which again, she is complaining all the time with the battery life, the size, and how slow it is.

Oh yeah, she still uses her Mid 2012 MBA, and the battery doesn't last as long as it once did, but still great in terms of speed and battery life when compared to her "new" work laptop from the VA.

 

[ZircoBen]

I blamed the IT people for loading the machine with so much crap monitoring software, anti-virus software, and such that despite having good to average specs, the machine ran like molasses.

I suspect that the reason why people say that their work computers suck compare to their Macs has more to do with the OS (Window for my work laptops) and the security SW that is added than the actual HW.

I think you're both right about the software that is loaded on PCs... the Sophos suite comes to mind, and whenever I get a report of a slow computer, it's not uncommon to see Sophos taking up 30% of CPU as it does its thing in the background.

I will also give my wife's experience when she had to stop using her base model Mid 2012 MBA for a "new" HP laptop her work made her use back in 2019.

She only used Macs since me and her got together, so she didn't know anything else. She figured that all computers were basically the same, and her new work laptop was going to be similar to her MBA. She was mistaken.

You would think that a 7 year old entry level Mac couldn't come close to a new HP in terms of performance, but my wife would literally yell at her work laptop. It would constantly crash, slow down, had weird problems, and the battery life of this new HP was a tiny fraction of her aging MBA.

And, her work laptop was huge and heavy.

At first, she thought she had a lemon and asked the IT people for a different one, which they did, but her experience was still terrible.

She ended up leaving that practice, partly because of the bad experience of their mandatory work equipment.

My wife is now working for the VA, and again has to use their equipment (another Windows laptop), which again, she is complaining all the time with the battery life, the size, and how slow it is.

Your wife's experiences with the MBA are fascinating to me and ring back to the 2017 MacBook Pro that I mentioned - far inferior hardware on paper that runs much better in practice than even a brand new, relatively modern machine.

It just all seems weird to me - Windows is a streamlined and stable OS that a lot of people do have incredibly positive experiences with. Why do these work-deployed laptops seem to fall SO flat?

 

[gpat]

A lot of Windows laptops, even high-end or business tier, just have really lousy quality control.
I've seen this happen with Dell XPS, Latitude, Surface Laptops, Thinkpads, ASUS creator-tier with first class hardware, you name it.
That's just the way it is. Apple had its (self-induced) pains as well with the 2016-2020 generation but with Apple Silicon the platform made a massive leap ahead.

 

[RokinAmerica]

Only in this Mac forum do people compare laptops NOT listing relevant specs. Ram, drives, gpu, cpu... many factors go into comparing units.

If your IT department cannot look into the myriad of options and get what is needed (Apple or Windows) you have found the "Peter Principle" person in your company.

 

[Juicy Box]

Only in this Mac forum do people compare laptops NOT listing relevant specs. Ram, drives, gpu, cpu... many factors go into comparing units.

There are plenty of threads on here comparing Macs' and PCs' on specs, but I don't think that was what the OP was expecting with this thread.

It is pretty apparent from several posts that the difference that many people are experiencing isn't spec related. Like someone already mentioned, my experience has been similar, on spec alone, my current work Dell laptop should out perform my older Macs, or at least feel comparable, but it doesn't. It feels sluggish, the fan ramps up for what seems like no reason, and the battery life is horrible.

The battery life part, is more understandable, as it is considered as my work's "performance laptop", so it is understandable that poor battery life is sometimes a tradeoff for performance, but the problem is the performance also seems crappy compared to Macs that are much older than it.

If you want two exact comparisons, my current work laptop is a Dell Precision 7520, the specs I remember, it has the 7th Gen i7, 32GB RAM, it does have a 512GB SSD and discrete graphics, but I can't remember which one at the moment and too tired to log into it to check, but here is the spec sheet:

https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/Precision-7520-Spec-Sheet.pdf

At its launch Dell called the 7520 "The world’s most powerful 15 inch mobile workstation."


So my work Dell compared to my wife's base model Mid 2012 MBA, with much slower clock speed 3rd Gen i5, 4GB of much slower RAM, integrated graphics, and 64GB of a much slower SSD, on paper, the Dell should be wiping the floor with the MBA, but the MBA responds quicker, seems to open apps quicker, opens tabs quicker on the web browser, and just a much more smooth experience. All while getting better battery life, even after 10 years wear on the original battery.

