Yeah, the performance is honestly incredible for the (comparatively) poor software libraries, limited GPU cores, and low ceiling for power. I adore my MacBook Pro and find it to be more than enough for my current needs. It's been surprisingly performant for my transformers course this summer.
Apple Silicon is an even better deal for learning/tinkering with ML models if you already own one or plan to purchase one regardless. As you mentioned, the unified memory architecture is a cheaper alternative to massive/expensive Nvidia GPUs for running inference on larger models. The software is only going to improve, given the growing enthusiast cohort and Apple's push towards providing a solid ML development pipeline on MacOS.
Apple Silicon is an even better deal for learning/tinkering with ML models if you already own one or plan to purchase one regardless. As you mentioned, the unified memory architecture is a cheaper alternative to massive/expensive Nvidia GPUs for running inference on larger models. The software is only going to improve, given the growing enthusiast cohort and Apple's push towards providing a solid ML development pipeline on MacOS.