Intel-based MacBook Pro is Intel's latest anti-Apple campaign target
Intel continues to throw shade at Apple, oddly aiming at the Intel-based MacBook Pro, but this time using gaming as a cudgel to try and prove Windows-based products are better than Apple's offerings.
Intel's presentation offered some bold claims against Apple
Apple is on a two-year transition away from Intel in favor of using its own Apple Silicon chips in Macs, and its initial M1 releases easily demonstrates Apple is doing things right. However, Intel is still quite unhappy about the break-up, as a presentation to members of the media revealed.
The presentation about Intel's 11th-generation H-series notebook processors, which also took shots against AMD and ARM, saved most of its negativity for Apple, according to PC Gamer. Chiefly, it used gaming as its main weapon against Apple, proclaiming Intel notebooks offer a "better gaming experience than 100% of Mac Laptops."
Intel then went on to offer data on the matter, including claims over half of "today's most popular games" are not supported on macOS itself. This attack is a little misguided for Intel, as Intel-based Macs running macOS still exist, and they cannot run games like Grand Theft Auto V or Cyberpunk 2077 natively either.
Emulation was also mentioned but shown to be ineffective with a demonstration of Valheim poorly running on Parallels on a Mac.
A later slide then proudly declared that Intel's 11th-generation Core i5 H-series offers "better gaming performance" than the "most powerful MacBook Pro." A chart is then provided showing a variety of games running better on an "Intel Branded System" than on a 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Intel compared an Intel-based MacBook Pro using year-old hardware against its own creation.
Oddly for such a graph, Intel directly compares year-old MacBook Pro with a Core i9-9980HK and the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M against its brand new system, which uses the Core i5 11400H and the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060. Naturally, all of the Intel system results are faster than the MacBook Pro's, due to using a brand new processor and a much more powerful graphics card.
Intel also linked gaming to content creation, with statistics pointing to 50% of Windows notebook buyers also creating content, and 43% of content creators doing the same for playing games. Approximately 49% of creators buying a Windows notebook worth $800 or more also play games, with the percentage of "advanced gamers" who purchased a high-value Windows notebook moving to 61% in creating content.
Intel's Gamer-Creator overlap slide tries to directly link the two types of computer usage.
The published presentation slides oddly don't mention Apple Silicon at all, and keep any comparisons between Intel-based systems. In early AppleInsider tests in November, the M1 was shown to stand up very well against its Intel-based Mac counterparts, both in processor-based and GPU-based tests.
This hasn't stopped Intel from taking on Apple Silicon since the start of 2021, in a variety of ways.
This includes a marketing campaign where Intel tried to make the phrase "You're not on a Mac" catch on, the offering of selective benchmarks against Apple Silicon, and producing an Apple Silicon comparison website.
Meanwhile, Intel has used the MacBook Pro to promote its own chips, as it did in April.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has also directed his ire towards Apple. Gelsinger told Intel employees in January that "we have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino makes."
Follow all the details of WWDC 2021 with the comprehensive AppleInsider coverage of the whole week-long event from June 7 through June 11, including details of all the new launches and updates.
Stay on top of all Apple news right from your HomePod. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider," and you'll get latest AppleInsider Podcast. Or ask your HomePod mini for "AppleInsider Daily" instead and you'll hear a fast update direct from our news team. And, if you're interested in Apple-centric home automation, say "Hey, Siri, play HomeKit Insider," and you'll be listening to our newest specialized podcast in moments.
Intel's presentation offered some bold claims against Apple
Apple is on a two-year transition away from Intel in favor of using its own Apple Silicon chips in Macs, and its initial M1 releases easily demonstrates Apple is doing things right. However, Intel is still quite unhappy about the break-up, as a presentation to members of the media revealed.
The presentation about Intel's 11th-generation H-series notebook processors, which also took shots against AMD and ARM, saved most of its negativity for Apple, according to PC Gamer. Chiefly, it used gaming as its main weapon against Apple, proclaiming Intel notebooks offer a "better gaming experience than 100% of Mac Laptops."
Intel then went on to offer data on the matter, including claims over half of "today's most popular games" are not supported on macOS itself. This attack is a little misguided for Intel, as Intel-based Macs running macOS still exist, and they cannot run games like Grand Theft Auto V or Cyberpunk 2077 natively either.
Emulation was also mentioned but shown to be ineffective with a demonstration of Valheim poorly running on Parallels on a Mac.
A later slide then proudly declared that Intel's 11th-generation Core i5 H-series offers "better gaming performance" than the "most powerful MacBook Pro." A chart is then provided showing a variety of games running better on an "Intel Branded System" than on a 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Intel compared an Intel-based MacBook Pro using year-old hardware against its own creation.
Oddly for such a graph, Intel directly compares year-old MacBook Pro with a Core i9-9980HK and the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M against its brand new system, which uses the Core i5 11400H and the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060. Naturally, all of the Intel system results are faster than the MacBook Pro's, due to using a brand new processor and a much more powerful graphics card.
Intel also linked gaming to content creation, with statistics pointing to 50% of Windows notebook buyers also creating content, and 43% of content creators doing the same for playing games. Approximately 49% of creators buying a Windows notebook worth $800 or more also play games, with the percentage of "advanced gamers" who purchased a high-value Windows notebook moving to 61% in creating content.
