Rene RitchieThe invitations are out. The website is up. The YouTube stream is prepped. Apple’s March 8, 2022 Event is a GO! But... with what? iPhone SE 3, iPad Air 5, Mac mini Pro, Mac mini Max, M2 MacBook Pro, new displays? Let's run it all down!
Apple has up to three, three new Mac minis coming our way this year, and while they may all look the same, the performance… and price… are going to be… wildly different, and here’s why!
We already have the silver M1 Mac mini starting at $700. That’s the entry-level model Apple slid back into the lineup in November 2020. It has 4 firestorm performance cores, 4 icestorm efficiency cores, 8 G13 graphics cores, 16 neural engine cores, H.264 and HEVC media engines, and up to 16 GB of unified memory. Also, two Thunderbolt and two USB controllers. But that’s it. Not a bit, byte, or port more.
Except for the circa 2018 Intel 8th Gen space gray Mac mini that Apple’s kept idling at the higher end of the lineup. Starting at $1100. For a 6-core i5, and 512 GB of SSD. Which… even with the Intel-inside space-heater feature thrown in for free, was just a terrible deal back then. Never mind now.
So Apple really, really needs to transition that to the M1 Pro and M1 Mac, the chipsets they introduced last October for the new 14- and 16-inch MacBooks Pro. But in desktops. Stat.
Because the M1 Pro has up to 8 firestorm performance cores, 2 icestorm efficiency cores, up to 16 G13 graphics cores, ProRes media engines, up to 32 GB of unified memory, and up to 8 terabytes of SSD. Also, three Thunderbolt and three USB controllers.
And M1 Max… well, it has all of that, but with options for up to 32 graphics cores, double the ProRes engines, and up to 64 GB of memory.
Each individual core is the same as M1, but there’s just so many massively more of them, and other resources, that it’ll tear through CPU-bound tasks like audio plugins faster, GPU-bound tasks like 3D modeling way, way faster, and the media engines will… basically feel like you have second rendering box off to the side that you can use while still working away on your main Mac. It’s just… transformative.
Now, there have been reports of a dual die M1 Max, even a quad die M1 Max as well, all for the upcoming Apple silicon Mac Pro, and that’s gotten some Mac mini aficionados just… drooling at the idea of a dual M1 Max Mac mini somehow making its way into the top end of lineup as well. Because it would literally be twice the M1 Max, the M1 Big Max, so to speak. Up to 16 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores, 32 neural engine cores, 64 graphics cores, 4 ProRes engines, and up to 128 GB of unified memory.
Which… I’d all caps love to see it. But I don’t every time get what I’d love. Because, in this case, literally, I think Apple would rather shrink the enclosure than fill up the thermal envelope, and maybe also keep multi-die exclusive to the much higher end Pros, like the Mac Pro, maybe, hopefully, even the 27-inch iMac if they really want to recapture full unfettered glory of the previous iMac Pro.
But, yeah, I think mini is going to top out at max, especially given the reports of that sleeker, slimmer new design that’s been making the rounds. Probably as sleek and slim as Apple can go and still allow full workloads to sustain pretty much indefinitely. For the CPU, no doubt, because they can already do that in the MacBook Pro, but hopefully even better, faster, stronger… and longer for all the compute engines all lit as well.
Also, with up to four Thunderbolt USB-C ports, which means it’ll support more displays, and MagSafe power, but more like the M1 iMac and less like the M1 Pro Max MacBook Pro version.
And I’m guessing that’ll all come in at $1000 or more for the M1 Pro mini, neatly taking the place of that old Intel space gray blast furnace. And that means something closer to $1900 or more for the M1 Max mini. At least, based on the M1 Pro MacBook Pro starting at $2000 and the M1 Max MacBook Pro starting at $2900 once you add $500 for the Max chip itself and $400 for the 32 GP memory option that’s obligated along with it.
And then there’s… not that keyboard-only Mac mini patent thirst trap making the rounds, though I’d adore in an all shades of Apple 2 Plus nostalgia kinda way. And if you want a video on what that could mean for the future of the Mac, let me know in the comments.
But then there’s the next-generation entry-level M2 Mac mini. Which might sound like… too soon, too soon, but the M1 shipped almost 18 months ago so unless we all want even Intel to start laughing at Apple’s update rate, they absolutely need to get moving on their spec bump roadmap as well. And given Apple’s previous AX chipset schedule was loitering around 18-months for the last long while already, the same pace between M generations just makes the same kind of sense that does.
But don’t let the numbers fool you. M2 won’t compete with M1 Pro let alone M1 Max. No more than the 2019 A13 iPhone competed with the 2020 A12Z iPad Pro. Core for core, M2 will have both higher performance and higher efficiency, as well as much better graphics and, my guess is, entry-level ProRes engines. But it just won’t have anywhere nearly as many of those massively multi cores that pro workloads demand, or as much memory or ports. And I’ve got a whole entire video up deep diving on exactly that, which I’ll link up in the description below the like button.
But, because it’s meant for consumers and not pros, some reports say it might just have that one special feature Apple currently reserves exclusively for it’s entry level consumer lines — the full on skittles taste-the-rainbow of colors. I’m talking red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, Like the M1 iMac, but all-in-none instead of all-in-one.
And my hope is, even with the new M2 chip and new multi-color design, Apple keeps it at the same starting at $700 price point. But then also keeps the silver M1 Mac mini around as the entry-level option, but drops it down to $500. That original sweeter than sweet spot nature and Steve Jobs intended when the Mac mini was originally announced.
I know, I know, but a nerd can dream. And pivot table me out here, but M1 Mac mini at $500, M2 Mac mini at $700, M1 Pro Mac mini at $1000 and M1 Max Mac mini at $1900… that is one HELL of a lineup.
iPhone 14 is coming this fall and iOS 16 is coming with it. So, new design, new 48 megapixel-binned camera, new iHole punch — all the new hardware aside — we’re at a crossroads when it comes to the software. It’s time for Apple to give us nerds what we really need — a god mode. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up!
When Steve Jobs single act of willed the iPhone into existence, the iPad too for that matter, he saw it as a way to make computing even more accessible to the mainstream. People who always felt traditional computers, even Macs, were too… confusing and intimidating. He saw it as a way to liberate us from generations of comp-sci tyranny. As much as moving computing from the command line to the mouse and pointer to multitouch, from the institutions to the home… to the pocket. And to do that, he and his living auteur to engineering translator, Scott Forestall, kept everything super direct and super simple. I mean, the original iPhone didn’t just ship without a terminal or finder, it shipped without developer frameworks, without apps.
