> When they switched to Intel, I recall there being a lot of talk of benefits to running on the same chips as everyone else.

They switched to Intel first and foremost because PowerPC was not going to get them the performance/power ratio that they wanted. It was holding them back in laptops. For example, Apple never shipped a laptop with a G5 chip because it took so much damn power to run a G5. Intel was basically their only option.

A secondary benefit, which they marketed heavily, was the opportunity to boot your machine natively into Windows. They thought this would help overcome the reluctance of "switchers" who were worried that they would miss something about Windows.

These days, the role of the OS as a gatekeeper is basically gone. There's greater diversity in client OS (Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, Android, etc.) and most anything important is available through a browser or a native app.

And Intel is no longer their only option. They've proven they can run big businesses making their own chips.

I do wonder how this will affect VM performance on Macs though. I don't see how it can be maintained, unless Apple chips are so much faster than Intel that they can absorb the translation overhead.