Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Event to Include 13-Inch MacBook Pro, 16-Inch MacBook Pro, and 13-Inch MacBook Air With Apple Silicon Chips [Updated]
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Maybe but I think there’s a demographic of document-based users who want iPad-level mobility but the power of MacOS—writers, journos, academics, researchers. In my industry, my cohorts prefer MacOS as iPadOS still isn’t good enough, but we don’t need the horsepower of a MacBook Pro. My wife works in science research and it’s the same for her as well. She tried an iPad Pro twice and even with the Magic Keyboard it still isn’t good enough.
What the 16” really needs is for the $800(?) GPU to be a standard config since that is the only fully functional option. Can we get that? 
Interesting point, but absolutely no way they want not that many people on the new release! They want this to be a blasting success. Shareholders would kill them for the strategy “let’s make this release less attractive, because we are not sure we get it right”
That’s not how the world works!
Yes, I’m pretty sure a MacBook without any silicon will not cause you any issues ever
Sorry, could not resist... the latest intel based MacBooks are having quite a few (design) issues depending on your use...
I'm crossing my fingers that a 16" Apple Silicone mbp could finally be the portable that replaces my 2013 12-Core Mac Pro. However, very curious if these Apple Silicone computers will work with eGPUs or if that idea is bust.
3-5x better?!?! Not a chance. I think 50% performance boost at absolute best, and expect it to be much lower.
Makes sense to release a MBP 13 and 16 on Apple Silicon without a redesign. That way they can save the ressources redesigning a device most people will skip (because nobody wants to buy the first AS version). They just have to make the motherboard layout compatible with the old design, and the “perfect” test vehicle is ready.
The second version which has all ”tweaks” learned will then also look new and shiny - and REALLY make a killing in sales.
The second version which has all ”tweaks” learned will then also look new and shiny - and REALLY make a killing in sales.
Where did you get that from? We dint even know whether the concept of base and boost clocks applies to Apple CPU, that’s Intel marketing scheme. Apples all-core sustained clock is usually just couple % lower than its max single core clock, but I don’t think that anyone has measured that out yet for the A14 (we have figures for the A13 courtesy of anandtech).
Anyway, 1.8 ghz sounds to me like the frequency of the efficiency cores.
I have no reason to buy one anytime soon, unless there's a redesign I like. Now, if they released a black colorway, I'd pre-order it instantly.
Wrong. I want to buy the new AS but wont if there is no new design. I will just keep my existing computers for the next year. So who is going to be buying these new computers? Clueless consumers who dont know better? I was that, on the intel transition.....
what’s the point of buying a gimped system [all apps wont be native], when I can buy the intel mac and it works fine?
At least with new hardware it softens the blow of the issues. There has to be some incentive to be buying the new machines.
It is interesting how this will all pan out and what Apple decides to do with its marketing of the new computers.
Which is why Apple offers, and will continue to offer, the MB Air.
What's the point of buying a system (intel) which won't be able to run new native software in a few years, unless you are buying a new machine every year?
My main machine is a 2016 MBP 15". The 16" MBP Apple Silicon will double its performance, even running x86 apps in rosetta.
It depends what you use it for.
If I needed a new computer right now, and required my software to run in a reliable and expected manner, I would buy a PC [as I have for this and other reasons].
If I use mac apps and utilise the computer as a consumer only, then the AS machines will be good out the box.
I will be buying AS Macs as a consumer only for the next few years I expect.
But yes I buy new machines every year - its cheaper [i am not going to go into the maths, but it is for me]. I treat them like an Uber - a tool to get me from one place to another.
Edit - when I say consumer, I also realise there is Logic and Final Cut that professionals use, and I can see these apps working amazingly well. I would buy AS for these too.
As always I am very happy when I am proven wrong. Nobody is right until we see how they perform
My fans spin at 5k+ quite way too often and it's annoying to have that kind of noise going so frequently and also embarrassing because when I'm working around other people I get weird looks like "****" or "what's wrong with your computer?". I haven't been happy with their thermal design in laptops for years.
I've also had all kinds of display issues, from it not waking, to washed out gamma, as well as kernel panics, audio popping, chronic beachballing and the list goes on. No doubt some of it is sloppy software but I've lost faith in Apple's design team. They just aren't the quality house they used to be when it comes to laptops (I had to return my 2016 MBP after 3 repairs too!).
Having said that, Apple silicon and no Jony Ive might be the magic combination that gets them back on track, that's what I'm desperately hoping for at least!
Care to explain your tanty? I chose a 16" because a lot of the time I can't set up with an external monitor.
I had a 17" that I used one of those OWC trays to replace the optical drive with a 2.5" HDD and put an OWC 2.5" SSD (whopping 120GB) in place of the stock drive (I think the main bay had a faster SATA port)... but I certainly wouldn't trade the extra bay and 2.5" capability to go back to a chunky MBP like the old days, and the RAM upgrades kind of don't matter to me since I max it out when I buy it anyway.
I do wish a bit that the SSD was still a replaceable PCIe M.2 card, since unlike other things storage prices drop fairly rapidly over time, there's no design cap, and they're small enough it seems like it could be made to work. It would probably be a nontrivial install to get the heatsink right, though.
I think key differences of the MacBook is that it’s designed around the full-size keyboard so as to achieve the smallest possible enclosure. And no fan. I think these are two ideals still important to Apple. The name is arbitrary.
I think you know why. But in a few years if what you state is the case and development is flocking to AS then it’s easy peasy to buy a Mac then.
But it’s not like developers will stop updating programs for the vast majority of Mac users.
Errr...what?? Let's pick your thread apart...
1) Rosetta 2 will address a large part (nearly all?) of the compatibility question - provided it runs acceptably fast enough for your needs. If Apple have done their job properly, all your existing MacOS software will run without modification. A number of Apple & 3rd party apps will already have been recompiled to ARM-native versions, and others are in progress.
2) There is no evidence that Apple will be locking down all MacOS apps to the app-store.
3) Everything is *already* soldered down to the board (bar iMac 27" RAM and Mac Pro, and some proprietary SSDs) and has been for many years. Where on earth have you been since 2015? In a coma?
4) If benchmarks and performance tests are to be believed, Apple Silicon has already caught up and mostly exceeded Intel and AMD performance per core. Apple just needs to scale out the architecture (already done by other ARM-based vendors like Marvell, Amazon & Ampere) to match the higher core counts.
Go and educate yourself.
I'm a software engineer and haven't run an x86 VM on my Mac for many years. Have you heard of a thing call "Cloud services"?
It's easier to push code to an AWS / MS Azure instance and requires far less management overhead and time (=money) than a local VM. It also removes the need to have a local machine that has enough memory and CPU cores to run VMs with good performance.
I used to spend a massive amount of time in creating, configuring, backing up, copying and patching VMs and it was a real overhead, especially when working with a team who had to share or update "golden images". Cloud services have made it much easier to manage all of the above with better reliability and consistency than I could achieve myself. The cost is trivial compared to the time-saving.
However, one area that will be problematic is the use of Docker containers. x86 containers are not going to run Apple's HyperKit for Apple Silicon without some kind of emulate layer. Yes, Docker exists on ARM but it has a tiny ecosystem compared to x86.
I will be looking for developer feedback after the Apple Silicon launch before getting a machine for work use.
Last edited:
