[hunterloftis]

I agree the M1 is great hardware.

However, the feeling of speed is made up of much more than just the hardware's capabilities. The OS you use, the toolchain you have access to, impacts your experience as well.

This X1 matches 92% of a 2022 MB Air's single-core performance and 94% of its multi-core performance (https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/19092431). I'm happy to wait an extra 100ms for something to compile in order to have a nicer daily experience of the machine and operating system.

[spullara]

And 0% of its silence while doing all that. Also, I would check real benchmarks. I have seen much bigger differences.

[Brian_K_White]

m1/m2 performance is only great while you live within it's limits. It's all special optimization tricks in hardware to match up with certain common software operations. Great if your usage pattern matches.

It's almost like when hardware has special bits that make benchmarks scream because they know exactly what the benchmark software does, yet normal work is the same or worse than anyone else. It's not exactly that bad. M1/M2 does perform a lot of real work a lot better. But it's "a bit like that"

It's just that it only works if your usage matches what Apple targeted as what most people will ever need to do.