Macs inherently faster than PCs?

[senttoschool]

Intel and AMD laptops drop performance by as much as 50% when they're unplugged. That would explain why people complain that Windows laptops are slower.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Does anyone have any additional perspective on why Macs subjectively or objectively are so much "faster"?

For the most part I'd chalk it up to "macOS vs. Windows" rather than the hardware.

I will say that "in general" Mac hardware has been better than PC hardware in that Apple's led the way with things like SSD, integrated RAM, improved displays...

• a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro from 10 years ago came with SSD, period. Lots and lots of Windows laptops did not, though these days it's rare to find a spinning disk not so 10 years ago.
• Macs have had their "Retina" displays since 2013 (MacBook Pro) or 2018 (MacBook Air). Still not uncommon to find low-res displays on Windows today, though some do have higher res not all do.
• Macs now have Apple Silicon, which runs cooler & longer and outperforms Intel/AMD in most typical uses.

All that said, though, I think macOS vs. Windows makes the biggest difference in terms of operational responsiveness and efficiency (i.e. battery life).

 

[Queen6]

Suffered Dell notebooks for years when I worked in major multinationals. The Precision line is decent, however by far overpriced. A while back met up with a friend who is a VP and is still there. After a day's work his only comment towards my Mac was "does that ever run out of battery" Naturally his corporate provided Dell had long ran out of juice...

Only reason companies choose Dell is the pricing and on site repair. At one point I just gave up and used my personal MBP. During a CEO visit local IT manager decided to flex and pointed out the Mac. Told him it meets all requirements for remote work nor is it on the internal network and the company issued Dell is a piece of garbage that you have been refusing to replace for close to a year.

CEO asked the IT manger if he knew how much this business unit generates, not a clue. His response was I expect an email from this gentleman related to his new computer, if not.

Requested a high spec MBP, IT manager refused, looped in the CEO. He said "there are three people in this conversation"; one governs, one generates over $70 million of revenue, one is a negative cost to the company choose wisely. I got the Mac of my choice and put it to task. IT Manager was shortly sent home, while companies want to save on cost they also want to profit and are willing to invest in those that can and do deliver.

I bought the same notebook for personal use and is still with me close to 12 years on. Being one of the ill fated 2011 15" MBP's I just kept it as didnt want to inflict it's problems on another. Ironically it runs at full tilt with zero throttle. Just a couple of days ago it was pushing 98C with the fans at a leisurely 5K with all four cores at max frequency...

Q-6

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Depends on the Mac and the Windows PC being compared to, but macOS is generally more fine-tuned and optimized for the processor and battery.

The 2017 Mac is objectively going to be "weaker" than the newer Dell, when running a benchmark test, but macOS tends to be more stable and less inconsistent in performance than Windows. I think that's primarily because Apple designs macOS to work with the (very limited) sets of CPUs and hardware platforms, whereas Windows is designed to work with basically every platform out there, meaning it can't be as fine-tuned. Even if you have individual hardware companies making special drivers for each platform set (like Intel), they're not going to be as fine-tuned as Apple + Intel would be.

But I can personally attest that my 2015 MacBook Pro performs roughly as well as my 2021 Lenovo work laptop for the same types of tasks (having lots of browser windows open, checking email, and running word processor windows). That itself is pretty sad—and tells you a lot about how well Macs perform.

Now…M1 laptops absolutely blow Intel processors out of the water on battery, heat, and performance. I use an M1 Mac and a top-end Lenovo laptop for work. The Lenovo cost more than the M1 Mac and the spec sheets would make you think the Lenovo laptop is far better.

It's not. The Lenovo gets so hot just running Chrome, Word, and Outlook that it physically hurts to touch the laptop around the area above the keys. I'm not exaggerating. If I kept my fingers there too long I am confident they would actually suffer mild burns—and the fans are basically constantly running. My M1 Mac barely gets warm.

The M1 Mac can have dozens of tabs open, email apps, Word, and other random entertainment apps running with barely any noticeable lag or slowdown. The Lenovo will constantly freeze, even doing simple things like plugging a monitor in, or unplugging from a charger, or switching apps at times. It's genuinely frustrating to use my work laptop and it causes me to not be able to do things as fast because of how slow it frequently acts.

My M1 Mac can get anywhere from 10–15 hours of all that functionality on one charge. My Lenovo sometimes dies overnight just for not being plugged in—and can probably do 4-5 hours on a good day with my screen dimmed a lot.