The idea being that the iPhone as a limited, managed app console was far more valuable to more people, than as just another open computing device. The way a Nintendo Switch or PS5 is more valuable to gamers who don’t want to have to deal with the overhead of a full on PC.
Because, there was already macOS, already have Windows and Android and all the Nix’es for us nerds, but nothing at all for the far more massive mainstream market.
And even, over the years, when iOS got things like folders and apps and even background APIs, they were still obsessed with keeping things simple, so simple AirDrop didn’t even get approved until after the much nerdier Craig Federighi took over the reins with iOS 7. Only then did the gates open even enough for a Files app, Extensibility, Shortcuts… any form of more advanced functionality at all to slip through.
But that created a real problem, a real tension, not just inside Apple but among users, between people who legit believed iOS 6 was as far as the iPhone should ever have gone, like that was it, feature complete, fini, done. And those who felt… who feel… like even iOS 15 still isn’t far enough. Compounded now by years of Pro versions of the hardware… But next to nothing at all when it comes to Pro versions of the software that runs on it, not really.
I mean, not a decade and a half in, not with Apple providing some background access but not all, some default apps but not all, some filesystem features but not all, some multi-windowing but not all, some reader app exceptions but not all. So, we’re left with kinda… Shrodinger’s operating system. Too complex for the mainstream market it was originally visionaried for, still too limited for the nerds who comprise maybe 10% of the customer base but make up 90% of the noise on Twitter and YouTube. You know, like me.
So, I’m going to break the first law. Not nothing unreal exists. Not don’t talk about fight club. Not never start a land war in Asia or never screw over your partner. The first law of feature requests — don’t state a solution you think you want but a problem you have, because there could be a better solution to it you just haven’t thought of. I’m going to break that rule… because I think I have a solution that’ll kinda neatly sidestep several more years of being trapped in some quantum state somewhere between capability and complexity. And that solution is
God mode. But also, easy mode.
Picture this: Setup buddy, the first run process we all go through every time we start up a new iOS device, which is emblematic of all of this — because it just keeps getting longer and more complicated, to the point that most people just want to tap, tap, tap their way right through it, but it’s also nowhere nearly detailed or flexible enough for a power user who wants things just exactly the way they want it.
So, instead, start everyone off with a switch set right in the middle for the way that iOS is now, but then ask us how sophisticated we are, and how sophisticated we want our iPhone experience to be. Do it right out the gate. Fade in from Apple boot logo.
If you’re new, not tech savvy, or just have zero patience for spending time managing a device that’s meant to be saving you time, you can slide it left for Easy Mode. Safe Mode. And then, skidoosh, you get something fairly close to how the iPhone worked back in the day. Including limited gestures, less layers, more obvious affordances, built-in apps as default, simplified Settings, completely uncluttered Camera app, and a completely locked down security model. Steve Jobs’ original vision, restored!
But if you’re a power user, a nerd, and have a ton of time on your hands, you can slide it right for God Mode. Expert Mode. And then, Shazam, you get something much closer to how the Mac. Including full Home Screen customization, more Finder-like Files, default app selection for all app types, top-and-bottom multi-windowing for apps, multi-stream audio, Pro camera with all the still and video bells and whistles, and yeah, Gatekeeper so we can download and run signed apps straight from the web. Basically, iPhone as a pretty full-on open computing platform.
Make it hard. Grueling even. Put up all sorts of scary modal warnings. I’m talking worse than what Apple had planned for those Dutch dating apps scary. Force us to enter the Konami code. Sideways. Twice. Whatever.
And to stop evil individuals and institutions from trying to take advantage of people, not naming any names, Phishers and Facebook Onova Spyware, maybe it takes a full restore to flip modes. Just a big enough pain in the ass that no one can or will do it on a call or when waiting to take a test.
Sure, it might take the pressure off from tech illiterate legislators who want to regulate Apple down to being just another PC vendor, and really annoy the super problematic, kinda cringy toxic Coalition CEOs that just want to break the App Store for their own benefit. And it might even resolve some of the long-running philosophical disagreements and conflicting incentives within Apple. But it’s really not about any of them. It’s about us. About a user base of over a billion iPhone users that really do range from that massive mainstream majority to that passionate power-nerd base, and giving everyone… maybe not exactly everything we want, but way more of what we increasingly need.
In this video, listen… we have to talk about what’s going on with the M2 MacBook Pro rumors. Because they’re dropping faster than f-bombs on Peacemaker. And it’s not even the escalation in quantity — it’s the utter conflict, the cage match between them — I mean, we’ve gone from 14-inch in the new design to 13-inch in the old, from… notch to Touch Bar… from later this fall to soon as this spring, and in the blink of an eye
Which makes the kinda sense that only kinda does? Because, when Apple dropped the first batch of ultra-low-power custom silicon Macs back in November of 2020, all three of them were still stuck in the same old designs. MacBook Air. Mac mini. And 2-port MacBook Pro. New silicon hotness inside. Busted old boxes out. But since then, we got 2… arguably 2 1/2 complete redesigns in 2021. The 24-inch iMac and the ultra-high performance 14- and 16-inch MacBooks Pro.
So, some 18 months post M1, and almost 6 months post the new high-end Pros, what nerd wouldn’t want them to pull a Reese’s peanut butter cup and just two-great-better-together that new design with this next generation of Apple silicon?
Which is exactly what DylanDKT reported back in January. Specifically, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro enclosure, with an even newer M2 Apple silicon chipset. All coming sometime in the second half of 2022.
But now… Now both randomly accurate DigiTimes, and MacRumors are reporting something both better and worse. Better, in that we might see the updated entry-level MacBook Pro way earlier, as soon as the the Apple event rumored for March 8, and worse, in that M2 will be the only thing updated about the new entry-level.
Which, yes, going to M2… about damn time. But sticking with that old design… just feels frozen in time.
So… could Apple do this? Would Apple do this? And… why?
Well, again, this isn’t the high end 14- and 16-inch M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros we’re talking about, the ones that we just got back in October. It’s the entry-level 13-inch M1… nothing… just plain M1… we got back in 2020. And that entry level it’s… it’s just always been… well… weird.
