Intel Downplays Apple's M1 Chip With 'Carefully Crafted' Benchmarks

[xserret]

Let's all enjoy the long-overdue party... Intel sucks.... and crushed so many much worthy historic competitors like the Motorola, DEC Alpha... only with their monopolistic behaviour... finally somebody can grab them by the horns!

 

[mannyvel]

Intel Core i7 vs. Apple M1: Let's reality-check Intel's new claims | PCWorld

Sorry apple fans. The M1 is not the amazing jesuschip you think it is. It's really good, but not the be all end all apple marketing would have you think. 16 hrs of battery life (at 125nits)...I don't know about you, watching videos at that brightness (8 ticks from low) is downright unusable. Now, when intel does a FAIR test the results are MUCH closer. 6min close. egads. Our amaing mjesus chip is not capable of blowing away the intel in battery life? what gives.

Apple marketing.

This is Apple's first low-end desktop CPU, and Intel is comparing it to a Core 7.

Intel still makes a ton of chips, and they perform well enough for most people. For Apple and its user base the future is somewhere else.

 

[chucker23n1]

While I agree with most of the comments here about Intel getting beat for battery and performance, at the end of the day Macs only make up, at most, about 9% currently of the personal computer market. Historically, it's hovered around 5%. Now, I'm sure Intel would like to keep Apple as a customer, but losing Apple really isn't that big a deal when Apple is selling so few machines that require a CPU that Intel could provide.

It's quite a big deal, because Apple has outsized mindshare, and used almost exclusively high-margin products from Intel. (They did not, for example, use the Pentium and Celeron models.)

Lastly, we don't have Apple's product roadmap for iOS and MacOS devices. It's quite possible that Apple was demanding too much from Intel (both pricing and re-architecting something such as cross platforming iOS and MacOS) and Intel said no.

So?

For all you claiming that Intel is worried, what is Intel worried about? That a sea of Windows users are going to go buy Apple devices and learn a completely new environment to theoretically get a 20% performance gain on MS Office or web surfing or streaming?

In part, yes, absolutely. Just like many are moving to Chromebooks.

But also: that other laptop manufacturers start wondering if their architecture needs to be x86 at all. See, for example, Surface Pro X.

Are consumers going to complain to Wintel vendors that they demand the M1 and future Apple chips to be as an option on their devices (again, and likely paying a lot at checkout for that CPU)?

You can bet enterprise customers are complaining to Dell, HP and others that the competition has better chips.

What Mac users don't realize, however, is they are getting more locked-in than ever...Apple has complete design and control over the hardware, operating systems, app store, app approvals, developer pricing model, and now the CPU.

Other than hardware, what the hell are you talking about?

 

[Steve Adams]

It's quite a big deal, because Apple has outsized mindshare, and used almost exclusively high-margin products from Intel. (They did not, for example, use the Pentium and Celeron models.)



So?



In part, yes, absolutely. Just like many are moving to Chromebooks.

But also: that other laptop manufacturers start wondering if their architecture needs to be x86 at all. See, for example, Surface Pro X.



You can bet enterprise customers are complaining to Dell, HP and others that the competition has better chips.



Other than hardware, what the hell are you talking about?

Everything he said is true. what the hell don't you understand?

 

[chucker23n1]

Everything he said is true. what the hell don't you understand?

M1 Macs don't require apps to go through the App Store.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

If the new CEO delivers then Apple may have a hard time keeping up.

The new CEO okayed the publishing of this PDF. This is a situation where NOT doing a thing would have been better than doing anything as it just shows the new CEO won’t be much different than the old CEO. Maybe his goal is to bring back a lot of his buddies and promise them nice sweet re-retirement packages when the well dries up. 🙂

Intel is actually comparing:
- a MacBook Air with a 50 Wh battery that is playing a 1440p Netflix stream on a 2560*1600 monitor
- to a Swift 5, which uses a less power-hungry CPU than in their "performance" test, has a 56 Wh battery, and is playing a 720p Netflix stream (because Chrome cannot do more) on a 1080p monitor.
And yet the Mac is beating the PC.

The fact that we can’t clarify is just another reason why they should have left this one on the admin’s laptop.

but are all the windows users just going to flock to Apple?

Many windows users have already flocked to Apple by way of the iPhone and, in many cases, the iPad. They rightly haven’t given up Windows because, I mean it’s there and still useful. But that’s still an Apple sale. And, Apple sells more iPads than all laptops combined. That means that, today, Apple sells more mobile processors to customers than Intel.

