I can't say I don't miss it.
Heck,
I'll miss it... but I'd rather have a better MacOS machine than a mediocre Windows machine.
In reality, I'm not ready to switch to Big Sur yet, let alone M1, so we're talking 6 months or so down the line before I consider it, by which time there will probably be a range of Windows on ARM virtualisation, WIn x86 emulation and cloud options.
However, if Apple Silicon hadn't happened, then there would be a very good chance that my next machine would be a PC anyway, because Apple just wanted too much cash - and, more importantly, offered too little choice - for what was basically a PC clone with mediocre hardware specs and a MacOS license. (The choice is important here - the , say, 5k iMac is pretty respectable value
if and only if you actually want a 5k all-in-one... if you want a mid-range headless desktop with a couple of 24" 4ks, it's a joke, as is a Mini with minimum-viable-product Intel UHD graphics...). I
prefer MacOS, but I can do everything I need to do on Windows if necessary.
With Apple Silicon, though - if the success of the M1 is repeated with the M1X/M2/whatever then Macs are going to offer a hefty performance advantage over PCs, even if you have to compromise on form factor. The M1 Mini already has a faster GPU than the Intel UHD so with a M1X/M2 the GPU may be a non-issue, and now even being stuck with non-expandable RAM comes with a performance pay-off...
When I first bought an Intel Mac in 2006, being able to dual boot and/or virtualise Windows and Linux
was a significant bonus. 14 years later, the reasons for needing Windows are rapidly evaporating - no more testing websites in Internet Explorer, far more MacOS and platform-independent software available and plenty of powerful, compact PCs available if you need a "real" PC (kids these days whining about having to carry a MacBook Air
and a Surface Pro have never lugged a Powerbook G3 around Heathrow!).
Meanwhile, if my main pay-the-bills workflow was on Windows and didn't work under virtualisation, I'd just get a PC. I prefer MacOS, but its not worth the hassle of continually rebooting. I'm going to need to do that
anyway if I get another paying webapp development gig, because I need to be able to test stuff on a Windows touchscreen.
Thing is, if Mac and MacOS are better than Windows, a big part of that is because Windows has to face a huge burden of backwards compatibility to satisfy all those conservative corporate and industrial customers. Compromising the development of Macs for the sake of Windows compatibility could be the undoing of Mac, We're just lucky that, for a time, the Intel Core i chips
were the best solution for Macs, and that made Windows support very easy.
