At one point I even had to install XCode onto it to release an emergency bug fix for an iOS app while on holiday, and it worked fine (just a bit slow).

It's definitely not a glorified chromebook, really interested to see how the $599 model performs

I recently tried my former m1 air for the first time in a couple years, but the forced apple id to be able to even use the hardware soured my taste. That combined with the $99/year fee for development (vs one-time $35 fee for android) convinced me it wasn't worth my time, and I sold it.

Windows tries to do this, but you can at least bypass it with a pro version and a simple command during setup.

Any Mac application will be built for ARM at this point, and anything made for Intel Macs will run seamlessly under Rosetta. And that stuff is mostly limited to developers making Intel Docker images, musicians using some VSTs that haven't upgraded, and games.

This is at least the third major architecture migration for Macs, and they always rip the band aid off and applications have to upgrade or not run. (Motorola to PowerPC, PowerPC to Intel, Intel to ARM.)