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Unhappy with the M1 Macs? Wait for the early 2021 Macs with Apple Silicon
- Thread starter Hexley
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Nope. But he could be going on instinct from following Apple's patterns over the course of years.
I'm not 100% sure but my guess is Apple's next announcements are - sometime by the end of March 2021:
16" MacBook Pro with M1X (or whatever the higher end chip will be called)
AirPods Studio
12.9" A14X iPad Pro with 5G and probably mini LED
I'd say I have about a 70% confidence. We can't even predict Airtags at this point. 24" iMac overhaul is probably later in the spring, 2021.
That's about all we can forecast without being in the boardroom where these roadmaps are created.
Wrong. Look at the iFixit teardown of the 2020 Intel Air. The machine uses pull tabbed tape, essentially command strips, to hold the battery in place. Evidently designed for replacement.
MacBook Air 2020 Teardown
A blog-style teardown of the MacBook Air 2020, in which we investigate the thickness of the new Magic Keyboard and discover some welcome tweaks to the internal design.
www.ifixit.com
Note that I used the word 'consumables' not upgrades. I referred to the battery.
They’re not going to offer a MBA with 32+ GB, but they are going to offer the 4-port MBP 13” and the 4-port space gray mini with 32+ GB (those have not been replaced yet). That’s why they still sell those on the website now - the M1 was never supposed to replace the 4-port versions. It replaced the 13” air and the two-port 13” pro, and the i3 mini.
Some people don’t realize this, and they will get upset, but people get upset all the time by decisions apple makes and yet apple is still here at 2 trillion.
If Apple has a chip good enough for the 16" MacBook Pro, it should also be good enough for most iMacs. In that case, I see little point in delaying the release of Apple Silicon iMacs.
iMacs and 4-port MacBook Pros are comparable products. Until now, MacBook Pros have used less powerful hardware, but only because they are thermally limited. With the increased power efficiency of Apple Silicon, there is no fundamental reason why laptops should be less powerful than thin desktops. Most people buy iMacs for the convenience of an all-in-one computer with a bigger display than a laptop, not for maximal performance.
People looking for performance will have to wait a little longer for new Mac Pros and iMac Pros. And maybe also for completely new products made possible by the new performance/power consumption/price trade-offs.
Good for you.Wrong. Look at the iFixit teardown of the 2020 Intel Air. The machine uses pull tabbed tape, essentially command strips, to hold the battery in place. Evidently designed for replacement.
MacBook Air 2020 Teardown
A blog-style teardown of the MacBook Air 2020, in which we investigate the thickness of the new Magic Keyboard and discover some welcome tweaks to the internal design.
Note that I used the word 'consumables' not upgrades. I referred to the battery.
I was thinking user replaceable battery with a step by step guide on apple.com website.
If you mean an easier time for service center to install a new battery then that's different.
Redesign bodies for the MBA would be after 2022.
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It seems that our opinions differ on what replaceability encompasses, which is fine.
What rankles me is the glued in batts in the Pro. Replacing them is tantamount to needing an oxyacetylene torch to replace your brakes. And if you take it to the dealer, they just replace the whole subframe.
I hope you’re right about iMacs coming with the 16” MBP. I think the iMac Pro is going to be discontinued as a line though.
iMac Pro always felt like a jerry rig solution or place holder for a refreshed Mac Pro.
Like I believe the 2019 Mac Pro should have been released in 2017 to maintain a 4 year upgrade cycle.
- Late 2013 Mac Pro with Xeon
- Late 2017 Mac Pro with Xeon
- Late 2021 Mac Pro with Apple Silicon
How many Mac Pros does Apple sell annually? A few hundred thousand? Certainly not enough to justify developing a more scalable workstation architecture for them. The current Mac Pros are relatively cheap, because the same architecture is also used in datacenters in massive numbers. With Apple Silicon, the R&D efforts must be funded by the sales of Apple workstations, which could make new Mac Pros much more expensive.
The alternative would be moving the line between consumer devices and workstations lower. In addition to Mac Pros, high-end models of iMacs, MacBook Pros, and maybe even Mac Minis could use the workstation architecture, and this would be reflected in the branding.
~1% of all Macs shipped are iMac Pros and Mac Pros. Based on how frequent it gets refreshed it could be ~25% of the iMac 27" Core i9 as the iMac gets refreshed annually while the Pro desktops gets refreshed every ~4 years.
Apple shipped an estimated 18.35 million Macs in 2019. So more or less 183,500 Pro desktops in 2019?
One implementation would be these Pro desktops will be using multiple SoCs shared with iMacs to be economical. With certain hardware bits to be disabled to allow for multiple SoCs to work well together. Decades ago this hardware technique have been done to allow 2 or more physically separate cores on a chip to work together on single logic board.
Or
Chiplets?
Or
Apple's Pro desktop chips will be the platform for their own ARM-based cloud service.
I've read references that Apple uses Linux for their data centers. This may allow Linux on Apple Silicon. Performance per Watt is very important to the cloud as well. It would make for marketing gold.
Eventually x86-based Apple data centers will need an upgrade so the upgrade path would surely be based on Apple Silicon.
If the fastest supercomputer since June 2020 is ARM-based then why not use the best performance per Watt ARM chip tech?
I am just extending current product line tech beyond its intended use case.
Think Apple's ARM efforts as a base for a donut mix. You can shape it donut shaped with a hole or without a hole. You can even even give it a floral or phallic shaped. Sugar raise it or dunk it in chocolate.
