Apple’s M1 MacBook Pro has ‘up to twice the battery life’ of the Intel one

Apple today revealed its long-awaited ARM-powered Macs, including a new MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro. All of them use the new M1 chip, which promises massive gains in performance and decreased power consumption — or at least when running apps optimized for the new hardware. In fact, the company claims its new 13-inch MacBook Pro has “the longest battery life ever on a Mac,” and “up to twice the battery life of the previous generation.”

Performance-wise, the gains are similar to those the company is touting with the MacBook Air. One needs to take that ‘up to’ bit seriously. As I wrote in my post about the MacBook Air, these performance numbers likely reflect gains when using apps that have been specifically developed to run on ARM-based chips. Apple was less clear about how the laptops will perform when running software originally written for Intel processors, though it did say the new Macs would outperform the older Intel ones with integrated graphics in at least some graphically-intensive applications. Then again, I’m not so sure how fair that comparison is either, considering Intel’s latest batch of laptop processors include massive gains in integrated graphics.