Instant Claim Chowder: Gordon Mah Ung on Apple’s M1 Performance Claims

Gordon Mah Ung, executive editor of PCWorld:

Let me just say it out loud, OK? Apple is full of it. I’m referring to Apple’s claim that its fanless, Arm-based MacBook Air is “faster than 98 percent of PC laptops.” Yes, you read that correctly: Apple officials literally claimed that the new MacBook Air using Apple’s custom M1 chip is faster than 98 percent of all PC laptops sold this year. […]

Does that mean the new fanless MacBook Air is faster than, say, Asus’ stupidly fast Ryzen 4000 based, GeForce RTX 2060-based Zephyrus G14? Does it mean the MacBook Air is faster than Alienware’s updated Area 51M? The answer, I’m going to guess is “no.” Not at all. Is it faster than the miniLED-based MSI Creator 17? Probably not, either.

This is one of the dumbest hot takes I’ve ever read. First, the PC laptops Ung cites are almost certainly squarely in the top percent or two by unit sales. So they’d seemingly fit exactly in the difference between 98 percent and 100 percent.

Second, I wouldn’t bet against these M1 Macs.

Ung’s “Apple is full of it” take reminds me of the BlackBerry executives who thought Apple’s 2007 iPhone announcement was a fraud, that it couldn’t do what Apple said it could do.

★ Monday, 16 November 2020