The donut mix could be the basis for a dinner roll or pizza dough.
A background of the persons who disagree with me would be interesting to see. Have they worked corporate, computer engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, R&D, marketing, sales, etc?
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The M1 isn't really an 8-core cpu in the sense you are thinking. It's closer to a 4-core, since the "little" 4 cores are slowish and meant for low power.
I'm basing using the description of Apple's Mac Compare page.
What I wanted to bring into focus was how many Intel Macs will received when they transition to Apple Silicon.
Assuming Johny Srouji meant at least three chips when he said "family", and we count the M1 (14x in drag) as one of them, we should see two more. High laptop/low iMac is one.
The high end chip is where all the uncertainty is. What configuration, what connectivity, what memory solution. I honestly don't think we can speculate productively about a higher end solution - the possible space is just too wide without further constraints.
The next laptop chip on the other hand is pretty straight forward, unless you mind 50% error bars.
It's likely to simply be more of the same. Nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary, but not much space for surprises either. The memory subsystem configuration is arguably the greatest unknown.
The high end chip is where all the uncertainty is. What configuration, what connectivity, what memory solution. I honestly don't think we can speculate productively about a higher end solution - the possible space is just too wide without further constraints.
The next laptop chip on the other hand is pretty straight forward, unless you mind 50% error bars.
It's likely to simply be more of the same. Nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary, but not much space for surprises either. The memory subsystem configuration is arguably the greatest unknown.
Kuo: Redesigned MacBooks With Apple Silicon to Launch in Second Half of 2021
Apple plans to release additional MacBook models with Apple Silicon in the second half of 2021, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, as part of the company's two-year transition away from Intel processors across its Mac lineup. In a research note today, obtained by MacRumors, Kuo said that...
forums.macrumors.com
But but but Hexley said to us that is 100% SURE (and we know he is Tim Cook) that Apple will release almost every new arm macs until March....whats happening...so, release a new 16" Mbp and after a few months ,an redesign is coming ?
come on....Kuo how wrong can you be?! you are an reputable chain leaker
Kuo: Redesigned MacBooks With Apple Silicon to Launch in Second Half of 2021
Apple plans to release additional MacBook models with Apple Silicon in the second half of 2021, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, as part of the company's two-year transition away from Intel processors across its Mac lineup. In a research note today, obtained by MacRumors, Kuo said that...
But but but Hexley said to us that is 100% SURE (and we know he is Tim Cook) that Apple will release almost every new arm macs until March....whats happening...so, release a new 16" Mbp and after a few months ,an redesign is coming ?
come on....Kuo how wrong can you be?! you are an reputable chain leaker
I stopped listening to Hexley. Nothing he is putting out there as "100% certain" remotely makes any sense and anyone who puts out that kind of assurance having no relationship directly to Apple is just arrogant.
I know your post was sarcasm (sorry to tear down the fourth wall), but I put a lot of faith into Kuo's predictions.
So, as common sense dictates, there will be no immediate refresh on the Mini nor the Air nor the 13" MBP.
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maybe...we really dont know...based on Kuo predictions...he is talking about the redesign macbooks...so 14" and maybe the 16" as he told us months ago
So there are sill chances that the Mini can be updated or the Air in the next 3-4 months...but who knows but Apple ?!
Ya, I do find that misleading from Apple, though in fairness the performance is about the same. I mean it does have 8 cores, but it's only the big 4 that really matter for performance.
Here's a good review between a Intel Mac mini + eGPU vs M1 Mac mini - eGPU.
With how much was spent to get the Intel "beat" the M1 will really make people go with the M1.
Apple is experiencing Osborne effect by continuing to sell Intel Macs the majority of which would still be sold until WWDC 2021.
Would specific use case that insist that Intel Macs be bought exceed 20% of Macs shipped for the next 7 months for Mac mini, MBA and 13" when a faster & cheaper alternative is available now and a higher-end options to be completed by June 2021?
Time is money and you do not become a more than $2 trillion business by dilly dallying
With how much was spent to get the Intel "beat" the M1 will really make people go with the M1.
Apple is experiencing Osborne effect by continuing to sell Intel Macs the majority of which would still be sold until WWDC 2021.
Would specific use case that insist that Intel Macs be bought exceed 20% of Macs shipped for the next 7 months for Mac mini, MBA and 13" when a faster & cheaper alternative is available now and a higher-end options to be completed by June 2021?
Time is money and you do not become a more than $2 trillion business by dilly dallying
Particularly in the laptop market, the M1 stonks everything short of the I9 MBP. And you're right about what they're leaving on the table. Customers who are willing to fork over for $3000 16" Pros are instead buying base M1 MBPs.
Global personal computer market as a whole is ~80% laptop. Here's a video of a M1 Mac Mini trouncing a 2019 MBP 16" Core i9.
M1 Mac mini vs 2020 iMac Core i9
A fraction of the people buying Intel Macs a quarter ago will be buying one today.
Makes me wish kept to my 2012 Mac and sold any of Macs last month when I was made an offer.
I bought a low spec Intel mac, simply because I needed a stable computer, and couldn't afford to keep waiting. My initial plan was to sell after the new 4 port 13 or 16 came out, and buy one of those, but the admirable performance of the Air has me contemplating alternatives. Maybe I'll end up with an Air and a spare instead. That would nearly fit into the budget of a base 16, let alone an optioned up one.
I seem to have good, stable silicon in my 2020 MBP 2 port, which was the main goal.
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