The New Mac Lineup

Just riffing here, random thoughts.

Thin, think iPad Pro 12.9in in a 13in form. Full keyboard, similar to today’s. The new design reminiscent of the iPad Pro designs. Edge to edge crisp display. It’s a convertible, which means you can flip the display over the back of the computer and it becomes a tablet. It’ll be about as thick as and weigh as much as the 12in MacBook.

Completely touch aware. Support for Apple Pencil. FaceID will be supported. No fan. As fast as, if not faster than, a modern 16in MacBook Pro. A battery life of 15-hours (10 under heavy load.)

The Mac Mini is an obvious place to make a huge difference in price performance. The question is, will Apple make a screaming fast Mac Mini for a good price? My guess is no. It will continue to be a low end option. It will get a new design and be about the size of the Apple TV. Fast. Quiet.

The iMac and iMac Pro – if the pro continues to be a thing – will not have touch support but will get a new design. Edge to edge display. FaceID. Fast. Quiet.

The Mac Pro design will remain as is for a while. A long while. It was designed to take us into the future. My big question here is, is the design going to work for replacing the CPU with a new Apple Silicon SoC?

The new lineup, with the modern design, will be Apple Silicon only. The price for the 16in and new 13in (14?) will increase. All devices with Apple Silicon will increase in price. Anyone believing Apple will drop the price because they’re in charge of everything, thus costing less to make, is dreaming. Apple only increases prices for new items.

The Intel based lineup will continue for a period of time as the inexpensive option in the lineup and will eventually fade out.

I feel like the Apple Silicon announcement really solidified my thoughts around the lines between iPad and MacBook. I had predicted the announcement of a 12in iOS laptop I’d dubbed iBook. That didn’t happen. But Apple Silicon Macs are so much better than my mythical iBook. True Pro developer hardware and OS. Full access to the computer. Everything we need to make excellent Mac and iOS applications.

Oh, and I really believe we’ll get a version of Windows that runs really well on Apple Silicon. It’s just a matter of time. The NT kernel, and all of Windows for that matter, are very portable and already run on ARM chips.