It seems if you want optimal performance and power efficiency, you need to own both hardware and software.

Does Apple optimize the OS for its chips and vice versa? Yes. However, Apple Silicon hardware is just that good and that far ahead of x86.

Here's an M4 Max running macOS running Parallels running Windows when compared to the fastest AMD laptop chip: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/13494385?baseli...

M4 Max is still faster even with 14 out of 16 possible cores being used. You can't chalk that up to optimizations anymore because Windows has no Apple Silicon optimizations.