So, the point that I am making, and some others seem to agree, HW, and specifically the "specs" don't mean anything here. It is something else going on. I am inclined to think that it is some security SW that is bogging down the PCs, but again, I don't know for sure.

A lot of Windows laptops, even high-end or business tier, just have really lousy quality control.

Maybe, but I don't think it is a QC issue. It seems like this is the way with every work PC I have ever used, it just seems to be too widespread to be a QC issue.

I have to admit that my current work PC laptop (Dell Precision 7520) is the best one that I have ever used, but it still doesn't come close to the overall experience of a much older Mac.

I have been avoiding the upgrade cycle as long as I can, but I have a feeling that I will have to swap out my Dell Precision 7520 for something newer. Most would think that is a good thing, as new would usually mean better, but at my work, you never know what you might get.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

The short answer is, yes, properly configured Macs are inherently faster. However we need to note that Macs come in a range, such as laptops from low end 8 GB RAM MBAs up to 96 GB RAM MBPs, a huge range. There are zillions of PCs stronger than low end MBAs.

Today Apple's SoC are state-of-the-art, and Apple's Unified Memory Architecture helps those Macs with lots of RAM beat anything PC until one gets up to the range of big, hot desktop boxes.

 

[unrigestered]

there must be something wrong with my 2023 Dell Vostro (close to a "budget" line from Dell) then, as general handling is faster than on my Macs.
in fact, i feel macOS is actually pretty slow when it comes to opening and closing apps.
also, didn't use a stop watch, but my Linux distro is booted up in approx. 4-6s and shut down in about 2 or so. don't have a current Windows for first hand comparisons, but they usually are no slouch in these regards either as long as you don't fill up the hard drive with crap.
system updates are a matter seconds (like 5-10, only rarely a little more than that.), opening and closing apps is much faster, same as on Windows.

and performance wise, at least Digital Audio Workstations tend to fare a little better on Windows than on Mac, with the latter often being a bit more stable in exchange.

don't get me wrong, i really like my Macs, but personally i really don't see some inherent superiority in speed, or the other systems as sluggish in comparison either.

 

[genexx]

there must be something wrong with my 2023 Dell Vostro (close to a "budget" line from Dell) then, as general handling is faster than on my Macs.
in fact, i feel macOS is actually pretty slow when it comes to opening and closing apps.
also, didn't use a stop watch, but my Linux distro is booted up in approx. 4-6s and shut down in about 2 or so. don't have a current Windows for first hand comparisons, but they usually are no slouch in these regards either as long as you don't fill up the hard drive with crap.
system updates are a matter seconds (like 5-10, only rarely a little more than that.), opening and closing apps is much faster, same as on Windows.

and performance wise, at least Digital Audio Workstations tend to fare a little better on Windows than on Mac, with the latter often being a bit more stable in exchange.

don't get me wrong, i really like my Macs, but personally i really don't see some inherent superiority in speed, or the other systems as sluggish in comparison either.

I am sure you are using an older iMac with a slow HD and no SSD or NVME Storage device.

My experience also as a Senior IT Consultant with a Dell Laptop is the same as the initial Post described and i gave it back, but my private Lenovo 14ARE with 4700U AMD Cpu is running as reliable and fast as a Mac with the Downside of the Fan spinning under Medium Load even after changing Thermal Paste and optimizing many little Feature Flags but much better as it was in the beginning.

I Love the Silence and Speed of the MBA M2 and even my Z490 Build in the BeQuiet Case is barely audible ( fast with Win11 or Ventura or Sonoma and Silent ) but every Windows Laptop is a Hairdryer without optimizing the heck out of it.

I will never ever purchase a Windows Laptop again as i use Windows 11Arm if i have to on UTM as a VM on the MBA M2 .

 

[Isamilis]

I work in tech support, in a company that deploys exclusively Dell laptops to its employees. We've had conversations with employees that suffer with these Dell laptops, and their comments are boggling to me - Macs can't be THAT much better than these new Dell PCs that we give them? Here's some of their talking points:

• 1 hour battery life for even relatively new Dell Latitude laptops
• Fans whirring up and overheating for basic tasks
• Computers become incredibly slow when adding 30 to 40 tabs on separate Chrome instances. (to the point of the mouse pointer being frozen/jittery, and text input being choppy and difficult)
• Computers get hot and kill battery while "sleeping."

