I own an M1 and like it. But loading it up feels like loading up any other NUC style machine. I'm not sure on what axis it's better. Folks talk up the memory bandwidth, but in Apple's design, neither CPU, GPU, or NPU have access to full memory bandwidth. Not even close. Apple's caches are fast at 3 cycles, but AMD's are 10x larger. Apple's GPU claims further complicated given that they want everyone to use Metal as opposed to OpenGL, Vulkan, or DirectX on their platform. And compatibility and speed suffer as a result. Heat and noise are indeed important, from my perspective it simply seems that Apple's chosen a particular spot on the curve with an attractive outcropping thanks to early integration of on-package DRAM, but otherwise nothing special. Other manufacturers will ship on-package DRAM. AMD and NVIDIA have been shipping on-package HBM to the datacenter for an age.

If anything, it seems that Apple's much larger product - the iphone - had a lot more to do with M1/M2 design than high end desktop equipment. On package DRAM is common in cell phones to reduce board size. And M1 is a scaled up A series SoC. I think it's a great product for Apple. But as someone who's supported Mac, Linux, and Windows machines at a university for a decade, it doesn't feel appreciably different from Intel NUCs over that timespan. AMD's 7840U is setting a new standard for power and performance on the PC side right now. And the two will continue to leapfrog.