Everyone here seems to be making this solely about the processor, which it is partially, but the other story is that Rosetta 2 is looking really good. Obviously there’s plenty more to test beyond a GeekBench benchmark, but hitting nearly 80% of native performance shows both the benefits of ahead-of-time transpiling and the sophistication of Apple's implementation.
I’ll still be waiting to see what latency-sensitive performance is like (specifically audio plugins) but this is halfway to addressing my biggest concern about buying an M-series Mac while the software market is still finding its footing.
I’ll still be waiting to see what latency-sensitive performance is like (specifically audio plugins) but this is halfway to addressing my biggest concern about buying an M-series Mac while the software market is still finding its footing.