Let’s be “real”, the reason why the M1 chips exist in the first place has one big reason — Intel’s incompetency to upgrade with time. The increments on Apple chips far exceed expectation year over (at least for now) while Intel still struggles to hang on to the rope. So, what are the upshots to Intel’s new campaigns against the M1 Mac?
Intel’s Strategy: Never Give In!
You know Intel means it when they say “get real” when they make a dedicated website to prove that they’re still in the game. Things get even more story-like when you dig a millimetre deep into the skin.
Intel has rather confidently employed “I’m a Mac” star Justin long who featured in various ad campaigns made by Apple from 2006 to 2009. They have gone hard at it and a result of that is the most unconvincing dialogue of all time: “Hello, I’m a… Justin. Just a real person doing a real comparison between Mac and PC.”
The new ads take a dig at the M1 powered Macs by stating the obvious differences (sometimes drawbacks) Macs have come to be known for like the gimmicky TouchBar, no touchscreen, single monitor support, lack of choice and flexibility, so on and so forth. But the real issue is beyond design and features. The real issue is in the power inside the silicon running the entire unit.
Sadly, there isn’t much to write home about in favour of Intel here either. Intel is caught beating around the bush with its inconclusive cyclic marketing talk failing to provide concrete data (probably because there isn’t any) to validate its claims.
Also Read: MacBook Air with M1 Chip Outperforms Top End Intel-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro
In a quest to prove that Intel’s 11th Gen processors “offer users more” than Apple’s M1 chips do, Intel has coined phrases referring to various aspects wherein the M1 powered Macs and on a larger scale, the Apple ecosystem falls short. Intel tries to mock how Mac users require “extra devices and gear” pointing at the so-called requirements of other Apple products in a quest to achieve what a Windows 2-in-1 laptop does. Sketchy remarks on how “everything just works” on a PC and how one is often entrapped in “Apple’s rigidly controlled walled garden”, that is the fabled Apple ecosystem.
Astonishingly enough Intel has been caught fishing for benchmarks that are limited in number where Intel chipsets outperform the M1 chips. The authenticity of those benchmarks is questionable.
Interesting Titbit: Intel has used a 16″ MacBook Pro on its website to graphically show the comparison. Well, we don’t know from where Intel got hold of an M1-powered 16″ MacBook Pro because the rest of the world is still quite a long way from getting hold of that. In Intel’s defence, the images are probably “for representative purposes only”. Or maybe they’re back from the future.
While comparing M1 Macs and Intel-based PCs, the right thing to do is to shoot for the statistics pushed out for the comparison. There clearly is no point in hankering for the already established differences that exist in a Mac-based ecosystem and a Windows-based workflow. Sadly, until Intel’s R&D catches up, there can be no such valid comparison.