M5 and Panther Lake are both late 2025 releases. They're fair comparisons.

One of them I can go to the store and buy right now. One I cannot. That is a very important difference.

Panther Lake isn't appearing in any products until 2026.

That’s partly the difference between making your own components and getting them from a vendor. Sure Intel can send select vendors prerelease prototypes but the feedback loop will never be as efficient as in house.

But it’s like a margin call. Everything is great until it completely sucks. Of course a lot of that comes down to TSMC. So if Apple falls it’s likely others will too.

I think it's the difference between having enough CPUs that you can launch a product and having enough CPUs that people start planning future products.

Volume takes time. That's why we're seeing 2026. And before someone says "that just gives Apple an advantage because they're smaller," Apple is shipping a comparable volume of CPUs - and they're doing basically all their volume on the latest fabrication tech.

You're absolutely right. Where should we go to get a Panther Lake laptop?

That’s exactly what I’m asking.

And we’re sure that when it shows up in products it’ll be as good as Intel says it is?

Intel's CEO said Q1 2026 for market availability for Panther Lake.

There are no benchmarked samples yet.

I'd love Intel to do well with this, but Intel has disappointed before.