Phil Schiller first announced it back in 2016, but after announcing the then new 13- and 16-inch all Thunderbolt and Butterfly MacBooks Pro. And he announced it as sort of a… one less thing… Same then new design as the 13-inch, but without the then-new Touch Bar, and with only 2 then new Thunderbolt ports instead of 4 in the full-on pro. And he called it a MacBook Pro for people who always wanted a Retina MacBook Air.
Because, back then, the MacBook Air hadn’t gone Retina yet, even though 18-months earlier Apple had introduced the Retina MacBook… nothing. The one with a super anemic Intel Y-series coreM chipset, single Thunderbolt port, and a price point well beyond the Air. In other words, premium portability at the expense of performance.
And this was literally meant for people who wanted the opposite of that. A Useries Core i chipset, but not really super high end or high priced. A… MacBook Pro Air… or MacBook Air Pro, so to speak.
And then, so ironically for so many reasons, when it came time for Apple to ship their first M1 Macs, the ultra-low-power M1 Macs, it was that 2-thunderbolt chassis that Apple used for the entry-level MacBook Pro. With the Butterfly keyboard swapped out for the new magic scissor switch model, but with the Touch Bar swapped in for the function trees. Because Apple always be trolling.
But still very much a MacBook Air Pro Pro Air situation — exact same chipset but with with a bigger thermal chassis and a fan so it could sustain heavy workloads for longer than 20 minutes. And that was all the M1 Pro we had for almost a year, until Apple finally replaced the higher-end Intel models with the literal M1 Pro and Max, and the new 14-inch and 16-inch designs, back in October. With more ports, more CPU, more memory and storage, and way, way more GPU.
Now, I’ve got a whole entire video up diving deep into the differences between M1 Pro and Max and M2, and I’ll drop a link to it in the description below the like button, but tl;dw, don’t let the numbers fool you. The M2 will have next-generation, higher performance, higher efficiency CPU cores, way more powerful graphics cores, better media engines, but it won’t have anywhere nearly as many of them. So, it’ll work even better in even smaller enclosures, like the rumored M2 MacBook Air redesign, especially at single core tasks. And sustain even better in a a same-sized enclosure, like the the old 13-inch MacBook Pro
It won’t have anywhere nearly the multicore performance of the M1 Pro or M1 Max, because entry-level not high end.
But that also means it doesn’t need the bigger, beefier new 14-inch design to sustain the performance it has, or the bigger battery to keep sustaining it. Plus, if M2 follows the same formula as M1, it’ll only have 2 USB and 2 Thunderbolt controllers, which wouldn’t be enough for all the ports on the existing 14-inch chassis. Which means Apple would have to do a variant that drops one of the Thunderbolt ports, and maybe the SD Card and HDMI ports as well.
I mean, they’ll have to do that eventually anyway, because the current design is going on 6 years old, doesn’t have MagSafe, and the Touch Bar is basically abandonware at this point. But it’ll let them kick that design can down the road at least another year. You know, while they’re working on the new iMac Pro, Mac Pro, Mac mini… and, of course, the next iPhone.
It also increases differentiation. Not only because no new design or newly re-instated ports, but no mini-LED, no ProMotion up to 120Hz adaptive refresh. Which clears up any vestigial confusion by making it wicked obviously much less a MacBook Pro Air and pretty clearly a MacBook Air Pro. And, of course, with none of those new things, especially the new display, it helps keep the old price point. Which is pretty much an entry-levels whole entire job.
And given how many truly new M-class Macs Apple still has to release before their self-imposed this-year deadline, I can absolutely see them going just exactly this game-theory way.
Sumbul Desai, MD, Vice President of Health at Apple, joins me during Heart Month to talk about Apple's journey into health, how they design and validate new health features, making health features user and medical professional friends, and balancing family, caregivers, and privacy
Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra is out, the geeky benches are in, and we’re all about to discover if Qualcomm’s latest, greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 finally, the Rock-level finally, lays Apple’s A15 Bionic to utter desolation and waste.
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So, in the Phantom blue corner, coming in on Samsung’s 4 nanometer process and the ARMv9 instruction set architecture, we have Qualcomm’s newly re-branded Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, or S8G1, which, sadly, no, isn’t the next Stargate spinoff.
And in the six colored corner, coming in on Taiwan Semiconductor’s second gen 5 nanometer process and the ARMv8 ISA, we have Apple’s still Bionic-branded A15, which, no, luckily, isn’t a metric paper size for anything.
And out the sound of the bell, the judge for this… rumble in the stonx… will be PC Mag’s own Sascha Sagen. Now, let’s get ready to benchmark!
And the winner is… wait… no… wait… no… wait… no? Surprise Face Memoji. This can’t be right! Apple A15 Bionic by KO, no T, armbar, guillotine choke, and ground and pound, all at once, at the same time, beginning of round 1?
I mean, Samsung’s process is at 4 nanometer and TSMC’s still at 5 nanometer, and carry the 1, divide by zero, that’s… more process? But, turns out, those are marketing names, not actual physical measurements, and TSMC’s N5P process is currently better than Samsung’s 4LPE.
But Snapdragon is on ARMv9 and Apple is still on ARMv8, which… floating math symbols… is more ISA? But, turns out, Apple largely drove ARMv8 and ARM64 and their license lets them do pretty much whatever they want with it, and they’ve been doing just that going on almost a decade. And, while I’d love to be wrong about this, it feels like ARMv9 is mostly just about replicating what Apple’s been doing and packaging it up for other licensees, some vector capabilities aside.
But didn’t Apple CPU gains grind to a halt and their future look dim as the impact from cpu engineer exoduses — exodii? — to Nuvia and Rivos start to bleed in?
I mean, that was some fanfic written almost immediately after A15 was announced, and just so schadenfreude-istically re-blogged to bait clicks pretty much across the techosphere.
But it turned out A15 continued building not just on the Bionic architecture, but on the low, slow, wide approach Apple’s been relentless about for basically ever. Just maniacally obsessed with efficiency, and achieving performance through that efficiency. Specifically in this case, with more efficient performance cores, way more performant efficiency cores, a kinda monstrous new graphics cores, up to 5 this time, and a ridiculous amount of system cache. To the extent that, where A14 was a Song of Ice and Firestorm cores, a15 went double cold with Blizzard and Avalanche. Along with a continued push into off-core features, with not only new ProRes media engines, but a new storage controller capable of writing that 6 GB per minute of data to the SSD without dropping a frame. Just, yeah, no new I/O controller to get it off any faster than Lightning’s positively Jurassic USB2 speeds.
