Apple’s M1 battery life so good we thought it was a bug, says marketing VP

“When we saw that first system and then you sat there and played with it for a few hours and the battery didn’t move, we thought ‘Oh man, that’s a bug, the battery indicator is broken,'”

What you need to know

Apple’s stunning M1 chip has been awarded Tom’s Guide’s Hero Breakthrough award for 2021.
They caught up with Apple executives about the development and launch of the M1 chip.
Apple’s head of marketing revealed that battery life on the M1 was so good they thought the battery indicator was broken the first time they saw it.

Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers has revealed that the first time his team saw Apple’s new M1 chip in action they thought the battery indicator was broken because its performance was so good.

The revelation came in an exclusive interview with our friends at Tom’s Guide, who have just awarded Apple’s M1 chip with their Break Through Award for its 2021 Hero Awards. First, TG spoke to Tim Millet, VP of platform architecture at Apple who said the priority with Apple silicon was to make the best chip on the market:

“If somebody else could build a chip that was actually going to deliver better performance inside that enclosure, what’s the point? Why would we switch?,” said Tim Millet, Vice President of platform architecture at Apple.” “And so for my chip architects, that was the target.”

Millet noted how Apple started work on Rosetta years before Apple silicon to make sure that the transition to Apple silicon would be seamless, and that “everything worked out the box as expected”, he also spoke of the pride of Apple’s graphics folks:

“Of course, you can imagine the pride of some of the GPU folks and imagining, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great if it hits a broader set of those really intense gamers,'” said Millet. “It’s a natural place for us to be looking, to be working closely with our Metal team and our Developer team. We love the challenge.”

But the really fantastic revelation from the piece came from Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing, Bob Borchers, who told TG that the first time his team saw the Apple’s M1 chip in action, they assumed the battery indicator was broken due to a bug because it performed so well:

“When we saw that first system and then you sat there and played with it for a few hours and the battery didn’t move, we thought ‘Oh man, that’s a bug, the battery indicator is broken,'” said Bob Borchers, VP of worldwide product marketing for Apple.

Apparently, Apple CEO Tim Cook was present and laughed them off stating “nope, that’s the way it’s supposed to be”, Borchers said it was “pretty phenomenal.”

Apple’s MacBook Air with M1 and 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 deliver best-in-class battery life and performance thanks to the energy efficiency of the M1 chip, as well as pretty staggering power and performance.

The company is expected to debut a new M1X chip with 10-cores including 8 high-performance cores in a new set of MacBook Pro models later this year.