14 TECH ADVISOR • MAY 2021NEWS ANALYSIS
- In batterylife,it’sprettymucha wash.
- TheMacBookProwouldn’tpassmuster
to be certifiedas an Evo laptop. - ThenewMacBookshavea rangeof
compatibilityissues,frommultiple
monitortogamecontrollers,as
wellasmany documented software
plug-in problems.
In the parlance of our time, it’s ‘shots
fired’ yet again, with Intel highlighting
problems in competing products. In
November, Intel did the same with
AMD’s Ryzen 4000, which it found to
suffer degraded performance when
running on battery in many situations.
The normal reaction from outside
observers and die-hard Apple fan
boys is to dismiss these challenges as
sour grapes. Intel, however, says it has
benchmark receipts. Since we enjoy a
good reality TV fight, we’ll detail Intel’s
claims and tell you whether to believe
them or not.CLAIM: MACBOOK
M1 IS SLOWER
THAN CORE I
Intel says in the
WebXPRT 3 test, using
the same version of
Chrome for both the
Core i7 system as well
as the Arm-nativeMacBook, Intel takes the lead. The Intel
chip was largely ahead in WebXPRT
3, and the x86 chip was nearly three
times faster in finishing the photo
enhancement test.
Intel doesn’t just use WebXPRT
3, though. It also shows the Core i
pummelling the M1 in a PowerPoint-
to-PDFexport,andin multipleExcel
macrosbya factorof2.3x.Andyes,
Intelused the Arm-native versions of
Office for its tests.Our take: We’d really need to run similar
tests, but we don’t doubt the results. Yes,
you may think one multi-billion dollar
company publicly beefing with another
multi-billion dollar company means ‘it’s
all fake benchmarks’, but that’s probably
not the case because of the huge liability
risk Intel might face. That’s why Diet
Coke doesn’t outright call Diet Pepsi
undrinkable swill.