Intel's Gamer-Creator overlap slide tries to directly link the two types of computer usage.
The published presentation slides oddly don't mention Apple Silicon at all, and keep any comparisons between Intel-based systems. In early AppleInsider tests in November, the M1 was shown to stand up very well against its Intel-based Mac counterparts, both in processor-based and GPU-based tests.
This hasn't stopped Intel from taking on Apple Silicon since the start of 2021, in a variety of ways.
This includes a marketing campaign where Intel tried to make the phrase "You're not on a Mac" catch on, the offering of selective benchmarks against Apple Silicon, and producing an Apple Silicon comparison website.
Meanwhile, Intel has used the MacBook Pro to promote its own chips, as it did in April.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has also directed his ire towards Apple. Gelsinger told Intel employees in January that "we have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino makes."
Follow all the details of WWDC 2021 with the comprehensive AppleInsider coverage of the whole week-long event from June 7 through June 11, including details of all the new launches and updates.
Stay on top of all Apple news right from your HomePod. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider," and you'll get latest AppleInsider Podcast. Or ask your HomePod mini for "AppleInsider Daily" instead and you'll hear a fast update direct from our news team. And, if you're interested in Apple-centric home automation, say "Hey, Siri, play HomeKit Insider," and you'll be listening to our newest specialized podcast in moments.
Comments
macs suck at games. And that is because of decisions made by Apple.
that said, I love the smell of intel panic in the morning.
Also, 100% of Intel notebooks can’t do macOS😂
Between all the compatibility options, there's a good list of working games:
https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_Parallels_Windows_compatible_games_list
https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_CrossOver_Windows_compatible_games_list
https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_native_compatible_games_list
https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_Rosetta_2_compatible_games_list
People also don't have to choose Mac or PC. Decent gaming PCs are cheap now. 1660ti for $900, runs most games at 1080p Ultra 60FPS:
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-1920x1080-Core-i5-10300H-GeForce/dp/B08CVTP6T6
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1660-Ti-Max-Q-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.418762.0.html
A PC like that can sit in the corner somewhere and stream via remote play to either a TV or Mac and that way it runs on a better quality display and the fan noise is less noticeable. That's a lot easier to setup than messing with software compatibility programs.
Obviously for people who only want a single computer for everything and need decent gaming, a PC will be the better option and that's been true for many years. Bootcamp improved things and for the last 8 years or so offered the possibility for decent gaming but it still needed rebooting all the time.
The Mac gaming audience is just much smaller, at least 1/10th-1/20th the size of the Windows platform. Making 10% extra revenue for years of support isn't worthwhile. The OpenGL/Metal/Vulkan issue doesn't help matters but loads of developers support iOS so the main issue is the audience.
Intel's comparison is just bizarre, they are effectively promoting Nvidia who is one of their biggest competitors. Nvidia is trying to buy ARM and even without a buyout, there's nothing stopping them from making their own ARM PCs:
https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-arm-gaming-laptops/
Then they'll be cheaper than Intel PCs and will easily take significant marketshare away from Intel. Game devs will start supporting ARM better, which helps Apple.
Intel is flailing in panic just now because everybody can see that nobody needs them any more.
Never been a problem for me. I just boot into windows natively and play all the PC games.
They chose to build only compact machines, and to not support game developers / development (and to refuse to work with NVidia, who’s got the current preferred gaming GPU).
I’ve been waiting for years for Apple to put out a desktop-class power-user machine so I could run Mac OS for everything-but-games, and have a Windows installation just for games. I have zero shame in acknowledging that I like games, and they’re the only reason for me to EVER use Windows (and I don’t like consoles).
Every machine Apple has put out since 2013 is ill-suited for high-end gaming. I COULD run Windows on recent intel Macs, and play many somewhat-recent games on them, but I don’t trust the thermals (throttling & failure). I’ve had a MacBook Pro die from thermal stress caused by gaming & 3D rendering, and I won’t risk another on either task.
It’s no loss to me in giving up 3D rendering. Every single 3D modeling & rendering product is buggy, badly designed trash (and much is also now using the abusive subscription model). It’s crap you only put up with if it pays as a job... or you’re a highly tolerant geek (I’m not). But I STILL want to play games!
iMacs are hardly an improvement over MacBooks for raw power & thermal flexibility, and Apple keeps proving they’re dead set on continuing in that direction.
I never wanted to screw around with the hacky nonsense of eGPUs & Hackintoshes. Apple doesn’t even offer us a stand-alone display guaranteed to work on a Mac (see exception below), let alone provide consistent support for eGPUs themselves.
The Mac Pro isn’t even worth discussing. I can’t afford it. Given one as a gift would be awesome, and I’d certainly use it... and it’s also a total fantasy. The pro display alone is out of reach of average people’s incomes.
M1 transition comes along, and my fantasy of “one computer for everything” has been killed. The end; I have to get another PC.
So when I finally broke down and shopped for a gaming PC, I discovered that the latest GPUs are basically impossible to buy unless you want to (and can afford to) feed scalpers.
Yay computer industry; I effing hate ALL of you. Worst industry ever.
Except for the healthcare industry; that’s even more insane.