Yikes... those are some power hungry chips. Why would a person still buy x86? Compared to ARM, it's inefficient and outdated technology. Buying computers with AMD and Intel chips is like buying a gasoline car when electric cars are the future.
The success of x86 wasn't only due to software, but also thanks to the standardization of hardware and firmware. You can release a single image and boot it on every PC-compatible computer, because stuff like the BIOS, PCI, VGA, ... are all standard. A bare x86 CPU is of little use without all the thingamajigs that make a PC a PC.
Viceversa, on ARM outside the few boards or computers with an UEFI it's a far west of options, configurations, and so on. ARM PCs will never succeed outside of Apple closed garden until they get as convenient to install and upgrade as their x86_64 counterparts are.
I bought an M1 Mini early on and it's been an absolutely wonderful machine. But it's got 16 GiB RAM and a few ports on the back.
On the same desk, I've got an AMD 3900X w/ 64 GiB and expansion slots and room inside the case. The point being, different needs are being met.
Apple isn't ever going to win any hyperscale awards, but they're putting on a good show for HEDT despite Threadripper and other recent high performance CPUs. They're very good at what they're good at.
And for me, anything I'd want to put Linux on these days is either embedded or lives in a rack. Desktop is a big market, but give me something cool and silent or else far away any day.
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini
Maybe not everyone wants/needs to be locked into the apple Ecosystem?
PS. Electric cars are the past as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
The Intel Mac Pro still exists because they haven't made a modular apple silicon machine and their remaining large scale video production customers would leave them if they were told just to to migrate to M1 Studio machines.
I don't see a similar argument for the Mini, especially as it's still on 8th gen. I'm honestly surprised Intel is still supplying Skylake CPUs for it
Perhaps they have a warehouse of these somewhere and they are still trying to unload them?
I see Intel based iMac's for sale at Costco yet they are not on Apple's site?
I think I saw a decently specced 21.5" Intel iMac going for $599 last year, although an M1 Mac Mini would still be my choice.
Apple Silicon is great but doesn't serve every need.
The answer of course is software compatiblity, OSes, CPU platforms, HW markets etc are not interchangeable, and x86 was and is the only practically open platform with big enough market that there's working competition between hw/system vendors, os vendors, sw vendors, etc.
Then eventually in the late 90s, x86 matched and later overtook the competitors, helped by the huge volumes leaving process investments of competitors too far behind. (Everyone had0 their own private fabs then, and process generations got expoenntially more expensive).
After the RISC camp struggled head to head with x86 for a few years the race was over in 5-ish years. Probably the 21164 and 21264 were the last chips to hands down beat x86 by a large margin. They had a Rosetta style translator back then and most (?) x86 Windows apps ran faster on the Alpha/WinNT platform than on fastest native x86 chip for a time.
I wouldn't buy an electric car right now, and I similarly wouldn't buy ARM desktop PC that's bundled with anal probing from Apple and unlimited limitations.