Apple silicon Macs are awesome. I own several and love using them. But let's not deny that there are a couple of issues with them, even now more than a year since their launch.
Soldered SSDs
So this is perhaps my biggest issue with Apple right now, and that is the fact that they solder the SSDs onto the logic board of Apple silicon Macs. Now, Apple started doing this a few years ago when they were still using Intel CPUs, but it's much more widespread at this point, especially with Apple silicon Macs. Also, I can't think of any good reason for this practice other than planned obsolescence and controlling your right to repair.
Sure, the SSDs inside Apple silicon Macs are super fast but so are the SSDs on Windows PCs especially the ones with PCIe 4.0. Now the problem with SSDs is they are a consumable product, which means they have a finite lifespan. At some point in the future, every SSD will die. And if yours dies, your only option, if you're outside of warranty, is paying Apple an exorbitant amount of money to repair it. Luckily, it's more than likely going to last a pretty long time.
Now, even though the SSD inside my Mac is still probably going to last a long time, I still prefer what every Windows laptop does and that has a removable and fully upgradeable SSD. My Lenovo Legion 7 even has two SSD slots but what I can't wrap my head around is Apple deciding to use soldered SSDs on desktop Macs such as the M1 iMac and the M1 Mac mini. Now, there's plenty of room inside their chassis, and they don't need to be super small or portable like a laptop.
Desktops also don't have a built-in battery or get thrown around as much as a laptop would, so, on average, they can often last a lot longer before finally dying or becoming obsolete. To Apple's credit here, they've loosened their repair restrictions likely due to the Right to Repair movement gaining a lot of traction. Hopefully, we see them reverse their decision to solder SSDs in the future, but at this point, it's not looking very likely.
Software Support
Now, over the last year, we've seen a massive increase in software support and optimization for Apple silicon Macs, and that has been awesome to see. Apps like DaVinci Resolve, Chrome, the Microsoft Office Suite, and Adobe apps, for example, now work well. But if you've ever needed to use less popular applications, you've probably run into issues.
For me, just the other day I was trying to calibrate a new monitor to improve color accuracy for media production. The calibration software I would usually use for this just didn't work at all. It would open but wouldn't detect the monitor and wouldn't load certain functions. Luckily, I had a Windows laptop nearby that worked perfectly fine.
Honestly, I don't blame Apple fully for this because there's not much they can do if a company just can't be bothered to update their software to be Apple silicon compatible. But unfortunately, that leaves us, the users, at a big disadvantage, especially if your workflow includes these less popular or legacy applications with limited support outside of Windows.
Bootcamp/Virtualisation Support
Okay, so what about Boot Camp? Is this something that's going to solve these issues? Well, as you probably already know, there's no Boot Camp option for Apple silicon Macs. Also, the ARM version of Windows is not even available for Apple silicon Macs. Microsoft made a secret exclusivity deal with Qualcomm to only provide Windows ARM to devices with a Qualcomm SOC.
Now, this deal is supposed to expire soon, but I wouldn't count on it. So that leaves us with virtualization of Windows through software such as Parallels. Now Parallels does work well. I use it on my MacBook, and I will link Parallels down below, but it's just nowhere near as good as running Windows on your Mac natively.
You also run into issues with many 64-bit applications on Parallels because many of them are not fully supported yet in the preview version of Windows ARM, which is the only one that works on Parallels. So a ton of applications and also games, like Valorant, for example, just don't work.
Price to Performance
Okay, let's talk about the price to performance next. Now, with Apple silicon Macs, specifically the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros, they are good devices. Almost zero fan noise, great battery life, incredible build quality, and the overall package is just awesome. But you are paying a premium for it. The MacBook does better. The MacBook kept up with the RTX 3080 laptop quite well, even outperforming it in some areas, mainly video production, where the M1 Max could take advantage of its video encoders.
Also, it was able to match the RTX 3080's gaming performance but only in a synthetic benchmark and only when using Metal, which is Apple's 3D API. Most games use either OpenGL or Vulkan, frustratingly, neither of which Apple supports. Although they did previously support OpenGL but dropped it a while ago. Now apart from these few specific scenarios, in most other areas the Windows laptop was noticeably more powerful.
And if we look at pricing, the M1 Max sells for $3,500 US, and the Legion 7 was just on sale for $2,500. That's a $1,000 difference. Now, depending on your needs, that additional cost might be worth it for all the awesome features of the MacBook, like battery life, screen, and much better speakers, for example, but for performance, it's not. The newest Windows laptops feature Intel 12th gen CPUs, which far outperform Apple silicon when looking at just performance.
Some Workflows Still Just Suck
And this leads me to my final point. There are just a lot of workflows that are just worse on Apple silicon. Taking a look at Blender, for example, which is a popular 3D design application, an RTX 3080 laptop smokes the M1 Max MacBook Pro in cycles rendering because Blender can use Optix, which takes advantage of the ray-tracing cores within the RTX GPU.
And as of yet, no Apple device can compete with this kind of optimized performance from dedicated hardware and software working together. And don't forget, not only was the Blender performance on the RTX 3080 laptop four times better than the M1 Max MacBook Pro, but the RTX 3080 laptop was also $1,000 cheaper. And this is after Blender just got a massive update in version 3.1 that allowed Apple silicon Macs to increase cycle's render performance by a factor of almost five.
Now, Apple's engineers are currently working with Blender to improve performance and compatibility, but for the foreseeable future, a lot of workflows, for example, Cinema 4D, Blender, some CAD software, or certain development-specific programs are just so much better on anything but Apple silicon Macs due to compatibility and performance reasons.
Even for apps that are Apple silicon optimized, many of the add-ons or plug-ins, for example, music production software, are not, and must be run on Rosetta 2 if they can even run at all. I do not doubt that these things will be resolved with time, but the problem is no one knows when. And people need this stuff to work now, not 6 or 12 or 18 months in the future.
