Now that Apple corp has started the migration to M1 architecture, one of the few really interesting features of Macs may be gone, the ability to run Windows business apps on a Mac. When Macs were based on the same Intel chips that Microsoft wrote Windows for, it was a simple matter of installing Windows on your Mac (via Parallels, dual boot, VM’s, etc.). Now that Macs are using the M1 (ARM) family of processors it isn’t near so straightforward.
Yes, I have read the articles reviewing Parallels 17 and all the great features it has (apparently including the ability to mimic an Intel system), you still have to load (thus far) Windows for ARM after you load Parallels in order to run windows x86 software. Before you go looking to buy a copy of Windows 10 for ARM, let me warn you there is no retail version so far (even though Microsoft sells a few products running Windows for ARM).
So, why did Apple make the jump to ARM architecture when it meant their machines would lose access to an extremely large library of professional and business software? Well, among current product families, the ARM family produces the least expensive to build computers with far less power consumption for a given level of performance. With Unix and a few flavors of Linux already ported to ARM, it had to look like an obvious choice for Apple. And, they could wrest back development and advancement control from Intel who has not been performing up to Apple’s expectations for a few years (Apple may have a number of other reasons to want to use chips and architecture that they are involved in the development of).
In conclusion, I would like to say this: Once you decide which software you are going to use, select from among computers that run that software best, most affordably, most reliably, and most easily maintained. Ignore (in this initial step) the Apple vs Microsoft or M1 vs Intel vs AMD questions until you have selected the software and determined which machines best suit your needs running that software. Then you may or may not have brand choices. A quick bit for the future, as more and more software (apps) are run from the cloud, you may find that ChromeOS products may start attracting a lot of attention (My initial testing of Chrome products using a variety of chips and chip-sets has shown performance to be markedly better than that of systems running Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac-OS, etc.).