Apple is preparing slew of new Apple Silicon-powered Macintosh personal computers, including a new 40-core Mac Pro, larger iMac, new MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and a more powerful Mac mini, Bloomberg News reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
“More powerful iterations of the company’s silicon are coming to the Mac line,” Mark Gurman reports. “They’ll have more graphics and computing cores, boosting speeds for everyday tasks and such intensive work as video editing and programming.”
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Redesigned MacBook Pros are expected to debut as soon as early this summer, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter, followed by a revamped MacBook Air, a new low-end MacBook Pro and an all-new Mac Pro workstation. The company is also working on a higher-end Mac mini desktop and larger iMac. The machines will feature processors designed in-house that will greatly outpace the performance and capabilities of the current M1 chips, the people said.
Apple plans to launch the redesigned MacBook Pros in 14-inch (code name J314) and 16-inch screen (J316) sizes. They’ll have a redesigned chassis, magnetic MagSafe charger and more ports for connecting external drives and devices. Apple is also bringing back the HDMI port and SD card slot, which it nixed in previous versions, sparking criticism from photographers and the like.
For the new MacBook Pros, Apple is planning two different chips, codenamed Jade C-Chop and Jade C-Die: both include eight high-performance cores and two energy-efficient cores for a total of 10, but will be offered in either 16 or 32 graphics core variations… The new chips differ from the M1’s design, which has four high-performance cores, four energy-efficient cores and eight graphics cores in the current 13-inch MacBook Pro. The chips also include up to 64 gigabytes of memory versus a maximum of 16 on the M1.
Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores. The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics.
MacDailyNews Take: There is much more in the jam-packed full article here.
PC makers who’ve already been left in the dust, embarrassed by Apple’s initial M1 foray, will be left distantly behind, alone and shamed, by Apple’s next slew of world-beating Mac releases. 🙂
By the time Apple adds in the same cache, memory controllers, and multi-core support their silicon will burn just as much power and run at the same speed as x86 processors.
Same speed? They are already simultaneously faster and lower wattage. How would adding more things make anything worse? And given how energy efficient the M1 is, they would have to add a ton to need what an x86 needs.
Do high end PC graphics cards and CPUs do anything fundamentally different than what an M1 does? Can you surpass those performance levels with just more of the same stuff the M1 has?
I’d have probably bought a Mac Mini already if I wasn’t concerned about just 16 gig of ram.
Sure makes me feel good about having waited 7-8 years for a decent “pro” Mac Pro, bought one for $12,000 in 2020, only to have it totally blown away by a much more powerful machine and new architecture only a couple years later. Apple not only did it to pro’s by coming out with a new Mac Pro too late, but it’s much better follow-up too soon.
No matter when you buy any kind of electronics, there will always be something better next year. It helps if you ask yourself “What exactly do I need it for”.
And also, how much money did you leave on the table in lost time because you stubbornly hung on to an old Mac to protect your psyche from buyer’s remorse when the time gained, and revenue, in buying a newer machine would have long ago made it a no brainer to upgrade.