Intel Tweet Asking Why Former Mac Users Switched to PC Backfires

[Nokia_nerd_3310_3g]

Ahead of Monday's Apple event, which is expected to include the much-awaited launch of brand new 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros, Intel is continuing its long-running campaign to try and convince Mac users to switch to Intel-based PCs.

Last week, Intel released a video as part of its PC vs. Mac campaign that featured "Apple fans" introduced to different Intel computers and all of their features. During the four-minute video, Intel attempted to paint Apple consumers as oblivious to "innovations" made by companies besides Apple, including "touch screen" laptops.

Continuing its streak, yesterday, the official Intel account tweeted out, "Confessions of former Mac users. What made you #GoPC?" Instead of former Mac users engaging with the tweet on reasons they switched to PC, the tweet instead includes replies of current Mac users poking fun at Intel's "desperate" marketing attempts. One comment reads, "Just admit it: you're just pissed that Apple ditched you and designed a way better processor by themselves."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1448672444936564736

Other replies include Apple users trolling Intel, with one stating "You're not invited" with a picture of the upcoming "Unleashed" event invitation. One reply, in Intel's defense, says that Apple is "a low performance luxury brand with overpriced hardware and a lesser ecosystem because its closed."

Ironically, while Intel goes on the defense, Apple still sells Mac computers powered by Intel processors. After Monday's "Unleashed" event, the higher-end MacBook Pro will no longer be Intel-based and will officially switch to Apple silicon, but other Macs such as the 27-inch iMac and Mac Pro still feature Intel processors.

Apple officially embarked on its transition to Apple silicon in November of last year, and the company is expected to fully move all of its Mac computers away from Intel next year.

Article Link: Intel Tweet Asking Why Former Mac Users Switched to PC Backfires

The only reason I switched from my 2009 MacBook pro (that I got for free with a dead drive 2 years ago) is because it had a dead battery and the cd drive had started to scratch my disks and because my charger kept breaking (i went through about 4) and I couldn't afford a newer mac so I ended up getting a 2009 Lenovo ThinkPad t400 that just does everything I need though I didn't miss having driver issues. one day i will make a return back to my favorite ecosystem when I get a better job

 

[hot-gril]

I can dig out my Apple II and still get work done on it, but it's not feasible as a modern machine. It always depends on WHAT work you want to do. For that matter, a typewriter works fine to type out a letter - but it's still old tech. Same with a 7 year old PC. It will turn on, and it will work, but 7 years is a long time. You're talking over a full get of Windows software later. 2014 was Windows 8.1. 7 years later we've gone through Windows 10 and are now on the launch of Windows 11. I haven't tried it, but I doubt a 2014 PC will be capable of running Widows 11 without replacing parts of the internals.

A 2014 PC will probably be capable of running it. You can run Win10 on mid-range 10 year old PCs, and it's not even painful. And if you're talking about a high-end PC of today with a 3080ti and such... yep, it'll run stuff in 10 years.

My main home/work machine is a 2009 Mac Pro with 2012 CPUs and the newest part being an RX580. The GPU is only because of macOS compatibility, not power needs. It's not even about money, just not gonna bother replacing a machine that's still doing everything I throw at it, which miraculously includes running the latest macOS.

 

[hot-gril]

100% not true. I've switched back because from a pure power to price standpoint for running computational heavy applications Macs are a vanity brand. I will agree though that the new M1 MACS may change my mind during my next upgrade but for statistical computing/ heavy cpu bound applications Macs are not the be all end all. Therefore your statement is false, I'm fully sane... a masters degree student in engineering and I've switched from a Mac to a Linux based PC for my CS courses and applications.

But CS courses don't require heavy computational power, unless you're running ML experiments and your school isn't giving you a cluster to use.

 

[hot-gril]

If you buy a "State of the Art" PC for under $3K and expect to still use it for Pro-level apps and/or gaming WITHOUT significant upgrades in 7 years. You're either NOT upgrading your apps or still playing 7 year-old games. The OP implied that he could.

Idk, my old Mac still runs Adobe CC fairly well. I suspect the entire reason is running new games, in which case, the word "investment" doesn't apply.

 

[hot-gril]

Is the M1 considered RISC? I miss the G”*” days

Yep. There's the "RISC and CISC have converged" meme, but it's not really true. There's still a meaningful distinction.

 

[Lngwstx]

It’s so weird to me that it’s all or nothing. Why?

I have both. I have three computers of my own and one work computer, a mix of Mac and PC, and they’re all fine. I like them each for different reasons. I have an iPhone and an iPad but I also have a Samsung tablet and I like it very much, too. I prefer iPhones but my roommate has a Samsung phone that impresses me, too. They’re both good phones.

