At Least One New MacBook With Apple Silicon 'Likely' at WWDC, Says Morgan Stanley Analyst

[Realityck]

There is a lot of risk for them to launch all variations of a CPU all at once, and Apple has never shown that they have the engineering resources to do a ton of things at once

This is a new transition there is no baseline to guess with. It’s not the same a PPC relying on Motorola. If you use the Intel example they clearly got to the point of producing and utilizing multiple processor variations. Why can’t Apple be in the possession of that much engineering resources given the size of the company? Oh because its never been shown.

 

[CIA]

If these are released before the fall iPhone event, they will be M1, or M1X based.
If they are released after I fully expect them to be M2 based.
I have a feeling the fall iPhone event will always be the line in the sand for M generation chips.

 

[defferoo]

would be very surprised if they named this chip the M2. what would they call the chip going into the next Macbook Air? They can’t go with M3, that would imply it’s faster than the M2 when it isn’t. Betting they’ll go with M1X or something similar.

 

[coolkid93]

how about we just wait and see not just keep putting out speculations

 

[madebybela]

so many products unveils rumored for this event (on top of all the software which is the main focus), at this point I'm having this gut feeling there actually wont be ANY hardware announcements lol

 

[profcutter]

According to analysts, Apple likely to release the best something "ever".

They need to bring the 17" back but the 16" certainly comes close.

This is why they’ll never beat the 17 inchers. Just check out the travel on those puppies.

 

[DekuBleep]

Wow I really hope so! Very exciting times with the Apple Silicon.

 

[cupcakes2000]

I reckon they won’t be ‘m’ anything, I think m, mx, m2 etc will continue to relate to the low to mid range. I think the pro chips will be under a different branding, (maybe even several different brandings, if they’re planning on Xeon type chips). The z1 for example.

 

[name99]

You can always tell which reporters and analysts don't know what they are talking about by how much they push the name M2. There is no way they take an A14 generation core and bump the number up for confusing marketing. Maybe it won't be called an M1X, but I can't see them calling it M2

It doesn't have to be A14 based.
The A15 (the actual SoC, for iPhones) began production over a month ago. Production for the phones always begins months in advance to build up enough volume for launch.
Point is, this means that the A15 cores were done a while ago, and ready for implanting into M2's. Production could be going on as we speak -- Apple announces at WWDC, with availability at, say, end of June. The timing works.

Of course the timing for M1 Macs was phone first, then Macs; but that's not a rule of nature, it was just convenient (probably not least because of delays in getting the OS ready; even today Big Sur 11.4 on M1 is pretty much the first release that's considered reliable-ish for a variety of the weirder macOS use cases like booting off an external hard drive).
In many ways it would make sense to announce the M2 before the A15. It makes a big splash ("M1 was just a better iPad chip, M2 is in a whole different league!"). Moreover one expects that M2 (and A15) are ARMv9 designs, meaning there's a reasonable amount of new technology in them (BTI for security, MTE for both security and programmer bug detection, and SVE/2 for performance), and WWDC is the obvious place to tell developers how to use these technologies along with "You can get started on our new macs, that you can buy at the end of the month".

BTW my expectation is that mac cores will follow the same pattern as iPad Pro cores, though with some stuttering. In other words expect updates mainly every two years, not every year. (The actual macs may get slight bumps after a year, like we did with the A12X to A12Z transition, but not a whole new SoC). So in principle I wouldn't expect a mini-M2 for MacBook Air's and suchlike, more something like
- this SoC is called M2X
- next year's SoC is M3 (not M3X) and it goes into the low-end guys
- then we get M4X
and so on, at least for a while.

 

[Duane Martin]

so many products unveils rumored for this event (on top of all the software which is the main focus), at this point I'm having this gut feeling there actually wont be ANY hardware announcements lol

Other than bat-guano crazy MacRumors posters, and there are a lot of them, I have not seen any products other than new MBPs rumoured for WWDC. We have seen stolen tech specs so we may have some idea what they will be, it is just a question of when and specifics. The problem is there are a lot of technical variables, some of which Apple cannot control, for instance the world-wide chip shortage.

It is entirely possible Apple was still figuring out what they would be announcing on Monday until recently which might be why rumours are all over the place. Wouldn’t be the first time.

 

[Apple_Robert]

anyone know when was the last time apple decreased the cost of RAM and SSD?