I’ve got a whole deep dive up on that already, link in the description below the like button.
But… which, rather than grinding to a halt, in-between process shrink years, seems pretty much like another tock leap forward. Making this years expected process shrink down to TSMC’s 4 nanometer process look kinda all shades of bright. Meaning A16 Bionic.. Cyborg.. whatever… is going to ship in the iPhone 14 this fall, months before Qualcomm even announces S8G2… Atlantis, and nearly half a year before Samsung can cram it into a Galaxy Don’t Call it Note 23 Ultra.
And I say that as someone who, Sayamalan-style plot twist, really, really liked the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It’s got a bunch of features I wish Apple would hurry up and add to the iPhone already, including pen support which pretty much makes it the perfect iPad nano for your pocket.
As to the brain drain, you know Apple’s silicon bench runs silly deep. Great artists ship, and part of that process is having great editors, great auteurs even, to help them figure out what to ship, and like Intel, until Qualcomm with or without Nuvia ships objectively better chips than Apple, — I’m talking way, way better than Canadian Ketchup chips — it’s all just fanfic, just grist for the silicon rag thirst traps.
And I mean objectively better, performance and efficiency, not just goosing voltage to post some high scores that shred battery life even as they throttle harder than a Top Gun sequel release schedule in anything even approaching a phone-sized enclosure.
Sasha points out in his tests that a “result of 1,232 became 802 with a warm phone, and a GFXBench result of 28fps became 19fps”, and I’ll defend Qualcomm by saying physics is a jerk and everything throttles. Including A15’s 5 core GPU. And very few non-bench markers are ever going to run on red for any extended period of time. But you still want to be designing for the enclosure, not for the Benchmark LARPer. Especially on mobile, because unlike Alder Lake, you can’t just liquid cool to fit it in your fav mini tower. Silicon is unforgiving, so you have to play the long game.
And I know a lot of people will say none of this matters, phones are already OP, just way beyond fast enough, and that they scroll fine, and game fine, and it’s more about experiences than specs, feature sets than chipsets. I know that because I’m the one who started that whole pre-tiktok trend.
But what many people miss is this — over time. Experience at launch only matters to tech fanatics who swap phones faster than memes. Real people don’t just keep one new hotness until the next, they keep their only hotness… for years. And with Samsung finally putting on their Big Apple pants and promising updates for up to 5 years, those chips have to have enough headroom for those updates for those 5 years. In other words, they have to be able to maintain those experiences under the added weight of new feature sets. Scrolls smooth burns on Genshin Impact in 2022 is lol. But in 2027?
Apple’s been doing just exactly that going on almost a decade now, and I’d love — all-caps love — to see it from Samsung, Qualcomm, Google, everyone… Because competition is good for everyone. And by everyone, I mean us.
In this video, I’m going to explain the exact difference between Apple’s M1 Pro and Max, and M2. Between ultra high performance and ultra low power, massively more multi-cores and next-generation, better cores. Because we’ve got a slew… a slew of new Macs heading our way this year, starting as soon as next month, and M2 just has to be better than 1, right? Well, no, wrong… kinda.
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Come the holidays, we may well have an M1 iMac, M1 Pro and Max iMac, and M2 iMac to choose from. Same with the Mac mini and MacBook Pro. Entry level, powerhouse, and premium all. And that might just seem confusing and… yeah, convoluted as hell. So let me break out ye old Apple quadrants… decrants… tesseracts… whatever, relax about it.
When Tim Cook first announced Apple was transitioning from Intel to custom silicon, senior Vice President of hardware technologies, Jony Srouji said that would include a family of SoC, of systems-on-a-chip.
So, the M1 family actually began with the A14 Bionic, the chipset in the iPhone 12 that debuted in October of 2020. With 2 firestorm performance, or p-cores at up to 3GHz, 4 icestorm efficiency, or e-cores at up to 1.8GHz, and 4 G13 graphics cores, or GPU. Also 16 neural engine cores, or ANE, H.264 and 265 encode decode engines, and up to 6 GB of unified memory at 42Gbps.
That all translates to up to 1583 single and 4210 multi on the geeky benches, at least in the relatively roomy iPad Air.
Now, one of the ways you can scale a chipset architecture is by escalating the number of cores. That’s what Intel has done for years with Core i5 vs. Core i7 vs. Core i9, for example. Apple as well, with A12, A12X, and A12Z. Same generation of cores, just more and more of them.
The scaling actually goes both ways; there are two A13 e-cores in the heart of the Apple Watch system-in-package, which is key to Apple’s whole scalable system architecture advantage, but… topic for another video.
With A14, instead of making A14X, Apple made M1 instead. 4 Firestorm p-cores at up to 3.2GHz, 4 Icestorm e-cores at up to 2GHz, up to 8 G13 graphics cores, up to 16 GB of unified memory at 70 GB/s, and 2 each USB and Thunderbolt controllers. In other words, the exact same cores as A14, just 2 more performance and up to 4 more graphics, tuned a little faster to take advantage of the bigger enclosures.
Or, up to 1718 single and 7426 multi on the marks.
But, when you normalize for things like frequency and thermal envelop, including active cooling systems, and the ability to run faster, hotter, longer inside machines that are bigger than a phone, you get approximately the same single core performance, but way more multicore performance, because… just way more cores.
And, yeah, turns out when you run that cool, you can also run faster, longer, and get way better performance, especially per watt of power, in all of those Macs.
Which gave Apple room to keep escalating the core counts as well.
Enter M1 Pro and Max. Still built on that same A14 Bionic generation silicon IP. But with only 2 e-cores at the same 2GHz, because the focus was less on low-power tasks like checking email and more on high-power tasks like compiling code. Which is why they offer up to 8 p-cores as well, also at the same up to 3.2GHz, but in dual clusters. I’ll link up my deep dive below the like button if you’re curious about all that. Also, up to 32 GPU cores. All fed by up to 64 GB of unified memory, up to 400 Gbps of memory bandwidth, up to 2 ProRes media engines, and 3 USB and 3 Thunderbolt controllers. In other words, the exact same cores as M1, but up to 4 more p-cores, 28 more GPU cores, those ProRes engines, and… ungodly amounts of RAM.
That’s up to 1747 on single, but 12239 on multi.
Again, way more massively multicore performance, because… way more massively multicores. And single core performance ain’t nothing, not when you’re counting dock bounces for an app launch, or enjoying that instant iPad-like responsiveness on the Mac, but these days almost all workloads are almost all multicore aware, so getting all those multiple cores really, really pays off. But, of course, as each core improves, so does the sum of all the multiple cores.
Which brings us to the other way you can scale a chipset architecture, by improving the next generation of cores. That’s what Intel has done for years, originally with their famous tick tock cycle, more recently with their infamous tick, tock, optimize, optimize, optimize cycle, but like Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, and Alder Lake, for example. And also Apple as well, most recently with A13, A14, and A15 Bionic.
Some years, there’s a process shrink, like going from 7 nanometers to 5 nanometers, meaning Apple can fit more transistors in the same amount of space, or the same amount of transistors in even less space, which translates into more performance at the same power or the same performance at less power, or, more often then not, the best balance they can of more performance and less power. Other years, there are architectural improvements like bigger system cache, which improves speed and efficiency by reducing callouts to slower, hungrier main memory.
A14 was the former. A15, the latter. And if we see M2 any time before the end of 2022, the iPhone 13’s A15 Bionic is almost certainly what it’ll be based on, just like M1 was based on A14.
A15 has 2 Avalanche p-cores at up to 3.2GHz, 4 blizzard e-cores at up to 2.0GHz, and up to 5 G14 GPU cores. 16 next-generation ANE cores, ProRes included alongside H.264 and 265 in the media engines, 6GB of unified memory at 42GBps.
That’s up to 1690 for single, and 4645 for multi.
But also where you start to hit into the limitations of benchmark LARP. Because it’s increasingly hard to see what’s hitting an e-core vs. a p-core, or a media engine vs. a GPU. And that’s particularly important for A15, where the e-cores got way more performance, the p-cores got way more efficient, and those media engines didn’t necessarily take work off the CPU like they did on the Mac, but enabled work that wasn’t even possible on a phone before. So, faster, cooler, and yeah, just plain cooler. And I’ll link that deep dive below the like button for more as well.
So, if we choose to live dangerously and assume past behavior is still the best indicator of future behavior, meaning Apple continues to do with M2 what they did with M1 and A12X, we should be seeing:
4 Avalanche p-cores, maybe up to 3.4GHz, 4 blizzard e-cores, maybe up to 2.2Ghz, and up to 10, count ‘em 10 G14 GPU cores. That ProRes engine. Extra system cache, but probably still up to 16 GB of memory, and 70Gb/ps bandwidth and just 2 USB and 2 Thunderbolt controllers.
So, not much more capability in M2 over M1, but more performance at the same efficiency, even and including a little taste of that ProRes power. Compared to M1 Pro and Max, better single core, the way A15 is better than A14 at single core, but not at all competitive on multicore, not even close, because it simply doesn’t have enough of those multiple cores to compete. Where it should win, though, is battery life — like iPhone 12 to iPhone 13 win on battery life. Everything else being equal.
Now, if we don’t see M2 any time before the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023, then it’s possible it won’t be based on A15 at all, but the next generation A16 coming with the iPhone 14.
Unlike A15, A16 is expected to benefit from a process shrink, going from 5 nanometer to 4 or 3 nanometer. Those are marketing names, not consistent measures, but it just means even more efficiency and performance, depending on how exactly Apple spends and saves the new transistor budget it’ll enable.
And that would, legit, translate to even better single core performance, even better battery life, but still nowhere nearly the massively multicore performance, because still nowhere nearly the massive amount of multicores.
So, come the holidays, and having the choice between M1, M1 Pro and Max, and maybe even M2, here’s how it’ll break down. M1 will be not only the ultra-low-power option, but the ultra-affordable entry level, holding the line on up-front prices. So, if you just can’t or won’t spend dime one more than you absolutely have to on a new Mac, M1 is still going to be your best friend.
M1 Pro and Max will be still be top of Mac mountain when it comes to total performance potential though, especially if reports of dual and quad-die M1 Max variants in the new iMac Pro or Mac Pro prove accurate. Expensive, yes, but meant for those who value time even more than money. And nothing will come close to that until there’s an M2 Pro and Max or M3 Pro and Max, depending on when and how Apple chooses to update that ultra high performance silicon. And it took almost a year to go from M1 to M1 Pro and Max anyway. So, if you really need Pro… even Max level performance, you’re still going to want M1 Pro or Max.
And leaves M2 as the new ultra premium option. More powerful than M1 but also way more efficient than pretty much anything, so Apple can slap it into the hot, new, ultra-sleek, ultra-sexy next generation Mac designs, at a slightly higher price, at least at launch. So, if you’re more than willing to pay a slight premium for maximum style meets minimum profile, you’re going to want M2.
Because that’s how scalable system architecture works, and to hear Apple say… just all of that out loud, check out my interview with their VP of silicon and VP of Mac Product marketing.
2022 and you still have to unlock your iPhone with Face ID… like an animal. Or Touch ID. Passcode. Password. Whatever. All just different flavors of animal. Why? Because authentication is still active. Your iPhone is locked until such time as you jump through a biometric or input field hoop to unlock it. Never mind if you’re wearing a mask and sunglasses, or gloves or your finger is damp, or your hands are full or you’re in a rush. Like hitting that subscribe button so we can build the best community in tech together rush.
So, what do you do? I mean, besides hitting the button and cursing in the comments, obviously. Well, if you’re Apple… If you’re Apple, maybe you destroy Face ID. At least as a single point of active authentication. And then you replace it, superset it really, no, not with Touch ID, but with something just way, way better. Magic ID… no, that’s a terrible name, like Tiberius. Smart ID. Let’s go with that! And stay with me here, because this could end up being your favorite new iPhone feature… basically ever!
So, to appreciate how ridiculously good Smart ID would be — they’re totaling going to call it Magic ID, aren’t they, sigh, damn, whatever — to appreciate how ridiculously good it would be, we first have to appreciate how ridiculously bad everything else has been so far. Starting with the OG iPhone and… nothing. Well, effectively nothing really. Swipe to Unlock, just so you didn’t accidentally butt dial someone thanks to having an active touch screen in your pants… or bag. But, if you wanted to, you could enable a 4-digit passcode to keep the riff raff out. From literally tweeting poopin’ if you ever left your phone on the bar.
But, as time went on, and the contents of our phones became more and more private, important, and valuable… Apple began to take authentication more seriously… even if the vast majority of us did not. Because, given the choice between security and convenience, most people chose convenience.
