Taiwan’s China Times is reporting what it claims is the A14 chip roadmap, citing Apple supply chain sources that outline three variants of the A14 chip, two of which will power Apple silicon Macs.
The first element… doesn’t require much insight: an A14X chip to power both the next iPad Pro and also a MacBook. It has previously been speculated that this would be a new 12-inch MacBook, the more power-efficient chip providing a 15-20 hour battery life.
It says this would be followed by an A14T variant, which would be used in an Apple Silicon iMac. It also suggests that the iMac would get a new Apple GPU, code-named Lifuka…
Apple has historically offered integrated GPUs in lower-end Macs, and discrete GPUs in more powerful models. There has been a suggestion that this approach will continue with Apple Silicon Macs, and that Apple might be able to provide impressive graphics performance from integrated GPUs. Apple wrote, “Don’t assume a discrete GPU means better performance,” in its developer support document.
MacDailyNews Take: So, three A14 chip variants: A14 for iPhones, A14X for iPads and consumer MacBooks, and A14T (Terrific? Tremendous?) for higher-end and Pro Macs. Next year, it’ll be the A15, A15X, and A15T and so on.
Can’t wait…..
Then their is the Ai-14 that already knows what you want, and will give you what you deserve instead.
Shouldn’t that be the SJ-14
Ah yes, reminds me of an Atari marketing push back in the early 80s. Thye made the bold statement that their next computer (after the 800) was not just going to do what you told it to do, it was going to do what you wanted it to do.
The thought was that computers are to literal for the average consumer. They did exactly what you told them to do whether that is what you meant or not. So Atari thought they’d push the concept of creating a compute that did what you wanted regardless of what you actually told it to do.
Obviously that computer never shipped!
Has anyone heard how Apple will handle legacy apps, especially Windows apps for those of us who have one of those apps for which there is no equivalent on the MacOs side?
I think no one knows yet. I think Who is going to have some kind of emulator that’s gonna work with Intel software and run it without a problem. But that’s just my guess who knows
Parallels will be able to virtualize Windows, but it would have to be the ARM version of Windows, and lots of Windows software won’t run on that. Right now Microsoft won’t even sell that version to anyone but OEMs. They can probably do an emulation for Windows for Intel, but emulation is waaaaaaay slower than virtualization.
As of right now, I’m looking to buy whatever MacBook Pro is Apple’s last Intel version, and ride it out until the dust settles however many years from now.
Apple will handle it as always
emulation
keeps them on their toes
HA!
While possible, I doubt the exact same A variant CPU will show up in iPad Pro and low end Mac. The iPad Pro has no need for ThunderBolt or PCIe lanes as well as other amenities the low end Macs will require.
Yes, Apple could use a secondary chip to provide this, but that would be in direct opposition to the direction Apple has been going for the past few years (as well as the direction that all the other major CPU suppliers are going).
T for Terminator 🕶
I’l be Mac.
I can remember when the iPad was going to be delivered the discussion was if the OS would be based on OS/X or iOS. It turned out that Apple made the logical choice, especially for long term development.
Now we have some Macs moving to Apple’s silicon and we need to wait to see if Apple made the logical choice. Being able to make a logical decision on new products seems to be a speciality for Apple so I’m going to relax and wait until it comes out.