The video linked earlier in the thread is certainly interesting. Here's my take:
The 6th generation Apple TV seems to be a simple continuation of the existing product line with some tweaked features and a new remote being the headline features. I think that Apple want to discontinue the A10X line to free up some space for other CPU manufacture. The 2017 iPad Pro that used that CPU is long since gone (since it was replaced by the 2018 and 2020 variants).
And a games console would be a new product line which would want its own headline presentation. Before the April refresh I would have assumed that Apple would want to go with an A14x chipset - which might have come with 6 or 8Gb of RAM and a clock speed probably lower than what the M1 comes with.
Here's how I think Apple could get some high end tech into an Apple TV Pro and not overprice it.
The base M1 CPU used in the lowest SKU M1 MBA has one (typically faulty) GPU core deactivated. This has been flagged as reducing overall chip costs because it's re-using a chip which would otherwise have been thrown away by deactivating a faulty core.
Intel and AMD do it - it's called
binning. And it's why the various Intel iMacs have different clock speeds as well as core counts.
But because Apple never quote Mhz speeds on the M1 CPU you have to presume that each one passes muster at the speed and Apple therefore currently throw away chips that have failed CPU cores or are unable to sustain the required clock speed.
Existing benchmarks aren't suggesting any of the M1 CPUs currently in circulation are clocked any differently to the others most people have assumed we will see M1 CPUs with suffixes to denote some change of feature.
For example M1X will have more CPU and GPU cores. I have gone as far as suggesting that M1X has more CPU cores while M1Z might have more GPU cores (and on top of the M1X CPU cores). This would denote that an M1X is an M1Z with some deactivated GPU cores for example - just like with the A12z and A12x.
But what if there was a plan in place for for a binning procedure being done on the M1 CPUs that don't meet the requirements to become M1 CPUs?
Previously we might have expected an A14x CPU to have the same 4+4 setup as the M1, but perhaps lower clocked. These might denote an M1 that isn't stable enough to be sold in an M1 Mac or iPad Pro.
You might also expect some of these chips to, like the 7 core GPU version of the M1, have one or two CPU cores disabled because they are faulty.
An A14x may never appear now because the iPad Pro has gone full M1 but if you compare the A12z with the M1 you see that the CPU was clocked a lot lower so it got me thinking.
We may reach a situation where, after a few months of manufacturing, Apple might have some kind of idea how many CPUs they are throwing away because a core failed or it can't stay stable at the reported 3.2GHz of the high performance Firestorm cores.
I'd dare say that Apple have good reason for wanting all 8 GPU cores to be functional in a games orientated AppleTV Pro.
So we could have a future device powered by a binned version of the M1 but marketing wise Apple may not want to call it an M1 CPU because it would be slower than the ones going into the Macs.
There's plenty of letters available, but I say say that M1X and M1Z might be reserved for high performance versions of the M1, this leaves us something like M1T (for TV).
This nominal M1T could have 2 or 3 Firestorm Cores, or 4 Firestorm cores that run slower than the regular M1 for sustained heat reasons. Apple could be looking at binning stats to see what is the most cost effective CPU configuration to reclaim for use in the lower tier product.
So why didn't they launch it now alongside the AppleTV 6th generation?
For me, announcing at WWDC would be the perfect time to brief developers to create product ahead of the holiday season and perhaps demo existing secret product, possibly even pre-announce some games and mention if they have some studios and AAA titles on board.
As a footnote - what a spoiler it would be for the Epic case if Apple have seen that Sony and Microsoft are struggling to get their consoles out for the next 18 months. If Apple were to come out with a games console M1 variant for £499 it'd only be priced slightly behind the Mac mini which starts at £699 with 2 Thunderbolt ports and 256Gb storage.
Would it then be easy to imagine a super base model coming with M1T CPU, USB-C ports instead of Thunderbolt, and a HDMI port, and either 64 or 128Gb storage and only running tvOS? Throw in some iMac style pastel colours too
- could Apple make all Apple TV Pros Product Red or instance? And the M1T might be a slightly under clocked machine with just 2 or 3 high performance cores.
They could even keep the existing Mac mini case and drive home the silent running next generation console angle.
For me, WWDC would be the ideal place to launch the product when the M1 will be seen as an ageing CPU if it's not actually superseded by an M2 which you might expect to be based on the technology used in the A15 CPU.
The big plus point then is that writing apps for a low spec M1 means they could potentially all be ported to macOS - or vice versa depending on target audience.
