Apple will ship its first Apple Silicon-based MacBook Air late 2020 or early 2021, reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed in a note published Friday.
Kuo has previously said a 13.3-inch Apple Silicon MacBook Pro will ship before the end of the year. However, this is the first time he has talked about the future of the MacBook Air line.
The (potentially) best news of all? Kuo thinks the switch from Intel CPUs could make the MacBook Air even cheaper than current models.
To be clear, Kuo’s report says that the cost reductions involved in manufacturing could make the cost to Apple cheaper for the new MacBook Air. Whether that saving gets passed along to Apple customers remains to be seen.
“In an optimistic scenario, if Apple lowers the price of Apple Silicon’s MacBook Air to reflect the cost reduction, and if the newly-designed 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro are better than the old MacBook Pro, we expect … shipment volume to grow significantly to 18-20 million units in 2021,” Kuo writes, as reported by Apple Insider.
In addition, Kuo suggests that Apple will launch a redesigned MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon in 2021. This will be available with both 14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes.
The switch from Intel to Apple Silicon
After a long period of rumors, Apple finally announced the switch from Intel CPUs to ARM-based Apple Silicon at WWDC. At the event, Craig Federighi, SVP of Software Engineering, showed a Mac running on the Apple A12Z processor from the 2020 iPad Pro.
Are you excited at the prospect of a MacBook running Apple Silicon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
