I've been a Mac user for almost a decade. And as a former operating systems guy, I like that it's Unix and pretty stable.

But... it is still a small time player. A lot of essential Windoze software won't run on it. Manufacturers of lots of equipment that I use either professionally or personally do not distribute Mac version. Some have a Linux option, but all run on windows. Oh, and I'd bet that most of that software will not be available on ARM Windoze.

And now that's a big problem, because... see below.

And, after buying and converting to the M1, I discovered that there is no 386 virtual machine for it, and VMWare, the place where I run 386 Windows, has said it isn't worth their trouble to develop one for the M1. I have heard of no plans by anyone to allow 386 Windows to run on this machine.

So now I have to have two Mac's on my desk where I used to have one. One is my older Intel based Mac which I had hoped to retire.

This is a really big deal to me. Apple hurt me with this. And if I turn around and sell my M1 Mini and buy the still available Intel Mini, I am buying into an obsolescence path.

So what to do? Buy a machine just to run windows natively?

Ugh. HUGE disappointment.

BTW, I was a user of the very first virtual machine monitor (VMM) which ran on the 360-67. It is a wonderful idea and I'm shocked that there apparently isn't one for 386 on the M1.