Why Windows silicon might be the winner with M4-based Mac launch

With the pending rumored release of the Apple M4-based Mac products just days or weeks away, including new MacBook Pros and Mac Minis, I have been asked quite a few times this week what I thought about the leaked performance numbers and how it might alter the PC landscape that has already undergone drastic changes. Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel have all released Copilot+ PC ready processors to the market and Microsoft has ramped up its marketing and emphasis on client AI quite dramatically over the last 6 months.

Unprecedented leaks of the new laptops have given us a window into what Apple has planned, courtesy of some friends online.

The results, which should of course be taken as tentative, and even potentially incorrect until we get our hands on systems, indicate that the Apple M4 in a Mac chassis will be a formidable part. Single threaded performance increases by more than 20% over the Apple M3 in both Cinebench and Geekbench. But the Apple M3 is already leading processors from the Windows market in single thread performance, so this won’t really change the comparisons much, and in some respects the perceivable advantages of ST performance can be minimal.

Multi-threaded results are more interesting. The Apple M4, based on these leaked data points, sees a more than 50% increase in score in Cinebench 2024, and a 26% increase in Geekbench. Compared to the Windows processor ecosystem, both the Snapdragon X Elite and the AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 families offer better multi-threaded performance scores.

That larger gap in Cinebench MT score tells me that Apple is potentially pushing its limits of power draw and thermal design on the new platforms, and we could see hotter systems, louder fans, or sacrifices around battery life on the MacBook Pro as a result, in a direct attempt to try to keep pace with the new generation of Windows devices.

So, what does this mean? It seems we have found a “new normal” for the highly competitive client processor space. Since the release of the Apple M1 back in 2020 Apple has had clear leadership in PC silicon design against both Intel and AMD (and Qualcomm’s earlier silicon). But for the M4-based Macs, the market has shifted, and the picture looks much better for the long-term success, and the pace of innovation, in the Windows market. You should no longer just assume that the Apple processors are the best: we are back in a truly competitive (and exciting) PC market!

The decision between buying a Mac and buying a Windows PC includes consideration of performance and efficiency of course, but your software ecosystem is also a critical piece. This is what makes the Copilot+ PC features, and feature refreshes like Microsoft announced in early October critical to continued momentum in the market. Though we are still waiting for some key capabilities like Recall, Search and Click to Do to make their way to the Copilot+ PCs in market, the vision that Microsoft is painting for AI on your laptop feels very different than what Apple is doing. And Microsoft can combine local compute with its vast Azure AI infrastructure to this Copilot story, an even more powerful potential customer advantage.

Of course, those of you that know my history and background know that I am NOT here to try to tell you that benchmarks don’t matter, or that something like single threaded performance is “good enough” and the market will never need more. Benchmarks are a critical portion of product development and product measurement – both for engineering and for consumers and reviewers. Benchmarks allow us to compare and contrast devices but they aren’t the only way to look at the capabilities of devices. Real-world applications and experiences are critical too, which is why our Signal65 testing always includes a balance of both of these categories of measures of merit.

If the M4-based Macs will be winners in single threaded performance, and leaks indicate that they will be, that’s going to be good for MacOS in terms of usability, snappiness of the experience, and applications that are dominantly single threaded. But with leadership opportunities for the Windows silicon partners in multi-threaded workloads, that could impact heavy workloads like rendering, creation, video editing, and more. And many overlook the impact of MT performance on multi-tasking (or mega-tasking as Intel referred to back in the day!) when you are running lots of applications at one time, or in particular, two or more moderately heavy workloads. This is where the real work of a creator or productivity user gets done!

How will these different systems compare if you are editing and running through your productivity workflow while you are on a multi-client Teams or Zoom call? What if you are doing some lighter content creation tasks in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Davinci Resolve while in the same collaboration scenario? I know that I am always typically engaged in more than one thing at a time, so these are the “real world” scenarios that need to be compared and tested. Maybe we look at loading down a system with a heavy 1T task like Cinebench while looking at creation, productivity, or even AI inference tasks? How will the new MacBooks and Copilot+ PC designs compare?

Maybe more interestingly – what if we do all of that, while running on the battery as opposed to plugged into the wall? That is the most realistic usage scenario for a laptop, so it will be critical to look at both options.

And of course, the MacBook Pro line isn’t known for its value in the laptop space, so how will the competitive landscape look when we integrate some performance per dollar, or capability per dollar comparisons for those impacted by that kind of metric?

The key takeaway here is that, yes, the performance leaks of the Apple MacBook Pro using the M4 look solid, and I have little doubt that Apple will have built an excellent chip and laptop utilizing it. But as the benchmarks continue to tell the story, so will the real-world user experiences. It’s going to be an exciting November!