Disappointed in Apple Silicon: Apple Marketing vs. Reality / Intel

[booksbooks]

Sorry to hear about your lackluster experience. My M1 machine builds software and runs data analysis workloads 2-3x faster than my i9 laptop and I easily get 10 hours on a single charge. So no, it’s not just hype. The CPU in particular is extremely fast and draws very little power.

Under load it will obviously get as hot as Intel, they have comparable system TDP. Anything else would be throwing performance away. But it takes much more to make the Apple Silicon sweat - Intel draws 10x as much power on most trivial tasks like opening files or doing background processing.

Ok I'm glad you're getting the performance you expected.

 

[Mactech20]

I run FCP on my M1 Max and the computer is completely silent. My old 2015 15" MBP couldn't even run it. I also run World of Warcraft on the M1 Max running at 4K ULTRA and I am getting 70FPS+ with it getting a little toasty. I have been nothing but impressed that a laptop can do that.

 

[Shh]

I think this poll demonstrates that your view does not parallel with reality.

 

[Apple_Robert]

OP,
Look at the Apple Buy page and tech specs for the Macs again. Apple has never claimed that every user will get x amount of battery hours per day nor has Apple ever stated that the M1 and M2 would never get warm, hot, or throttle.

From reading what you said, I think two of the culprits for your disappointment are 1) false expectations due to injecting your own expectations into the Apple literature and then getting mad at Apple for not living up to what you injected into the literature 2) The software you are using is causing your Mac to get hot. Change your expectations to what Apple actually said, and use something better than iMovie and you may have a change of heart.

 

[booksbooks]

OP,
Look at the Apple Buy page and tech specs for the Macs again. Apple has never claimed that every user will get x amount of battery hours per day nor has Apple ever stated that the M1 and M2 would never get warm, hot, or throttle.

From reading what you said, I think one of the main culprits for your 1) false expectations due to injecting your own expectations into the Apple literature and then getting mad at Apple for not living up to what you injected into the literature 2) The software you are using is causing your Mac to get hot. Change your expectations to what Apple actually said, and use something better than iMovie and you may have a change of heart.

Apple's marketing specifically spells out how much more efficient these processors are vs previous Intel ones. That was my expectation and that is not my reality. No I will not change my expectations. I may, however, change computers.

 

[Shh]

Apple's marketing specifically spells out how much more efficient these processors are vs previous Intel ones. That was my expectation and that is not my reality. No I will not change my expectations. I may, however, change computers.

What do you want out of the computer?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Apple's marketing specifically spells out how much more efficient these processors are vs previous Intel ones. That was my expectation and that is not my reality. No I will not change my expectations. I may, however, change computers.

The M series is faster and more efficient than Intel. That is a fact. It is also cooler than Intel. That too is fact. You have a right to your opinion but, you are 100% wrong.

 

[RokinAmerica]

Thanks for your post OP. I am on border thinking about getting a Mac but not sure what, if anything, will work for what my work load is.

It can be like any other echo chamber on forums. Humans have this weird quality in that they really like to hear what they agree with and really do not like to hear what they disagree with.

 

[MacRail]

@booksbooks - I think this is a challenging place to have such a discussion. We all know that msg boards just seem to spiral downwards sometimes. I suspect if we were all sitting around a table, we'd have a far more nuanced and meaningful interaction. A lot of people post here, and hang out here, because they are passionate Mac users, customers, and fans even. Your experience, since its been a negative one, starts to automatically put people in defense mode. And thus strong, and often overly strong reactions (ie. the "you are 100% wrong" reaction above). In light of your issue - it probably requires a lot of finesse to write this up in a way that maximizes the likelihood that you get the kind of key feedback you're looking for (without the noise). Again - I'm sorry you've had a negative experience. I never wish for any user of Apple products to end up there.