I recently bought a Mac mini with the M1 chip, for freelance work. It’s quite impressive; I can see why Intel is in their feelings on their breakup with Apple. But they’ve been making solid stuff for a long time, they were behind most of Apple’s best products for a long time, they shouldn’t be stressing. Apple is doing good work with the M1 chip, but Intel has proven themselves more than capable of competing with their former partner. Competition is good for consumers. I’m glad there is a market for multiple offerings, that means I’ll keep having good options to consider when I buy the next device.

 

[SurferPup]

No one in the history of the world (with full sanity) has gone from Mac to PC, unless forced.

Tru Dat - my partner preferred PC, Sony Vaio, as her number one selection criteria is it has too look pretty. Her next laptop she sceptically embraced a boot camped MacBook Pro with Windows 7 and vitalisation software (I did it for her). Her next iteration of the MacBook Pro, no boot camp and she hasn't regretted the shift at all. Myself, I was surrounded by  2e / 2c, McIntosh, Texas Instruments, CompuColours, IntelliColours, IBM, others I can't recall and DOS, my parents owned a computer business. I chose Apple when I was a young child and never owned / purchased a PC in my whole life. As a child I self taught myself BASIC computer language. Apple is intuitive and desirable - fun. Naturally I use PC at work and PC is just PB - pretty boring 🥱.

 

[bgalakazam]

I have had nothing but issues with Windows, starting with DOS, then Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 10, 11. Currently I only touch Windows at work as it is what comes installed. Slow, crashes all the time, needs constant reboots. Once I switched to OS X (now MacOS), I've had no issues. It just works. Goodbye reinstalling the OS every month due to viruses or crashes. Goodbye registry cleaners, constant updates and reboots. There is a single Inter Mac left in the household and it will be replaced in time.

* a thread *

 

[miric]

Why Intel is asking?

 

[Pilot Jones]

Jeez 🤦‍♂️

First it was just mega cringe, but this is getting real pathetic.

Can't believe some Intel executive hasn't pulled the plug on their entire marketing department already out of sheer embarassment.

 

[macduke]

No one in the history of the world (with full sanity) has gone from Mac to PC, unless forced.

One time I was forced when starting my first job after college. There was a misunderstanding about being provided a Mac for work. I tried to get by on that Dell box for a few months and then just started bringing in my personal MacBook Pro and hooked it up to the Dell displays.

My boss was so impressed with my increase in performance that she bought me a nice new 27” iMac and from there I got everything running so efficiently and automated that I basically got bored out of my mind and decided to go elsewhere. But it was also kinda nice because I had time to go on MacRumors all day back when it was in its prime.

 

[orthorim]

Windows will switch over to ARM and will then still be behind Apple Silicon, but not as far behind, and will still be able to compete. Chrome laptops are also a really good competitor but will also run on ARM. Just needs one of the phone chip makers to realize they could sell 100M units of ARM chips if they made a desktop version. Google might even be developing one already.

Intel was too busy adding secret undocumented ARM cores to their chips to care about performance.

Or maybe the architecture was simply on its last legs, and all the engineering talent in the world can't flog the dead horse enough to make it run. As an engineer, I think that's most likely the cause for Intel failing to deliver.
They had stretched their runway with all sorts of tricks - including a complicated micro instruction architecture where they interpret their CISC instructions and turn them into RISC instructions.

To everyone able to read Geekbench scores, it has been obvious that Intel chips have not gotten substantially faster since 2012. That's 9 years ago. Complete stagnation. Moore's law - hahaha - no more!

They used some tricks every year to eeke out single percentage performance gains.

They used all marketing tactics to make it seem there's vast differences between their chips, but in reality Intel has only one chip, and the marketing department calls it anything from i3 to i9 - and there's some variations that use less power with less performance and a variable number of cores.

But the truth is the core architecture is all the same sh_it.

Intel is finished. They are surprisingly bad at producing ARM chips also.

 

[orthorim]

Imagine... Apple sells its M1 chips to the competition... I think in the PC market that wouldn't hurt them at all. And the M1 is currently probably at least 50% faster than the nearest ARM chip from the phone manufacturers.

 

[sautter123]

No one in the history of the world (with full sanity) has gone from Mac to PC, unless forced.

I did. I was a life-long fanboy, who was born-and raised into the cult. I finally got fed up with the scam and switched. I am SO happy now with my Windows systems. I wouldn't install OSX if it was open freeware now.

 

[akbarali.ch]

I seriously dont understand the desparation Intel is getting into. Mac has less than 10% market share and is due to MacOS (having less app ecosystem) and hardware being expensive (actually its debatable if you consider quality).

Any of my friend who are not on mac have only one reason. They feel its cheating on the company's part to charge so much for the same thing that other company give or feel stupid to buy something you can easily get it for cheap. Also, repairing windows system is cheaper, also more company warranty on almost all parts, about 3 years, Apple's only 1 year. There are various benefits of getting Windows and so Windows users are not going to shift macos.
Even if 10% of mac users shifts to windows, thats just 1% percent of world computer user.
Yes, they may lose much much more market share to AMD. I mean, their front is on east and they are pointing their arsenal to west, come on.

