Apple silicon Macs

Let’s talk a bit about the Macs with Apple silicon. Announced last week and releasing this week, there’s new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini equipped with Apple’s M1 chip, a derivative from its illustrious line of A series chips that’s been powering iPhones and iPads for a decade. Long story short: Apple is abandoning Intel because the chipmaker is unable to produce CPUs with the power and efficiency that Apple requires. Apple’s own in-house team has done such a fantastic job with the iPhone chips that porting it to the Mac platform is the next logical leap.

And the benchmarks show the M1 is simply amazing. Single and multi-thread scores equalling or better than Intel’s latest 11th generation chips, with only the very top-of-line still holding a slight advantage (I can cherish my Intel-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro for quite a bit longer). Keep in mind the M1 represents only the “entry level” product from Apple, and it does this amazing performance with incredible power efficiency - battery life on the new laptops is well above 10 hours. The M1 MacBook Air doesn’t even have system fan.

And because Apple now practically owns the whole stack, the seamless integration between software and hardware means the M1 Macs can get more performance out of a single unit of speed. The supreme fluidity of using a modern iPhones and iPads has come to the Mac as well, which is just fantastic.

I cannot wait for the truly “Pro” products to come out with Apple silicon, offering even more performance, and more than the 16 gigabytes of RAM and 2 terabytes of SSD that the new M1 Macs maxes out on. The only question is what should I buy: a MacBook Pro to replace my current 16-inch machine, or a new, hopefully redesigned iMac to compliment the mobile product? A confounding and fun conundrum to ponder on. I sold my 2017 iMac to consolidate down to a single laptop, so it would be interesting if I reverse the decision.

Intel and the rest of the PC world should be on high notice.

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Hofmeister.

Mac Mini and Macbook Air is still alive

And just like that, the longest neglected two products in Apple’s portfolio - sans Mac Pro - finally received updates.

I woke yesterday to the Apple event in Brooklyn still ongoing: it started at 7am, and I tend to wake at 8am. An avid purveyor of Apple products I may be, I was not about to forgo precious sleep time just to watch a keynote. Nevertheless, I hopped on immediately onto MacRumors, ignored the presentation of the new iPad that was ongoing, and went hunting for details on the new Macs earlier in the event.

After four inexplicably long years, the much beloved Mac Mini finally gets refreshed. No longer are people suckered into paying the same price for hilariously outdated internals. I’ve fond memories of the Mac Mini because I bought one back in 2014, the last time it got an update until today. It was a relative powerhouse in a tiny package, and the unit served me well in my creative endeavors until it was replaced by a 5K iMac last year. Had today’s refresh been available then, I probably would’ve bought it.

The new Mac Mini receives innards that rival the iMac, as long as you don’t care about graphics performance. It’s got the latest 8th-generation Intel chips, alongside a completely flash storage architecture, featuring up to 64GB of memory and 1.5TB of SSD storage. With an army of IO ports at the back similar to the iMac, the new Mac Mini should make plenty of BYOP (bring your own peripherals) customers happy; even those wanting more graphics can attach an eGPU unit via Thunderbolt 3.

Here’s to hoping Apple doesn’t let this Mac Mini languish unchanged for another four years.

The other Mac product to receive a refresh, a genuine surprise for me, is the Macbook Air. Thought to be in purgatory since the introduction of the Macbook back in 2016, it seems Apple have decided to reharness the immense brand value of what is easily their most popular laptop ever. Essentially an entry-level 13-inch Macbook Pro by a different name, the new Macbook Air changes it up slightly by retaining the iconic tapered design, and adding Touch ID to the keyboard (previously only available on Pro models with the Touch Bar). The new laptop looks fantastic.

Macbook Air with a retina display: we’ve been clamoring for it endlessly, and after many long years Apple finally delivered. As a previous owner of an 11-inch Macbook Air which was unceremoniously forsaken at a TSA checkpoint, I’m dangerously close to plopping down the $1200 necessary for the base new one. If only I wasn’t saving up for a 911…

All of the lines.