Apple Event to Include 13-Inch MacBook Pro, 16-Inch MacBook Pro, and 13-Inch MacBook Air With Apple Silicon Chips [Updated]

[Fomalhaut]

Boy am I grad I bit the bullet and bought a new 16 inch i9 processor MacBook Pro!
don't ever want to transition to ARM. I like Intel and AMD.
Future New Computers will be Windows 10 machines I guess
APPLE lost me as a customer in this transition
It feels like we are going in reverse
Better show your ARM based Macs up against the fastest Intel and AMD processors.

These will be non upgradable THROW AWAY Macs the ones with ARM. not for me
like a good car. I like to keep it a long time and make my own repairs

Please tell me which parts of your new MBP16 are upgradeable?....I have one, and I counted them...twice...the answer is absolutely none.

If running Windows 10 is a "must-have" for you, then sadly, at least for the time being, an Apple Silicon Mac is not going to meet your requirements. Just buy a premium Windows-on-Intel machine if that is what you need.

Have you looked for MacOS or Web-app alternatives for the Windows software that you use? I used to run Windows VMs or Bootcamp, but found that I don't need any Windows-only software these days for my work (software development, documentation, photo/video editing). I do have some specific astronomy software that only runs on Windows, and just bought an Intel NUC to run these. Quite cheap, tiny, and performs pretty well.

 

[PickUrPoison]

The rumors aren’t pointing this way, but a 12” could use higher end components and the Air remain the budget item. Perhaps it might happen with the redesign, imagine a 12" with: mini-led, edge-to-edge display, faceId, etc. Whilst the Air remains in its current design, but using an Apple chip.

That would resemble the scenario we had with the older Air design. The MacBook had a retina screen and USB-C whilst the Air had some older low res screen and traditional ports.

Yeah basically the 12/14/16” Pro scenario. Given the presumably lower demand for any 12” model, a $1,200-ish 12” Pro probably is a more likely scenario than an $899 12” Air. The weight wouldn’t be all that different for a 12” Pro vs. a 12” Air.

Might just be wishful thinking though; I’m not sure Apple considers the 12” a viable form factor anymore. Most simply want larger screens. Is a 12” notebook as dead as the 4” iPhone? I hope not.

 

[Maconplasma]

I wish I could get an Apple Keyboard with an integrated Touch Bar.

Agreed! That's the one thing that drives me crazy. I have a beautiful 16" MBP and do a lot of video and photo editing and I really enjoy using the TouchBar while editing, but when I hop off my MacBook Pro and jump on my iMac there's no TouchBar and I have to change the way I work. Apple definitely needs to include the TouchBar on all future Macs.

 

[Maconplasma]

Boy am I grad I bit the bullet and bought a new 16 inch i9 processor MacBook Pro!
don't ever want to transition to ARM. I like Intel and AMD.
Future New Computers will be Windows 10 machines I guess
APPLE lost me as a customer in this transition
It feels like we are going in reverse
Better show your ARM based Macs up against the fastest Intel and AMD processors.

These will be non upgradable THROW AWAY Macs the ones with ARM. not for me
like a good car. I like to keep it a long time and make my own repairs

OMG what will Apple do without you as a customer? Imagine Apple someday achieving a 2 trillion dollar valuation. Nah, without Macrumors customers (the only customers Apple has 🙄) they'll never get there. 😂

 

[cmaier]

Agreed! That's the one thing that drives me crazy. I have a beautiful 16" MBP and do a lot of video and photo editing and I really enjoy using the TouchBar while editing, but when I hop off my MacBook Pro and jump on my iMac there's no TouchBar and I have to change the way I work. Apple definitely needs to include the TouchBar on all future Macs.

On the other hand, I wish I could get a 16” MBP without a touchbar.

I never intentionally use it (other than volume and brightness, which worked better with buttons), and I often *accidentally* touch it when typing.

So for me it‘s a net negative.

 

[cardfan]

Way more people than you think. Just try and step out of the forum bubble for a second and recognize that NORMAL customers don't know about Apple silicon or ARM-based Macs or what any of that means. They just need a new Mac and buy one. Think about the products that you buy that you don't frequent forums about.

