Intel CPUs definitely got better over the years, but Macbooks were nerfed by Apple's mediocre CPU cooler designs. Their power curve was tweaked so users wouldn't notice (boost to extreme speeds extremely quickly to respond to clicks and such fast, then come down fast because the cooling can't sustain the boost speeds) but the CPUs never came out their best in any Macbook design, no matter how expensive they were to buy.
Most Thinkpads haven't been struggling, except maybe their netbook counterpart. Some "workstation" ones with Nvidia hardware in them do put out unreasonable amounts of heat and noise, but that's hard to prevent when Nvidia is the only one making GPU hardware that performs well in laptops.
I must say the Dell and Lenovo support packages are great. Few people buy them, but the knowledge that the company will send someone to your house within 24 hours to either replace a broken part or give you a new laptop should placate a lot of anxiety.
I think the unspoken story of the apple intel relationship in the latter half of the 2010s was that Apple was waiting on intel to release cooler and more efficient chips (by means of smaller processes), and intel might’ve made promises causing apple to adapt smaller and smaller designs for cooler running chips, and intel didn’t deliver.
Intel could've failed their promises in the 2012 Macbook and the blame would fall squarely on them, but when the 2015 Macbook came out, Apple still fell for it. In fact, they got worse over time.
Something tells me they were starting to design for M1 before the M1 was ready. The 2020 Intel Macbook Air ran effectively passively cooled by dumping heat into the motherboard and chassis and cooling a whole different part of the machine.
Apple machines and heat have always been a complicated story. The trash can Mac was innovative in its cooling design, but that same design made upgrading the machine tough. One Macbook model blew hot air right into the place the cover around the screen was glued to, and at one point Nvidia's shitty hardware managed to desolder itself inside a Mac machine because of its bad design.
I'm glad they've found a way to produce cooler chips because it seems Apple's fetish for sleekly designed machines conflicted heavily with their cooling performance.
Most Thinkpads haven't been struggling, except maybe their netbook counterpart. Some "workstation" ones with Nvidia hardware in them do put out unreasonable amounts of heat and noise, but that's hard to prevent when Nvidia is the only one making GPU hardware that performs well in laptops.
I must say the Dell and Lenovo support packages are great. Few people buy them, but the knowledge that the company will send someone to your house within 24 hours to either replace a broken part or give you a new laptop should placate a lot of anxiety.