According to the Chinese-language site, The China Times, Apple’s first Mac to pack Apple Silicon will be a 12-inch MacBook with an A14 processor and a battery life of 15-20 hours.
Dennis Sellers for Apple World Today:
The Apple Silicon MacBook will purportedly weigh only 35 ounces and sport a USB Type-C interface. (The China Times adds thats the next gen iPad Pro will also use the A14X processor.)
The China Times says that we’ll see an iMac incorporate it in the second half of next year. What’s more, the report says the all-in-one will also sport an Apple-developed GPU [graphics processing unit].
I believe the 12-inch MacBook will be the only Apple Silicon Mac released this year. 2021 should see the iMac (both 21 and 27 inches), Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air making the transition. I think the Mac Pro won’t make the move until the first half of 2022, and that the iMac Pro will be discontinued.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
Start with the “MacBook” and make it as seamless as possible to users and developers. Play up the benefits, of which there will be many, for some examples: True all-day battery life, universal apps that work across iPhones, iPads, and Macs, etc. Release an ARM-powered Mac Mini and maybe even an iMac a short time later. During the next 1-2 years after the initial launch, work to move all other Macs to ARM…
Now, the question is, does that seem doable? Again the question is, “What happens to sales of Intel-based Macs?” Do they fall off a cliff like sales of PowerPC Macs during the last transition? Is there some way for Apple to make Intel-based Macs not seem like, or even be, a dead end?
Obviously, there are many questions, but if the benefits to users from moving Macs to ARM are clear and compelling, and [if] the changeover is executed well, Apple-designed ARM-based Macs could lead to greater sales than ever before!
We’ve been anticipating ARM-based Macs for quite a long time now and we can’t for the the process to begin! — MacDailyNews, March 9, 2020
We’ve been anticipating ARM-based Macs for quite a long time now and we’re excited that the process has finally begun!
Think code convergence (more so than today) with UI modifications per device. A unified underlying codebase for Intel, Apple A-series, and, in Apple’s labs, likely other chips, too (just in case). This would allow for a single App Store for Mac, iPhone, and iPad users that features a mix of apps: Some that are touch-only, some that are Mac-only, and some that are universal (can run on both traditional notebooks and desktops as well as on multi-touch computers like iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and – pretty please, Apple – Apple TV). Don’t be surprised to see Apple A-series-powered Macs, either. — MacDailyNews Take, January 9, 2014
Apple has been, for years, building strength in the enterprise via BYOD and the rise of mobile which Apple ushered in with iPhone and iPad. “Compatibility with Windows” is not nearly as important today as it was even a few years ago… We expect to see Apple begin the ARM-based Mac transition with products like the MacBook and work their way up from there as the apps are brought over to ARM via Xcode and as the rest of the world continues to throw off the Microsoft Windows shackles into which they stupidly climbed so many years ago, lured, wrongly, solely by Windows PC sticker prices. – MacDailyNews, June 19, 2019