I’m sure they’ll be aware when their software doesn’t work or has to be emulated. No boot camp. No more windows.

But I’m sure Apple will make a big deal about iPad apps running. We will see a bigger effort to lock it down to AppStore only. Any universal apps definitely. And it remains to be seen if we see actual full versions of office or photoshop on par with the intel versions despite what they’ve said or tried to show. Apple, sadly, likes to mislead people at their media events.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I fully expect Apple is going to stack the proverbial deck for the AppleSI debut. Meaning they will showcase the "insanely great" performance on Apple designed apps, and talk about how much faster these apps are than the older versions on current Macs. They have re-written (or will by launch) the majority of their apps to leverage the various custom components of AppleSI, accelerating the applications beyond the raw power of the ARM core. Meaning the performance will bely the power of the CPU. Older Macs that do most of the heavy lifting on the general purpose Intel cores will perform less well, making the AppleSI look very fast. However, this does not paint a full picture of what to expect. Applications that are not re-written to take advantage of the various component on the AppleSI SOC, will have to rely on the raw "grunt" of the ARM CPU, and this is where the Intel systems could perform better. I imagine the majority of these cases will be 3rd party, non-Apple developed software. The in-house applications will demonstrate the possibilities when the full capabilities of AppleSI are leveraged.

History has traditionally shown that when a GPU has to share memory with the system, performance suffers. It is simple physics, there is only so much memory bandwidth available, if it is being shared between both a GPU and the CPU, neither can reap the benefits of the full bandwidth. Not to mention, if your integrated GPU is using 4 to 8 GBs of your system RAM for graphics, there is that much less for your applications. It will be interesting to see if Apple mitigates this by boosting the RAM amounts in the systems. For example, Macs that would normally ship with 8 GBs, come with 12 or perhaps 16 GBs of RAM. They could easily "absorb" the extra cost of the RAM by leveraging the savings in CPU/GPU costs with the AppleSI. They may even do what Sony, and then Microsoft did and use a higher performance type of RAM as the main system RAM. Both the PlayStation 4/Pro and the XBOX One S/X use GDDR RAM vices SDRAM as is used in Macs and PCs now. This helps, but still doesn't mitigate the loses associated with having to share resources. Don't get me wrong, there are some benefits to sharing RAM between the GPU and CPU, but raw performance is not one of those. Dedicated GPUs with their own resources will outperform shared systems.

Makes you go hmmmmmm

Rich S.

Although you do share resources (especially RAM) with unified memory between CPU and GPU, you also avoid the bottleneck of common interconnects such as PCIe - even version 4 (x16 connect = 32GB/s). Dual channel DDR5 can get about 3 times this bandwidth, and HBM2 about 4 times this.

You will, as you say, need more RAM in the system.

 

[cmaier]

I’m sure they’ll be aware when their software doesn’t work or has to be emulated. No boot camp. No more windows.

But I’m sure Apple will make a big deal about iPad apps running. We will see a bigger effort to lock it down to AppStore only. Any universal apps definitely. And it remains to be seen if we see actual full versions of office or photoshop on par with the intel versions despite what they’ve said or tried to show. Apple, sadly, likes to mislead people at their media events.

Apple isn’t misleading anyone. Stop it.

 

[Maconplasma]

On the other hand, I wish I could get a 16” MBP without a touchbar.

I never intentionally use it (other than volume and brightness, which worked better with buttons), and I often *accidentally* touch it when typing.

So for me it‘s a net negative.

If you do touch it while typing then you're not a true touch typist. I'm a very proficient touch typist and have never touched the TB while typing. I respect your opinion but you have to accept that companies will create features on products you may not like but that doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. And before you say they should make it an option, forget it. It costs companies more money to provide customer options that require a restructuring of the frame just to satisfy a niche market.

 

[germinator]

It’s a laptop that is already at the peak of design.

HaHaHa. Puhleeeeese...

Ever tried to replace a keyboard? A battery? Ever cut yourself on those sharp edges?

Apple's current laptops, while better than most competitors, are still far from what I would consider a great design, one that has great ergonomics (keyboard), is easy to service, and has user-upgradable components.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Of course they could have a unified memory solution ready-to-go which does not require the GPU to be on the same SoC as the CPU.

