If I had to guess, Apple will announce the Intel updates via press release the week before so that the event can be 100% Apple silicon.
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Your estimates of announcement/launch date, model for first Apple Silicon Mac?
- Thread starter johngwheeler
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We don’t know what those new macs are for other than they are running Mac OS 11. There’s nothing in the names that suggest we’re getting an intel refresh. Not saying it won’t happen, but there’s really not enough information in this filing that suggests much other than possible new macs.
That being said, it does lend more credence to a mid-late November Mac event. I’m expecting 3 new Apple Silicon macs to be revealed at the event based off of the many leaks and rumors corroborated with this new information. It sounds like we could see an entry-level notebook (MBA?), the 13” MBP update, as well as the new smaller iMac redesign based off of supply chain rumors.
What adds to the confusion is that at least three of the model numbers were originally filed with both the EEC and the FCC in June of 2019 as part of a larger set, but were not used. Of the ones that were used, they became the 2019 16" MacBook Pro 16, the 2020 MacBook Air and the two 2020 MacBook Pro 13" models.
This is probably why some people were claiming that at least one of the re-filed numbers would apply to a 2020 MacBook Pro 16 update and IMO the most-likely form for that to happen is it gets a new 10th Gen Intel CPU (since it did recently get a GPU upgrade) as I do not believe Apple's dedicated GPU is ready.
The new ones are desktops A2348, A2438, A2439 and laptops A2338, A2337, A2182, A2158, A2147. The rest existing or old Macs.
A2330 is Mac Mini DTK
A1993 Mac Mini
A2304 Mac Pro Rack
A1991 Mac Pro
A2116 iMac 21.5" 2019
A2115 iMac 27" 2019-2020
A1986 iMac Pro
A1481 Mac Pro 2013
A1418 iMac 2012-2017
A2251 MacBook Pro 13" 2020
A2179 MacBook Air 13" 2020
A2159 MacBook Pro 13" 2019
A2141 MacBook Pro 16" 2019
A1990 MacBook Pro 15" 2018-2019
A1989 MacBook Pro 13" 2018-2019
A1932 MacBook Air 13" 2018-2019
A1466 MacBook Air 13" 2012-2017
A2330 is Mac Mini DTK
A1993 Mac Mini
A2304 Mac Pro Rack
A1991 Mac Pro
A2116 iMac 21.5" 2019
A2115 iMac 27" 2019-2020
A1986 iMac Pro
A1481 Mac Pro 2013
A1418 iMac 2012-2017
A2251 MacBook Pro 13" 2020
A2179 MacBook Air 13" 2020
A2159 MacBook Pro 13" 2019
A2141 MacBook Pro 16" 2019
A1990 MacBook Pro 15" 2018-2019
A1989 MacBook Pro 13" 2018-2019
A1932 MacBook Air 13" 2018-2019
A1466 MacBook Air 13" 2012-2017
Just speculation, but I doubt the ARM Mac Pro's are ready already as they require much more performance (graphics and otherwise). So I could see 2 iMacs (in diffrent sizes) and fingres crossed an ARM Mac Mini, as the 3 non laptop models.
November is the most likely, IMO. I think Apple wants them out in time for the holidays, hopefully they'll be available in time. They may not be available until mid-December depending on how constrained they supplies are for the new Macs. Looking forward to new 24" iMac.
My best guess is Tuesday 8 December.
November seems to be too early based on Tim's "shipping before the end of the year" comment during WWDC.
For sure, there will be no announcement the week of November 2 due to the media circus surrounding the US elections.
Tuesday 10 November is a vague possibility. After that, the US Thanksgiving holidays becomes bad timing. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't celebrate this holiday but the fact of the matter is that the launch revolves around the USA.
More importantly, let's remember that Macs generate no more than 10% of the Apple's revenue. Apple did not the set the expectation to shareholders for a mid-quarter launch so my guess is that it will be delayed as late as possible but still ship in 2020. The first Apple Silicon Macs won't represent 10% of Apple revenue since it won't be all product families for an entire quarter. So late in the year with a limited number of AS Mac models, it might be 0.5-1.0% of Apple's revenue.
