MacBook Pro Vs Surface Pro; Apple Dominates Microsoft

Updated Nov 30 with Cyber Monday Friday deals; Article originally posted Nov 29.

The next few years in personal computing are going to be redefined by ARM processors. Microsoft’s Windows 10 on ARM will be taking on Apple’s macOS with Apple Silicon. With the launch of the new Macs by Tim Cook and his team, we have the first ‘real world’ comparisons.

Apple is dominating Microsoft.

Nov 30 update: Both Apple’s MacBook Pro and Microsoft’s Surface Pro X have their advantages. If you’re looking to purchase either of the machines, there are some last minute Cyber Monday deals that you should consider:

• Apple MacBook Pro (M1 chip, 8GB RAM 256GB SSD) – B&H – $100 discount to $1199. Link.
• Microsoft Surface Pro X (SQ1 chip, 8GB RAM 256GB Storage) – Walmart – up to $337 discount to $1232. Link.

Comparing synthetic bookmarks is rarely a level playing field – the numbers can be impressive but not are necessarily a direct representation of the user experience. That said, when the benchmarks for Apple’s M1 chip were discovered ahead of the launch, it wasn’t a case of being a little bit ahead of the Intel powered competition, it was a lot ahead of the competition.

The question on how well the M1 works in practice has been answered, and there’s been a stunning comparison of the power of Apple’s ARM hardware… thanks to Windows 10.

Apple has removed Boot Camp from macOS 11, which many used to boot their Mac hardware into Windows 10. The promise was that virtualisation could be used to emulate any machine as required. Which is what developer Alexander Grad has achieved, but with a twist. The version of Windows running on the new M1 Macs is Microsoft’s ARM version Windows 10. Hartley Charlton reports:

“Using the open-source QEMU virtualizer, Graf was able to virtualize the Arm version of Windows on Apple’s ‌M1‌ chip, with no emulation. Since the ‌M1‌ chip is a custom Arm SoC, it is no longer possible to install the x86 version of Windows or x86 Windows apps using Boot Camp, as was the case with previous Intel-based Macs. However, he said in a Tweet that when virtualized on an ‌M1‌ Mac, “Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications really well. It’s not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close.”

In terms of Windows 10 on ARM, Microsoft currently sells the Surface Pro X with a customised ARM chip from Qualcomm based on the latter 8xc platform. It’s possible now, through the virtual Windows 10 on ARM running on the ARM based Apple Silicon, The benchmarked result on similar hardware shows that the M1 Mac runs Windows 10 on ARM faster than the Qualcomm/Microsoft powered Surface Pro X. Mayank Parmar reports:

“The Geekbench results show that Apple’s M1 chip has a single-core score of over 1390 and a multi-core score of over 4,769 when tested with Windows 10 ARM in virtualization. On the other hand, Surface Pro X is only able to fetch 802 single-core score and 3104 multi-core score.

“Surface Pro X is the only truly powerful Windows ARM PC on the market and Microsoft has used a custom version of Snapdragon processor called the SQ1 for its Surface Pro X. The results don’t look good for Microsoft and Qualcomm, given that the Windows 10 is running via virtualization on Apple hardware.”

 If you needed an example of the leap that Apple has made by designing its own silicon specifically around macOS and a single hardware platform, here it is. And on the flip side of the coin, this is an example of how far the Windows 10 platform in general, and Qualcomm’s ARM chips specifically, have to go to match the M1 chip.

Back in the real world, the twist is emulation. Both macOS and Windows 10 need to bring developers on board to release ARM native applications. Until that point both platforms are relying on emulation to run older applications. Windows 10 on ARM only supports 32-bit applications, with 64-bit support (covering the majority of applications) expected in beta shortly and generally in ‘early 2021’. As with any emulation, performance is lower than running native applications, and will have a hit on battery life.

Apple’s Rosetta 2 has the advantage of a lot more processing power on tap from the M1. Apple’s glowing presentation aside, it’s not a slam dunk in terms of compatibility, with some apps reporting issues and others with poor performance and a huge impact on battery life. Forbes’ Patrick Moorhead:

“For me, Edge browser was very, very slow and indicative of complex code. Outlook was better but I experienced some lags. OneNote was extremely laggy. I couldn’t see any issues at all with Word or PowerPoint. I experienced lags in Chrome, Skype for Business, Webex, Zoom, and Teams.

“Slack was very sluggish and slow. Slack is based on the Electron IDE, where one of its software engineers said here that Rosetta 2 will make app (like Slack) “performance will be significantly degraded.”

We are in the early stages of ARM on the desktop. There’s along way to in terms of hardware and software, there are issues that need to be considered by anyone buying into either platform at this early stage – although Apple’s two year plan to move all of the Mac family to ARM within two years restricts those in the macOs ecosystem.

Next up for both platforms will be the OS updates to improve the emulation support. Apple will look to keep the impression of seamless support, while Microsoft will open up to 64-bit applications and a larger library of legacy apps.

Now read more about Apple’s plans for new Mac hardware in 2021…