The Conspiracy Against Apple Silicon….

There’s an insidious plot against one of the largest companies in the world, spanning the globe in an effort to protect… some of the other massive corporations. Yeah, it’s stupid.

I was casually scrolling through Reddit of an evening, when I came across this post on r/apple, titled “Apple Silicon is an inconvenient truth”. I must admit it caught my attention, and decided to give the article linked a read. The article, titled the same, is mostly quoted extracts from an article from wormsandviruses.com titled “A Burger Without Heinz”, although the daringfireball.net article adds a paragraph on the end that is the primary reason for me talking about this at all.

The original article is critical of Wirecutter, a large US-based reviews site, as they didn’t include Apple’s M1 based laptops in their “best laptop” or “best ultrabook” listings. The author, Jack Wellborn, notes “Wirecutter’s exclusion of MacBooks from a category that is effectively “best laptop” is the latest bit of evidence in a recent trend I’ve noticed wherein reviewers have inexplicably stopped comparing Wintel laptops to Apple’s MacBooks.” He also took issue with their definition of “ultrabook”, to quote Wirecutter, “[Ultrabooks] have great keyboards, screens, and battery life, they offer enough power to do everything most people need a computer for, and they’re thin, light, and portable. You should expect to pay between $900 and $1,300 for a great Windows ultrabook that will last you three to four years.”, to which Jack adds, “Take out the word “Windows” and what the authors describe is the category of laptop defined by the MacBook Air. In that sense, “ultrabook” really means “off-brand MacBook Air”. Naming the category “best ultrabook” instead of “best laptop” feels like a deliberate cop-out to justify excluding Apple’s MacBooks.”

It’s worth taking a look at the Wirecutter page for “best laptops” before discussing anything further. The page is essentially a list of their picks for various categories, from “The best ultrabook”, to “The best Chromebook”. The top item is the ultrabook section, which is immediately followed by “The best Mac laptop”, where they specifically recommend the MacBook Air (M1, as of writing). Taking issue with Wirecutters choice to distinguish MacOS based laptops from Windows and ChromeOS based machines seems a little bit of a stretch. While yes, you could argue that Apple’s MacBook Air line does match, and pretty unequivocally beat Windows based “ultrabooks”, I don’t think it was a bad choice to make the distinction between Windows based “ultrabooks”, and MacOS based equivalents. Most people aren’t comfortable switching machines, let alone using an operating system that is markedly different from what they are used to, and might not support many of the applications they have paid for and use regularly. Sure, there are likely plenty of alternatives someone could switch to and for many that just use their machine for web browsing and word processing, in theory it’s an easy switch, but in practice the amount of time and energy the average person has to switch machines just can’t accommodate switching OS too.

Also, I have a bit of pedantry to express here. “Ultrabook” is an Intel marketing term. They first introduced it in 2011, as a way for manufacturers to have a unified front in defending against the MacBook Air. It has been superseded by “Intel EVO” as of 2020, but it has stuck around in the industry as a synonym for “Thin and light Windows laptop”, so Wirecutter effectively sticking with that definition isn’t what I’d call egregious. While the point that it’s somewhat disingenuous to exclude the MacBook Air in this category is fair enough, especially thanks to the burden of switching operating systems, I can’t say I’m that bothered especially when the very next item on the page is them recommending the M1 MacBook Air. If you follow that point through, then it would make sense to also include Chromebooks in that ultrabook category as they are perfectly capable of doing everyday tasks just like the Air and “Wintel” ultrabooks, to which point you could easily argue there are a number of ChromeOS machines that are a better value with the same sort of usage experience.

The main thread that runs through both of these articles is confusion and suspicion over reviewers not including Apple’s M1 based MacBooks in other reviews. The daringfireball.net article goes so far as to say “Apple silicon is a profoundly inconvenient truth for many computer enthusiasts who do not like Macs, so they’ve gone into denial, like Fox News cultists with regard to climate change. It’s that simple. There’s no other explanation for omitting MacBooks from comparisons”. I’m sorry what? That accusation would be laughable if it wasn’t so dumb. Reading the gushing “review” of the M2 MacBook Air makes it abundantly clear that the author’s point of view is so Apple-centric that he couldn’t possibly conceive of any other reason to not include MacBooks in other reviews. We get it, you’re an Apple fan boy. That’s fine, but don’t feel the need to lash out at everyone else just because the world doesn’t share your view that the M2 MacBook Air is “the ideal everyperson computer”.