Now, I think there's a fair point that Macs don't come with lots of plugins and corporate "bloatware," but my 2015 Mac has lots of apps and background software that runs on boot up after years of using it. And if it runs as well as a 2021 Windows computer with a much newer Intel CPU, that should tell you a lot.

If my workplace let me use a Mac, I would genuinely get more work done because I wouldn't encounter so much lag, hangups, and slowdowns because of my Windows computer.

If you have the power to let your employees use M1 Macs if they want to, PLEASE LET THEM. They will genuinely be so much happier—and will almost assuredly complain about their computer far less.

It will never happen at most enterprises. They can't control what's installed on your computer that way.

 

[izzy0242mr]

It will never happen at most enterprises. They can't control what's installed on your computer that way.

True, but also depends on the enterprise. If they allow virtualization, that could be an option. My Mac using a virtual (Windows) machine with the same corporate bloat still performs better than the brand new Windows work laptop running the same software.

And if anyone's going to change corporate's mind, it's going to be IT.

 

[izzy0242mr]

Intel and AMD laptops drop performance by as much as 50% when they're unplugged. That would explain why people complain that Windows laptops are slower.

Is this even when you keep the battery profile to "max performance" or whatever?

 

[eltoslightfoot]

True, but also depends on the enterprise. If they allow virtualization, that could be an option. My Mac using a virtual (Windows) machine with the same corporate bloat still performs better than the brand new Windows work laptop running the same software.

And if anyone's going to change corporate's mind, it's going to be IT.

That's true and not true. For instance, I use BYOD now for my profession (massive employer) through the use of Azure remote desktop. I went to use my M1 MBA and it can't use a smart card properly with a mac and connect to the Azure remote desktop instance. No problem, I went to use Parallels/VMWare solutions and it still won't work with VMs (Azure remote desktop with smart card access).

Thought about my situation. Sold my M1 MBA for decent cash (it was 16GB RAM/512GB SDD version). Took the cash and bought an ASUS Zephyrus G14 16GB RAM and added a 1TB SDD on my own--even has an Nvidia 3060 Graphics Card. I made a little money on the transaction as this was an Open Box discount at BB for $700.

Now I have a faster machine--especially with gaming (with admittedly WAY shorter battery life--like 6 hours) and my smart card works just fine.

So depending on the tools in place for virtualization, it might work or it might not.

 

[senttoschool]

Is this even when you keep the battery profile to "max performance" or whatever?

Yes. I believe the drop is still there. Maybe a smaller drop. But Intel and AMD laptops will always be slower on battery.

 

[Sokratesagogo]

I work in tech support, in a company that deploys exclusively Dell laptops to its employees. We've had conversations with employees that suffer with these Dell laptops, and their comments are boggling to me - Macs can't be THAT much better than these new Dell PCs that we give them? Here's some of their talking points:

• 1 hour battery life for even relatively new Dell Latitude laptops
• Fans whirring up and overheating for basic tasks
• Computers become incredibly slow when adding 30 to 40 tabs on separate Chrome instances. (to the point of the mouse pointer being frozen/jittery, and text input being choppy and difficult)
• Computers get hot and kill battery while "sleeping."

They report that their personal M1 MacBooks are not only faster, but handle multiple Chrome windows and 40+ tabs without an issue. All this with all-day battery life. Another user says that her 2017 MacBook Pro (13", 7th gen i5) is faster than her 1 year old Latitude 7430 with a 12th gen i5.

I get the Apple Silicon hype, but I simply can't believe that Macs are inherently this much better, especially in comparison to the "latest and greatest" from Dell. The 2017 MacBook especially confounds me.

Does anyone have any additional perspective on why Macs subjectively or objectively are so much "faster"?

Apple MacOS and apps only have to work with a very small range of hardware combinations. Windows and Windows apps on the other hand have to deal with a hardware ecosystem an order of magnitude more complex.

 

[senttoschool]

Apple MacOS and apps only have to work with a very small range of hardware combinations. Windows and Windows apps on the other hand have to deal with a hardware ecosystem an order of magnitude more complex.

No, I don't think that's the reason.

Objectively, AMD and Intel mobile SoCs use 3-5x more power for the same performance.