 

[ghanwani]

The new CEO okayed the publishing of this PDF. This is a situation where NOT doing a thing would have been better than doing anything as it just shows the new CEO won’t be much different than the old CEO. Maybe his goal is to bring back a lot of his buddies and promise them nice sweet re-retirement packages when the well dries up. 🙂

His first day will be Feb 15. Are you sure he okay'ed it?

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I have failed to see any other benchmark (including YouTube videos) showing a comparison between Microsoft Office on M1/macOS and on Intel/Windows.

It’s likely as you said because showing a comparison between two applications that are functionally not the same doesn’t even make sense. Then consider, what MOST folks will be doing in Office over 90% of the time will be entering data. And anyone who says that they can see a marked increase in performance when typing on either of those are making it up 🙂

Now, I'm sure Intel would like to keep Apple as a customer, but losing Apple really isn't that big a deal when Apple is selling so few machines that require a CPU that Intel could provide.

If you ONLY focus on the Mac you miss the bigger picture where millions of POTENTIAL Intel system sales are instead going to Apple. These aren’t even people switching from Windows, these are people WITH Windows and decide to get an iPad because they can still access all the same web portals that’s most of their computer usage.

 

[KPOM]

It would likely be up to my IT department. It's less that I need performance and more that I need them to be happy with whatever I have running. It's basic stuff, but I would simply like to avoid dealing with multiple laptops if this is at all possible. A work laptop could come at no cost to me, but that's just another thing to have to deal with.

Makes sense. At minimum, Microsoft would need to start selling retail licenses for Windows on ARM, or let Parallels/VMWare sell licenses as an "OEM" so it would be officially supported.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

His first day will be Feb 15. Are you sure he okay'ed it?

No, I am not. Not one bit LOL! I wonder if he’ll retract publishing it, though? If he wanted to show a cut between the old leadership and him, that’s one way to do it.

 

[ikramerica]

Yes, you are absolutely right.

What these websites are doing is reporting benchmarks produced by Apple and Intel and providing a "critical analysis" on them, which is, quite honestly, worth nothing. What these websites should be doing is providing their own bias-free benchmarks.

Apple's own benchmarks show the M1 destroying Intel processors. But they are comparing the just-released M1 with 10th gen Intel processors, released in 2019, and which equip Macs, and not the 11th gen.

Intel's own benchmarks show their processors beating M1 chips in carefully selected tasks.

None of them is truly honest. They both show part of the truth, and, during these strange times, it became very clear that it is very possible to lie by only telling the truth. I am yet to find a comprehensive benchmark test, from an independent vehicle, showing the most relevant tasks.

There are, of course, Geekbench tests, and, in terms of raw performance, the M1 seems to be clearly superior. However, nobody buys a computer to run Geekbench tests (or very few people do).

Intel's benchmarks show something interesting, which is that Microsoft Office may perform better on Windows running on its processors than on macOS running on M1 processors. Microsoft Office is much better on Windows than on macOS, and it is certainly not fair to compare them both in terms of performance. Still, many people use Microsoft Office and do not care how fast the processor is if it does not make up for inferior software. I have failed to see any other benchmark (including YouTube videos) showing a comparison between Microsoft Office on M1/macOS and on Intel/Windows.

As for MS Office, beyond Excel, there are no practical performance benefits between them as nobody is really pushing Office hard enough to matter.

Excel is a different story. Excel for Mac is like Excel Lite compared to Excel for windows and has been for quite a long time. Sure, Excel was originally a Mac App and early on it supported all functionality on the Mac, but in the 21st century the scientific and finance communities need a windows machine to run Excel for Windows due to all the features it lacks on the Mac these days. And they need it to be fast.

 

[radus]

As for MS Office, beyond Excel, there are no practical performance benefits between them as nobody is really pushing Office hard enough to matter.

Excel is a different story. Excel for Mac is like Excel Lite compared to Excel for windows and has been for quite a long time. Sure, Excel was originally a Mac App and early on it supported all functionality on the Mac, but in the 21st century the scientific and finance communities need a windows machine to run Excel for Windows due to all the features it lacks on the Mac these days. And they need it to be fast.

word 365 for mac os is also far inferior compared to word 365 for windows
(just try to search / replace format (i.e. standard to bold text) for any text between parenthesis like „*“ and there are many of such examples)

 

[cocoua]

last bullet from Intel before the big M2/M1X Bazinga!

so unfair, that it claims desperation.