Just to spell it out here, let me explain my experience of trying to review Apple’s M1 and M1 Pro based machines, and lend some insight into the reviews process which might just explain why there isn’t a deep-seated conspiracy to hurt Apple’s $152.836 Billion profit margin, and screw consumers out of “a nearly perfect laptop for nearly everyone”.

The biggest hurdle in trying to test and quantifiably measure the M1’s performance was compatibility. Especially when the M1 first launched, finding a test suite that is cross-compatible between not only Windows and MacOS, but ARM based MacOS was functionally impossible. Anything we could find would only run through Rosetta – which still offered absolutely incredible performance mind you – and the majority of the test suite I would normally run, well it just wouldn’t. As much as I hate to break it to Jack, a single test suite like Geekbench isn’t enough to actively compare machines, as much as the article might make you believe it is. By the time the M1 Pro and Max chips came out, there was better M1 support in a number of apps, but still not enough for Puget System’s PugetBench to run in Photoshop meaning I couldn’t get a result for that. Of course, for anything intensive like gaming, MacOS just isn’t your friend (let alone on ARM), so any comparative benchmarks comparing gaming performance just isn’t possible. It’s also quite a different ecosystem – someone looking for a Mac will want to know how Final Cut performs, not so much Premiere Pro.

To give an insight into the logistics of reviewing tech, at least for someone like me, the vast majority of products you see reviewed here are loaned samples meaning I get them for a few weeks then they are whisked away for me to never see them again. While I can’t speak for larger sites like Wirecutter or Arstechnica – the other site criticised in the articles, I know for me the struggle to include relevant comparative data is thanks to the fact that I don’t have access to any of the machines I’ve tested previously, meaning I can’t run any updated or new tests. Of course for those larger publications you could make the argument they should purchase products like the MacBook to use in future testing, but for anyone that can’t afford to drop multiple thousands on products you won’t even be using beyond occasional testing just isn’t possible.

With that said, the real, primary, reason I think Apple’s machines aren’t included in these comparative tests is that they aren’t competitors. Apple has worked incredibly hard to distinguish itself from its “PC” counterparts, and that’s how they like it. There isn’t a direct competitor to the MacBook Air, because there is no other machine with the same usage experience. Pick up an HP ultrabook, then an Acer ultrabook, and functionally it’s the same thing. The MacBook, primarily thanks to the operating system, just isn’t. So it doesn’t occur to reviewers to include them in comparative tests.

It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of people who are looking for a MacBook wouldn’t also be in the market for a Windows machine, and vice versa. If you need an ultrabook for work, if you use any OS specific apps you are pretty much locked in. If you want a laptop for home use, well most people have switched to a tablet or even just their phone, or again they have their own preferences already. As you can tell by the tone of these articles, people who are willing to buy Apple’s products tend to have rather strong – almost fanatical – preferences, compared to Windows buyers who are almost always indifferent about the brands and products they use. That again means that it doesn’t make much sense to go to the extra effort of testing a MacBook when reviewing a Windows machine.

I also feel it’s important for me to lay out my biases here so you can judge the points I’m making fairly. I’m not a fan of Apple, their anti-consumer practices and walled garden ecosystem is pretty abhorrent to me. I much prefer open source where possible. I also don’t own an Apple product. I’ve used plenty, fixed plenty, but don’t own or use any myself. MacOS is the biggest limiting factor of that for me, as I flat out can’t do a lot of what I use my PC for, and truth-be-told I’m also very familiar with Windows and haven’t felt the need to get to grips with MacOS instead. That’s not to say I harbour any affection towards Windows – not at all. I’m stuck with Windows – like a lot of the world – but if Linux wasn’t such a pain to use and was more compatible with things like the Adobe suite and games (I know that’s getting better especially with the Steam Deck) I’d switch to that in a heartbeat. I’m not the target market for Apple’s machines, but even so I can completely see the value in Apple Silicon. As I said in my reviews, for someone who is in their target market, the M series chips are amazing. Their efficiency and outright raw performance is incredible, and for anyone willing to switch to MacOS the hardware itself is definitely worth a look (even if the company itself might be best to steer clear of). Plus, I have friends that use Apple.

While you might not agree with some of the points I’ve raised here, I think it’s clear to see that the rather supremacist view that “Apple Silicon is an Inconvenient truth” for Apple hating reviewers is plain idiotic. It’s fine to like something, but that doesn’t mean your viewpoint is the only viewpoint possible. No one is hurt by preferring a Windows machine over a MacBook, so you can put your pitchforks down.