As well as this week’s MacOS beta releases revealing product codes for unreleased Apple Silicon iMacs, iPadOS has also revealed the new iPad Pro’s A14X SOC, albeit hiding under the guise of “13G”, a codename for the powerful A14 variant. while a number of outlets have suggested that the iPad Pros could get M1 branded chips in line with the current Apple Silicon Macs, but while the underlying silicon may actually be identical, I’m pretty confident the branding will stay A series for Apple’s iPad line with A14x running different firmware and most likely using some of the lower binned silicon like we saw with the entry level MacBook Air models, most likely running 8GB of Unified memory.
Renders via https://twitter.com/apple_tomorrow
Apple Silicon’s Master plan for Domination
Of course in the past few days I’ve talked a lot about the new M1X iMacs that are on the way, as well as the M1X powered MacBook Pros that should be just around the corner too, but Apple’s M1, their first entry into Apple Silicon for the Mac is still making waves and causing Intel to not only focus their marketing attention on bashing it, but also announce that they’re building fabs specifically to manufacture ARM chips in the hope that Apple will contract them to build some (though I’m not sure how Many 14nm M1s anyone would want).
As a quick overview, M1 uses the same cores as an A14 SOC in your iPhone 12. The iPhone chip has 4 efficiency IceStorm cores and 2 performance FireStorm cores with a 4 Core GPU, while the M1 (and A14X) uses 4 IceStorm and 4 Firestorm cores, and an 8 Core CPU.
When moving up to the M1X, we’re expecting 4 IceStorm efficiency cores and 8 firestorm cores, along with a 16 Core GPU, with all of this still based on the A14 architecture. These should offer around 80% more performance in multicore and 2X performance for graphics compared to M1.
So what becomes of the now humble M1? Well as Apple is only building chips for their own systems, the most likely thing is to look at what happens with iPhones over time, Apple keeps around some older models to fill out the lower end of their line up. When an iPhone is released, for example the iPhone 12 generation, pricing goes from $699 to $1099 for the iPhone 12 mini through the iPhone 12 Pro Max with the latest A14 chip inside. But iPhones start with the $399 iPhone SE, with an A13 inside and an older design. Apple will most likely copy and paste this model into their Mac lineup too.
Right now, the entry level Mac mini runs $699 with the MacBook Air at $999, and we’ll focus on MacBook Air for now. Student pricing on it is $899, and educational institutions have a $799 option that includes reduced storage at 128GB instead of the standard 256 starting point as most files will be accessed from the school or university’s servers if these are being used as communal systems over a network. They also use the lower binned M1 SOCs that have 7 functional GPU Cores as a way of increasing overall yeild in fabrication.
Now I’d mentioned Mac SE models back in 2020, but I noticed Greg’s Gadgets, a channel I follow has started mentioning this too recently so I think we may be on the right track, but I also think as I said last year that Mac mini will also be getting an SE version.
Mac mini when it was first introduced by Steve Jobs with the PowerMac G4 inside was designed to be the cheapest Mac ever, and a BYOKDM system, Bring your own keyboard, display and mouse. It was intended to be a gateway drug into the Mac operating system and now, with Apple’s ecosystem built out even more than it ever was back then, it would be the perfect time to bring it back to its original starting price of $499.
Now it would be pretty simple to replace that power supply with a probably cheaper smaller model, or even remove it al together and let it run from the MacBook Air’s wall charger which I believe is also 30w and uses USB C – very simple and actually moves what might be one of the warmer components outside of the chassis. Then its a simple task of building the board into a smaller enclosure, and with a re-designed logic board this could easily fit inside an enclosure like the Apple TV comes in right now.
Let me know what you think of the chances Apple could bring the Mac mini and MacBook Air SE later this year or in 2022 down in the comments.
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