When Mac fanboys tussle with Windows aficionados, the fur can fly. And at some point, someone will probably bring up the old chestnut: Windows laptops simply run out of juice when you need them most, while Macs just keep on chugging away.
Is it true? Yes. And also no. What PCWorld's team of mythbusters discovered was that yes, installing Windows on a MacBook Air exhausted its battery far, far quicker than the Mac OS ever could. But when asked to explain themselves, Microsoft executives explained that Apple's engineers simply weren't as dedicated as the Windows world.
The question isn't academic. Every road warrior fears running out of power right when it's needed most. Preventing this scenario from happening has quietly emerged as the most significant design trend in mobile computing over the past few years. Smartphones like the Galaxy Note 3, LG G2, and Moto X have prioritized battery life, while power-sipping chips like Intel's Haswell and "Bay Trail" Atom chips now power PCs that offer all-day computing—especially when paired with keyboards or covers with batteries installed inside. And whether to choose Apple or a Windows PC is a perennial debate.
But what we haven't been able to do is to isolate the operating systems themselves, to determine whether the Mac, or Windows, is the most efficient. Part of the problem are the machines themselves; Apple's MacBook Air is a stripped-down, optimized machine that lacks a touchscreen, designed by a company that manufactures the operating system, apps, and a few fixed hardware configurations. Microsoft has to account for all of the variations within the Windows world.
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