For the first time in a long time, the battle between Mac and Windows PC is getting interesting.

Apple's products have been suppressing Microsoft's Windows-based PCs for years, thanks to their excellent battery life and performance. However, Microsoft said it eventually tilted the balance in a direction favorable to it.

“We have more powerful chips. We've rewritten Windows 11 to take advantage of it. We then built a unique experience on this platform,” said Yusuf Mahdi, Microsoft's chief marketing officer for consumers. So I think we have a clear advantage in this area for a while.”

Microsoft says they have achieved this goal with a new artificial intelligence personal computer called Copilot+ pc.

You've probably heard of artificial intelligence PCs, which include special neural processing units (NPUs) to run AI applications locally instead of relying on cloud-based services like ChatGPT.

The Copilot+ PC includes the same NPU, but is also equipped with at least 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. Importantly, it also runs Microsoft's Copilot artificial intelligence assistant Windows 11.

When Microsoft launched the Copilot+ PC, the PC industry was hoping to enter a period of continuous sales growth after two years of sharp decline. According to IDC, PC sales increased 1.5% in the first quarter, compared to a 28.7% decline in the first quarter of last year.

“In my opinion, the need is unquestionable,” Mahdi said. “This will stimulate PC purchases like never before.”

Mahdi added that for the first time in decades, Microsoft felt that it had an advantage over Apple in terms of performance because it offered “something completely unique that couldn't be done anywhere else.”

As we all know, Apple lags behind Microsoft in the AI race and only recently became a participant — although it has made sure its hardware has extremely fast artificial intelligence chips.

In order to take advantage of Apple's backward position, Microsoft hopes that Copilot+, powered by GPT-4O, can greatly improve productivity and become a user's assistant to handle various tasks from common problems such as audio issues to document summarization.

Microsoft is also introducing a new Copilot Recall feature, which makes it easier to search almost everything you've ever done on your computer, including documents, photos, and web pages. So if you're planning a trip to Seattle and can't find the site you use to find things to do, you can type “Seattle” in “Memories” and it'll bring up the site you're browsing.

Microsoft says its approach is to take a snapshot of your screen over time and then use Copilot's visual search function to find what you're looking for. The company also said that content saved in the “recall” will only be stored on your device, and you can customize which apps use the feature.

Microsoft's first Copilot+ PC will go on sale in June, starting at $999, which is comparable to the price of Apple's MacBook Air.

Performance and battery life

Windows and Mac users may have different priorities, many of which are ingrained in specific ecosystems and are unlikely to change. In other words, unless new and unique AI features appeal to players (otherwise they won't easily change lineups). But they can still go head-to-head.

Performance benchmarks have become a major topic of conversation, and since Apple introduced the first M1 chip for Macbooks in 2020, Apple's Mac laptops have been beating Wndows-based PCs in terms of energy efficiency.

These ARM-based chips allow the MacBook to last a full day on a single charge while providing excellent overall performance in a variety of usage environments. However, Microsoft said its Windows PC has a new weapon that will allow it to regain its leading position: Qualcomm (Qualcomm) Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Pro chips.

In a statement on Monday, the company said that compared to the Apple MacBook Air with the M3 chip, the Copilot+ PC equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip has increased battery life by 20%, peak performance increased by 23%, and continuous multi-threading performance increased by 58%.

Furthermore, Mehdi said that the Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PC beat Apple's latest M4 chip in terms of trillions of operations per second (TOPs), and TOPs is a common indicator for measuring the performance of potential artificial intelligence applications.

Currently, due to a true artificial intelligence product, Microsoft has an advantage. But Apple didn't stop there. The company will host the annual World Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 10, and is expected to launch its own artificial intelligence applications and services at the conference, including some that Mark Gurman (Mark Gurman) said will run on OpenAI's artificial intelligence software.

As for the Macbook, Apple is still likely to release its M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. These two chips should perform better than the M4 and may surpass Qualcomm's chips.

Mark June 10th on your calendar.