It’s fair to say that Apple’s ARM-based machines delivered far more than Microsoft’s… to the point that emulating Windows 10 on ARM inside a new MacBook offered better benchmarks than a native Pro X.Īpple’s closed-nature of the operating system, forcing developers to stay up to date not just with the latest versions of macOS but also Apple’s own strict rules on packaging software meant that the emulation layer to let Intel-based apps run on the ARM hardware had a limited horizon to address, which it managed with broadly similar performances of older apps on the newer hardware. Now, Apple is a different ecosystem with a closed-access operating system dealing with a very limited footprint of device, so it was expected that its focus on performance would mean that it was going to improve on the Pro X with its focus on pure mobility.

When the Pro X launched, it had a twelve-month head start over Apple as Tim Cook’s team ditched Intel and moved to the ARM-based Apple Silicon to the full Mac range.

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