So, Apple bought a company called AuthenTech and began working on Touch ID, a biometric fingerprint identity scanner that would make authentication way more convenient. And more on that in a minute. But, basically, Apple figured if they made it way easier to unlock, they could make it way more attractive TO lock. Not only get more people to enable a passcode, but a stronger 6-digit passcodes, or damn-near adamantium password. Even add the option for auto-delete after 10 fails.
Because a 4-digit passcode was trivial to break. 6-digits, non-trivial but still brute force-able. A long, strong, unique password, especially something pseudorandom? We’re talking heat death of the universe. The occasional 0day bypasses, shoulder-surfing, or coercion not-withstanding.
But passcodes are still active. Passwords are actively user hostile. You have to remember them and enter them correctly, and that takes time. Doing it repeatedly and under stress takes a lot of time. And accessing our own phones shouldn’t be a job, much less a full-time one. And we shouldn’t be working for the machine, the machine should be working for us.
So, Touch ID. Starting with the iPhone 5s. You place your finger on the Home button, or now the power button on recent iPads non-Pro and Macs, triggering a capacitive sensor that scans your print, converts it to math, trashes the actual print, but sends the math down a hardware channel to the Secure Enclave on the Apple A-series or M-series chipsets, where it’s compared to the math of your registered fingerprint, and if they match, releases an authentication token to iOS. Which can unlock your device, unless you’re in the totally locked down PreBoard state, which then requires a passcode or password, but otherwise, even approve things like Apple Pay transactions.
Of course, Touch ID won’t work if you’re wearing gloves or if the moisture of your finger is different enough from when you registered your print, like if you just washed your hands or sweated them up in a workout, or if you burned or cut yourself. And if you’re asleep, immobile, or incapacitated, someone else can in close proximity — someone who knows or guesses which fingers you have registered — can use it to unlock without your consent. You just have to be alive enough for the capacitive sensor to trigger.
And it’s nowhere nearly as secure as a long, strong, unique password, but it’s just so much more convenient, especially if you’re unlocking your iPhone… never mind several times a day, but dozens and dozens of times an hour.
And while Touch ID has been replaced by Face ID on every iPhone but the SE, there HAVE been persistent rumors about Apple adding it back, specifically as an in-display sensor. Super specifically, as a large, acoustic and or ultra-sonic sensor covering most of the bottom of the display.
Only problem is, in button or in-display, either way, it’s still active. You still have to put your finger down for it to unlock or authorize you, every single time. Which might not sound like much, but it’s still moments from your day, slices from your life, and it’s still you working for the machine, not the other way around.
So, Face ID. Starting with the iPhone X. You raise or bump it to wake, triggering the front-facing camera array to bathe your face in infrared light and an infrared dot pattern, which an infrared camera then uses to scan your facial geometry, similarly trashing the actual image, but converting it to math and sending it down the hardware channel to the Secure Enclave. But because, unlike finger prints, our hairstyles, facial hair, even fashions can and do change, and frequently, it uses neural networks to match and constantly update the matching process.
Now, previously, Face ID needed all the data from a triangle around your eyes, nose, and mouth to ensure a secure enough match. But, with masks hiding our noses and mouths, basically the opposite of the Batman, for much of the last two years, recent betas have leant more heavily on data from around our eyes, which makes it a little less secure, but offers the convenience of Face ID even with a mask on.
Besides masks, OG Face ID won’t work if sunlight is blinding the camera system, you’re wearing infrared blocking sunglasses, or it can’t see your eyes and attention mode is on, while new, optional Face ID is fine with masks but requires special training for glasses and won’t work with pretty much any sunglasses, or fuller face protection like Canadians, and yeah, the Batman, might wear for half the year or more. And if someone else gets your device and can trick or make you look at it long enough for the Face ID scan to complete, they can unlock it without your consent as well. No living capacitance needed.
So, sure, at its best, Face ID is even more secure than Touch ID, unless you’re dealing with an evil twin situation, but still nowhere nearly as secure as a long, strong, unique password. But also, at it’s best, it’s even more convenient, because it can unlock while you’re picking up your phone, which can make it feel almost transparent… almost… not active. Even though it still totally is. And any time you’re off-angle enough to have to pick it up or wake it first, you know it. Like Matrix Resurrected, you’re still working for the machine.
So, what else could Apple use? Well, how about Voice ID. Nuance, which was the part of the original back-end to Siri offered Voice ID services, including for banking apps, but it never really took off. Apple started doing basic Voice ID for hands-free Siri starting with the iPhone 6s, adding registration to the setup buddy experience. In the beginning it used the always-on capabilities of the sensor-fusion hub in the original M series of motion co-processors that… got integrated back into the A-series and beefed up considerably over time. Basically, when the mic picks up the activation phrase, which is restricted to “Hey Siri” and only that on Apple gear, it checks it against the local, on-device voice print you registered, and if they match, the system lights up. Previously, it would have to make a network connection to Apple’s servers to parse any and all requests, but as of last year, Apple is handling local requests on-device and only handing off to servers for internet-related requests.
Back in 2020, Apple even added multi-user Voice ID support to the Home Pod, so you could ask Siri to read out your messages instead of your partners or kids’. And all the potential hilarity and embarrassment that may cause.
Obviously, based on how many of your Apple devices I’m guessing I trigged when I said the activation phrase just before, it’s ok enough for basic disambiguation for a shared HomePod or iPhone out in public, but not for security against the whole wide world. Certainly not for, “My voice is my passport, verify me”.
Plus, If you get a bad cold, or lose your voice, or someone gets a recording for a replay attack, like in Sneakers, it can fall apart quick, and speaking a code word is as active as typing a password anyway, but… I’m building to something here.
The Apple Watch has been able to track motion for years now, like stair climbing, and more recently, falls while walking or even riding a bike. But last year, Apple added full-on gait analysis to the iPhone. It’s for health metrics and preventative therapeutic reasons, not for security, but it can still tell how you walk. Is it granular enough to tell your walk apart from someone else’s, like security-based gait-analysis systems work? I have no idea. And if you twist your ankle or tweak your back, it can be a problem. But it’s absolutely, potentially, another source for biometric data. A… gait ID, so to speak.
But biometric data isn’t the only possibility. Authentication typically breaks down to three factors — something you know, like a password, something you are, like a finger print, and… or… something you have. Like a trusted object.
