APPLE SILICON
Are MacBooks About to Get Thinner and Lighter?
With M-series silicon, Apple will reclaim its position as the leader in ultra-portable laptops.
When Apple silicon leaped to the Mac it made sense to start with the low-end of the lineup and grow towards processor designs that handily exceed the capabilities of the current high-end, Intel-based Macs. But that strategy has only heightened interest in what’s coming next. Into this void has stepped Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman with numerous leaks about rumored 2021 MacBook Pros. Here are the highlights as reported by MacRumors:
• New 14-inch model in place of current 13.3-inch model, facilitated by reduced bezels.
• New, flatter design, said to be “similar to the iPhone 12.”
• More powerful next-generation Apple Silicon chips with up to 16 power cores and four efficiency cores instead of Intel processors.
• Potentially a custom Apple Silicon GPU with 16 or 32-cores.
• Updated thermal design for the 14-inch model, currently used by the existing 16-inch MacBook Pro, with a larger heat pipe, added thermal pads, and a 35 percent larger heat sink.
• “Brighter, higher-contrast”…