While that's fine if the laptop is plugged in and fans are spinning hard, performance drops by 50% as soon as it's unplugged.

 

[Analog Kid]

Am I reading this correctly: Dell offers that Latitude 7430 with a class 40 SSD at best, which I'm reading means a specified sequential write speed of 350MB/s and random write of 80MB/s?

For all the griping about Macbook SSD speeds, even the "slow" Air configuration is typically measured at 1500MB/s sequential. I'm not quickly finding a random write speed. Everything but the base model is twice that speed.

Someone tell me I've got something wrong in my data here, because that difference alone is mind boggling.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Am I reading this correctly: Dell offers that Latitude 7430 with a class 40 SSD at best, which I'm reading means a specified sequential write speed of 350MB/s and random write of 80MB/s?

For all the griping about Macbook SSD speeds, even the "slow" Air configuration is typically measured at 1500MB/s sequential. I'm not quickly finding a random write speed. Everything but the base model is twice that speed.

Someone tell me I've got something wrong in my data here, because that difference alone is mind boggling.

Where are you finding that? It looks like Dell uses some trickeration marketing speak type stuff here. It doesn't really mean much. I found some stuff saying 1500MB/s and some other stuff saying that was old and it is faster than that.

For instance, check out https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-...ce-laptop-with-a-Tiger-Lake-CPU.527856.0.html and it says 2891MB/s read and 1398MB/s write...

 

[unrigestered]

not sure about the Latitude, but the stock 512GB one inside my 2023 Vostro has 5GB/s which is quite good enough for my needs and actually more than what i expected from one of Dell's "budget lines"

 

[Analog Kid]

Where are you finding that? It looks like Dell uses some trickeration marketing speak type stuff here. It doesn't really mean much. I found some stuff saying 1500MB/s and some other stuff saying that was old and it is faster than that.

For instance, check out https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-...ce-laptop-with-a-Tiger-Lake-CPU.527856.0.html and it says 2891MB/s read and 1398MB/s write...

Ok, that would be more reasonable. I'm looking at the Dell tech specs here:

https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/laptops-and-2-in-1s/technical-support/latitude-7x30-spec-sheet.pdf

up to 512 GB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD, class 35 256 GB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SED, class 35​

up to 1 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD, class 40 512 GB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SED, class 40​

The classes appear described here:

SSD class 35 vs 40 or Class 35 vs class 40 SSD - Which is better? - Infomatives

While comparing the module, speed, readings, and interfaces, Class 40 SSD is better than 35 but 35 is cheaper and offers fast speed too.

www.infomatives.com

What you linked to is an Inspiron 7400, versus a the Latitude 7430 mentioned by OP. I haven't the slightest understanding of what the differences may be, I find Dell's product line baffling...

The Inspiron tech specs say "up to 32Gbps" which is obviously an interface speed, not an access speed but the read speeds you quote would make sense on that bus...

https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/inspiron-14-7400-laptop_users-guide_en-us.pdf

 

[unrigestered]

definitively possible. there are some weird, seemingly random decisions that many PC manufacturers seem to do which can be easily overlooked if you are not careful about every single spec.
there are some beautiful HP devices that look very good at first sight, but when you look closer, they are still putting 5Gb/s USB ports or 1x 3.2GHz DDR4 in some of their upper tier devices.
and of course there's also stuff that you can't see on specs:
my Vostro for instance, has got to be one of the worst keyboards i ever had the displeasure to type on, almost on par with something like the ZX Spectrum (LOW budget computer from the early '80s, for those lucky to be too young to have witnessed)

 

[orionquest]

You don't work in Tech support, otherwise you would know this stuff.

The new Macs are not significantly faster (maybe in some cases they are), they are just more efficient at the same tasks, and use a lot less energy in the process, which is why they have long battery usage.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

You don't work in Tech support, otherwise you would know this stuff.

The new Macs are not significantly faster (maybe in some cases they are), they are just more efficient at the same tasks, and use a lot less energy in the process, which is why they have long battery usage.

And there is the fact that most of the time we users are not stressing the hardware of either a standard windows laptop or mac laptop. But at this point in time I agree with you, the Mac ARM architecture is not especially faster than most x64 processors in the last year or two--especially if they have a dedicated graphics card. In fact, if they do have a graphics card, the windows laptop will likely be faster for many tasks.

