Apple has claimed in a new interview that the M1 MacBook battery life was so good they originally thought the battery indicator was buggy, failing to respond as the remaining life fell.

The claim is made by Apple marketing VP Bob Borchers, who also suggests that future generations of Apple Silicon might be good enough to turn Macs into gaming machines …

Borchers spoke to Tom’s Guide, after the site’s own tests came extremely close to matching Apple’s claimed wireless web-browsing battery life of 17 hours.

The most striking thing about the M1 is its battery life. For example, the MacBook Pro lasted an astounding 16 hours and 25 minutes in our web surfing test. The previous Intel model lasted 10:21. That’s a huge difference, and this increase caused more than one double take within Apple.

“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. “And then Tim’s laughing in the background, ‘Nope, that’s the way it’s supposed to be’ and it was pretty phenomenal.”

Borchers said that the real achievement was hitting this kind of life alongside performance good enough for Intel apps to run seamlessly under Rosetta 2.

“We started a small project years before we started transitioning the 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,” said Miles. “And we believe that was a huge part of the transition story…everything worked out the box as expected.”

While M1 Macs leave most comparably priced Windows machines in the dust when it comes to performance, there is one area where the position is reversed: gaming. Borchers suggested that this might not remain the case for future generations of Apple Silicon.

As rumors swirl around a future M1X chip for the MacBook Pro 2021 and a possible M2 chip for the 2022 MacBook Air, Apple sees big things ahead for Apple Silicon, both in terms of achieving new designs and perhaps appealing to the most demanding audience of all — gamers. After all, many of the engineers building Apple’s chips are gamers themselves.

“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 Milet. “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.”

Tom’s Guide named the M1 chip as a Hero award winner.