kpom

tyler82 said:

I ordered the base Air on Nov. 12 (via Adorama) and not a peep from Apple yet on shipping. Hope it gets here by Christmas since it's a gift!

Wow. I took advantage of a Cyber Monday promotion at Adorama for the configuration I wanted (16GB/7Core GPU/512GB). Hopefully I get mine before January 8 (by when I need to return the model I've been using). Did they submit the drop-ship order to Apple November 12?

doggone said:

High demand or low production rates?  Given that the form factor itself hasn't changed that much, it would be surprising that general manufacturing has been the issue.  Is it that the chip fab or board production is lagging?
It sucks to be waiting for a new laptop, especially given the excitement around the M1 chip.

I hope this doesn't also delay the release of the 16 inch MBP.  My wife's current MBP has a speaker issue so would love to replace it with a new 16 inch unit. 

I'm guessing high demand, though the M1 also "competes" with the A14 for production capacity at TSMC. The reviews have been incredibly good.

 DuhSesame said:

I wonder how much difference we’ll see for the Air vs. the Pro.

I assume it’s just the long-term performance.

I agree, but this is still very impressive. Something like Cinebench will be better for judging the difference in sustained CPU tasks. 

One difference between the early 2020 Air and base MacBook Pro is that the latter could sustain high power longer because it used higher wattage chips. That could well be the case with the new models. I.e. both the new Air and Pro are using the M1 chips, but Apple might be allowing the M1 to run faster on the Pro (and certainly it will run at top speed longer because of the active cooling system vs. the passive cooling in the Air).

That said, I opted for the Air and will test it next week when it arrives.

blurpbleepbloop said:

If Apple is following the Intel switchover playbook then that puts the screws to any recent or planned Intel-based Mac purchase. Apple stopped compiling MacOS for PowerPC after just two years of producing the first Intel based Macs. Keep in mind this is during the period when a two year span would have signaled a fairly significant increase in power/capabilities.
But if this timeframe is applied today, wow, it really will screw recent hardware purchases. Rather than being able to keep on current OSes for 5-7 years (keeping very capable hardware, by any metric, relevant) some may get as few as 2 years.
I would really appreciate a public commitment by Apple to fully support Intel Macs as the hardware allows (ie fallback gracefully if certain capabilities aren’t possible) for a minimum of 5 years.

Tim Cook said that they have Intel Macs in the pipeline and that they are “excited about them,” but Jobs said the same thing about PowerPC Macs in 2005. I’m guessing that Tim Cook realizes he’s “Osbourning” Mac sales somewhat, but Apple isn’t as dependent on Macs and can afford a blip. That said, since Intel Macs can always be converted to Windows PCs (or be used to run native x64 Windows) some people might buy the last versions for just that reason. That was not the case with PowerPC Macs, since no other commercially viable OS ran on them.

Given that Apple has annual OS updates now, I’m guessing that the next 3, and possibly 4 new OS releases will support Intel. The last “new” Intel Mac will probably ship in 2021 (it may just be a Tiger Lake Mac Mini or 16” Pro), and will get at least 2 upgrades.