Titled “One more thing” Apple hosted as Tim Cook put it “Their 3rd major event in just the past two months”. Earlier this year during the WWDC keynote Apple ended the keynote with the news that before the end of the year Apple will be releasing some macs that will be powered by Apple Silicon instead of intel based.
The time came yesterday for Apple to announce the next generation of macs. First they were showing us what was powering the new machines and that was called the M1. (Not to be confused with the motorway leaving London.)
Before Macs had several chips scattered around the motherboard which did different things. One for the CPU, one for the GPU another was Apples T2 chip which powered the macs security. Now it’s all powered by one SoC Chip. (System on chip)
Inside the M1 is an 8 Core CPU, an 8 Core GPU and a 16 Core Neural engine. It does all this whilst being so incredibly power efficient. The M1 will allow iPad and iPhone apps to be run on macOS for the first time as well if developers say they can.
So, what actual machines did Apple announce with the M1 chip?
The first machine announced was a new MacBook Air. Priced at the same £999 as before it also looks quite similar to previous generation of MacBook Air but obviously inside it is very different with its new M1 chip. The MacBook Air comes with up to 18 hours of battery life and is actually dead quiet because it is fan-less.
The MacBook Air also comes with all the familiar features like Touch ID and the Force Touch trackpad.
The second Mac Apple announced was a new Mac Mini. Priced at £699 it is definitely the best Mac Mini ever made. The back of the Mac Mini has a host of ports featuring Gigabit Ethernet, 2x Thunderbolt / USB 4 and 2x USB-A. It even comes with a headphone jack. The Mac Mini is an amazing little desktop computer and perfect for many home offices.
The third Mac they announced was the MacBook Pro 13”. Just like the MacBook Air this allows has the new M1 chip but also comes with a fan. You may wonder what difference this might make, well when the M1 chip may got to hot it will have to throttle the speed of the device. If your completing many high demanding tasks the fan will prevent this from happening.
The MacBook Pro comes with a 20-hour battery life. That is pretty much all day even if you are only getting 4 hours of sleep a day. The MacBook Pro 13” comes with the TouchBar as default something which has been heavily criticised however I quite like it.
Summary
All the new Macs come with the same M1 architecture powering them and MacOS Big Sur running the show. Speaking of Big Sur, Big Sur is available for download this Thursday (12.11.20) Even if it’s just for the design I very much recommend downloading for this major update in MacOS. You can read more of my thoughts on Big Sur in my review here: https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/taking-a-look-at-macos-big-sur
The M1 and the three Macs announced this week are just the start of a process that is going to take a few years towards Apple Silicon, but it is a very impressive start.
Will I be buying one?
No, There’s two reasons for that. The first is I’m quite happy with my current set-up of my iMac at home and my iPad Air for travel. Secondly, I think it’s going to be interesting to see just how compatible some Apps will be when people start to get their hands on the devices. There will 100% be a lot of bugs.
Any questions please feel free to tweet me here: www.Twitter.com/kylewilkinson46
Thanks for reading
Kyle Wilkinson
More reads by me:
Taking a look at MacOS Big Sur (MacOS 11.0)
iPhone 12 Pro, my review.
Kyle Wilkinson Blog – The Podcast
Episode 4, iPhone 12 Pro
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