They report that their personal M1 MacBooks are not only faster, but handle multiple Chrome windows and 40+ tabs without an issue. All this with all-day battery life. Another user says that her 2017 MacBook Pro (13", 7th gen i5) is faster than her 1 year old Latitude 7430 with a 12th gen i5.

I get the Apple Silicon hype, but I simply can't believe that Macs are inherently this much better, especially in comparison to the "latest and greatest" from Dell. The 2017 MacBook especially confounds me.

Does anyone have any additional perspective on why Macs subjectively or objectively are so much "faster"?

Apple silicone processor is much more efficient (and faster) than intel. macOS on Intel Mac is comparable with Windows on Intel PC.
My HP 48GB RAM is still a lot slower and shorter battery life compared to M2 Air 13 8GB RAM.

 

[unrigestered]

I am sure you are using an older iMac with a slow HD and no SSD or NVME Storage device.

2020 M1 MBA
2021 16" M1 MBP

though i also have no plans on going back to Windows in the near future. it's been a steep decline after Windows 7 regarding all those pop up annoyances for completely irrelevant things and that you should try install or use this instead of that.

 

[Aggedor]

Macs do work better. All of your bullets sound about right to me. Though I think 1 hour battery life might be an exaggeration, a modern Mac laptop will absolutely outclass any PC on battery life.

I think the Dell battery life is probably accurate - I had a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, 9th generation, and I would get about 60-70 mins with the battery. If I had a Teams call (which I did, a lot, for work), the battery life would be about 30 mins. Basically, I had to have it plugged in all the time.

Also the thing ran hot enough to fry an egg, with a fan exhaust that sounded like a hairdryer and felt just as hot.

 

[unrigestered]

yes, battery life is not even close, at least regarding Intel (1340P laptop CPU in my case)
never had an AMD other than my 386DX-40 back in the day

also, the guys who wrote the fan curves on that Vostro are complete morons.
regardless of which setting (high performance, balance or silent) it's either on or off, and "on" is always in a very apparent high RPM way, instead of letting it run at low speeds constantly and ramp up when needed

 

[MacProFCP]

I work in tech support, in a company that deploys exclusively Dell laptops to its employees. We've had conversations with employees that suffer with these Dell laptops, and their comments are boggling to me - Macs can't be THAT much better than these new Dell PCs that we give them? Here's some of their talking points:

• 1 hour battery life for even relatively new Dell Latitude laptops
• Fans whirring up and overheating for basic tasks
• Computers become incredibly slow when adding 30 to 40 tabs on separate Chrome instances. (to the point of the mouse pointer being frozen/jittery, and text input being choppy and difficult)
• Computers get hot and kill battery while "sleeping."

They report that their personal M1 MacBooks are not only faster, but handle multiple Chrome windows and 40+ tabs without an issue. All this with all-day battery life. Another user says that her 2017 MacBook Pro (13", 7th gen i5) is faster than her 1 year old Latitude 7430 with a 12th gen i5.

I get the Apple Silicon hype, but I simply can't believe that Macs are inherently this much better, especially in comparison to the "latest and greatest" from Dell. The 2017 MacBook especially confounds me.

Does anyone have any additional perspective on why Macs subjectively or objectively are so much "faster"?

1. No, Macs not aren’t inherently faster.

2. Apple doesn’t sell crap, though 256 SSD and 8 GB of ram should be history, the most basic Apple machines come with a processor that outshines much of the crap in the PC world.

3. Unfortunately PCs suffer from two very basic and easily fixable problems: cheap, slow processors (core i3, i5) and a host of ridiculously unnecessary software preloaded.

4. I am a Mac guy and we own many machines of every style from Intel iMacs to the MBP M2Max. Just yesterday, two of our Macs had issues. Restart, boot to Safe Mode, restart seemed to fix it.

Our IT/ Network admin is a PC guy who has an old Yoga machine that still works great.

5. The fix is twofold:
i. We never buy a PC that the IT guy doesn’t fully spec. Typical spec is Core i7 10th Gen or newer, 16 GB of ram and 512 SSD. Even the machine that just runs the surveillance cameras was spec’d. We use a handful of PCs and I personally just got two cheap PC laptops for my kids at around $350 each on eBay. If you spec it right, it will work well.
ii. Before we use any PC, the IT guy removes all the fat. When the box comes in, he takes it and spends a few hours removing the junk and adding Office and whatever else we need.

