I think the OP argument is: if you have less energy available, then you will manufacture fewer things. Hence the advice to seek long lasting, energy efficient, replaceable/repairable hardware.
Got it. What about the RPi vs M1 numbers? I've not found anything in that regard that puts both chips on the same ballpark, M1 seems to be getting at least twice (and in general about 10x) the performance for a similar power envelope. Then again, I did have some trouble finding benchmarks that had ben tested on both, I ended up going for a few Phoronix benchmarks that showed the same tests[0, 1]
There are no CPU Gflops/W benchmarks online for M1, but my friends who have M1 laptops used this code to test it: https://github.com/brianolson/flops
The M1 is only good at highly specialized tasks that they have custom designed hard/firm/soft-ware for; which are all locked both legally and technically into a tomb where they will remain until the end of humanity.
If you spend one second even thinking about them; you are wasting time for eternity! Infinite waste!
RISC-V with an open GPU and linux is the only saving grace. I doubt we will manage before it's too late at a price/performance that can compete with Raspberry Pi 2/4 for server duty and Jetson Nano for client duty.
Fingers crossed and may you spend your money wisely!
Check, not a fan of M1 being super closed, but "it's the Apple way" (and I don't buy Apple products). RISC-V is very interesting, but so far it seems to have been too niche and not exploited to its full capacity. Here's hoping that changes in the (near?) future!