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First Macs With Apple Silicon Could Be 13-Inch MacBook Air and 13-Inch MacBook Pro

I really fancy slipping my iPad Pro 12.9 and similarly sized MacBook into my bag, best of both worlds. I rarely use my 2016 MBP 15" anymore. As long as the MacBook can connect to a 4K monitor, it will be great as a backup system for short periods too. (Not going to lie, I've already been consolidating everything onto my iMac Pro & Drobo in advance!)
 
yg17 said:
I just bought a 2020 13" MBP when they came out. I'm gonna be pissed if they update it after 6 months.
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How can you be pissed? There have been rumors for years that they are transitioning, just about 6 months ago, Cook said they would transition, and you purchased a currently acceptable device. I device that some folks will continue to purchase for fear of some software not playing well with Apple Silicon.

I’m in the market for a computer and have been for over a year and I’ve been waiting to see how this plays out. I can’t imagine being upset if I couldn’t wait for the already rumored next thing...
 
If it’s the Air I’ll be buying, so long as they show at least some of the basics running on it - Photoshop, Affinity stuff,... and if it just ran iPad apps I’d be happy with it. Speed and battery life will hopefully be good. My 2012 Air isn’t great anymore. 😀
 
Number 41 said:
Who else is excited to own a computer that needlessly switched to a processor type that no one else uses and that won't be compatible with any of the software you currently run?
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"No one else uses" except Apple and all the Mac users. I'll be in good company.

Look at my sig, I haven't updated my stuff in 5 years. Would've been 8 had my 2012 MBP's mobo not died.
 
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Could also mean 2 models, eg low/high end of 1 13 laptop, who knows.
But it doesn’t really make sense to me to release an Air and a MBP of the same size, but that’s just me... I guess we’ll all know more on the 10th and keep the rumors coming 😎😎
 
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bernoulli said:
I’m making a wild guess here but I think there is a possibility that people use mac with software that’s not made by apple or adobe.
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They'll just recompile. For the relics whose devs have disappeared without leaving behind the src, there's Rosetta. Sure that'll go away some day, but those who really care will virtualize. Apple seems to be making this a non-issue for nearly everyone.

(edit: actually, Windows VM users will suffer)
 
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jz0309 said:
Could also mean 2 models, eg low/high end of 1 13 laptop, who knows.
But it doesn’t really make sense to me to release an Air and a MBP of the same size, but that’s just me... I guess we’ll all know more on the 10th and keep the rumors coming 😎😎
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But the Air and the Pro have been 13" for years. The main differentiator has always been performance.
 
Wonder what chip the air would have ? A14 for the MacBook Air and A14x for MacBook Pro ? Or a new variety of chips
 
hot-gril said:
They'll just recompile. For the relics whose devs have disappeared without leaving behind the src, there's Rosetta. Sure that'll go away some day, but those who really care will virtualize. Apple seems to be making this a non-issue for nearly everyone.
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x86_64 Windows VM is quite crucial for me… And I'm sure I'm not alone.
 
howywood said:
Then I expect my 2020 MBP 13” to be swapped with the new one. I’ve been a lifelong Apple fan, but their upgrade cycles for their computers make no sense.
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Entitled much? If you really cared about something like the CPU inside of your Mac, then you should have been following the rumors. All of us have seen this coming for years. You'd be better off skipping the first year anyway. I'm skipping the first gen at least, and likely the second gen because software updates and time for third party developers to work with the hardware will really help. Not to mention the first few generations of ARM iPads were nothing compared to what came next, especially on the GPU side. Give Apple a few years and these things will be several times faster. But then you'll probably be calling on them to upgrade your Mac for free again…
 
the Apple Silicon MacBooks will be great for people who do everything on the apple ecosystem. but bad for those needing windows programs to run alongside, unless some very good virtualisation software emerges.
 
tgwaste said:
The 12" macbook is the best laptop Apple ever made. I want to see that come back and be maintained and updated.
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Nope. It was the 13" Mid-2011 MacBook Air with the 60 GB SSD and 2 GB of RAM. I'm still rocking it with MacOS Sierra.

I will be very interested to see the new redesigned iMac for 2021 but it better come in 27" - not 24".
 
meme1255 said:
Until x86_64 virtualisation is possible, I'll stay with a Intel-based Mac.
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laz232 said:
I have yet to see anything about it running VMware Win10 efficiently - especially with real professional SW like Empire XPU, Altium Designer, Solidworks etc - I don't want to maintain two computers (Intel MacBook + Win10 laptop) and I don't want to go over to Win10 for my administration and documentation work...
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The bottom line with virtualisation is simple: wait & see.

There's something in the pipeline from Apple itself with their mention of Linux virtualisation

Companies like Parallels for sure have not been sitting by idling away while their market disappears. Give them some more time to announce a product.

Similarly even MSFT cannot ignore that Intel CPUs are looking awful when it comes to processing power / watt used. In a world that increasingly turns more "green", even Redmond will have to do something in the end. Maybe that could include licensing what's needed to run a future version of windows in a virtual machine on an AppleSi machine. It's all where they want to end up themselves in the longer term.

Till then: you still have a year or more to buy a new intel based mac.
And second hand machines will be around for many more years to come - even today you can still pick up fully working PowerPC based ones if you're that desperate.

Other than that: it's not that hard to be windows-free. I only used windows for testing my own websites in MSIE and EDGE for _many_ years. But even that is now gone: they'll have to be standards compliant or won't get to use my websites is my current policy. And that allows me to have the same policy as the cleaning lady: I don't do windows.
So yes it might mean sometimes that I'll make a different buying choice when a vendor makes their stuff windows only. But there's plenty of others that do embrace macOS.
 
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Number 41 said:
Who else is excited to own a computer that needlessly switched to a processor type that no one else uses and that won't be compatible with any of the software you currently run?
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There is so much wrong with this it is hard to know where to begin.

1) ARM is all over the place and while AS is a variant it is part of ARM sort of like AMD is part of x86
2) The change over isn't "needless"; Intel couldn't produce the CPU Apple wanted at the specs promised by Intel in the timeframe given by Intel and what Apple did were buggy messes. An Intel employee admitted as much.
3) Thanks to Rosetta 2 the "won't be compatible with any of the software you currently run" is total BS. It is so wrong it doesn't even qualify as FUD
 
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I actually reached out to some pretty niche scientific software that we use and asked if they will be transitioning to Apple Silicon, I was pleasantly surprised when they told me they have already ordered dev kits. So pretty exciting stuff.
 
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