Following this, I’ve found that, for tasks appropriate to the machine, the PCs actually feel a bit faster. I know that, for our machines, it’s not really the case, as none of the PCs are used for video editing, or even Photoshop, but we do web browsing and email and basic stuff and they work fine.

6. Batteries on PCs are junk and while they do last more than an hour, they don’t come close to the reliability of the batteries in the Macs.

7. Get a Lenovo X1 Yoga, with 11 Gen i7, 16 GB of ram and 512 SSD and you’re looking at the same price as a MBP. The big difference is that these machines do not hold their value as well as the MBA/MBP so you can get them much cheaper on eBay. We bought two machines on eBay that were used Like New; so new they had the plastic film and came in the box. Price? $650 each (in 2021).

 

[cthompson94]

I think part of the "inherent" faster is due to bloat also. Many PCs come with various programs pre installed and automatically setup to run in the very beginning. The majority of people probably don't get rid of these programs or they don't know that they can do that. While yes Macs do contain what some may call bloatware since Macs come with various applications pre installed they are not set to load automatically, so even a base model mac vs a base model or maybe mid tier model PC will have the mac performing faster because there isn't all this background crap running

 

[JMStearnsX2]

I work in IT, and our environment does the opposite. We deploy 95+% Macs, the rest being Windows devices. Dell Latitudes are decent work PCs, I would say it's got to be some software that's heating them up and using the battery life.
We issue the 13" MacBook Pros to our staff, we get discounts buying them from our suppliers. They run great and have excellent battery life. Very few of our staff need anything more than the base model.

 

[WP31]

Like so many have said, there are too many variables to simply say "Macs are faster". But I owned a small biz (~100 employees) for ~10 years and was the entire IT department (w/outsourced support, of course) and my experience was that Macs were just generally quieter, simpler, more 'liked' by employees, and had better batteries (life and day-to-day use).

As middle management in a large organization that uses 95% windows computers only now, I understand ITs desire for a single windows based solution but boy oh boy do these Dells feel like a 10 year step backwards. Everything you listed is a complaint I have and sometimes it's maddening. I open mail, calendar, teams, explorer, & edge = where is the rocket ship that is taking off in my office? If I try to make a teams call at the same time = cross my fingers that it'll work (audio drops, video bogs the whole thing down, app might freeze, etc.). Unplug form power and close the laptop = it'll probably be dead when I open it up again.

One anecdote for how bad the battery/power situation is is: All someone has to do in a meeting is say "ohhhhh, I unplugged my laptop last night" and everyone just accepts that it isn't going to work. There could be a customer presentation or budget brief or whatever, everyone just accepts that you unplugged your laptop and shut it so it's useless.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Speed wise - it depends.

Windows has too many variables, it can fly or it can crawl on the same specs machine depending on what driver decides to act up.

Battery - no contest. I don't think there's anything in the Windows world that can approach the battery efficiency of Apple Silicon.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I work in tech support, in a company that deploys exclusively Dell laptops to its employees. We've had conversations with employees that suffer with these Dell laptops, and their comments are boggling to me - Macs can't be THAT much better than these new Dell PCs that we give them? Here's some of their talking points:

• 1 hour battery life for even relatively new Dell Latitude laptops
• Fans whirring up and overheating for basic tasks
• Computers become incredibly slow when adding 30 to 40 tabs on separate Chrome instances. (to the point of the mouse pointer being frozen/jittery, and text input being choppy and difficult)
• Computers get hot and kill battery while "sleeping."

They report that their personal M1 MacBooks are not only faster, but handle multiple Chrome windows and 40+ tabs without an issue. All this with all-day battery life. Another user says that her 2017 MacBook Pro (13", 7th gen i5) is faster than her 1 year old Latitude 7430 with a 12th gen i5.

I get the Apple Silicon hype, but I simply can't believe that Macs are inherently this much better, especially in comparison to the "latest and greatest" from Dell. The 2017 MacBook especially confounds me.

Does anyone have any additional perspective on why Macs subjectively or objectively are so much "faster"?

Where do you people work? I have a four year old midrange dell laptop at a very large employer with gobs of extra crap on it--including needing to wait for a smart card and it would load up faster than my M1 MBA I used to have.

