First Apple silicon Mac not expected to launch until November
Apple may not unveil the first Apple silicon Mac at its October 13 event, and instead will launch the anticipated macOS device in November, a new report claims.
Credit: Apple
The Oct. 13 "Hi, Speed" event is largely expected to focus on new "iPhone 12" and "iPhone 12 Pro" devices, but Apple watchers have predicted that the first Mac with Apple silicon could make its debut during the keynote, too. Apple, for its part, only said that the Macs with first-party chips would arrive before the end of 2020.
In a Bloomberg report focused on 5G and the iPhone, Mark Gurman suggests that the first Apple silicon Mac won't launch during the Tuesday keynote. Instead, he said that the first Mac laptop with an Apple slicon chip "will emerge at another launch in November."
At this point, it isn't clear if that "launch" will be an actual separate keynote event or an unveiling via press release. Whether it's a keynote or not, the move is significant enough to warrant a separate launch.
Bloomberg does note that the device will be announced "among other products," suggesting that the first Apple silicon Mac could arrive alongside other Intel-based models. During its Apple silicon announcement, the company did say that new Intel Macs were in the pipeline.
The Oct. 13 event will be Apple's second keynote in the latter half of 2020, following an event that saw new Apple Watch and iPad models. Alongside four new iPhones with 5G support, Gurman said that Apple will unveil new HomePod speakers and Apple-branded over-ear headphones at the "Hi, Speed" keynote.
Given that Apple appears to be focusing on smartphones and audio at the Oct. 13 keynote, and that it focused on Apple Watches and iPads at the previous one, there may be enough Mac developments to justify a completely separate event or launch.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, Apple has been holding its launch events in a virtual and socially distanced fashion. Because launch videos are prerecorded, Apple may be choosing to further stagger its launch across multiple keynotes and months.
The first Mac with an Apple silicon device is expected to be either a refresh of the 12-inch MacBook or some MacBook Pro variant. It's rumored to sport the A14X processor, a custom GPU, and a battery life between 15 to 20 hours.
Credit: Apple
The Oct. 13 "Hi, Speed" event is largely expected to focus on new "iPhone 12" and "iPhone 12 Pro" devices, but Apple watchers have predicted that the first Mac with Apple silicon could make its debut during the keynote, too. Apple, for its part, only said that the Macs with first-party chips would arrive before the end of 2020.
In a Bloomberg report focused on 5G and the iPhone, Mark Gurman suggests that the first Apple silicon Mac won't launch during the Tuesday keynote. Instead, he said that the first Mac laptop with an Apple slicon chip "will emerge at another launch in November."
At this point, it isn't clear if that "launch" will be an actual separate keynote event or an unveiling via press release. Whether it's a keynote or not, the move is significant enough to warrant a separate launch.
Bloomberg does note that the device will be announced "among other products," suggesting that the first Apple silicon Mac could arrive alongside other Intel-based models. During its Apple silicon announcement, the company did say that new Intel Macs were in the pipeline.
The Oct. 13 event will be Apple's second keynote in the latter half of 2020, following an event that saw new Apple Watch and iPad models. Alongside four new iPhones with 5G support, Gurman said that Apple will unveil new HomePod speakers and Apple-branded over-ear headphones at the "Hi, Speed" keynote.
Given that Apple appears to be focusing on smartphones and audio at the Oct. 13 keynote, and that it focused on Apple Watches and iPads at the previous one, there may be enough Mac developments to justify a completely separate event or launch.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, Apple has been holding its launch events in a virtual and socially distanced fashion. Because launch videos are prerecorded, Apple may be choosing to further stagger its launch across multiple keynotes and months.
The first Mac with an Apple silicon device is expected to be either a refresh of the 12-inch MacBook or some MacBook Pro variant. It's rumored to sport the A14X processor, a custom GPU, and a battery life between 15 to 20 hours.
Comments
Though I think the whole SoC will be custom, not A-Series.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/10/09/apple-silicon-november-bloomberg/
Umm, who started that rumor? And why am I hearing that the first ASi Mac will have an A14X in it? Apple has already said they were working on a new family of SoCs for the Mac.
I’m guessing there will be two new series; X-series for consumer and Z-series for Pro systems. And they will have an “M” variant for mobile (laptop). And they will use the same CPU and GPU cores as the A-series, as well as other logic units.
