Now that Apple’s begun rolling out its M1 product lineup, it’s now reportedly gearing up for the next wave of computers powered by the chip’s multiple successors. And readers, we’re talking about a lot of computers and chips here.
According to Bloomberg, Apple is readying new MacBook Pros, a low-end MacBook Air, a larger iMac, a Mac Pro, and a Mac mini. Citing anonymous sources, the report says we could see redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros by early summer. Those will be followed by a revamped MacBook Air at the end of this year, a lower-end 13-inch MacBook Pro, and next year, a completely new Mac Pro.
The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros will purportedly have a new chassis, MagSafe, and more port options. Photographers and video creators should rejoice — these new ports include an HDMI port and the return of the SD card slot. These two MacBook Pros won’t be powered by a single next-gen Apple Silicon chip, however. They’ll be powered by two separate chips dubbed Jade C-Chop and Jade C-Die, respectively. These are some sci-fi arse names, but both are expected to have 10 cores, eight that are high performance and two energy-efficient. Both chips will also come in “16 or 32 graphics core variations” and can go up to 64GB of RAM.
The next Mac Mini will also sport one of these chips and two more ports for a total of four. The new Mac Pro will supposedly offer a choice between two more chips that are “either twice or four times as powerful” as the Jade C-Chop and Jade C-Die.
Get ready for some more ridiculous codenames. These new chips are dubbed the Jade 2C-Die and the Jade 4C-Die. Bloomberg claims these chips will come in 20 and 40 core variations. The 20-core chip will also have 16 high-performance cores and four energy-efficient ones, an option for 64 core graphics. The 40-core version bumps things up to 32 high-performance cores, eight energy-efficient cores, and 128 core graphics.
If you thought we were done with new chips, we are not. The planned MacBook Air will have yet another chip, codenamed Staten, that’s basically a faster version of the M1. The Staten chip also bumps graphics cores up to nine or 10 and is expected to power the forthcoming 13-inch MacBook Pro.
There wasn’t much detail on the new iMac, other than it’s larger than the colourful 24-inch iMac Apple just launched at its Spring Loaded event. This tracks with previous rumours that said the new iMac would be “really big, bigger than the biggest one.” According to Bloomberg, Apple paused development on the big boy iMac months ago to better focus on the 24-inch model.
It was baffling, at least from a PC user’s perspective, that Apple stuck the M1 chip in each of its new devices this year. Well, it’s looking like that may have been a temporary strategy for the initial transition because if these rumours pan out, it looks like Apple is rolling out five new chips. It’s a lot to process.