First Three Macs with Apple’s Beastly M1 Silicon Unveiled
Credit: AppleToday Apple held its "One More Thing" event — a rare third event in a fall season that's already seen two prior events heralding the release of two new Apple Watch models and iPad models, and the iPhone 12 lineup, among other things, so this third event was widely expected to be about Apple's Mac lineup and the first step in its transition to its own Apple Silicon chips, and in that regard it didn't disappoint.
Several times over the past few years, Apple has held a late October to unveil new Macs, following its iPhone launch in September, so although the timing for this one has been pushed back into a third event with everything going in the world, it was clearly time for a Mac event, especially since Apple had promised that the first Apple Silicon MacBooks would be arriving by the end of this year.
However, Apple did offer up a couple of small surprises here too. While we were all expecting a new 13-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple also debuted a new Apple Silicon equipped Mac mini, as well as formally showing off its new M1 chip, specifically designed for the Mac family rather than just being a variation on its A-series chips from the iPhone and iPad family.
With these new M1 chips, Apple is ushering in a whole new generation of Macs that will provide more power, longer battery life, and other even more advanced features going forward, and while the family will quickly expand over the next year or so, continue reading to browse the first three new M1-equipped Macs that Apple just announced.
The New MacBook Air
Following the usual intro by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple's VP of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, took the stage to act as the master of ceremonies for the unveiling of Apple's M1 chip and new Macs, and he kicked off the new MacBook Air by reflecting back on the original debut of the first MacBook Air, over 12 years ago, pulled out of a manila envelope on stage by Steve Jobs to make the point that it was a whole new category of thin and light MacBooks.
While the MacBook Air of 2008 was a premium "executive" class product — with a price tag to match — it has since moved more into the entry-level range of Apple's MacBook family, but as Ternus explains, thanks to the M1 chip, Apple is completely redefining what a thin and light notebook can do.
Ternus passed the stage over to Apple's Mac Product Line Manager, Laura Metz, who outlined the capabilities of the new M1-equipped MacBook Air, which are nothing short of impressive, offering up power and performance that was once the exclusive domain of Apple's "Pro" MacBooks.
Which makes sense, when you consider that Apple's M1 chip is just the M1 chip. There's no dual-core, or quad-core, or i5, or i7, or turbo-boosted version — it's just the M1, with the same 8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores, and other features as every other M1 chip.
In practical terms, this means that it offers 3.5 times the CPU performance and five times the graphics of the previous MacBook Air, which Metz explained is enough to edit multiple streams of full-quality 4K ProRes video without dropping a single frame — something heretofore impossible even on a MacBook Air, much less any other similarly slim and light notebook.
In fact, Metz notes that this makes the new MacBook Air three times faster than the best-selling Windows laptop in its class, and faster than 98 percent of PC laptops sold in the past year. The M1's SSD storage controller offers SSD speeds that are up to 2X faster, and the Neural Engine boosts machine learning performance by a factor of nine.
Best of all? It does all of this without a fan. It's completely silent.
The power efficiency of Apple's new M1 chip also means that the new MacBook Air gets the kind of battery life we've never before seen on a MacBook — up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing, 18 hours of video playback, and double the video calling time on a single charge.
Metz also went on to indicate that the FaceTime camera has been improved, although she conspicuously omitted any mention of an actual resolution increase (not surprising, since it turns out it's still only 720p). Instead, she focused on the new image signal processor in the M1, which promises better noise reduction, greater dynamic range, improved auto white balance, and machine-learning enhanced face detection. These are all things that also came to the Intel-based 2020 iMac, courtesy of Apple's T2 chip, which is now embedded into the M1.
The new MacBook Air screen also gets a bump to a P3 wide colour gamut on the True Tone Retina Display, while also boasting Wi-Fi 6 technology for the first time in a MacBook (the iPhone 11 lineup first added Wi-Fi 6 support last year, which later came to the 2020 iPad Pro also), and two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports.
The new MacBook Air will also still start at $999 for the base model, which features 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 7-core GPU in the M1. $1,249 will get you a bump up to the model with a 512GB SSD and an 8-core GPU. Both models can also be configured-to-order with 16GB of RAM and SSD sizes up to 2TB; the maximum configuration will set you back $2,049.