The problem with traditional trusted devices is that they were single-factor dumb Bluetooth dongles. So anyone could just grab the dongle or relay the Bluetooth and effectively become you. But Apple already has a really smart, really secure trusted object — the Watch.
Once you put it on and unlock it with your passcode or iPhone, it stays unlocked for as long as it can detect your heart rate. The minute it loses your heart rate, it locks up again. And since it can already be used to authenticate and authorize you on the Mac, and more recently, fill in for Face ID on your iPhone if you’re wearing a mask, Apple’s already built in strong defenses against relay and other attacks, including time of flight and automatic re-lock if the distance between your watch and iPhone suddenly grows too great. Like someone trying to run away with it.
It’s limited, because the iPhone can unlock the Watch so Apple has to be careful about the Watch also unlocking the iPhone, or paradox and the end of days, or just, you know, way less dramatically, collision and potential exploit, and you have to have a watch for any of it to work at all, but I’m treating this as gravy, not steak. Or frosting, not cake. Whatever.
Same with all the other signals that can be picked up and used to establish and match our patterns. Time is one. For example, when you’re usually awake vs. asleep. Location is another. When you’re usually at home or at work... or… mostly these days, work from home. But theoretically, at school, at the gym, anything regular. And then there’s behavior in general. Just when you usually do the usual things that you do… usually.
And Apple’s already been using this type of data, on device, since… iOS 9 I think, for Siri suggested apps. Including, most recently, for the Siri Suggested App widget. That you typically check Twitter when you wake up… or, sure, YouTube for my most recent upload, and thank you kindly. Or Podcasts when you get in the car. Maybe Music when you go for a run. Disney+ when you’re settled in for the evening. You smell what the Rene is cooking. Sorry.
And that might spark your privacy paranoia alarm bells, but Apple’s just as paranoid, so it’s restricted to on-device, only for your own benefit, and with that very narrow app recommendation use case as well. Which currently does not include anything even remotely close to authentication, because as signals go, these are all just incredibly weak. At least by themselves. But what if they were part of something a more? Like a threshold.
Ok, so, imagine this. You go to use your iPhone… and it’s just unlocked. That’s it. That’s all. But totally not all. Because it took a hell of a lot of work to be that simple. Like, what if every time you spoke your iPhone captured a snippet of voice, every time you moved in front of the camera, it caught a glimpse of your face, every time you touched the bottom of the display it registered a partial print, every time you carried it around it tracked a bit of your gait. Nothing that, on it own, would be anywhere nearly enough to actively authenticate you, but when all pieced together, met some pre-determined threshold of trust that just resulted in your iPhone being passively unlocked whenever you wanted to use it.
Maybe you could choose how strict that threshold had to be, like low for when you’re at home, high when you’re out and about, and password only when you’re entering a particularly sketchy situation. But maybe location is part of it as well, and time, and behavior, and even wearing your trusted watch. All those things could lower or raise the threshold of trust. And if anything happens, if you’re wearing a mask and gloves and have a cold and you take your watch off while out skiing at some place you’ve never been before, and you fall below the threshold of trust, then your iPhone challenges you for a full, active authentication. Then you have to Face ID or Touch ID or even passcode or password in. But only then. Otherwise, when you’re well above the threshold… you’re set. Which could also be a super high threshold as well. Like multi factor face and touch and voice and watch high. Total win for both security and convenience high.
Because, otherwise, all authentication is passive but also persistent. All still on-device, for your benefit only, private by design, never shared with Apple or anyone else, but all working for you. The machine finally working for you, not the other way around. Not… like an animal.
Smart ID… or, yeah, Magic ID. Womp womp. But given everything Apple’s doing, everything I just went over, I have to believe they’re working towards it. Hell, given Apple’s fully integrated model, from silicon to software, they’re pretty much uniquely positioned to be working towards it. To give us authentication peace in our time.
"AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products. Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag. It’s why the Find My network is built with privacy in mind, uses end-to-end encryption, and why we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking. We hope this starts an industry trend for others to also provide these sorts of proactive warnings in their products."
M1 Mac mini Pro. M1 iMac Pro. M1 Mac Pro. But then…! M2 MacBook Air. M2 MacBook Pro. M2 Mac mini. And M2 iMac. What are they? When are they? And I’ll do you one better… why are they, and which is for you?
Hit that subscribe button and bell to show your support, and I’ll break it all down
Mac mini is reportedly next up in Apple’s ongoing silicon transition. Possibly as soon as Apple’s widely anticipated spring event. They already pushed out the ultra-low-power M1 version of the mini in November of 2020, alongside the M1 MacBook Air and entry-level MacBook Pro, but it was silver and not space gray, which as everyone knows means not so pro. In other words, it was ripping and replacing Intel in the existing enclosure. No new design. No ultra high performance option. Other than the old Intel space gray space heater Apple kept on the menu.
Now, this new Pro mini is rumored to be replacing just exactly that. But with a smaller, sleeker, new enclosure, and not just M1 but M1 Pro and M1 Max. They’re still based on Apple’s A14 Bionic Architecture, like M1, but instead of 4 Icestorm efficiency and 4 firestorm performance cores, they have 2 e-cores and up to 8 p-cores, and instead of 8 G13 graphics cores, they offer up to 32. Also, up to 64 GB of memory, and not just dedicated H.264 and 265 media engines, but ProRes as well. Along with sick amounts of memory bandwidth to keep it all fed, and instead of 2 USB and 2 Thunderbolt controllers, they have 3 of each, which means more ports as well. In other words, phenomenal silicon power… itty bitty living space.
And where the original M1 Mac mini was and is perfect for anyone who just wants the least expensive way possible to get into Apple silicon, or to throw at any amount of production grunt work, this new Pro version is basically going to be a mini server, whether it’s on a desk, in a rack, or part of a mini farm. Grunt work on Hulk serum.
Next up is a new iMac Pro. It was originally rumored for last year and at 32-inches, but recent reports have settled on 27 for the size and, yeah, while Apple has all the money, there’s still a hard limit on how much their Mac team can focus on at any one time. And getting the redesigned 24-inch M1 iMac and redesigned 14- and 16-inch M1 Pro and Max MacBook Pros out the door was all they ended up having the bandwidth for. So, now it sounds like WWDC in June at the earliest, but maybe not until fall for the new Pro-level iMac.