 

[MauiPa]

so much to take apart here. Yes chips run at an operating temperature, no biggie there, just a terrible lack of understanding. Apple silicon produces far less heat for the same tasks than almost all intel chips, they may not run cooler, but there is way less heat to remove. All ne has to do to verify this is to look at the numerous benchmarks where they see how much wattage is used, more wattage = more heat. Depending what you are doing, the battery will be drained at a rate determined by the usage. My M! MBP literally can last all weekend for web browsing, email and other stuff. Not so on my Intel MBP. You literally will not notice speed difference for using the web and another non-constrained tasks. But literally all the benchmarks show a vast performance improvement for CPU and graphics intensive tasks, but the SSDs are pretty much the same, so some things you will not notice.

It would be nice instead of a rant, you would perform some actual benchmarks about what you are not noting any speed improvements on. also, the i9 is a pretty high end chip from intel, so like I said, not all taks will show an improvement

 

[Realityck]

just yesterday I was editing video running the latest iMovie on the 16" MBP M1 Pro and the battery dumped by like 20% in just 30 minutes of usage and it got very hot. This is brutal performance. Also, in day-to-day operation I am not getting really any better battery life than my Intel MBP.

If you are doing extended processing tasks why have it on battery? The energy savings are for lighter usage not heavy usage.

In a prior post where someone was wondering if the mini-LED displays consumed a lot more battery when in HDR mode.
==============
The HDR display activity will diffidently drain the battery faster. 14" has a 69.9 Wh battery, 16" has a 99.6 Wh battery.

Per notebookcheck.net
Apple M1 Pro 8/14 entry level

• Playback of an HDR video at max. brightness in full-screen mode only runs for about 4 hours.
• 15 hours video playback (SDR at 150 nits)
• Our Wi-Fi test (Safari, windowed, 150 nits) runs for 13.5 hours, but it is only 6.5 hours with the maximum brightness of 500 nits.

16" M1 Pro and Max (separate reviews)

• HDR video at the maximum brightness ran for about 4.5 hours on our test unit of the MBP 16 with the M1 Max SoC, Pro results missing.
• 17 hours video playback (SDR at 150 nits) M1 Max, Pro run 17.5 hours.
• Our Wi-Fi test at an adjusted brightness of 150 nits runs for almost 15 hours and is still around 7 hours at the maximum SDR brightness M1 Max, Pro ran 17 hours, and 8 hours at the maximum SDR brightness.

================
The point of showing you the above if that anything that consumes a lot of power is not what the typical laptop user is going to be doing on battery for very long. It would be the same with your intel i9 laptop. For lighter usage the M1 processors do give many hours of usage.

 

[booksbooks]

What do you want out of the computer?

Significantly better performance than the latest gen i9 I came from.

 

[booksbooks]

The M series is faster and more efficient than Intel. That is a fact. It is also cooler than Intel. That too is fact. You have a right to your opinion but, you are 100% wrong.

You are 100% wrong, and I am 100% right because my REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE DOES NOT EQUAL WHAT'S ON PAPER.

 

[satcomer]

Stop. It is not a troll thread. Anybody can vote and express their opinion here. My experience is what it is as stated.

You the one that got an M2 Mac book air and wanted the crunch video on like it's Mac book Pro should do, the
air is for web surfing, music listing and email! I'm retired and don't want to work like that anymore! The Mac Book Air was not made to video crush on it! You created your own hangups because if one wants to crunch video should be on a Mac Book Pro!

 

[booksbooks]

Thanks for your post OP. I am on border thinking about getting a Mac but not sure what, if anything, will work for what my work load is.

It can be like any other echo chamber on forums. Humans have this weird quality in that they really like to hear what they agree with and really do not like to hear what they disagree with.

LOL, totally! I know Macrumors is full of certain types and the herd mentality kicks in and everyone jumps. The reason I posted this thread because I really wondered what the response would be. I posted a poll to see not knowing what to expect. So far many are voting in favour of Apple Silicon and a few of us in the minority are not getting the expected performance. My Intel MacBook Pro latest gen was pretty maxed out and while the fans did kick in a lot and it heated up, it did perform quite well and the battery life was decent. Based on Apple's marketing I expected a leap in performance and efficiency and no matter what I do, no matter how much I analyze Activity Monitor, etc. I am just not getting it.

