Well, specifically, they’re promising battery life that beats Qualcomm’s implementation of an ARM laptop SoC.
Qualcomm is significantly behind Apple. I’m not convinced that the ISA matters all that much for battery life. AMD’s x86_64 performance per watt blew Intel’s out of the water in recent generations, and Qualcomm/Samsung’s ARM chips can’t compete with Apple’s ARM chips in the mobile, tablet, or laptop space.
Afaik most laptops with Qualcomm X chips seem to be even more efficient than Apple’s Macbooks, at least when running native code. The biggest problem they are having is platform maturity, Microsoft has spent the last decade doing all the wrong decisions, and now they are waiting for software developers to port their code to ARM, while Apple has had a 4-year head start.
The chips are not bad though. As for competing, there’s really no competition as Apple uses their chips exclusively on their laptops, so there’s literally no room for any competition.
The biggest problem they are having is platform maturity
Maybe that’s an explanation for desktop/laptop performance, but I look at the mobile SoC space where Apple holds a commanding lead over ARM chips from Qualcomm, and where Qualcomm has better performance and efficiency than Samsung’s Exynos line, and I’m thinking a huge chunk of the difference between manufacturers can’t simply be explained by ISA or platform maturity. Apple has clearly been prioritizing battery life and efficiency for 10+ generations of Apple Silicon in the mobile market, and has a lead independent of its ISA, even as it trickled over to the laptop and desktop market.
