Software is moving to the web or are essentially executables running a web browser (Electron) which is taking the hardware out of the equation - so people just

Software is moving to the web or are essentially executables running a web browser (Electron) which is taking the hardware out of the equation - so people just want the lightest device with the biggest battery life. M-series Macs are in a category of their own in this regard. The battery lasts so long that people forget to bring their chargers along. And unless you're doing some _really_ heavy stuff, they're perfectly fine for software development too. I have personally run Unity + Rider + Dockerised backend & local database on an M-series for years with zero performance issues.