One More Thing: Apple M1 chip for Mac. This changes everything.

Introducing the new MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, all with the Apple M1 chip

M1

    Yesterday, Apple released its first-ever line up of Macs with its own Apple Silicon, the M1 chip, in a much-awaited release. The event, which you can view above, started at Apple Park, where CEO Tim Cook outlined the progress Apple has made this fall in an unprecedented series of releases at 3 events, from OS updates to Apple Watch, iPad, and iPhone. Now, it's finally time for the Mac, Apple's most popular line of products. From Apple's top-secret chip lab, John Ternus (VP, Hardware Engineering) introduced Apple's new, high efficiency and performance chip, the M1. It uses the same Apple Silicon as Apple's other products, like Watch, iPad, and iPhone. M1 is an SoC (System on Chip). This means that all of the various chips that are normally distributed around a laptop, such as the CPU, GPU, memory, I/O, and security chips are all in one. Johny Srouji (SVP, Hardware Technologies) explains that it also features a UMA (unified memory architecture), which means that are the systems on the chip can access the same memory, making it much more efficient. Apple's chip uses the industry-leading 5nm technology to pack 16 billion transistors onto a single chip.

Apple's new Apple Silicon Macs could be released on November 17

Sources: 9to5Mac, MacRumors

    At WWDC 2020, Apple announced that it would be transitioning away from Intel x86 chips to its own Apple Silicon, the same ARM-based CPUs already in its iPad and iPhone lineups. It said it would be announcing the first Mac with these processors by the end of this year. Some expected it to be released at the October 13th event alongside the new HomePod Mini and iPhone 12 series. New Twitter leaks by Jon Prosser have stated that Apple will announce a November 17th event on the 10th. A separate Bloomberg report had previously floated a date in November for the ARM event. There is also controversy as to which Macs will be the first to get the new processors. Some are hoping that the discontinued 12-inch MacBook Pro will be revived, and others think it will be a 13-inch MacBook or an iMac.

    If you recently got an Intel MacBook, don't worry (too much). Apple has said it will keep supporting Intel-based computers for "years to come", and I will write another article explaining this.

Read about the first Apple Silicon, M1.