I have nothing but circumstantial evidence for this, but I think Apple recognized that M1 needed to be viewed as exceptional hardware to get a smooth product tr

I have nothing but circumstantial evidence for this, but I think Apple recognized that M1 needed to be viewed as exceptional hardware to get a smooth product transition with strong uptake, and as a result ensured that the marketing campaign would focus on benchmarks and word of mouth. I'm not accusing them of astroturfing but at the very least they got demo devices in the hands of the benchmarking blogs. I saw a lot of people on HN talking about how amazing M1 was at the end of last year, but all the stores in my area were closed to walk-in customers and there were very few shopping appointments available, so unless most of those people bought an M1 but didn't mention it in their comments, it seemed pretty obvious they were just going by what they saw in the blogs without having checked out the device in person. My nearest Apple store was basically empty save for Apple employees every time I went there for Genius Bar appointments. I don't believe every person hyping M1 actually used M1 before doing so. People who buy them do seem happy. But I've seen people claim that 8GB RAM on M1 is functionally equivalent to much greater RAM on x86 because of faster whatever and more efficient something something. At a certain point the adulation exceeds credibility. I'm excited to see what happens when this whole ecosystem matures, especially in a few years when TSMC 3nm is involved and devices get even more efficient. M1 seems to be a very fine product. But clearly there's a reason the high end MacBook devices are still running Intel...maybe that reason is software. Maybe it's display support. Maybe it's a lot of things.