 

[booksbooks]

@booksbooks - I think this is a challenging place to have such a discussion. We all know that msg boards just seem to spiral downwards sometimes. I suspect if we were all sitting around a table, we'd have a far more nuanced and meaningful interaction. A lot of people post here, and hang out here, because they are passionate Mac users, customers, and fans even. Your experience, since its been a negative one, starts to automatically put people in defense mode. And thus strong, and often overly strong reactions (ie. the "you are 100% wrong" reaction above). In light of your issue - it probably requires a lot of finesse to write this up in a way that maximizes the likelihood that you get the kind of key feedback you're looking for (without the noise). Again - I'm sorry you've had a negative experience. I never wish for any user of Apple products to end up there.

Thanks man. Agreed.

 

[Shh]

Significantly better performance than the latest gen i9 I came from.

Then get a 12th gen Intel laptop with an RTX 3080 or 3080 Ti. There are some big sacrifices though, such as dropping 40-50% in performance when unplugged and a battery life that will be much worse than the Mac. I'd recommend the ASUS ROG Zephyrus.

 

[booksbooks]

so much to take apart here. Yes chips run at an operating temperature, no biggie there, just a terrible lack of understanding. Apple silicon produces far less heat for the same tasks than almost all intel chips, they may not run cooler, but there is way less heat to remove. All ne has to do to verify this is to look at the numerous benchmarks where they see how much wattage is used, more wattage = more heat. Depending what you are doing, the battery will be drained at a rate determined by the usage. My M! MBP literally can last all weekend for web browsing, email and other stuff. Not so on my Intel MBP. You literally will not notice speed difference for using the web and another non-constrained tasks. But literally all the benchmarks show a vast performance improvement for CPU and graphics intensive tasks, but the SSDs are pretty much the same, so some things you will not notice.

It would be nice instead of a rant, you would perform some actual benchmarks about what you are not noting any speed improvements on. also, the i9 is a pretty high end chip from intel, so like I said, not all taks will show an improvement

Dude, first of all, this patronizing post is just so tired. My post is not a rant, that is your bias label you are putting on this because the information does not coincide and is not compatible with your bias toward Apple. I do understand the elements of hardware, I understand wattage output and power draw, etc. This is a very complicated topic and we could get into a lot of details about it.

The whole point is that what is being marketed... what is being stated... does not equal the real world performance that I and others like me are experiencing. You fail to consider things like non-optimized software for Apple silicon etc. I consider all of it and all I am saying is, after months of owning a 16" MBP M1 Pro and still getting absolute garbage performance in different situations (e.g., applications like iMovie) I literally am close to giving up on it. So I came online and I've been curious to query other people's experience. And just because my experience may not equal yours or someone else's does not invalidate one another's empirical experience.

 

[Realityck]

Then get a 12th gen Intel laptop with an RTX 3080 or 3080 Ti. There are some big sacrifices though, such as dropping 40-50% in performance when unplugged and a battery life that will be much worse than the Mac. I'd recommend the ASUS ROG Zephyrus.

Great example. Let's not forget the 280W AC Adapter included. 16" M1 Max MBP is a 140 watts adapter.

 

[jons]

This is the reason someone above called you out. It's counter to everything the rest of us experience. So the conclusions are you're either lying or have a very uncommon edge case. The problem is that it's impossible for anyone here to tell since you don't really tell us details. For example what are the specs on each machine? What to you mean by "day-to-day operation"? What kind of video are you editing to see that battery loss? etc etc.

Sadly, the history of this and other forums makes many of us cynical when someone posts a negative thread that runs counter to so many other experiences. I

I am someone who edits video everyday all day on an M1 Max 16”. I edit HEVC encoded video all the way to Raw footage and I can say from experience the battery life and heat generated is better than it was on the i9. Some days I do initial cuts on battery power from my bed, it’s that good. No idea what the OP is on about except maybe they’re editing extremely unoptimized footage or their machine is broken. Honestly no idea how to make sense of it.