Apple is far more motivated to ship the maximum number of iPhone 12s especially because the release is late and they won't get a full quarter's worth of unit sales.
Apple Silicon Mac sales revenue in Q1FY2021 is close to being a "rounding error."
November seems to be too early based on Tim's "shipping before the end of the year" comment during WWDC.
For sure, there will be no announcement the week of November 2 due to the media circus surrounding the US elections.
Tuesday 10 November is a vague possibility. After that, the US Thanksgiving holidays becomes bad timing. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't celebrate this holiday but the fact of the matter is that the launch revolves around the USA.
More importantly, let's remember that Macs generate no more than 10% of the Apple's revenue. Apple did not the set the expectation to shareholders for a mid-quarter launch so my guess is that it will be delayed as late as possible but still ship in 2020. The first Apple Silicon Macs won't represent 10% of Apple revenue since it won't be all product families for an entire quarter. So late in the year with a limited number of AS Mac models, it might be 0.5-1.0% of Apple's revenue.
Apple is far more motivated to ship the maximum number of iPhone 12s especially because the release is late and they won't get a full quarter's worth of unit sales.
Apple Silicon Mac sales revenue in Q1FY2021 is close to being a "rounding error."
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Prosser thinks it will be 17 November for the announcement and that is nine days before US Thanksgiving. Since this will be a digital event with no travel needed, it should not impact any US media's holiday plans. It will also be two full weeks after the US General Election so by then the media circus should be either fully closed or at least pulling down the tents.
As for the actual shipping date, I agree it could very well be in December.
Is the collective in agreement that there will be no AS update of the MBP 16 this year? The $2200 current model is very enticing.
I do not see any of the dGPU Macs being moved to Apple Silicon until Apple's dedicated GPU is ready. I expect the first waves will be the models that have an Intel iGPU as the GPUs on the Apple A-series SoCs will generally beat them.
I'm really eager to buy a "low budget" Mac for basic use like web browsing.
Does anyone know the price an "ARM Mac" will be for someone with low performance needs like me?
I've heard some Mac experts say the new "Arm Macs" will be more expensive?
Does anyone know the price an "ARM Mac" will be for someone with low performance needs like me?
I've heard some Mac experts say the new "Arm Macs" will be more expensive?
The announcement is most likely on the November 17th date Prosser targeted. Since the iPhone 12 Pro Max and 12 Mini are released on the 13th, it wouldn't make sense for Apple to trash its own publicity machine by making the AS Mac announcement that same week. Moving it to the 17th would allow the press to focus on these new devices instead of splitting coverage between the Mac and iPhones.
Thank you. I had thought this Apple GPU was specific to desktops and assumed that A14X (or whatever) would have enough push to compete with discrete GPU-powered laptops. Not gaming machine, of course, but for video, etc.
In any case, I don't care to wait around another year.
I expect this first generation of Apple Silicon Macs to be similar in price to their Intel equivalents (so neither appreciably cheaper nor more expensive) as Apple will want to recover the R&D and production costs of the new designs and components.
But I do think ASi will allow Apple to eventually offer a wider range of price points for Macs than they have in the past, just as they do with iPhones, iPads, Watches.
People need to stop saying this.
One of the key reasons (and perhaps not the most important) for the AS transition is that R&D costs are going to be mostly paid for by the iPhone. The CPU cores, the GPU cores, the Neural Engine cores, and probably at least half of the remaining "blocks" have already been paid for while developing the A14 SoC for the iPhone 12 and the latest iPad. It is unknown at this point what the other parts of the Mac's SoC will be, but we can say that there will be a different display driver blocks (to drive the Mac's display, and allow for say a 4K external monitor on the USB4/TB4 ports vs. the iPad/iPhone display), and the USB4/TB4 ports. The only R&D costs that need to be carried specifically by the AS Macs are for the Mac specific blocks, and not the common blocks. Those costs will not be very significant.
