Apple has announced their next Apple event. It’ll kick off next Tuesday, November 10th. According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple will announce new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops powered by chips based on the A14. That’s the same processor that’s in the iPad Air and iPhone 12, though Apple will likely give it a small upgrade. It will need improved graphics performance, since it’ll need to power the Mac screen as well as external monitors. While the iPad can do this, it’s not as common of a use case as it is on Macs.
They may also be your last chance to get a MacBook Pro powered by an Intel processor from Apple. Why would you want that? For a larger library of native, non-emulated support, and, of course, full Boot Camp support, which Apple’s new Macs will likely never have.
This is going to be a drastic event. We may also finally see those new AirPods and AirTags. Though, at this point, no one’s sure of that either.
What to Expect
According to Mark Gurman, a well-connected reporter at Bloomberg, Apple will release updates to their MacBook lineup. This will be new Mac laptops, including new 13-inch MacBook Pros, 16-inch MacBook Pros, and the MacBook Air. These machines will look just like the current models. Apple’s only swapping the processors. Expect a much larger change in the future, as Apple can make their laptops thinner and lighter when powered by their own processors.
The new laptops may outperform entry-level Intel laptops, and perhaps even the high-end models. We don’t yet know if Apple will continue to sell the machines side-by-side with the Intel versions. Apple has stated that their transition will take two years, and that they have existing plans to update Intel Macs, so we could still, potentially, see one more iteration of an Intel-powered MacBook Pro. I’ve got my fingers crossed, as I hope to never “upgrade” to an Apple-powered chip. At least not until they have Boot Camp and eGPU support, as I really don’t want to give up gaming on my Mac.
Apple will use the A14 chip from their existing iOS hardware. The A12 from the iPad Pro was included in the Mac Mini developer units Apple sent out, so the A14, if it includes improved graphics, should be more than powerful enough for a desktop-class PC.
Apple is working on new iMacs, finally with a new design (I sincerely hope they steal some ideas from Microsoft’s Surface Studio) and a new smaller Mac Pro.
Apple’s event will be one week from today. Hopefully everyone will get what they want. But I’ll be set up to order the last iteration of an Intel MacBook Pro, if I have to. I’m going to likely have to make that thing last at least 5 years before Apple has everything together.