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Comment by mikhailt | Hacker News Reader

Many folks are comparing it to previous Macs with macOS, not PCs nor other distros.

If you have an Intel Mac next to it, there's a clear noticeable difference assuming macOS is on it.

If you put W10 on the Intel Mac, it is much faster than macOS on it (from my own experience). If we could run W10 or Linux on M1, it will be much faster than Intel Mac.

Another example, Windows 10/11 on ARM in Parallels on my MBA m1 is much faster than Surface Pro X, a MS-tuned/customized device.

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For me, all the gains from a W10 running faster than MacOS are lost because I have to immediately go into control panel to fix everything. Those fast computers are waiting on me to improve the user experience most of the time. I'm personally not really splitting hairs over much longer running processes if I have to walk away anyway.

Fix everything?

I’m comparing Windows PC (i7-6700k, nvme) with MBA m1 and MBA is noticeable faster in just everything. Compilation time of JS and Java code is literally 2 times faster on MBA M1 than on desktop i7 CPU.

That hardware is from 2015, though. A fairer comparison would be to current gen Intel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_processo...

To current intel laptop (without a cooler), maybe, not to desktop with powerful cooler. I’m sure desktop CPU should be much more powerful.

i7-6700k is 6 years old. The current equivalent i7 (i7-11700k) is almost 2x as fast when using all cores.

If the latest gen, top cpu is “almost 2x as fast” it will still lose to the parent’s “literally 2 times faster” M1. While using 4x more power.

Right but GP's main points were:

- noticeable faster in just everything

- literally 2 times faster [compiling code]

Neither of these statements is true when comparing against the latest generation, which is the relevant comparison.

The power thing is true, but irrelevant to GP's point and my objection to it.

I was comparing 2 computers I have (read the comment I replied to). But if you are saying that passively cooled Apple notebook should be compared to last-gen Intel desktop CPU with powerful cooler - Apple enginers would be honored to read it ;)

While the M1 is surely impressive I think you put too much weight on those JS compilation results. Windows is known to be really slow for this specific task since it has poor per-file IO performance - especially when Windows Defender is enabled.

I do my daily work - involving lots of JS compilation - on a i5-4690 running ubuntu server, it's faster than any of my colleagues' much newer MacBook Pros (no M1's yet though). Our Windows laptops are so far behind that it's just awful to watch (3-5 times slower).

Isn't the i7-6700k 3-4 generations older at this point than the m1?

for those who downvote the facts they don't want to know about: https://twitter.com/eugeniyoz/status/1407518570888810497?s=2...

nobody is arguing with your facts, just that your comparison is apples and oranges since the i7 6700k was released 5+ years ago.

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