Hard disagree, the more you look at it, the more this can be described as “a product to convince people that discuss technology online that this is a product for tons of people”. Most people need HDMI more than they need record-matching single-thread performance. Most people need more RAM because almost all they do is web-based and not MacOS native. Most people need I/O because they have mice, weird peripherals, and tons of usb drives, mostly USB-A.
That said, it’s a magnificent second or third device for the tech elite that’s already committed to the Apple ecosystem (having nothing on-device, whose peripherals and I/O needs are covered by more general-purpose computers) and who will absolutely brag that the performance of this lets them do lots of coding (using it as a metric for what a good computer is, in their eyes). Strangely both things can be true at the same time!
Hard disagree, the more you look at it, the more this can be described as “a product to convince people that discuss technology online that this is a product for tons of people”. Most people need HDMI more than they need record-matching single-thread performance. Most people need more RAM because almost all they do is web-based and not MacOS native. Most people need I/O because they have mice, weird peripherals, and tons of usb drives, mostly USB-A.
That said, it’s a magnificent second or third device for the tech elite that’s already committed to the Apple ecosystem (having nothing on-device, whose peripherals and I/O needs are covered by more general-purpose computers) and who will absolutely brag that the performance of this lets them do lots of coding (using it as a metric for what a good computer is, in their eyes). Strangely both things can be true at the same time!