Design rumors have also flipped, from bezel-less and chin-free, like the Pro Display XDR, to simply a bigger version of logo-less but still cheekily chinned giant iPad on a stand design we got with the 24-inch. Only with black bezels instead of white and space gray or full-on black instead of the Skittles taste the rainbow of colors. And, instead of an LCD display, a mini-LED display, for near OLED-level deep, inky blacks, and super bright whites to support full HDR, high dynamic range workflows.
Same M1 Pro and M1 Max silicon options, with all the higher core counts and ProRes engines, though even maxing the Mac to the current Mac max with the Max — why you do this Apple — would only get to 64 GB of RAM, and the old Intel iMac Pro went all the way to 256 GB. Which might be why there have also been rumors of a higher binned M1 Max, or even a dual die M1 Max implementation for the tippety top end.
And where the M1 Mac was designed for the home or front-of-house work, for students, families, and entry-level coders and creatives, the M1 iMac Pro and Max will be for people who don’t care about portability, but want that MacBook Pro type power with a giant display, just a huge production canvas, all-in-one’d right in.
Then there’s the M1 Mac Pro. Currently rumored to be something between the classic G4 cube and the 2019 Mac Pro with all those hot, heavy Intel Xeon and AMD hellicarrier boards ripped out, and replaced with M1 Max. In a smaller version of the same or similar enclosure. But with dual die M1 Max, maybe even quad die M1 Max still having more than enough room and power draw, at least for the base to mid-level SKUs. Maybe more.
How Apple, if Apple, will handle the up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM on the current Intel Mac Pro, or at least way more massive amounts of unified memory, along with the modularity and expandability that marked the rebirth of the current modular-again cheese-grater over the previous sealed trashcan Vader-helmet of an appliance Mac Pro.
Apple’s been good at keeping Mac Pro details on the down-low over the years, so we might only know it when we see it. Which, if Apple keeps to its previous pattern probably won’t be until WWDC in June, with a ship date later in the fall, towards the end of the year.
And that’s what people who want and need a Mac Pro want and need — not just a bigger mini, but a truly no-limits Mac. The mother of all server boxes with the potential to basically plug a whole entire studio right in.
Tim Cook originally said the transition from Intel to Apple silicon would take 2 years. Same exact thing Steve Jobs said about the Power PC to Intel transition back in the day. They managed to finish that in one but this is going to take the full two, mainly because Intel already had a full range of chips available for Apple right from the start, where Apple is building out their own custom chips one by one. Or… M1 by M1. Technically, A14X, A14XX, and A14 Triple X. The extreme kind, not the other kind!
And once M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and the dual and quad die implementations of Max, and all the work and fabric those entail, are all good and properly rolled out, like by fall of 2022, well, that’s when the next wave can start, with M2. And the redesigned MacBook Air. Or just MacBook if Apple decides its time to get back to basics. Probably around October of this year, if it doesn’t fall over to next.
And where the M1 MacBook Air stuck to the same 2018-era design as the old, anemic Intel model, the M2 is reportedly getting a newer, flatter, sleeker redesign as well. Maybe with white bezels and a rainbow of colors, not just like the M1 iMac but the OG iBooks, and maybe even a notch. As well as a mini-LED display, as Apple continues to push that tech not just across the line, but down it.
But… with the higher price tag to match. Which… you know, has been true of every new MacBook Air and MacBook re-launch in the last decade and more. Which is why it’s mean less for entry-level students and compute.. casuals, and more for higher-end premium travelers and ultra ultra book flexers. With the M1 version sticking around to keep that $999 price point warm, at least for now.
Like the M1 MacBook Air, the entry-level M1 MacBook Pro kept the old body when it got its new brain. All two ports and Touch Bar of it. The M2 is rumored to be getting the same or similar redesign as the recent M1 MacBook Pro and Max, though not with all the performance and probably not all the ports.
Because just like M1 was built on A14 Bionic from the iPhone 12, M2 will probably be built on A15 Bionic from the iPhone 13. Which means higher performance Blizzard efficiency cores, higher efficiency Avalanche performance cores, and way more powerful A14 graphics cores. More numerous as well. Just like the iPhone 13 Pro got a 5th GPU, M2 is reportedly getting up to 10 GPU cores. Also, potentially the basic ProRes engine from A15 as well. Which would be fan-freaking-tastic for creatives.
Of course, if M2 hits in October or later, it’s also possible it could be built on Apple’s upcoming A16 Bionic for the iPhone 14 instead. Which should be getting a process shrink from 5 nanometer to 4 or 3 nanometer, maybe some improved matrix multipliers for the machine learning accelerators, and the same type of generational e-core, p-core, and gpu core improvements we’ve seen from Apple’s tick years. But either way, anyway, it means more power with less power consumption, which is exactly what you love to see in entry-level Macs.
Especially, in this case, for people who want or need something more than a MacBook or MacBook Air, including an active cooling system that can sustain heavy load for longer than 20 odd minutes, but who don’t want or need the weight or full-on Pro level performance — or price! — of the full-on MacBook Pro.
The M1 Mac mini will be two years old by the end of the year, so updating it to M2 alongside the MacBook Air and Pro makes exactly the kind of sense that does. But so does updating it to that new enclosure rumored for the Mac mini Pro. At least, it would make all the rumors surrounding the rainbow of colors coming to the Mac mini also make the kind of sense that does.
Because, where Apple believes Pros want their machines limited to the colors of interface chrome, so they just disappear into the background and don’t mess at at with the color cones in our eyes while we’re color grading on the screens, Apple also increasingly believes consumers want them that rainbow.
So, come October-ish… forget spec bump, if the mini goes M2 and literal Skittles, that would be basically the best mini update ever, for exactly that lowest-price entry-level consumer Mac market ever.
Unlike the M2 iMac, which may well be the very first pure Apple silicon spec bump, since it was the very first pure Apple silicon redesign back in April of 2021. So, all Apple really has to do here is refresh the chipset inside, and maybe the colors on the outside. The way they’ve been doing with the consumer end iPhones for the last few years already. You know, sometimes the red is a bit more yellow, other times a bit more blue. That whole techno-fashion thing. And maybe mini-LED? That might just come down to how much mini-LED prices have come down by then. Since right now they seem to be adding about $100 to the bill, which isn’t as easy to absorb on the entry level price points. See 11-inch iPad Pro. Which, yes, should be going mini-LED and M2 around the exact same October time frame.
Which is also when Apple will begin the next phase, with M2 or M3 Pro and Max… And maybe scaling the Mac Pro all the way to Max.