You forgot the joking emoji.

 

[visualseed]

would be very surprised if they named this chip the M2. what would they call the chip going into the next Macbook Air? They can’t go with M3, that would imply it’s faster than the M2 when it isn’t. Betting they’ll go with M1X or something similar.

There is really nothing to say they can't call these M1 as well. They can just be 16-Core (or more) variants. the X variants of the A series came out later and the only differences were the number of CPU/CPU cores. I would suspect a version number change would only come about after a change in design of the actual cpu/gpu/neural cores.

One of the things that I have noticed is that Apple advertisers the current M1 Macs as "8-core" which makes me believe this will be a significant point of differentiation in future products.

 

[James Godfrey]

We may not get a redesigned anything this year, Apple could quite easily stick an M1X in the current models, and wait to refresh the design until next year when miniLED is more doable.

I hope not but you never know with Apple… all we knew about the iMac before launch was that they were coming in colours… other than that we knew nothing…

Rumours are just that, rumours… most of which has been based on the black mail leaks, which those leaks could have potentially been an old prototype image.

 

[Duane Martin]

anyone know when was the last time apple decreased the cost of RAM and SSD?

They did with MBPs in 2019. It happens.

 

[GadgetBen]

Could be a great setup by Apple to weed out the grass.

Whoever is telling Prosser and others that the announcement will take place might well be weeded out.

 

[Fidgit]

I haven’t been following very closely, but why should I care about mini-LED again?

 

[Duane Martin]

I haven’t been following very closely, but why should I care about mini-LED again?

Check this link - “The main benefit of Mini LED over conventional LEDTVs (which also use LED backlighting with an LCD panel) is that the LED backlights are so much smaller that they can be much more precise and, therefore, ensure that pictures are bolder in colour, deeper in black levels, and brighter for HDR.”

 

[satchmo]

It is entirely possible Apple was still figuring out what they would be announcing on Monday until recently which might be why rumours are all over the place. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Possible. I’m sure they have all the footage shot in segments.

I forget which recent Apple event had a video sequence that seemed a bit disconnected, like a section was removed.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Could be a great setup by Apple to weed out the grass.

Whoever is telling Prosser and others that the announcement will take place might well be weeded out.

Valid point.

 

[Ion-X]

An M1X 14” MBP is likely next week. 16” also quite likely.

What’s extremely unlikely is anything with a true next-generation M2 chip, or any non-MBP hardware announcement.

 

[Ion-X]

I haven’t been following very closely, but why should I care about mini-LED again?

Better contrast, better black levels, brighter HDR.

Not necessary by any means, more of a nice-to-have that improves display quality.

 

[ValO]

Apple isn’t going to want to suddenly undermine a product that isn’t even a year old. People are fine with a yearly upgrade, but they don’t want to feel like they’re 6 month old product is suddenly inferior. In actuality, I don’t expect an upgrade to Mac Mini until maybe 2022. I also expect the new MacBook Pros to be either a beefier M1 or an M1X chip. I really doubt they go right to M2 (branding) when M1 isn’t even a year old (I expect the new ARM processors to have no more than a 2 year update cycle, with maybe a bump in between). People expect Apple to iterate way, way too fast nowadays.

Yes, one new m model and one new m.X model every 2 years. So in one year the m-model, the next year the Mx model and the year after that another new m model, etc, etc.

 

[Realityck]

Check this link - “The main benefit of Mini LED over conventional LEDTVs (which also use LED backlighting with an LCD panel) is that the LED backlights are so much smaller that they can be much more precise and, therefore, ensure that pictures are bolder in colour, deeper in black levels, and brighter for HDR.”

I've been wondering why some seem to think that amazing things occur with a 12.9", or a 14" or a 16" LCD screen using mini-LED back lighting array? Most TVs with it are 50" or larger. Sets that are smaller usually use edge lighting only, not back light arrays. The blooming observations with the 12.9" iPadPro is good feedback.

 

[Ion-X]

Could be a great setup by Apple to weed out the grass.

Whoever is telling Prosser and others that the announcement will take place might well be weeded out.

Why would Apple leak the same false information to 4 or 5 different analysts? A leak would only be used to single out one particular leaker.

 

[iDontHaveAUserName]

I expect the only thing to come out next week is M1 with 32 and 64g RAM support, which is then available in the current 13” and 16”.