Here’s what I think we’ll get...
consumer desktop... X8, X12, X20
consumer laptop... X8M, X12M
pro desktop... Z16, Z20, Z28
pro laptop... Z16M, Z20M
The # in the name represents the CPU core count
X @ 3GHz, and Z @ 4GHz
Desktop SoCs will have only 2 efficiency cores, the rest will be performance cores.
Mobile SoC cores will be half performance and half efficiency.
GPU cores will very from 8 to 16 (maybe higher on Pro systems).
A notional A14X with a 4+4+8 config: 4 perf cores, 4 eff cores and 8 graphics cores, would be awesome as one of the processor options for an MBA, MBP13, Mac mini, small iMac, and whatever low cost machine as well as an iPad Pro. It just needs to support up to 32 GB of RAM and TB3/USB4 for the Mac machines.
An A14 based MBA13 with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for $800 would make for a great machine too.
But yes, the higher performance SoC options will be "made for Mac" as it were. They will run too hot to be in a fanless form factor.
The introduction has already taken place at WWDC. The release will be more than a press release but I don't see a need for a massive show. This especially with A14 already released. Frankly all they need is a good video that doesn't gloss over the technical details.
The A14X: 4 perf cores, 4 eff cores, 8 GPU cores, will be perfectly fine as the low end option for all the Macs except for the large iMac, large laptop, and the Mac Pro. It's going to score something like 1600, 7000, and 24,000 in GB5 single, multi and Metal. That's 8 core Skylake territory with something like a Radeon Pro 5300M level GPU. Of course, we all hope the dedicated Mac SoCs will have 2x, 3x, 4x CPU and GPU perf.
If they are going to sell a Mac laptop at $800, it isn't going to come with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB of storage. A Mac laptop with 13" display, 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB is an optimistic set of features for $800, even with an A14, not an A14X. They sell an iPad Pro 12.9 with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage for $1000. Just don't see how they are going to have a machine that basically have equivalent components for $800.
Maybe they might be able to do it with an A14 SoC and 8 GB of RAM, if they are willing.
Long-term I saw the keyboard issue looming, and I saw evidence of other things, too, that had me concerned. The machine felt like it was heading towards failure eventually based on some weird things I saw happening. I traded it in on this 2019 RAM/GPU-loaded machine (2.3 Ghz i9, 1 TB SSD, because experience is the SSD won’t be used up in the lifespan I’ll have it, and the price for CPU speed increase would be a bad value for something I won’t notice in my use-case without artificial benchmarks). Of course, I timed my upgrade off by a year! Oh well. Worst-case scenario is this 16” will remain a very good Windows laptop after Apple no longer supports MacOS updates for it, with the fun part that Windows and MacOS make notably different metakey usage fo layout.
It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft/Apple cooperate to bring Windows for ARM as a bootable (no VM) OS. If that happens, Intel should be even more concerned long-term.
The great thing I see from perusing the WWDC information is the 8 large/performance+ 4 small/low-power cores is the majority of the time even with web browsers, it may momentarily power up some big cores to process the main rendering/JavaScript quickly to get sites displayed, but then coast on the 4 low-power cores. Short of regular heavy animation, Microsoft Office/ Apple’s suite will easily be able to work efficiently on the small cores. Only heavy-duty processing users (long-term) will see the lower battery life (more CPU/GPU-intensive games are what will be a more common case for casual users: decoding, playing video from youTube will be as battery-efficient as an iPad due to hardware acceleration).
I see the Apple Silicon MacBook Pros coming out as likely being a battery-sipping cross between an iPad with the horsepower of a MBP laptop when desired, just no touchscreen. I’ve considered and at times used in long battery-use scenarios to use an iPad for web-browsing/typing documentation while doing development, and saving the laptop for building, to maximize battery life. The reality is most of the time in software development (and computer on time) is spent thinking, reading/writing documentation, very little of the wall-time building, but it eats a lot of power to build code, and even a fair amount having the laptop just standing ready with screen on.
But with the coming Apple Silicon laptops BIG+little cores, this will be in a single device. Darn it, I can’t justify taking a loss selling/trading in this laptop!
I have a 21” iMac from 2014 with 8MB and it runs just fine now that I’ve upgraded it to an SSD. It was dog slow - to the point it was almost unusable. After I upgraded it, it now runs great... Can even run Xcode without any serious issues.