Before you read too much into these tests, keep in mind, some were conducted with internal tests while others used third-party benchmarks. The company also claims the Core i7-1185G7 CPU is six times faster than M1 when running AI-based tools from Topaz Labs and around 1.7 times faster on certain Adobe Premiere, Photoshop and Lightroom functions. Intel says an unlisted system it tested with an Intel Core i7-1185G7 CPU and 16GB of RAM is 30% faster than the M1 chip while running Google Chrome and Microsoft Office tasks. To remind you of that, Intel cherry-picked areas (as The Verge so bluntly put it) where Intel-powered laptops outperform the M1 Macs.

This doesn't mean the MacBook Pro and Air will be faster than the quickest Windows 10 PCs at every application or tool. The M1 chip has only gotten faster as developers optimize their software to run natively on ARM. The Apple Silicon powering the latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air put up jaw-dropping results in our synthetic benchmark tests - even with software running through a Rosetta 2 translation layer. If AMD put Intel on the ropes, Apple delivered a punishing blow with its M1 processors. That changed in earnest at the start of 2020 when AMD released its Ryzen 4000-series chips, which outperformed Intel's dual 10th Gen (Ice Lake and Comet Lake) offerings in many of our tests while delivering excellent efficiency.

For the longest time (the better part of a decade), Intel was unrivaled when it came to mobile-chip performance with its 'Core' processors running circles around the competition. The most important element of a processor for many customers is performance. Part of that campaign was bringing back the 'I'm a Mac' guy Justin Long defected to team Intel and PC in the same way the Verizon guy ended up at Sprint (we all saw how well that worked). Not long after, the company unleashed a marketing campaign to persuade customers to purchase PCs. Intel immediately went on the offensive, releasing in-house benchmarks showing areas where its chips supposedly outperform the M1. It didn't take long to learn that the divorce was a nasty one. The debut of Apple's first computer chips marked the beginning of the end of a 14-year collaboration between Apple and Intel. A year later, Apple revealed the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with M1 chips, or Apple's custom ARM-based silicon. Things reached a boiling point in early 2019 when Tim Cook blamed Intel chip shortages for declining Mac sales.

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