(very classic Microsoft/Samsung style, nobody but their fans care)

ARM is coming to Windows and servers yes or yes, and they will face the true enemy in their army.

We are in a world hungry for energy savings, X86 is so dead…

Can't understand how it was possible that Intel let AMD buying ARM

 

[KPOM]

For all you claiming that Intel is worried, what is Intel worried about? That a sea of Windows users are going to go buy Apple devices and learn a completely new environment to theoretically get a 20% performance gain on MS Office or web surfing or streaming? Oh, and while paying a lot more money for that Apple laptop or desktop. There may be some bragging rights and hurt pride down the road if Apple starts playing the CPU Metrics Game like all CPU vendors have been doing for 30+ years, but again, so what? Is Apple going to start selling the M1 to Dell and Toshiba? I doubt it. Are consumers going to complain to Wintel vendors that they demand the M1 and future Apple chips to be as an option on their devices (again, and likely paying a lot at checkout for that CPU)? Wintel already has Intel and AMD for consumers and pros...they're not going to add (or even get requests) a 3rd CPU at checkout.

Intel is likely worried about the threat to x86 in general. Apple has shown that it is possible to produce a chip running a mainstream operating system based on another architecture (ARM) that can adequately run x86 code and smooth a transition. Technologically, there is nothing stopping Microsoft from working with Qualcomm, another ARM licensee, or even getting its own ARM license to try to do the same. Microsoft has certainly tried to make Windows on ARM a success. Apple showed them some new possible ways to make it work.

True, M1's performance is not solely or perhaps even primarily because of ARM, but it does show that a newcomer without the baggage of supporting all the legacy code can make inroads.

 

[ericinboston]

It's quite a big deal, because Apple has outsized mindshare, and used almost exclusively high-margin products from Intel. (They did not, for example, use the Pentium and Celeron models.)



So?



In part, yes, absolutely. Just like many are moving to Chromebooks.

But also: that other laptop manufacturers start wondering if their architecture needs to be x86 at all. See, for example, Surface Pro X.



You can bet enterprise customers are complaining to Dell, HP and others that the competition has better chips.



Other than hardware, what the hell are you talking about?

It's quite a big deal, because Apple has outsized mindshare, and used almost exclusively high-margin products from Intel. (They did not, for example, use the Pentium and Celeron models.)



So?



In part, yes, absolutely. Just like many are moving to Chromebooks.

But also: that other laptop manufacturers start wondering if their architecture needs to be x86 at all. See, for example, Surface Pro X.



You can bet enterprise customers are complaining to Dell, HP and others that the competition has better chips.



Other than hardware, what the hell are you talking about?

1)You're telling me that the M1 has been out for a few months and the enterprise players have already run to Intel to complain? No way. I will agree that in general, Intel has provided lackluster performance improvements (I don't care about battery life or power savings) over the past 5 years while AMD certainly has showed its might. And again, Intel has been battling AMD for 25+ years and there's always benchmark claims vs. reality vs. the competition. Give it a few years to see what Apple comes up with, where the Apple devices go, what Intel and AMD introduce, Mac overall adoption, etc. and then we'll see who and when the complaints start coming in to Intel. As many have said here, competition is good.

2)Chromebooks are a joke for anyone doing anything that requires decent horsepower. Yes, Chromebooks have their place just like desktops, laptops, ipads, and other devices. But to imply the general enterprise workforce is moving to Chromebooks is laughable. Middle of the road Chromebooks are $650 while high end ones float around $1000 for non-customizeable machines configured at 256GB drives, 8GB RAM, and an almost-2-year-old i5 cpu. Why would anyone who currently owns a $1500+, nicely configured laptop with far more ram, easily an i7 chip, and a larger drive save a few bucks to drop down a few notches on 3 major technology pieces? Example: 1.5 years ago I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2 for just under $1300 that included 16GB RAM, a 512GB SSD, and the 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H. I'm not saving $300 for a watered-down "high end" Chromebook because I want and need the better performance and I also understand I'm not the average laptop user. So sure, there are definitely people out there that can (or want to) only spend $700 and/or are going to only use the laptop for a browser and streaming and a Chromebook is a good option in those circumstances.