Not to mention I don't even use it because I can use my screaming fast gaming laptop with Azure remote desktop--which I had to get due to the fact that my M1 Macbook Air wouldn't allow my smart card to work with the aforementioned remote desktop.

If the M1 line is that much better, then your IT setup is not good.

 

[chabig]

fact, i feel macOS is actually pretty slow when it comes to opening and closing apps.

For some reason, windows does facilitate quicker app launching Than MacOS.

 

[BigDO]

Personal Macs do not come installed with corpo spyware, crapware and bloatware. Simple as that.

 

[izzy0242mr]

I work in tech support, in a company that deploys exclusively Dell laptops to its employees. We've had conversations with employees that suffer with these Dell laptops, and their comments are boggling to me - Macs can't be THAT much better than these new Dell PCs that we give them? Here's some of their talking points:

• 1 hour battery life for even relatively new Dell Latitude laptops
• Fans whirring up and overheating for basic tasks
• Computers become incredibly slow when adding 30 to 40 tabs on separate Chrome instances. (to the point of the mouse pointer being frozen/jittery, and text input being choppy and difficult)
• Computers get hot and kill battery while "sleeping."

They report that their personal M1 MacBooks are not only faster, but handle multiple Chrome windows and 40+ tabs without an issue. All this with all-day battery life. Another user says that her 2017 MacBook Pro (13", 7th gen i5) is faster than her 1 year old Latitude 7430 with a 12th gen i5.

I get the Apple Silicon hype, but I simply can't believe that Macs are inherently this much better, especially in comparison to the "latest and greatest" from Dell. The 2017 MacBook especially confounds me.

Does anyone have any additional perspective on why Macs subjectively or objectively are so much "faster"?

Depends on the Mac and the Windows PC being compared to, but macOS is generally more fine-tuned and optimized for the processor and battery.

The 2017 Mac is objectively going to be "weaker" than the newer Dell, when running a benchmark test, but macOS tends to be more stable and less inconsistent in performance than Windows. I think that's primarily because Apple designs macOS to work with the (very limited) sets of CPUs and hardware platforms, whereas Windows is designed to work with basically every platform out there, meaning it can't be as fine-tuned. Even if you have individual hardware companies making special drivers for each platform set (like Intel), they're not going to be as fine-tuned as Apple + Intel would be.

But I can personally attest that my 2015 MacBook Pro performs roughly as well as my 2021 Lenovo work laptop for the same types of tasks (having lots of browser windows open, checking email, and running word processor windows). That itself is pretty sad—and tells you a lot about how well Macs perform.

Now…M1 laptops absolutely blow Intel processors out of the water on battery, heat, and performance. I use an M1 Mac and a top-end Lenovo laptop for work. The Lenovo cost more than the M1 Mac and the spec sheets would make you think the Lenovo laptop is far better.

It's not. The Lenovo gets so hot just running Chrome, Word, and Outlook that it physically hurts to touch the laptop around the area above the keys. I'm not exaggerating. If I kept my fingers there too long I am confident they would actually suffer mild burns—and the fans are basically constantly running. My M1 Mac barely gets warm.

The M1 Mac can have dozens of tabs open, email apps, Word, and other random entertainment apps running with barely any noticeable lag or slowdown. The Lenovo will constantly freeze, even doing simple things like plugging a monitor in, or unplugging from a charger, or switching apps at times. It's genuinely frustrating to use my work laptop and it causes me to not be able to do things as fast because of how slow it frequently acts.

My M1 Mac can get anywhere from 10–15 hours of all that functionality on one charge. My Lenovo sometimes dies overnight just for not being plugged in—and can probably do 4-5 hours on a good day with my screen dimmed a lot.

Now, I think there's a fair point that Macs don't come with lots of plugins and corporate "bloatware," but my 2015 Mac has lots of apps and background software that runs on boot up after years of using it. And if it runs as well as a 2021 Windows computer with a much newer Intel CPU, that should tell you a lot.

If my workplace let me use a Mac, I would genuinely get more work done because I wouldn't encounter so much lag, hangups, and slowdowns because of my Windows computer.

If you have the power to let your employees use M1 Macs if they want to, PLEASE LET THEM. They will genuinely be so much happier—and will almost assuredly complain about their computer far less.