MAY 2021 • TECH ADVISOR 17Our take: Okay, we get it. Macs suck
for gaming. All we can is say no rational
person would disagree. For gaming, the
M1 Mac is about 10 feet below inferior
as a gaming platform compared to the
PC – unless maybe you count running
GeForce Now cloud gaming on it?
CLAIM: MACBOOK WOULDN’T
WIN EVO CERTIFICATION
You know that fancy Intel Evo program
that tries to improve laptop performance
in key areas that annoy consumers?
Well, Intel pretty much says that if Apple
submitted the M1 MacBook to the same
program that Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo,
MSI, Acer and others go through, it
would be rejected.
The reason? Intel says the M
MacBook is too slow in doing things
that anger consumers, such as switch
to Calendar in Outlook, start video
conference
Zoom and select
picture menu in
PowerPoint.
Our take: We
know of no
AMD-based
laptops with Evo
certification either.
So while Intel
might think it’s an
insult to Apple to deny Evo certification,
wesuspectApplewon’tcareaboutone
lessbadge on its laptops.GREAT BATTERY LIFE?
Perhaps the most shocking claim Intel
showed deals with battery life. While
performance tests can be cherry-picked
by those looking to prove an outcome,
battery life usually can’t be disputed.
Apple’s official claim gives the M
MacBook up to 18 hours of battery life
using Apple TV app to watch a 1080p
video with the brightness set to “8 clicks
from the bottom”. Apple also claims
up to 15 hours browsing 25 “popular”
websites with the same “8 clicks” criteria.
When Intel pitted a MacBook Air
M1 against an Acer Swift 5 with a Core
i7-1165G7, however, it found both
basically dead even. The MacBook Air
came in at 10 hours, 12 minutes, and the