3)Your comment about "So?" missed my point which is that WE DO NOT KNOW WHY INTEL IS NO LONGER SUPPLYING APPLE. It could be money, it could be timing of availability, it could be Apple trying to convince/force Intel to start making non-X86 chip technology which would/could ultimately make X86 technology irrelevant and hence Intel now loses power/control to Apple. It could be a lot of things. Take some time and think before the snarky replies.

 

[ericinboston]

Intel is likely worried about the threat to x86 in general.

That is my thinking, too. But it's been much longer than the last few years of Apple. It started back with the browser wars and their popularity and cross platform...both Microsoft and Intel were worried that browsers could become the next operating system and thus eat Microsoft's lunch as well as Intel's if the browsers ran on multiple CPUs.

Apple made Intel worry more with the popularity of the iPad and iPhone and non-X86 technology...and now the Macs are/will be more and more tightly integrated to the iOS technologies. Intel likely sees the plan Apple is trying to do: get the iPhone and iPad apps to only run on Apple architecture (already done) and now get the apps to only run on Apple Mac non-X86 architecture. Doing this (which Apple is now starting) sets the stage for Intel to lose control of the apps and operating systems in the Apple Mac world. If, and that's a big if, Macs ever become so popular to get 20%+ marketshare, Intel will be deeply concerned.

Both Apple and Intel are monopolies in their own ways and neither is backing down on this architecture change.

 

[KPOM]

3)Your comment about "So?" missed my point which is that WE DO NOT KNOW WHY INTEL IS NO LONGER SUPPLYING APPLE. It could be money, it could be timing of availability, it could be Apple trying to convince/force Intel to start making non-X86 chip technology which would/could ultimately make X86 technology irrelevant and hence Intel now loses power/control to Apple. It could be a lot of things. Take some time and think before the snarky replies.

It likely was inevitable, given that Apple likes to be in control over everything it does. However, had Intel been able to deliver on its original schedule (and be on the 2nd refinement of 7nm by now), would Apple have switched in 2020? Perhaps not. We do know how Apple designed the thermals of its MacBook line since 2015. Every MacBook/Air/Pro released since then (with the possible exception of the 16" MacBook Pro) appears to have been designed with cooler running chips in mind.

We also know that Apple chose to make the switch in 2020, knowing that Tiger Lake was coming.

 

[Bustermd]

Does this surprise anyone?

Every manufacturer will carefully select data points that make their products look better. Apple does the same thing too.

Manufacturer advertising and marketing materials are not an objective source of truth and never were. It is kind of disturbing to me that so many people think they are, or should be.

 

[kaycrystal626]

Feel sorry for Intel, even AMD chips are better and more efficient than Intel.

 

[Jimmy James]

“We can cherry pick processors and results and show how we sometimes compare favourably to Apple’s first generation Mac entry-level mobile processor.”

 

[cmaier]

Numbers, numbers, numbers . . . all I know is I'm still a bit salty that my son's new M1 MacBook Air performs as well as or better than my 16" MacBook Pro . . . and it doesn't wanna catch his lap on fire . . .

Not "as well as or" 🙂

 

[cmaier]

While I agree with most of the comments here about Intel getting beat for battery and performance, at the end of the day Macs only make up, at most, about 9% currently of the personal computer market. Historically, it's hovered around 5%. Now, I'm sure Intel would like to keep Apple as a customer, but losing Apple really isn't that big a deal when Apple is selling so few machines that require a CPU that Intel could provide. Also, remember that this isn't the first time Apple has stormed away from a chip provider for another provider.

Lastly, we don't have Apple's product roadmap for iOS and MacOS devices. It's quite possible that Apple was demanding too much from Intel (both pricing and re-architecting something such as cross platforming iOS and MacOS) and Intel said no.

For all you claiming that Intel is worried, what is Intel worried about? That a sea of Windows users are going to go buy Apple devices and learn a completely new environment to theoretically get a 20% performance gain on MS Office or web surfing or streaming? Oh, and while paying a lot more money for that Apple laptop or desktop. There may be some bragging rights and hurt pride down the road if Apple starts playing the CPU Metrics Game like all CPU vendors have been doing for 30+ years, but again, so what? Is Apple going to start selling the M1 to Dell and Toshiba? I doubt it. Are consumers going to complain to Wintel vendors that they demand the M1 and future Apple chips to be as an option on their devices (again, and likely paying a lot at checkout for that CPU)? Wintel already has Intel and AMD for consumers and pros...they're not going to add (or even get requests) a 3rd CPU at checkout.

