After Apple launched their M1 chipset, everyone knew that the company will now be looking to outperform any other OS based on the Intel chipset and would certainly make a considerable jump in the future. With the help of the new M1 chipset, Mac machines are now able to beat almost all the other Macs with the Intel processors. However, what about its comparison with the Windows operating system. In a recent comparison review, PCWorld compared Microsoft’s Surface, Pro X, with Apple’s new M1 MacBook Air, and the result does seem to be expected but also surprising. We all know that Windows runs on ARM-based machines but is not as commonly available to the users.
Microsoft’s Surface, Pro X is one such device that is powered by an ARM chip that was created by both Qualcomm and Microsoft. Now the major problem arose in the operating system where Windows only allowed running 32-bit X86 software and was not able to emulate the 64-bit apps. Apple got rid of the 32-bit apps in 2019 with macOS Catalina and introduced Rosetta 2 technology for M1 Macs. Now every software created for Intel Macs into an ARM binary runs better on Apple Silicon-based computers. Microsoft did release a beta version of Windows with emulation for 64-bit X86, but the performance is far behind those of Mac powered by M1 chipset.
Another video processing test showed that a Mac with an M1 chip took 23 minutes to process a 12-minute 4K video to a 1080p H.265 format and the Windows tool took 2 hours, which clearly shows the difference in the performance. Therefore, even with the number of improvements Windows have been getting this year, it is still far behind from M1 chip powered Mac and also the scores of M1 powered Mac on Geekbench is way ahead of that of Windows, even when emulating Windows on Mac.