Daring Fireball: One More Thing: The M1 Macs

We are now officially on the path to the new Apple Silicon and off of Intel chips. It is interesting how much of this is about computing power per watt.

These are, by all accounts and measures, far faster machines than the Intel-based Macs they’re replacing. But the big win, and clear focus from Apple, isn’t speed but battery life. Apple’s quoted battery life times for the Intel-based MacBook Air from March of this year for “wireless web browsing” and “Apple TV app movie playback” were 11 and 12 hours, respectively. The new M1 MacBook Air pushes those times to 15 and 18 hours. The difference is even more striking with Apple’s specs for the new M1 MacBook Pro, which claim battery life of 17 and 20 hours for web browsing and movie playback. The current Intel-based 13-inch MacBook Pro gets just 10 hours on each of those tests. That’s very close to double the battery life. Double!

Doing more with less power is how Apple did so much in the A-series chips in the iPhone and iPad. Now that is coming to the M-series in the Macs. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these to see how they feel in real use.