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Intel-based MacBook Pro is Intel's latest anti-Apple campaign target

Intel's presentation offered some bold claims against Apple

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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.

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. 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. 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."

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49 Comments

blastdoor 3594 comments · 15 Years

The fundamental problem with Mac gaming is software and consistency/commitment from apple. These are issues well within apple’s power to fix and I’m glad intel is pushing apple to fix them. But intel might regret providing that push if apple actually acts on it. 

entropys 4316 comments · 13 Years

Fact check: true.

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.

22july2013 3736 comments · 11 Years

That chart isn't distressing for Apple users, it's actually comforting. Only a 10% difference, despite the fact that Intel's data uses a chip that hardly anyone owns yet.

hackintoisier 86 comments · 5 Years

Intel does have a point that macOS sucks if you are a gamer. The latest blockbuster titles just aren’t available on Mac, and that is a fact.  Of course many people buy macs for reasons other than gaming, but the gaming market is a still a relatively big market. 

Also, Apple could have chosen to use tiger lake and nvidia gpus, but famously opted not to do so, of course,  and intel is just highlighting that. 

Finally, tiger lake launched with 4 cores, so it couldn’t keep up with m1 and mobile  Ryzen 5000 in multithreaded heavy benchmarks, but tiger lake h with up to 8 cores is out, and it smokes m1 in multithreaded tasks and has taken the gaming crown from AMD, according to a recent Linus Tech Tips review of the 11800H. 

[Deleted User] 0 comments · 6 Years

Aren’t Intel history for us Mac users already? I mean, why even bother? Intel, Google, Microsoft, and other names having little to do with Apple keep popping up here all the time. What gives?

Also, 100% of Intel notebooks can’t do macOS😂