As for the production costs, they will be going down. Apple will be saving money vs. what they are paying out to Intel for their CPUs. Not only that, but they will most likely be using common memory technology between the iPhone/iPad and the AS Macs (LPDDR5, most likely). That commonality will allow for further cost savings (there are considerable volume discounts between buying memory for 4M Macs a quarter, vs. 50-70M iPhone+6-10M iPad+5M Macs per quarter.) They also get rid of the T2 chip (it will be inside the Soc).
I don't believe that there will be a case change in the first AS Macs, so there should be minimal costs incurred there.
The remaining costs that will occur will be no differnt for an AS Mac vs. an Intel Mac.
Er what about Rosetta 2, MacOS Big Sur, assisting developers etc.
There is also a lot more to the hardware than CPU / GPU. Who knows about the engineering to cooling etc? Also I am 100% sure there will be new hardware. Your opinion may differ and that's fine, but I think it will be all new designs.
However all costs associated with the transition will be spread over 3-5 years not having to be recouped immediately.
Knowing Apple they will want instant profit on the computers, however their margins will increase as sales increase and the transition ends.
They will price the products accordingly to estimated sales, profit margin required, and also the levels they believe customers will pay.
Another factor in pricing is if they want their Mac market to grow or contract. Their Mac market has been very consistent in volume the last few years. (Which could also be described as "going nowhere".) They could have just kept going with a quite successful and profitable business. But they decided not to. And while Apple loves their profit margins, I doubt they changed their silicon strategy for the Mac with sales to less people as a goal. What would be the point of that? Particularly as services is a growing revenue stream, they want to add people to their eco-system, not grow more exclusive. And when it comes to sales volume, pricing is a huge factor.
Ergo, I personally believe the new systems will be priced to sell.
As Kotask pointed out, production costs are likely to go down generally speaking, but lets try to put some numbers on the table. Apple currently pays some $200 and up to intel for their chips, and $100 and up to AMD for their GPUs, rowing to $500 (and up) for the top end configurations.
Apple said they were making "a family of SoCs" for their Macs. Lets start the napkin math from the bottom:
A14x - Apple has typically made phone chips that are just below 100mm2 and iPad Pro chips that are just above. The A14 seems to continue this pattern, so lets assume that the A14x does too. Let’s put it at 11x11=121mm2. That would yeild almost 500 chips from a wafer. Lets ballpark Apples wafer cost to $10000 at 5nm, and yield with modern design-for-yield strategies to 80%. That would put their raw cost per die at 10000/(500x0.8)=$25/SoC. Obviously, this disregards all fixed costs but for a chip that is likely to be put in tens of millions of devices, it’s a starting point. Even if we double the cost per chip, it is still way lower than what Apple pay for intels low power Core chips. So I’d guess the low power draw MacBooks and possibly Mac mini will drop in price.
Next tier up (MacBook Pro + small iMac):
200mm2 SoC. Yields 300 SoCs/wafer nominally. Lets be a bit more pessimistic with yeilds and put it at 75%. 10000/(300x0.75)=$45 Lets round up to $50 in raw cost per chip. Now the volume of these chips is much lower. 5-10 million, depending on Apple pricing and market success making fixed costs a larger factor, and doubling to $100 is definitely prudent napkin math. However, that is still clearly below current chip prices from intel and AMD for the MacBook Pros.
Last tier, (large iMac, Mac Pro):
350mm2 SoC. This is the level that is supposed to improve on the PC offerings of 2021/2022. This would give a bit under 200 dies per wafer. Lets assume really bad yield in spite of binning and design-for-yield. A hundred usable SoCs per wafer would give a raw cost per die of $100. That’s still really low, but this is the chip where the fixed costs really start to bite hard. Assuming a volume of a couple of million SoCs, design cost+ mask set +... could still double the cost per SoC or more. But this is much less than what Apple pays for CPU+dGPU with dedicated memory!
The purpose of this exercise is to show that Apple can make even large SoCs for relatively low volume products, and still save substantially on their BOM. I hope, and actually believe, that they will leverage this to increase their market share.
In September & October events Apple made design refresh for iPadAir and the iPhone 12's, so maybe that hints to Mac redesign change in November. That is encouraging for 14" to 13" unibody redesign, which I hope it is. Will make no sense with the newly introduced devices to keep the Mac to the old boring unibody.