Apple is going to declare a new age by ending a 15-year relationship with Intel. According to Bloomberg, a new MacBook Pro will be announced next week at Apple’s “One Moe Thing” online event. Furthermore, a new half the size ARM-based Mac Pro is in development. Read on.
Apple Silicon
The Mac transition to Apple Silicon is a planned two-year process of switching the CPUs in Apple’s Macintosh computers from Intel’s x86-64 to Apple-designed chips that use the ARM64 architecture. CEO Tim Cook announced the plan as a “Historic Day” in his WWDC keynote address on June 22, 2020. Apple has been building and refining its own processors for over a decade. It has all started from the iPhone that demanded performance and capabilities that were seen as impossible in a device that small. Apple claims that the most recent iPad is 1000 faster than the first generation, thanks to the ARM architecture. Furthermore, Apple Silicon will be developed in-house, which allows many advantages regarding costs and other technological possibilities.
Utilizing the Pro Apps
The technology will allow scalable architecture for utilizing and optimizing the ProApps. In a demonstration during the WWDC, Final Cut Pro X was presented running on Apple Silicon for the first time. The demonstration showed playing back three streams of 4K ProRes video and applying filters and color correction in real-time with no dropping frames and/or other side effects. According to Apple, the timeline for implementation of the technology is expected to take about two years with the first ARM-based Macs to be released by the end of 2020. Well, this time has come. A Bloomberg article sheds some interesting light on the upcoming Apple’s online event, “One More Thing”. In that event, the new OS will be presented, macOS Big Sur, which supposed to enable the transition to Apple Silicon.
MacBook Pro will be armed with ARM
Accordion to Bloomberg, the first Arm-based Apple Silicon Macs will be coming next week and presented during the “One More Thing” event held on November 10th. Although Apple declined to comment, a source confirmed to Bloomberg that Apple and overseas suppliers are ramping up production of three Mac laptops with Apple processors: New 13-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros and a new 13-inch MacBook Air. Bloomberg elaborates that according to people familiar with the matter. Foxconn, known also as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is assembling the two smaller laptops, while Quanta Computer Inc. is building the larger MacBook Pro. The smaller models are further ahead in production and at least those two laptops will be shown at next week’s event. Beyond the processor switch, the devices won’t have significant design changes.
Mac Pro at about “half the size”
Besides the laptops lineup, the company is already at work on a redesigned iMac and a new Mac Pro model. Bloomberg’s sources claim that Apple engineers are currently developing a new Mac Pro that looks like the current design at about half the size. It’s unclear if that Mac will replace the current Mac Pro or if it’s an additional model. Apple’s chip designs could help the company reduce the size of its computers due to increased power efficiency, but the current Mac Pro is large, in part, to fit components like additional storage drives and graphics chips. However, when thinking about this, it can be done, since there is plenty of real estate inside the “old” Mac Pro that can be utilized, which means that the new ARM-based Mac Pro will be more condensed, but even more powerful.
