News Analysis India

Tag: MacBook

  • Apple’s M1 MacBook Air smashes Windows on ARM in new benchmarks

    A benchmark test published on Tuesday shows a massive performance gap between Mac computers powered by Apple’s M1 chip and Windows on ARM machines running the latest 64-bit x86 apps via an official emulator.

    Conducted by PCWorld, the evaluation pits a Microsoft Surface Pro X against the new M1 MacBook Air, two devices that incorporate ARM processors.

    As noted by the publication, there are precious few ARM-based Windows boxes from which to choose as only two chips — Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx and Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 — power the platform. Microsoft’s derivative SQ1 and SQ2 processors, designed in partnership with Qualcomm, are in the Surface Pro X.

    PCWorld’s Windows testbed relied on a first-generation SQ1, though any gains derived from the more recent SQ2 are thought to be insignificant.

    The MacBook Air crushed the Surface Pro X in both single- and multi-score Geekbench 5 testing. Apple’s new laptop scored 1730 points in the single-core process, beating Surface’s score by just over 1000 points. Multi-core testing revealed an even larger disparity, with MacBook Air clocking 7454 points to Surface’s 2734 points.

  • Apple is now building the chip it needs to ditch Qualcomm like it ditched Intel

    This fall, Apple changed how we thought about laptops overnight. It replaced the Intel processors in its MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini with its own homegrown ARM chips instead — and though we were initially skeptical about Apple’s silicon transition, the final product blew us away.

    Now, Bloomberg reports that Apple’s chip chief has internally revealed that a second chip transition is also already in the early stages: a cellular modem that could mean far less need (if any) for Qualcomm chips in Apple’s products.

    “This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition,” Apple hardware SVP Johny Srouji reportedly said, according to Bloomberg.I

    If you’ve been following Apple’s struggles with Intel and Qualcomm, this won’t come as much of a surprise: Apple bought Intel’s smartphone modem business last July, which strongly suggested it was only a matter of time before Apple used that purchase to develop its own radio chips.

  • Chrome’s latest update adds tab throttling for a major performance boost

    A few months ago, we wrote about an update to Google Chrome‘s beta channel that added tab throttling in order to minimize the performance impact from dormant tabs. That feature is now rolling out widely, and it could be one of the biggest performance improvements to Chrome in a long time.

    Specifically, the company found that JavaScript Timers took up over 40% of resources in background tabs, and that reducing their impact made a big improvement to efficiency.

    With Chrome M87, JavaScript Timer wake-ups in the background will update just once a minute,  reducing CPU usage by up to 5 times, and extending battery life by 1.25 hours, according to Google (tests were conducted on a 2020 MacBook Air with Intel’s Core i3). The company says it’s managed to do so “without sacrificing the background features that users care about, like playing music and getting notifications.”

    The company is also bringing Occlusion Tracking to Windows, a feature previously available on Chrome OS and Mac that lets Chrome know which tabs and windows are actually visible to you. This allows Chrome to minimize resource usage on those that aren’t, in all making the browser “up to 25% faster to start up and 7% faster to load pages, all while using less memory.”

    Google is bringing a smaller update to mobile to help with those times when your chubby fingers make you press the wrong link. The company says that on mobile devices, one in five instances of navigation is people going back or forward, often because they clicked the wrong link. Chrome 87 will make 20% of these actions instant “with plans to increase this to 50%” in the future.

  • Apple launches new MacBook Air with M1 chip, learn price

    Apple has launched a new MacBook Air with M1 chip in its ‘One More Thing’ event. Apple has claimed that it works 9 times faster than the previous model. The special thing is that to buy this MacBook Air that comes with new hardware, you have to pay almost the same price as the old model. The company has priced it at $ 999, while for education purpose it can be purchased for $ 899. In India, it will be available from November 17 and its price will be Rs 92,900.

    Apart from being powerful, there is no fan in the new MacBook Air. The advantage of this is that you will not get any sound while using it. Apple has described its M1 Silicon chip as a very good chip that will give the user a better battery backup while using the MacBook Air.

    Refined Retina Display – The company has given a refined retina display in it, which turns on immediately after opening the lid of MacBook Air.

    Apart from these, the design of the new MacBook Air has been kept as before. It is very slick to see and in this you get macOS Big Sur operating system. For the sake of information, let us know that all those apps will work in MacBook Air, which do in the model with Intel chip.

  • New MacBook Air, MacBook Pro Models Based on Apple Silicon Reported to Debut

    Apple is planning to launch its new 13-inch MacBook Air as well as 13- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models at the November 10 event, according to a report. The new MacBook models are likely to have the anticipated Apple silicon, which is said to be based on the company’s A14 Bionic SoC that is already powering the iPhone 12 series as well as the latest iPad Air models. The Cupertino company sent the media invite for the event on Monday, without detailing any specifics.

    The invite mentioned “One more thing” that is expected to be the new Mac machines with the Apple silicon, Bloomberg reports. These new machines are said to include the new 13-inch MacBook Air alongside the 13- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models that all three are speculated to come with the new SoC.

    Apple is reportedly ramping up the production of the new MacBook models — with Foxconn manufacturing the new 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models and Quanta Computer building the new 16-inch MacBook Pro.

    The new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in 13-inch size are said to be further ahead in production and are likely to receive their announcement at the November 10 event. However, Apple may take some time in bringing the 16-inch MacBook Pro to the market.