The first Mac running an Apple processor reportedly won’t take the stage at Apple’s big product event next Tuesday. Instead, the initial macOS computer with Apple Silicon supposedly won‘t see the light of day until November.
There’s no doubt that a Mac built around an Apple chip is coming soon. At its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, said, “We expect to ship our first Mac with Apple Silicon by the end of this year.”
But it allegedly won’t arrive at Apple’s “Hi, Speed” event on October 13. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg predicted Friday that a Mac laptop with an Apple-designed processor will be unveiled in November. Gurman has a long history of correctly calling Apple’s moves, earning him an 88% accuracy rating on AppleTrack.
And the notebook probably won’t be alone. The rumored AirPods Studio over-the-ear headphones supposedly won’t make the mid-October event, either. They therefore might show up at a November one. And the long-rumored AirTags item trackers might have been pushed back to 2021.
That apparently leaves the iPhone 12 as the star of the October event (with HomePod mini probably playing a supporting role).
Few details available on initial Mac with Apple Silicon
Perhaps the most far-reaching news coming from WWDC in June was the announcement that Apple is moving away from Intel chips. Instead, future Macs will run processors Apple designs itself. The company already designs the chips in iPhone and iPad, and is simply adding Mac to the list.
Cupertino says these will offer desktop-class performance with notebook-class battery life. The A-series processors used in the iPad Pro series already produce performance that rivals MacBooks, don’t require fans, and deliver lengthy battery life.
Rumors about exactly what the first Mac with Apple Silicon will look like, and when it will arrive, have been flying since June. Reliable TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted it’ll be a 13.3-inch MacBook. A less-reliable source says the first will be a 12-inch MacBook that’ll cost a mere $849.
The device might run on some version of the Apple A14 processor that’s definitely going into the iPad Air 4 and mostly likely the iPhone 12, too.
However, we might not know anything definite about this ground-breaking Mac until an Apple November event.
