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Report: Super-Lightweight 12-inch MacBook Powered By Apple Silicon to Launch This Year

appleinsider.com

Inside Apple's iPad: the A4 processor | Appleinsider

Apple raised eyebrows during the original iPad unveiling when it casually noted that the new device would be using a new, Apple-designed System on a Chip named the A4. The company's future custom silicon plans are likely to expand even faster following its acquisition of Intrinsity, a privately...
appleinsider.com appleinsider.com
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Custom Chip not off the shelf.
 
I owned the MacBook 12 and its just too small. Apple should focus on 13" or larger. The Air is just fine on a plane or as a convenient carry.
 
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ZipZap said:
I owned the MacBook 12 and its just too small. Apple should focus on 13" or larger. The Air is just fine on a plane or as a convenient carry.
Click to expand...
I disagree. The 12” was great. The extra weight of the Air is really noticeable. If they can expand the screen within the same footprint, all the better.
 
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Didn’t the butterfly keyboard live on in the iPad Pro case?

Currently use an iPad mini 4 with a clamcase keyboard, so a 12” would be huge.

One port isn’t a deal breaker for me as long as a nice dock comes out for it.
 
Sounds nice and may be perfect for a lot of users. Might pick one up to use a test/dev system.

Also, really glad I did not buy a MacBook Air this year.
 
StrangeNoises said:
I had the 12" macbook from 2015 and I loved loved loved the form-factor, and how light it was. The current Air is such a lump next to it. ... but it was underpowered, and the single USB-C port was too limiting. You couldn't satisfactorily dock it with a 4K monitor. Fix those problems (a single port is fine if that port is thunderbolt or, probably now, USB-4) and i'm in.
Click to expand...

I had the second gen of it with an m7 processor and despite supposedly being "way more" powerful, I agree. The form factor was magnificent. I was taking upwards of 70 flights a year at that time, and it was fantastic for airports/travel. However, not only was it slow, but ran so hot that eventually my SSD died after just two years and I had to replace the whole damn computer.
 
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Compaq_portable-IMG_7218.jpg


Still remember having to lug on of these around at 28 pounds, so any MacBook is light to me :)
 
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Rogifan said:
That’s what Apple should do but the Air name is so powerful I’m not sure they can drop it. Even when the 13” MNP was getting into Air territory in terms of thickness and weight tech journalists were still whining about Apple not selling a retina Air. But having the MB, MBA and MBP makes no sense.
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If these Apple Silicon Mac laptops are as thin and light as some expect them to be, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple drops the Air and the Pro branding. I can see them go to just Macbook branding with 3 sizes (12", 14", 16")
 
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cmaier said:
My wife’s 3+ year old MacBook 12” has started overheating and shutting down. just before apple care expired a month or two ago we had the keyboard and battery replaced. This new machine can’t come fast enough.
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Especially if you have pets, but even if you don't I'd crack it open and blow it out. Don't let the fan free spin - hold it still with something. It's amazing what laptops can collect inside of them.
 
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DocNo said:
Especially if you have pets, but even if you don't I'd crack it open and blow it out. Don't let the fan free spin - hold it still with something. It's amazing what laptops can collect inside of them.
Click to expand...

Err ... the 12" is fanless;)
 
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asiga said:
"Less than 1 kilogram" will actually be "close to 1 kg" (otherwise they would say "half a kilogram"), which is too much for a 12-inch nowadays (the Intel rMB already had that weight). That's too much for such a little screen. Look at the LG gram: A 17-inch weighting 1kg (you can argue the LG gram is not rigid enough, but it has the screen size you want --big--- and the weight you need).
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LG GRAM 17 - 1,35 kg
 
jlocker said:
appleinsider.com

Inside Apple's iPad: the A4 processor | Appleinsider

Apple raised eyebrows during the original iPad unveiling when it casually noted that the new device would be using a new, Apple-designed System on a Chip named the A4. The company's future custom silicon plans are likely to expand even faster following its acquisition of Intrinsity, a privately...
appleinsider.com appleinsider.com
.
Custom Chip not off the shelf.
Click to expand...

The A4 was actually a Cortex derivative. The A6 was the first completely custom design.
 
pray2crom said:
What I like to know is how much better are apple's "silicon" chips in video rendering compared to intel machines using AMD GPUs? Apple divorced themselves with Nvidia so cuda is out of the question so now we are stuck with open cl and metal. I am still not buying the hype that a lone a14(xxx) can outperform the current offerings.
Click to expand...

I'm very interested in this, as the RISC approach really isn't just tik or tok, but full on zigging compared to endlessly zagging. Apple being yoked to Intel constantly limited what they wanted to do, as we know. I am taking a very heterodox view of the new AMD chips in that I want to see more about how they do in regular-world computing other than gaming. Their ability to cool and efficiently multi-task may not be as impressive as their raw core and speed count. This YouTube video does a very nice breakdown of three different laptops, comparing top-end Windows laptops with Intel and AMD chips up against the 2019 MacBookPro. (And that reviewer is not at all biased towards Macs.)

It's interesting that in a lot of workhorse tasks the Intel PC still comes out ahead of the AMD, even with the extra cores and speed. As it happens, a lot of Adobe Premiere relies on bursty processes, which the AMD chips drivers.

The Mac, with technically the least ballsy tech specs, still beats the other two on some of the professional tasks. It goes to show the strength that comes with tuning the drivers and software in the way that Apple does. Macs can leverage that T2 chip for H.264 of course. And the performance of how much better FinalCut runs on the Mac compared to Premiere on any of the platforms shows some of the strengths there.
 
DocNo said:
Especially if you have pets, but even if you don't I'd crack it open and blow it out. Don't let the fan free spin - hold it still with something. It's amazing what laptops can collect inside of them.
Click to expand...
We have a dog who doesn’t shed, and since the whole top of the case was just replaced, I doubt there was an accumulation of gunk that fast. More likely the motherboard they put in there is messed up - bad thermal paste, or whatever. (and of course there is no fan in that thing)
 
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