What Mac users don't realize, however, is they are getting more locked-in than ever...Apple has complete design and control over the hardware, operating systems, app store, app approvals, developer pricing model, and now the CPU.

The walled garden just got a roof.

1) Losing 9% of the market for an important product line is certainly "a big deal."

2) Apple is just the first. I had to fight back against thousands of posts on here that were absolutely positive that Arm was somehow congenitally incapable of competing with the majestic x86 instruction set architecture. Even if Intel's direct customers are not as ill-informed as the majority of macrumors forum posters, the customers of those customers were. Apple has now disproven this silly conjecture. I absolutely guarantee you that Apple will not be the last Intel customer to switch to Arm. Stay tuned.

3) Apple has no control over the developer pricing model on Macs. It controls only one of many app stores. Linux runs on M1, so Apple does not have complete control over what you run, either.

 

[chucker23n1]

1)You're telling me that the M1 has been out for a few months and the enterprise players have already run to Intel to complain?

Absolutely, sure.

If you're an enterprise customer paying Intel prices and now Apple and AMD are making more compelling offers, you're going to complain to your sales rep.

No way. I will agree that in general, Intel has provided lackluster performance improvements (I don't care about battery life or power savings) over the past 5 years while AMD certainly has showed its might. And again, Intel has been battling AMD for 25+ years and there's always benchmark claims vs. reality vs. the competition. Give it a few years to see what Apple comes up with, where the Apple devices go, what Intel and AMD introduce, Mac overall adoption, etc. and then we'll see who and when the complaints start coming in to Intel. As many have said here, competition is good.

Competition is good indeed.

2)Chromebooks are a joke for anyone doing anything that requires decent horsepower.

You're moving your goalposts here. This is literally what I responded to: "That a sea of Windows users are going to go buy Apple devices and learn a completely new environment to theoretically get a 20% performance gain on MS Office or web surfing or streaming?"

MS Office, web surfing and streaming will run fine on a Chromebook.

Yes, Chromebooks have their place just like desktops, laptops, ipads, and other devices. But to imply the general enterprise workforce is moving to Chromebooks is laughable.

The general enterprise workforce doesn't need much horsepower. By and large, they run MS Office (if even that) and a bunch of web apps. Dynamics, SAP, Google Workspace, etc. largely don't run locally, so local horsepower doesn't matter.

Middle of the road Chromebooks are $650 while high end ones float around $1000 for non-customizeable machines configured at 256GB drives, 8GB RAM, and an almost-2-year-old i5 cpu. Why would anyone who currently owns a $1500+, nicely configured laptop with far more ram, easily an i7 chip, and a larger drive save a few bucks to drop down a few notches on 3 major technology pieces? Example: 1.5 years ago I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2 for just under $1300 that included 16GB RAM, a 512GB SSD, and the 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H.

Your 9750H isn't representative of what the enterprise workforce uses, so I'm not sure why you would bring it up. Also, a MacBook Air eats its lunch in most workloads — even in multi-core ones. While using a fraction of the energy.

I'm not saving $300 for a watered-down "high end" Chromebook because I want and need the better performance

Sure, but you're not the target audience here. You were talking about, again, "MS Office or web surfing or streaming", and you don't need a 9750H for it (nor is it a compelling choice for it, as it burns far too much energy).

and I also understand I'm not the average laptop user.

Right.

(Typing this on a 4750HQ, for whatever that's worth.)

3)Your comment about "So?" missed my point which is that WE DO NOT KNOW WHY INTEL IS NO LONGER SUPPLYING APPLE.

Luckily, this place isn't called "MacFactCheck.com", then?

We can speculate and extrapolate based on Tim Cook's ethos. He likes to control the whole widget, and Apple's own chip design has become more than good enough that there's no need to rely on a third party. That's the entire story right there. It makes them more agile in their product design decisions; they don't have to beg for Intel to make a suitable CPU (see e.g. the ill-fated 12-inch MacBook which never got quite fast enough), or wait for the next scheduled product release. The cherry on top is that, at least right now, their chip design is actually better than Intel's, but that's really just icing on the cake; they did it for control.

 

[PharaohVision]

I thought Intel said benchmarks don't matter. How strange.

 

[happyprozak]

Apple is only making chips for Apple notebooks which means x86 is still very much important for Window machines. Intel losing Apple as a customer is a big blow but that is far from being a coup de grace.

Intel should be more worried about AMD at this point because they are making superior silicone for both desktops and laptops.