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 information came in an exclusive interview with Tom’s Guide, who just awarded Apple’s M1 chip with their Breakthrough Award for its 2021 Hero Awards.
The publication first spoke with Tim Milet, Apple’s vice president of platform architecture, who explained that 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? And so for my chip architects, that was the target.
Milet also spoke on the fact that the Cupertino company began work on Rosetta years before the M1 in order to ensure a seamless transition to Apple silicon:
We started a small project years before we started transitioning to Silicon to try to make sure that we could actually deliver the second generation of Rosetta in a way that allowed us to do this seamlessly. And we believe that was a huge part of the transition story…everything worked out of the box as expected.
. He also spoke on the future challenge of addressing high-powered gaming:
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.’ 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.
The biggest revelation from the interview came from Bob Borchers, Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing, who explained 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.’ And then Tim [Milet]’s laughing in the background, ‘Nope, that’s the way it’s supposed to be’ and it was pretty phenomenal.
The entire Tom’s Guide awards list is available over on their website.
