It depends on how quickly you need to upgrade, how important smooth operations are, and of course, whether you depend on bootcamp/virtualisation. If you need t

It depends on how quickly you need to upgrade, how important smooth operations are, and of course, whether you depend on bootcamp/virtualisation. If you need to upgrade soon and are dependant on the machine "just working", get an Intel based Mac. Obviously the same, if you need virtualisation. You do get a machine, which works now and will do so easily for the next 5 years to come. The new ARM Macs are very tempting, but it might take up to 2 years until the device you want to refresh is avialable with an ARM processor, and there might be teething problems. In any case, it will take some time, till most software is avialable natively. On the other side, unless there are first-generation issues, with an ARM-Mac you are very forward-looking. So for me, the answer is easy. For my work, I am going to renew my MB Pro on Intel, but privately, I am going to try to stretch the life of my iMac out, until I can an ARM based one. The iMac is still running on Mojave for compatibility reasons, so if I upgrade, going to ARM shouldn't be less compatible (which probably was the reason for Catalina to be that incompatible).