 

[Abazigal]

I seriously dont understand the desparation Intel is getting into. Mac has less than 10% market share and is due to MacOS (having less app ecosystem) and hardware being expensive (actually its debatable if you consider quality).

It could be mindshare. It's pretty much accepted that the M1 smokes Intel in performance in equivalent devices, and even if the majority of the market is indeed forced to use your chips because they don't have access to the M1, what does it say when people go with your product not because they want to, but because they have to?

Even if the M1 Mac poses no risk to Intel sales wise, it sounds like a matter of personal pride for Intel. To show that their products are capable of standing toe-to-toe with the M1 chip. And when you can't win the argument, try to confuse the audience instead.

 

[chucker23n1]

I can dig out my Apple II and still get work done on it, but it's not feasible as a modern machine. It always depends on WHAT work you want to do. For that matter, a typewriter works fine to type out a letter - but it's still old tech. Same with a 7 year old PC. It will turn on, and it will work, but 7 years is a long time. You're talking over a full get of Windows software later. 2014 was Windows 8.1. 7 years later we've gone through Windows 10 and are now on the launch of Windows 11. I haven't tried it, but I doubt a 2014 PC will be capable of running Widows 11 without replacing parts of the internals.

My late-2013 MacBook Pro does run Windows 11 in a VM. It's quite slow in some places, but it's doable.

 

[colourfastt]

You gamed on a MAC? I didn't know people did that. Seriously, More power to you, but I'd rather waste my time on other time wasters, haven't played computer games since space invaders

I was into Defender and Qbert.

 

[chucker23n1]

It could be mindshare. It's pretty much accepted that the M1 smokes Intel in performance in equivalent devices, and even if the majority of the market is indeed forced to use your chips because they don't have access to the M1, what does it say when people go with your product not because they want to, but because they have to?

Even if the M1 Mac poses no risk to Intel sales wise, it sounds like a matter of personal pride for Intel. To show that their products are capable of standing toe-to-toe with the M1 chip. And when you can't win the argument, try to confuse the audience instead.

Right. They're trying to buy some time.

I'm not sure it's working. Does anyone go "well, I was gonna switch to the Mac, but now that Intel made some petty marketing campaigns, I'll reconsider"?

They should have waited for Alder Lake and let that speak for itself. At least the gap won't be quite as big then.

 

[Abazigal]

Right. They're trying to buy some time.

I'm not sure it's working. Does anyone go "well, I was gonna switch to the Mac, but now that Intel made some petty marketing campaigns, I'll reconsider"?

They should have waited for Alder Lake and let that speak for itself. At least the gap won't be quite as big then.

I think that there are some interesting PC form factors that might appeal to certain users, but I feel these are niche markets like artists and teachers and not representative of the mass market. I tried to like the Surface Pro form factor but the HP Elite laptop my workplace users keeps running into heat-related problems when we started adopting zoom during the pandemic period, and even our IT dept is having issues keeping up with repairs for flickering displays and bloated batteries due to a shortage of parts.

Whenever Alder Lake does get released, it will need to be able to stand up to the M1X chip, not just the M1, and a gap will still be a gap, however narrow. No company is going to admit openly that their product is inferior to the competition.

 

[dorkyzombie]

So Apple is raking in the majority of revenue with only a small share of the market. At the end of the day it’s not the number of units sold that keeps the corporation running and growing, it is the revenue generated from sales.

Apple is like the tobacco industry and records 25-35% net profit margins. A 10% profit margin is huge. walmart sits at about 2.3%.

Yeah sure, we can claim apple is innovative and needs money for R&D. Innovative meaning they do not come up with there own stuff they just make it usable for most consumers in everyday life(and they do it very well). iPod...wow that was out years before, Nomad Jukebox anyone? iPhone, not really. Palm OS devices and windows phones was there for years, starting to pave the way. Many features within their software and hardware...borrowed shall we say? iPhone, iMac, iSickOfBS. iPod shuffle was a rip off of bargain mp3 players that had been out.

Consistent theme. Rip off, make better, double to quadruple the price. How do you think MS raked in so much during this time when apple was coming up? Patents they held for various hardware, especially phones.

 

[MysticCow]

A 2014 PC will probably be capable of running it

My 2011 mini runs Win 10 better than the macOS. That being said I’d love to have someone donate their old M1 Mac to a poor starving teacher like me should M1X or M2 drop Monday.

 

[tubular]

fanboy ... cult ... scam

Thank you for taking the time to create an account just for that post.

 

[tubular]

I have both.

Same here. Mac for almost everything, and a PC tower for gaming.

One size doesn't fit all.

 

[swsm]

Yawn Intel. We are barely paying attention. In fact if MR didn't cover your pathetic attempt at relevance I wouldn't even remember you existed... Switch to a PC? I just threw up a little bit.