Intel skepticism aside, I hope they can deliver on this. M-series Macs seem streets ahead in terms of battery life right now and it doesn’t feel great buying any other portable.
Apple makes low clocked, very wide SoCs, and are always the first customer of the most cutting edge silicon node. This is very expensive. And Apple can eat it with their outrageous prices.
Intel (and AMD) go more for “balance,” with smaller cheaper dies and higher peak clocks. Their OEMs also “cheap out” by bundling a bunch of bloatware that also drains the battery to pad margins.
AMD is only just now getting into the “premium” game with the upcoming Strix Halo chip (M2 Pro-ish spec wise). Intel isn’t there yet, but there are rumors they will as well.
Even if you remove all that crap, battery life is nowhere near the same vs the M-series chips. So while it may be a problem, it’s still not anywhere close to the reason battery life sucks.
I think in terms of actually doing stuff AMD is close in terms of power draw (W/performance) but it’s the little things like going to sleep and while completely idle that the entire MacBook draws so little power that needs to catch up – and that’s not entirely on the processor.
Intel skepticism aside, I hope they can deliver on this. M-series Macs seem streets ahead in terms of battery life right now and it doesn’t feel great buying any other portable.
Honestly, a lot of that is budget.
Apple makes low clocked, very wide SoCs, and are always the first customer of the most cutting edge silicon node. This is very expensive. And Apple can eat it with their outrageous prices.
Intel (and AMD) go more for “balance,” with smaller cheaper dies and higher peak clocks. Their OEMs also “cheap out” by bundling a bunch of bloatware that also drains the battery to pad margins.
AMD is only just now getting into the “premium” game with the upcoming Strix Halo chip (M2 Pro-ish spec wise). Intel isn’t there yet, but there are rumors they will as well.
Even if you remove all that crap, battery life is nowhere near the same vs the M-series chips. So while it may be a problem, it’s still not anywhere close to the reason battery life sucks.
I think in terms of actually doing stuff AMD is close in terms of power draw (W/performance) but it’s the little things like going to sleep and while completely idle that the entire MacBook draws so little power that needs to catch up – and that’s not entirely on the processor.