Apple Announces First Macs With New Apple CPUs

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Apple today announced its new its new Apple Silicon M1 chip, three new Macs to go with it, and the release of macOS Big Sur. 

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So Apple today announced their new chip. They're calling it the M1. This replaces the Intel processor inside of Macs. To go along with it Apple announced three new Macs that you could order today and get next week.

First let's take a look at the M1 chip. Apple is actually calling is SOC or System On a Chip because it includes more than just a CPU. On the chip there are eight CPU cores. Four of those are high powered cores and four are energy efficient cores. The idea is it will use the higher power cores to do tasks like editing video, editing photos, playing 3D games. Things like that. If you're just browsing the web, maybe writing a document, then it can use the energy efficient cores for that. The result could be it could save more energy and last a longer battery life without sacrificing speed. In addition, this chip includes eight GPU's right there on the chip so you don't need a completely separate GPU to go along with it. There is also a 16 core Neural Engine on the chip. These will all be able to share data between them much more efficiently than if they were separate components.

So as examples Apple estimated that you'll be able to use Final Cut Pro six times faster, be able to use three times more instruments and effects in Logic Pro, and doing things in Safari will be between one and a half and two times faster. In addition, they are touting Instant Wake. So in other words you open up your MacBook and it instantly goes on. Kind of what we expect from our iPads and iPhones.

So Apple announced three new Macs today all of which are using this M1 chip. They announced two new MacBooks. There's the 13 inch MacBook Air and the 13 inch MacBook Pro. Both have that M1 chip and both look pretty much the same as the previous MacBook Air and Pro. They'll both be much faster. Apple estimates somewhere around three times faster than the previous ones and battery life will be dramatically improved. As examples Apple said that if you're just browsing the web you should get 15 hours on the MacBook Air and 17 hours on the MacBook Pro. If you're viewing video you'll get 18 hours and 20 hours out of those two models. Also there will be improved image processing from the FaceTime cameras in those models. So you'll look better when video conferencing or FaceTime.

Apple also announced a new Mac Mini, which was a surprise since no rumors really mentioned this. This uses the same chip and features the same performance enhancements although, of course, battery life doesn't matter on a Mac Mini.

Now it's important to notes that when you use a new Mac with the M1 chip in it there are three different types of apps that you could be running. One, of course, is a native app, a new app like one from Apple or one from a developer that's really on it, that has binary code inside for both Intel chips and the M1 chips. These will run natively on the new Macs. So if you stick mostly with Apple apps most of your apps will do this. Other apps will lag behind. Like Apple says LightRoom will be next month and Photo Shop will be early next year.

Now the other type of app is an Intel based app. The apps you have right now with no updates required. These will run using Rosetta Two which will translate into instructions for the M1 chip. Apple claims that these will run really fast. As a matter of fact Apple claims that in many cases they'll run faster on the new Macs than they will on an older Mac with an Intel chip in it. Probably because of the onboard GPU's whereas a lot of older Macs had an integrated GPU.

The third type of app is that you'll be able to run iOS apps on these new Macs since they use basically the same processor architecture as iPhones and iPads the apps will just run on them. Now we still don't know exactly how you're going to get those apps on your Mac. Probably through the App Store and developers can actually choose whether or not to make their apps available on the Mac which is a good idea because some apps really require the multi-touch screen of the iPad or the iPhone and it won't make sense to use them on the Mac. Other developers, of course, may have a Mac specific version of their app and may just want to have that available for Macs and the iOS app only available for iOS. We'll just have to wait and see.

Now all three of these models start with 256 gigs of storage space and 8 gigs of RAM. But they can all be upgraded to 16 gigs of RAM and up to 2 terabytes of storage. Other factors look about the same although note that the 13 inch MacBook Pro models just have 2 thunderbolt ports but thunderbolt ports that are capable of USB 4 speeds. I should note that the M1 chips look identical across all these models. But one difference I see is that the lowest end MacBook Air shows only 7 GPU cores instead of 8 on the M1 chip. I'm not sure why there's a slight difference there. Then, of course, you pay extra for more memory and more storage.

Now you can order these right now. You can go onto the Apple site and order them and Apple says they'll be shipping next week. Now of course these new Macs will come with macOS Big Sur on them which means Big Sur is going to be released. It will come out on November 12. So for all existing Macs that can support Big Sur you'll be able to go and get macOS Big Sur on Thursday, at some point from the Mac App Store. So that's it. It looks like Apple is making a big leap into this new era by updating the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, and half of the MacBook Pro line. That just leaves the 16 inch MacBook Pro and the iMac which we will probably see next year. Then the Mac Pro which could be next year or the year after.