Can't wait!
Surprised MR haven't posted anything about it yet, read it on AI yesterday too.
I've seen a lot of fire sales recently on the MB lineup, most recently here in the UK you can pick up the 512gb varian for £900 at Currys - the cheapest its ever been. The same machine is £1549 on the Apple website!
Hopefully a sign of inventory being cleared.
Probably fake. Even the source page linked in the article seems to suggest so.
I wonder if the ARM macbooks will come this year or if there will be a refresh to bridge the gap. My guess is it will be the latter.
But if they don't improve the keyboard I guess I will skip the refresh too. All I use a laptop for is typing.
Kuo last year predicted ARM MacBook in 2020, thus corroborating that its not coming anytime soonApple is usually not that quick (look at the Mac Pro) so I think it will be some time before we see ARM MacBooks.
I wouldn't read too much into the core count - the A12X in the iPad pros is octa-core, remember! At 7nm, they will be able to cram a lot more into the lower TDP than intel currently are with their 14nm chips. These supposed chips are so performant though, I wonder if they would want to put it in a MacBook which would then sit alongside the much more expensive pros but offer similar performance? Maybe they are destined for a higher end (actively cooled) machine and the rMB will run on the iPad A12X chip (the two currently run similar TDP chips so presumably have similar (passive) cooling capacity).ARM would definitely give the 12" Macbook a differentiating factor from the other Mac laptops. The 12" Macbook could be the experiment with ARM, but that spec "leak" mentions 10 cores, that seems like a lot for a laptop, even the 15" MacBook Pro currently has 6. I wonder if it's for a desktop like the iMac, iMac Pro or even Mac Pro?
I wouldn't read too much into the core count - the A12X in the iPad pros is octa-core, remember! At 7nm, they will be able to cram a lot more into the lower TDP than intel currently are with their 14nm chips. These supposed chips are so performant though, I wonder if they would want to put it in a MacBook which would then sit alongside the much more expensive pros but offer similar performance? Maybe they are destined for a higher end (actively cooled) machine and the rMB will run on the iPad A12X chip (the two currently run similar TDP chips so presumably have similar (passive) cooling capacity).
Don't forget that ARM is a lot cheaper for Apple given in house development and shared cost of R&D. I am sure they already negotiated a good price on manufacturing 7 nm ARM chips. Apple will also be able to add to Macs features developed for IOS devices and differentiate their offerings from Intel based computers
Apple is usually not that quick (look at the Mac Pro) so I think it will be some time before we see ARM MacBooks.
There are numerous tests of the iPad pros completing tasks like video rendering in a similar timeframe to a MacBook pro. To what extent software optimisation might help the CPU in this regard is debatable, but given the fact it's a 7W passively cooled chip up against a 45W actively cooled CPU with dedicated GPU, it's astonishing it can even get anywhere near it doing tasks like these. I know there's a lot of hesitancy to put stock in benchmarks too, but in terms of measuring raw power they do have their uses as well as limitations.we really have some info that current A12X is superior for x86 apps in terms of cpu raw power and iGPU than an current 8th gen i5/i7 quad cores ?