Indeed. But wouldn't this require a new super-fast interconnect bus to be developed that is about as fast as the RAM? What memory technology will Apple use? LPDDR5? HBM2? GDDR6 (like the consoles)? Are they developing a very wide memory bus to get the bandwidth?

 

[Maconplasma]

I’m sure they’ll be aware when their software doesn’t work or has to be emulated. No boot camp. No more windows.

But I’m sure Apple will make a big deal about iPad apps running. We will see a bigger effort to lock it down to AppStore only. Any universal apps definitely. And it remains to be seen if we see actual full versions of office or photoshop on par with the intel versions despite what they’ve said or tried to show. Apple, sadly, likes to mislead people at their media events.

The Mac version of Office already sucks horribly. It really won't matter. Microsoft has made it clear they care only about the Windows customers by limiting functions on the Mac version that have been on the Windows version forever and they charge Mac customers the same price.
You sound very negative about Apple's future. I'm sure they know what they are doing with the future of Macs.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Of course they could have a unified memory solution ready-to-go which does not require the GPU to be on the same SoC as the CPU.

With everything else that’s already on the SoC, and other co-processors and functionality they may add to it, I’ve been expecting a separate package. Space isn’t at such a premium that the smallest possible package is needed. It would also let them mix and match between models, and offer multiple GPU options for a given model.

Question: would it be easier to cool two separate packages vs. a single package with twice the real estate? Or is it just a watts per cm^2 thing? Size of the die vs. package size considerations?

 

[cardfan]

OMG what will Apple do without you as a customer? Imagine Apple someday achieving a 2 trillion dollar valuation. Nah, without Macrumors customers (the only customers Apple has ) they'll never get there.

He’s not the only one. Apple will lose quite a few customers with the transition. Keep in mind none of apple’s software or services are essential for the vast majority. I buy macs because they can run most things. Most things that are made by third parties...not Apple.

Then again I cannot fault Apple for doubling down on iOS. That’s their cash cow. Being able to have universal apps is important. That may be enough to get more mainstream Mac users. But not really looking for macs to become more like chromebooks.

 

[shiseiryu1]

I really hope this transition will allow Apple to upgrade their products on a more consistent cycle. It’s super lame and embarrassing, for example, that the iMac Pro hasn’t received a major update in over 3 years.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I’m sure they’ll be aware when their software doesn’t work or has to be emulated. No boot camp. No more windows.

But I’m sure Apple will make a big deal about iPad apps running. We will see a bigger effort to lock it down to AppStore only. Any universal apps definitely. And it remains to be seen if we see actual full versions of office or photoshop on par with the intel versions despite what they’ve said or tried to show. Apple, sadly, likes to mislead people at their media events.

If Rosetta 2 works as advertised then I suspect many users will be completely unaware of what is going on when they install their existing apps, if they "just work", with good performance. They won't care if it's running on Apple Silicon or Intel, as long as it works well. If it's bugging, unstable or runs like a dog, then yes, they will start asking questions.

How many Mac users run Windows / Bootcamp in reality? I bet that it is far fewer than when Intel Macs first arrived. I bought one the first models in 2007 and used dual-boot, Bootcamp & VMs a lot initially, but over time, this became less and less necessary (in part due to the use of cloud services), and I haven't run needed a VM (Windows or Linux) on my Mac for several years.

 

[cardfan]

The Mac version of Office already sucks horribly. It really won't matter. Microsoft has made it clear they care only about the Windows customers by limiting functions on the Mac version that have been on the Windows version forever and they charge Mac customers the same price.
You sound very negative about Apple's future. I'm sure they know what they are doing with the future of Macs.

I’m only negative in that it’s something I don’t care about. It may appeal to the masses. That’s a win for Apple. Loss for me. It’s fine. Not having a funeral yet though. Never know.

 

[dgdosen]

Agreed! That's the one thing that drives me crazy. I have a beautiful 16" MBP and do a lot of video and photo editing and I really enjoy using the TouchBar while editing, but when I hop off my MacBook Pro and jump on my iMac there's no TouchBar and I have to change the way I work. Apple definitely needs to include the TouchBar on all future Macs.

I don't doubt a touchbar works for you - but it's just a bad solution for most people. Especially touch typists who don't like wasting time to have to look at their keyboard, or who have warm pinkies and trigger siri by accident once a half hour.

Why not compromise - dump the touch bar and build a 'magic touch track pad' - basically an ios interface IN the trackpad. Think of how much more useful a context sensitive UX for touch would be if it was presented in something other than 60 pixel tall strip. Take your emoji use case. Wouldn't it be better to pick an emoji like on IOS - with grid of items you can just point at? Wouldn't that be better than scrolling a strip of emoji(s?)?

Best part about it - If one doesn't want to use track pad as its secondary purpose, it should still work as track pads do today.

If Apple built that - I'd imagine more people would want it. People would want it just to hack it and play Doom on their trackpad...

You're welcome, Apple.

 

[Maconplasma]

I really hope this transition will allow Apple to upgrade their products on a more consistent cycle. It’s super lame and embarrassing, for example, that the iMac Pro hasn’t received a major update in over 3 years.

Embarrassing for whom? Most people walking into an Apple store or any store that sells computers don't know what's the latest or which one is approaching the end of it's cycle. That's the problem with forums, they think if they don't want something Apple makes then everyone else feels the same way. No.

 

[cardfan]

If Rosetta 2 works as advertised then I suspect many users will be completely unaware of what is going on when they install it, and it if it "just works", with good performance, then they would be none the wiser.

How many Mac users run Windows / Bootcamp in reality? I bet that it is far fewer than when Intel Macs first arrived. I bought one the first models in 2007 and used dual-boot, Bootcamp & VMs a lot initially, but over time, this became less and less necessary (in part due to the use of cloud services), and I haven't run needed a VM (Windows or Linux) on my Mac for several years.

That’s a big if. If things are emulated fast enough they won’t care. Lol. Ok. I do get it. But that’s pretty misleading if Apple doesn’t stress this.

How many users use boot camp and vm? Probably not the majority. But quite a few. And most importantly...I do. And it’s a dealbreaker.

 

[Jury]

It's a bit disappointing if next week's laptops do not bring any other changes than the CPU. I thought it was part of a "waouh" effect to bring Apple Silicon along with a completely new design.

Just replacing the CPUs is a bit dull imo. Not to mention that only 2 of next week's laptop will be equipped with A chips, the MBP 16" will still be intel-based.

Sad.

Tim Cook and Apple is taking it extremely slow and will become more than amount of years left in him.

 

[kerr]

I want a 14” laptop

 

[ikramerica]

Apple must not believe a civil war is brewing to make plans for Tuesday.

 

[Makosuke]

One word, Lifuka

Except that, thus far at least, all rumors I've seen are for release in 1H or 2H 2021. Obviously Apple could announce it now and not ship for another few months, but that's really not their style, so it'd be a pretty big coup to have it out the door that early/quickly. Conversely, if it is ready now, it's a bit surprising to not have an iMac on deck.

A GPU suitable for a 21" equivalent iMac would be entirely feasible for a first-gen in-house effort, since those already start with just Intel Iris GPU and max out with a modest Radeon. Going up against ATI's higher-end mobile chips (or the top-of-line iMac 27" desktop GPUs) is a much taller order. It's certainly feasible Apple could do it, and I'm not making any predictions, but it would be a pretty big shock if they could pull it off with a first-gen effort.

 

[Maconplasma]

That’s a big if. If things are emulated fast enough they won’t care. Lol. Ok. I do get it. But that’s pretty misleading if Apple doesn’t stress this.

How many users use boot camp and vm? Probably not the majority. But quite a few. And most importantly...I do. And it’s a dealbreaker.

It's a whole lot less people using Bootcamp Windows than you think, and if it was such a big business for Apple to continue supporting Bootcamp then they wouldn't make such a drastic move. Without a doubt they've done market research. It's weird how this forum acts like Apple is some mom & pop company that doesn't have a clue what they are doing. Obviously you're moving onto Windows so no worries. If the lack of Bootcamp is a dealbreaker then you never needed a Mac in the first place.