You can preorder the new MacBook Air starting today, and it's expected to arrive in stores next week.
The New Mac mini
Julie Broms, Apple's Senior Manager of Hardware Engineering, took the stage to unveil the dark horse in the race to Apple Silicon, the Mac mini.
While Apple sent out Developer Transition Kits using Macs mini earlier this year, those packed in the A12Z chip of Apple's 2020 iPad Pro, and were never intended to be final versions. In fact, developers are effectively renting them, and will likely be returning them to Apple now that the first actual M1-equipped Macs are available.
In the case of Apple's new Mac mini, however, Apple has not only packed in all of the power of its latest M1 chip but it's actually dropped the entry-level price to make its ultra-compact desktop Mac even more affordable.
The end result is that compared to the quad-core Intel-based Mac mini, the new M1 version gets three times faster CPU performance and a six times increase in graphics performance. As Broms notes, it's a tenth of the size of the top-selling desktop PC in its range, and yet it's five times faster
That's not even counting the machine learning improvements, either, which offer a boost of up to 15 times for ML-based workloads, thanks to the M1's Neural Engine.
Unlike the MacBook Air, however, it looks like the Mac mini will still pack in a fan, although Apple notes that the advanced thermal design and the M1's lower power requirements will mean that it kicks in far less often than it did in the Intel version.
The new Mac mini also offers a pair of USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt and USB 4, along with an HDMI 2.0 output, Gigabit Ethernet, and Wi-Fi 6 support, and it can drive Apple's Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution.
The new Mac mini starts at $699 — $100 less than the previous Intel version — although it looks like you'll only be able to get the Apple Silicon one in silver; Apple is still continuing to sell the Intel Mac mini in Space Grey.
You can preorder the new Mac mini starting today, and it's expected to arrive in stores next week.
The New MacBook Pro
The last entry in Apple's new M1 Mac lineup is naturally a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, which was introduced by Mac Product Line Manager Shruti Haldea.
As Haldea notes, the 13-inch MacBook Pro gets "way more pro" thanks to Apple's M1 chip, with 2.8 times the performance of the 13-inch Intel MacBook Pro, and five times the GPU performance.
Much like the new MacBook Air, this makes it three times faster than the best-selling Windows laptop in its class, and it can apparently chew through 8K ProRes footage in full quality in DaVinci Resolve without dropping a single frame. Machine learning performance is also boosted by up to 11 times over the previous generation of MacBook Pro.
Unlike the MacBook Air, however, this one does include a fan, as part of an active cooling system to ensure that maximum performance can be maintained when whipping through demanding tasks, suggesting that despite featuring the same M1 chip as the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro should actually be faster — which is kind of what we'd expect.
Since it has room to pack in a larger battery — a 58.2Wh cell — it also gets slightly more impressive battery life than the new MacBook Air, and runs circles around the previous MacBook Pro, with up to 17 hours of wireless web browsing and 20 hours of video playback. Haldea notes that this means developers can compile four times as much code on a single charge.
The new MacBook Pro also differentiates itself from its lower-end siblings by adding new studio-quality microphones for better signal-to-noise ratios, especially in noisy environments, as well as the Touch Bar that's been the staple of Apple's MacBook Pro models for the past few years.
Sadly, if you were hoping for a FaceTime camera upgrade, you'll be disappointed, as it looks like 1080p FaceTime cameras are still going to be the exclusive domain of Apple's Intel-based 2020 iMac. However, it does gain the T2/M1 image signal processor improvements, which should offer sharper video with less grain, and better contrast and detail, particularly in lower light conditions.
The M1-equipped MacBook Pro includes two USB-C Thunderbolt and USB 4 ports that can drive Apple's Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution, although notably that's two ports less than Apple's higher-end Intel versions — which it's also still selling for those who aren't yet ready to make the jump to Apple Silicon.
The new MacBook Pro starts at $1,299 for a version with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, while the next standard configuration up offers a 512GB SSD for $1,499. Both models can be configured with up to 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, topping out at $2,299.
You can preorder the new MacBook Pro models starting today, and they're expected to arrive in stores next week.