Today, Apple ushered in the new age of the Mac. As announced at WWDC 2020, Apple will produce its own chips in the future, just like you do with the iPhone and iPad.
Today the M1 was presented, the first Apple Silicon, which will be available in stores from November 18th in the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini.
Apple Silicon M1
At an Apple Keynote, you are used to superlatives. Today, however, a few more were added to the presentation of the M1 chip.
Basically, Apple is doing with the M1 exactly what the company has been doing for years with the iPhone and iPad. Instead of relying on Intel chips, you build your own with which you achieve more power and more battery capacity.
The 5 nanometer chip is equipped with eight CPU and eight GPU cores and consists of 16 billion transistors. There is also a 16-core neural engine on the chip, which is supposed to accelerate machine learning, with 11 trillion operations per second being possible. Compared to the Intel chip, Apple states that the M1 should be up to 15 times faster. With the integrated GPU, 25,000 threads should be executable at the same time, which means a throughput of 2.6 teraflops. Apple expects GPU performance to be six times faster than with previous chips.
Of course, with so much performance, the battery is not spared. However, Apple itself states that you can achieve 3 times as high CPU performance per watt with the M1.
For the MacBook Air this means a new 18-hour battery and for the MacBook Pro 20 hours of battery.
MacBook Air 13 inch 2020
For the first time, the new MacBook Air comes without a fan, just like the iPad or iPhone. Thanks to the new M1 chip, the MacBook Air should be 3.5 times faster than its predecessor, which was launched in 2018. As far as the graphics performance is concerned, there should be 8 times more performance inside.
Thanks to the M1 chip, the MacBook Air is said to be faster than 98% of all Windows laptops that went over the counter last year. In addition to Touch ID, Apple has built in an image signal processor (ISP), which improves the quality of the webcam and is supposed to deliver a good picture even in dark situations. Speaking of images: the MacBook Air now also offers a P3 color space. In addition to Wi-Fi 6, Thunderbolt with USB 4 is also on board.
With SSD hard drives that are 2 times faster, the MacBook Air manages 18 hours before the battery has to be recharged.
The MacBook Air is available with 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB or 2 TB of storage space. Apple offers 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM. The price starts at CHF 1,079 or 1,100.50 euros.
MacBook Pro 13 inch 2020
The M1 is also used in the new MacBook Pro 13 inch. Up to 20 hours of battery power should be possible here, with 2.8 times more CPU power and 5 times more graphics power.
As with the MacBook Air, Wi-Fi 6 is installed and an image signal processor (ISP) is used to improve the webcam images. Apple states that the newly built-in microphones are studio quality, which should not only improve the picture but also the sound during video calls.
Unfortunately, the MacBook Pro still comes with a fan. So much power still has to be cooled.
The MacBook Pro is available with 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB or 2 TB of storage space. Apple offers 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM. The price starts at CHF 1399 or 1,412 euros.
Mac Mini 2020
Last but not least, the Mac Mini was not spared from an M1 upgrade. The last version was presented by Apple in 2018.
Here Apple promises 3 times faster computing power than the 2018 model. The GPU should offer up to 6 times higher graphics performance and machine learning should complete tasks 15 times faster.
Of course, that much graphic power has to be usable. Two Apple Pro Display XDR or normal 6K screens can now be connected to the Mac Mini. Wi-Fi 6 was also installed here.
The Mac Mini is available with 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB or 2 TB storage space and 8 GB or 16 GB RAM. The price starts at CHF 779/778 euros.
Conclusion
Personally, I'm really looking forward to the new Macs. The iPhone and iPad have already shown several times that Apple can develop great chips itself. Now that Apple has presented it, the developers must also follow suit and prepare their apps for the M1 chip. If the app and the system are in harmony, users have full power and a lot of battery.
All new M1 models can be pre-ordered starting today . Delivery starts next week.
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