 

[booksbooks]

If you are doing extended processing tasks why have it on battery? The energy savings are for lighter usage not heavy usage.

In a prior post where someone was wondering if the mini-LED displays consumed a lot more battery when in HDR mode.
==============
The HDR display activity will diffidently drain the battery faster. 14" has a 69.9 Wh battery, 16" has a 99.6 Wh battery.

Per notebookcheck.net
Apple M1 Pro 8/14 entry level

• Playback of an HDR video at max. brightness in full-screen mode only runs for about 4 hours.
• 15 hours video playback (SDR at 150 nits)
• Our Wi-Fi test (Safari, windowed, 150 nits) runs for 13.5 hours, but it is only 6.5 hours with the maximum brightness of 500 nits.

16" M1 Pro and Max (separate reviews)

• HDR video at the maximum brightness ran for about 4.5 hours on our test unit of the MBP 16 with the M1 Max SoC, Pro results missing.
• 17 hours video playback (SDR at 150 nits) M1 Max, Pro run 17.5 hours.
• Our Wi-Fi test at an adjusted brightness of 150 nits runs for almost 15 hours and is still around 7 hours at the maximum SDR brightness M1 Max, Pro ran 17 hours, and 8 hours at the maximum SDR brightness.

================
The point of showing you the above if that anything that consumes a lot of power is not what the typical laptop user is going to be doing on battery for very long. It would be the same with your intel i9 laptop. For lighter usage the M1 processors do give many hours of usage.

Thanks for posting this, and I know that HDR ramps up the brightness. In fact, I just want to shut that down I could care less about watching HDR videos and when editing stuff like that I will plug in. I would also push back against "anything that consumes a lot of power is not the typical laptop use..." That is an excuse. I do not agree that using iMovie for 30 minutes and losing 20% battery makes any sense. It doesn't.

 

[Realityck]

Thanks for posting this, and I know that HDR ramps up the brightness. In fact, I just want to shut that down I could care less about watching HDR videos and when editing stuff like that I will plug in. I would also push back against "anything that consumes a lot of power is not the typical laptop use..." That is an excuse. I do not agree that using iMovie for 30 minutes and losing 20% battery makes any sense. It doesn't.

Maxtech in a few examples had a watt meter when conducting power efficiency tests when running various applications if one wanted to research this a bit. I am unfamiliar what a processing load iMovie represents, but I can assume it takes advantage of all cores to some degree and consumes the 14" 69.9 Wh battery fairly fast.

 

[theotherphil]

I have no Idea why your Mac is misbehaving but its certenaly not the experience other users are having. I don't think you're being fair by calling Apple a liar or implying a marketing stunt just because of this. How come everybody is lying and you owns the truth?. There's not a single possible scenario where a Intel laptop can beat the AS in battery life under the same task with the same performance, in fact not a single laptop reach anywhere close the M1 performance while unplugged.

You can be 100% sure there's something wrong with your macOS installation or some sort of hardware defect. Use the Activity Monitor to check for any misbehaving process or some app leaking memory. Contact Apple Support for assistance.

Somebody was on posting on here a few days ago wondering about slow performance. They hadn’t restarted in like a year and had something ridiculous like 40Gb swap file.

In posting the above screenshot without the full battery report or activity report, the OP is being disingenuous and ensuring that nobody can help them. Heaven forbid it’s user error when that doesn’t fit their narrative.

 

[Realityck]

I am someone who edits video everyday all day on an M1 Max 16”. I edit HEVC encoded video all the way to Raw footage and I can say from experience the battery life and heat generated is better than it was on the i9. Some days I do initial cuts on battery power from my bed, it’s that good. No idea what the OP is on about except maybe they’re editing extremely unoptimized footage or their machine is broken. Honestly no idea how to make sense of it.

For comparison our 16" M1 Max MBP battery is a bit larger then the OP's 14" M1 Pro MBP.

14" has a 69.9 Wh battery, 16" has a 99.6 Wh battery

 

[tranceking26]

Blimey, 95% satisfaction. Add me to that list!