Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes for Apple 3.0, “Analysis of the MacBook Pro announcement from friend-of-the-blog John Garner:”
Yesterday’s announcements about refreshing the high-end MacBook Pro models effectively gave away Apple’s plans on the less capable models… What Apple effectively did yesterday was to recapture their R&D expenses on Intel laptops by releasing models in a high margin segment, and left the medium- and low-end segments for its future A-series laptops. [They] bought themselves about six months to get their new ARM chip models ready.
And if you looked closely at the announcement, you can see what technologies will feature in the future lower-end A-series models, i.e., 13.5″ 4k Retina Screen likely with Haptic Engine and TrueTone, much longer battery life (24-hour), 256-512GB SSD, 7nm six-core ARM chip with T2 chip built-in clocked at about 2GHz, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and 8-16GB of RAM; priced at about $1000 USD.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bring ’em on!
SEE ALSO:
How Apple might approach an ARM-based Mac – May 30, 2018
Pegatron said to assemble Apple’s upcoming ‘ARM-based MacBook’ codenamed ‘Star’ – May 29, 2018
Intel 10nm Cannon Lake delays push MacBook Pro with potential 32GB RAM into 2019 – April 27, 2018
Why the next Mac processor transition won’t be like the last two – April 4, 2018
Apple’s ‘Kalamata’ project will move Macs from Intel to Apple A-series processors – April 2, 2018
Apple plans on dumping Intel for its own chips in Macs as early as 2020 – April 2, 2018
Apple is working to unite iOS and macOS; will they standardize their chip platform next? – December 21, 2017
Why Apple would want to unify iOS and Mac apps in 2018 – December 20, 2017
Apple to provide tool for developers build cross-platform apps that run on iOS and macOS in 2018 – December 20, 2017
The once and future OS for Apple – December 8, 2017
Apple ships more microprocessors than Intel – October 2, 2017
Apple embarrasses Intel – June 14, 2017
Apple developing new chip for Macintosh in test of Intel independence – February 1, 2017
Apple’s A10 Fusion chip ‘blows away the competition,’ could easily power MacBook Air – Linley Group – October 21, 2016
Is it gonna run pro apps like Mainstage and Logic Pro? That’s all I really care about.
Well, Adobe just announced plans to run full Photoshop on the iPad. Perhaps Adobe knows a little something about the new Apple ARM chips in the pipeline.
No interest in ARM-powered MacBooks.
Ok I will let Cooky know he will probably cancel them once he hears.
Will they include Rosetta-like transcoding for macOS targeted apps written for Intel chips to run quickly and efficiently on the ARM chips?
Apple has good form with handling these things. I’m sure they have well thought out plans in place as to mess it up would kill the A series Macs stone dead.
Apple: if you want to offer the MacBook Surface RT with built-in app headaches, but sure to also double down on your prior mistakes:
– make sure it can only run software from your quaint little software store
– ditch the remaining physical ports so you can sell an overpriced wireless charging pad “available sometime next year”, and users can wait for 2 years for “wireless docks” to become available, adding several hundred dollars to make a usable system
– reduce thickness another 2 mm so that more battery can be deleted. Be sure to advertise “up to 8 hour battery life when browsing on Facebook”.
– label the antiquated display “Retina”, because nobody knows exactly what that means anyway. specs don’t matter in cupertino, right?
– be sure to mark up your SSD drives up even more than the obscene prices you already charge
– remove all backwards compatibility with legacy 32 bit Mac apps
– put on a cheaper noisier keyboard — people who don’t know how to type won’t notice the difference
– be sure to offer no options for GPU or any user servicable RAM
– add colors to show how innovative you are
– be sure to charge at least 50% more than the equivalent hardware from any other computer maker
– advertise how great the T2 chip is, even though every computer maker has accessory chips in their machines as well
– be sure to abandon more legacy Apple design guidelines so that the Mac no longer has legacy efficiency benefits that come with real file systems, multicore parallel processing, and an OS that supports a variety of data inputs and outputs.
– call it a Pro. why not? You think anyone who can afford Jony’s pathetic designs must be pros.
In other words, degrade Mac hardware to become as limited as an iPad but charge top dollar for it. Go ahead and see how stupid that will be, Apple. You have the money to burn.
wow, where did you leave your pacifier and blanket?