New Apple Silicon MacBooks and More at Apple's One More Thing Event
Apple just announced the first Macs with its own silicon replacing Intel, and yes, it’s everything we thought it would be. Three new Macs with Apple silicon: the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the Mac mini. (The event started with a long list of updates and jargon, and we just wanted to get to the Macs.)
The M1
Apple’s new processor combines high performance and high efficiency in a single system on chip for Mac: processor, I/O, security, memory and more, in a 5 nm chip with 16 billion transistors. It has four high-performance and four efficiency cores, and Apple says the four efficiency cores are faster than the current 2020 MacBook Air’s dual-core processors, plus an integrated GPU, a Neural Engine capable of 11 trillion operations per second and a Secure Enclave. Apple says macOS Big Sur is “buttery smooth” on it. Apple showed a performance-to-efficiency chart: Intel’s curve versus Apple silicon’s, with much better performance.
MacBook Air
Apple’s best-selling computer has 8 cores in the M1, now 3.5x faster than previous Airs, with 5x better graphics from the integrated GPU (Apple said it’s three times faster than any Windows PC in its class), a 2x faster SSD and up to 17 hours of battery life. No fan (“let me repeat: no fan”): whether editing video in Final Cut Pro or playing App Store games, the M1 should slice through while the machine stays quiet and cool, I assume. Add better image signal processing for the (hopefully better) 720p camera, P3 wide color, 8 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage to start, at the same $999 starting price. The difference to the $1,249 Air is one more GPU core (7 vs. 8) and starting storage of 512 GB.
Mac mini
Looks exactly like Mac minis of many years. You get what’s in the Air, except both options ($699 and $899) have the same 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU M1 and 8 GB of memory, with either 256 GB or 512 GB of storage. Apple says it’s 3x faster than the previous Mac mini with 5x the graphics, with two USB-C ports on the back (USB-C Thunderbolt 3 and USB4) and two regular USB-A ports, and it can run the Pro Display XDR.
13-inch MacBook Pro
The same 3 pounds as previous 13-inch Pros, with the M1 (about 2.8x faster than previous MacBook Pros), a GPU 5x faster, new image signal processing for the 720p camera, studio mics and up to 20 hours of battery life.
What I wanted to know, and what disappointed me
- Camera: 720p, not upgraded to 1080p; I hope the new image processing does a much better job than the “potato cams” we get now.
- Memory: I wondered whether we could add third-party memory to Apple silicon Macs; based on these models, you cannot: it’s integrated into the SoC, limited to 8 or 16 GB.
- Ports: only two USB-C ports on the MacBook Pro (I’d hoped for four, like the higher-end Pros).
- No 16-inch MacBook Pro, which was rumored; it would have been amazing to have something bigger and faster than the M1. Maybe in six months.
What I ordered
The higher-end 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1, 16 GB and 1 TB, and the base M1 MacBook Air, to test against my iMac and MacBook Air, and, of course, my iPad: what do these M1 Macs mean for the iPad? That’s a big question for my workflow. Are you excited about these? How do you think they’ll perform against the 2020 iMac, MacBook Air and iPad Pro?
Links
- Follow Me on Twitter
- 16” MacBook Pro
- iPad Pro 12.9” 2020
- Magic Keyboard for 12.9” iPad Pro
- 2020 iMac Mid Tier
- • Apple Silicon is coming for iPad
- • 2020 iMac 2 Months Later
- • Turn your iPad into a laptop
- Macbook vs iPad
- Sony A6400
- Sigma f1.4 16mm E Mount Lens
- Rode VideoMic NTG
- iPad Pro 12.9
- Used DJI OSMO 3 Gimbal for some shots
- Tascam DR-10L Audio Recorder with Lav
In this video
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