However, there is no doubt that when it comes to power consumption, the Mac ARM line reigns supreme--especially since the Macs can do it while unplugged and not sacrifice much battery life to run at mostly full strength. The performance per watt of the macs is insane.

All that said, I have been using my Surface Pro 2017 with 8GB of RAM and it feels plenty fast surfing the web and streaming media. I bet that my Surface Pro 9 (getting here tomorrow hopefully) will also feel plenty fast when doing the basic stuff I do most of the time.

And my M1 Macbook Air felt plenty fast when doing the same kind of stuff. We simply don't stress this stuff with what we do most of the time.

 

[Zest28]

Not true at all. PC with Linux outperform Mac‘s.

 

[senttoschool]

You don't work in Tech support, otherwise you would know this stuff.

The new Macs are not significantly faster (maybe in some cases they are), they are just more efficient at the same tasks, and use a lot less energy in the process, which is why they have long battery usage.

Again, not true. All Windows laptops drop performance by about 50% as soon as it's unplugged while Macbooks retain the exact same level of performance.

That would explain users complaining that Windows laptops are slower.

 

[Aggedor]

On Windows versus Mac speed, one thing that Windows wins at is with MS software. Even something as simple as Office/Word is lightning fast on Windows versus even the highest-end Mac. A few years ago, I had to install Windows on a late 2013 Intel MacBook Pro, and within Bootcamp, Office was incredibly fast compared to the Mac version, on the very same machine.

Not that that's the be-all and end-all of usage examples, but even today it's a very noticeable difference.

 

[Isamilis]

On Windows versus Mac speed, one thing that Windows wins at is with MS software. Even something as simple as Office/Word is lightning fast on Windows versus even the highest-end Mac. A few years ago, I had to install Windows on a late 2013 Intel MacBook Pro, and within Bootcamp, Office was incredibly fast compared to the Mac version, on the very same machine.

Not that that's the be-all and end-all of usage examples, but even today it's a very noticeable difference.

I noticed this too, but it was in Intel Mac era. With AS, opening Office 365 has been same (or faster?) than in Windows.

 

[Juicy Box]

All Windows laptops drop performance by about 50% as soon as it's unplugged while Macbooks retain the exact same level of performance.

That would explain users complaining that Windows laptops are slower.

What about when the well-spec’d Windows are plugged in, and they are still slow?

It is probably a mix of factors, and maybe not just one thing for most, but I think in my case, it is security SW that is just hamstringing the HW.

 

[appltech]

Not sure but as for me the root of the problem is:
firmware behavior with Windows (lack of proper engagement & optimization)
Windows 10/11
By Windows 10 I mean newer releases. It can be problematic to install older LTS Windows 10 builds (such as 105*;106*;107*) on newer machines, but can admit that somehow system hangs more freely (tested only on one machine i7-7700, 32 DDR4; RX 580, NVMe as a main drive)

Switching to those builds + NVMe as a main drive (but not those SATA drive ports on NVMe) + tinkering with the Group Policy to disable unnecessary background activities might be a solution

Never thought that my Mac can become more than a laptop. But it did.
Because of quality or maybe even more

 

[PeymanHafezi]

I have an early 2015 Macbook pro retina (13 inches). Mac OS version is Monterey and I have installed Windows 11 via bootcamp without any problem. Boot time from OS choosing menu for windows 11 is much shorter than Mac OS; 26 sec vs 50 sec!
Recently I installed an SD card and partitioned it into two drives with Mac's disk utility. One with APFS format and the other with EX FAT.
I transferred a 1.8 GB file from Mac's SSD into SD card both in Mac OS and windows. The same result! Transferring happened much faster in windows than Mac OS.
Another example: When my Mac boots on Mac OS and I try to open Chrome, it takes around 30 seconds to open! Chrome icon jumps for more than 10 times and finally opens completely, despite that, when I open Chrome in Windows just after boot up, it opens instantly!
My 9 year old Macbook pro runs much more faster on windows 11!

 

[zevrix]

early 2015 Macbook pro retina (13 inches).

Well. It's some mildly interesting information regarding some ultra-vintage hardware.

Another example: When my Mac boots on Mac OS and I try to open Chrome, it takes around 30 seconds to open!

Huh? I've never seen this kind of behavior on any Mac in the recent like 20+ years. Chrome opens nearly instantaneously (just like other browsers, for that matter). You may have some core issues with your macOS installation (or the hardware itself).