One of the funnier aspects of the tech industry is the way that some of the world’s most valuable, most powerful companies still take passive aggressive public shots at one another like they’re in junior high school.
The latest example of this is Intel, Apple’s spurned partner when it comes to providing chips for the Mac. It’s clearly still bothered by it.
Intel’s Not Happy
Intel-based Macs were a fixture at Apple from 2006 through 2020. While you can still buy some Intel Mac models, Apple is phasing them out in favor of its own Apple Silicon chips, which it introduced at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
Intel clearly isn’t too happy about it, either, based on a presentation for its 11th-generation i5 H-series notebook processors. As reported by PC Gamer, the presentation for members of the media contained a slide claiming that Intel notebooks provide a “better gaming experience than 100% of Mac laptops.”
Another slide in the same presentation is labelled “The best Mac laptop for gaming can’t keep up.” It compares the 11th-gen i5 H-series notebook processors to “the most powerful MacBook.”
Interestingly, it doesn’t provide benchmarks for the M1 MacBook Pro, but rather the MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9-9980HK processor. It’s not clear why this is the case: whether the Apple Silicon performance was superior to the Intel Core i9-9980HK Mac in some regards, or whether, possibly more likely, Intel doesn’t want to acknowledge that its Macs are outperformed by Apple’s in-house model.
What’s less surprising is that Intel’s graph shows the MacBook resolutely losing out to Intel’s newest processor at every new gaming title selected, when played on 1080p high settings.
The barrage doesn’t stop there, either. Intel lists “today’s most popular games,” including APEX Legends, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Call of Duty Warzone, Cyberpunk 2077, Dead by Daylight, Genshin Impact, Grand Theft Auto V, Grid, Hitman 3, Enlisted, Monster Hunter World, Overwatch, PUBG, Rainbow Six Siege, ROBLOX, Rocket League, Valheim, Valotrant, Warframe, and War Thunder—and notes that “over half” of these “aren’t supported on macOS.”
Burning Bridges with Apple
Alan Dexter of PC Gamer, who reported the news, was part of the call with Intel Chief Performance Strategist Ryan Shrout. Dexter wrote that:
To be fair, gaming on a Mac absolutely is rubbish, and it’s not something I’d want to do. But I’m still surprised that Intel is so angry about it all. I even asked if Intel was burning its bridges with Apple? The answer was that Apple has been very public about moving to its own silicon and that it is now a competitor. All’s fair in love and war I guess.
In the meantime, Apple’s continuing work on its next-gen M2 Mac processor, which is set to debut later this year.
Image Credit: Intel