
Silicon MacBook could launch on 27 October and cost $800 - mgh2
https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/silicon-macbook-could-launch-on-27-october-cost-800-3793534/
======
_ph_
Bringing the 12" MacBook back with Apple Silicon for $800 could be huge. First
of all, the 12" MacBook was the dream portable machine, especially being
fanless. However, the processors where really to slow and the price to high.

I guess, the 12" MacBook was designed on a promise of Intel of delivering
processors, they never could deliver due to the issues with their 10nm
process. This is where an ARM based design around the iPad processor would be
an instant win performance wise.

But it is also great news, if Apple really uses the costs saved by going with
their own CPUs to offer the machine at a lower price. Suddenly, it can compete
with a lot of branded laptops on the price alone. With the additional speed
from the processors, it should be quite a good general purpose laptop. And we
know how nice the 12" MacBook was from a design perspective.

For the consumer market, the ability to run iOS apps becomes an additional
huge benefit. For more and more people, the smartphone is the default
computing platform, especially for younger people, the smartphone might be the
device they get into computing at all. So when bying a laptop to go along with
your smartphone, the Mac running Apple Silicon has a huge benefit, as it
integrates more seamless than ever with your smartphone.

I would expect the Mac market share to get quite a boost as a consequence.

While the MacBook is the obvious machine to equip with Apple Silicon for the
reasons listed above, I would also expect Apple to hit the market with a true
developer machine just so that developers can not only test their software on
Apple Silicon, but that it becomes the development platform right from the
start.

~~~
drawfloat
I still raise an eyebrow whenever Apple pushes running iOS apps on Mac as a
big plank of its desktop strategy. SwiftUI is still incomplete, badly
documented, and a bit of an arse to work with. A shame, because it has the
potential to be really enjoyable to work with. But until they sort that out,
this whole strategy of theirs seems half baked.

~~~
dbbk
This is the only part of their strategy to me that I don't understand. Running
unmodified iOS apps on a Mac is going to be such a terrible experience and
there's no way around it. Why? Just because they can?

~~~
k2enemy
Ipad apps on a mac laptop with touchscreen would be great. And some of the
design changes in MacOS 11 look like they are making mac UI elements touch
accessible.

~~~
perlpimp
also a transformer to macbook way thinkpad had their models with keyboard
folding to the back also would be nice.

------
mindfulhack
Apple Silicon feels like the most exciting 'Apple computer' news since the
launch of the Macintosh.

Typing this from a 16-inch MacBook Pro that cost me $5k, I know Apple loves to
make money via raw sale price of premium hardware. Imagine what power they'll
be able to pack into such a price once they apply Apple Silicon to the MBP.
I'm thinking 128 or even 256 GB RAM, extraordinary processing speed options
that are orders or magnitude faster than any other laptop (or even desktop),
it's major major news.

The big question mark hanging over it is ability to run native Linux. I'm a
Linux user, increasingly. We'll have to watch this space.

~~~
znpy
> The big question mark hanging over it is ability to run native Linux.

I wouldn't not be surprised if Apple took every measure possible to make it
impossible to run Linux on their new machines.

~~~
_ph_
It is not clear to me, why they would care much about it. The selling point of
Macs is to a large amount macOS. On the other side, at least for now, it is
announced that Apple Silicon hardware only boots into signed operation
systems, which currently is only macOS. I would assume, that means there is
little chance to run Linux natively on Apple Silicon. On the other side,
virtualisation technology is part of macOS, so there should be good support to
run Linux inside a virtualized environment. They even showcased Linux during
the keynote.

~~~
znpy
we'll see.

for the moment, most people i know complain about poor performances of linux
vms in mac os, particularly when running docker (that gets pretty i/o
intensive when dealing with images).

> at least for now, it is announced that Apple Silicon hardware only boots
> into signed operation systems

this alone already rules out gnu/linux i guess?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
It really depends. After all, there are UEFI x86 systems using secure boot to
boot Linux, but there was also Microsoft's vision of ARM (spec outright
prohibits user managed keys, and nobody's shipping with anything but Microsoft
keys).

~~~
GekkePrutser
> but there was also Microsoft's vision of ARM (spec outright prohibits user
> managed keys, and nobody's shipping with anything but Microsoft keys).

Indeed. "Microsoft <3 Linux" they say. Right...

------
watersb
A MacBook carved out of a single, atomically perfect crystal of silicon.

Heavy as fsck but oh so pretty.

Just don’t drop it.

~~~
freetime2
I also found it to be really strange that this article dropped the “Apple” in
“Apple Silicon”. As if having chips made from silicon is the defining
characteristic of these new laptops. Or maybe the whole thing is just a solid
block of silicon.

I also find it impressive that Apple managed to get us all saying “Apple
Silicon” instead of “processor” or “CPU” in the first place. It does have a
much hipper ring to it.

~~~
mistersquid
> I also find it impressive that Apple managed to get us all saying “Apple
> Silicon” instead of “processor” or “CPU” in the first place. It does have a
> much hipper ring to it.

Credit where it is due, Apple knows how to name.

Many technology pundits fail to understand (or perhaps more to the point
believe) Apple's naming choices, with "iPad" being a notable recent-ish
example. [0]

Even many who "get" Apple's product naming can misjudge. I personally was
unmoved by the name "iMac" when it was announced in 1998. However, that
leading lowercase "i" was a stroke of marketing genius so broad that it is
only just now diminishing some twenty years later.

[0] [https://www.cultofmac.com/310020/ipad-haters-5th-
anniversary...](https://www.cultofmac.com/310020/ipad-haters-5th-anniversary/)

~~~
hyperdimension
That, and how Apple got nearly everyone (unconsciously?) dropping the
indefinite article before their product name (e.g. "On iPad, ..." "...never
had this issue with iPhone")

I never fail to notice it--it nearly drives me crazy.

------
mrweasel
The possibility of new AirPort gear is just as exciting as new ARM based
laptops, I could use an update to my old AirPort Express units.

The last few Apple laptop I’ve had for work has been annoying at best, so for
home use I wasn’t going to replace my old 2013 Macbook Pro with a new Mac, but
I am tempted to try an ARM based Macbook.

~~~
ksec
To me it is even more exciting than ARM MacBook.

Airport Extreme was the last Router where I dont have to restart it every few
months. It was stable, rock solid. And you only realise how much better it is
once you switch to something else.

I wonder if it would still be based on NetBSD? And TimeCapsule?

~~~
runeks
> Airport Extreme was the last Router where I dont have to restart it every
> few months.

Give Ubiquiti a try. Mine has been running for several years and I’ve never
had to restart it.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Ubiquity is good, but honestly not any faster than the 6 year airport extremes
since they both run on 802.11ac.

Things might be different now with Wifi6 but there really hasn’t been a single
reason to go beyond an AirPort Extreme for 6 solid years.

~~~
ksec
>Things might be different now with Wifi6 but there really hasn’t been a
single reason to go beyond an AirPort Extreme for 6 solid years.

I was an idiot to want and buy a faster 802.11ac Router, I gave away my
AirPort Extreme to my friend and bought an ASUS. It was faster, slightly
better coverage / reception. But in the end I discover I value stability over
_absolutely_ everything.

I cant remember what problem I had with Ubnt when I had one set up in my
friends house.

------
vbezhenar
This is just a rumor posted from some random twitter account. Take it with a
grain of salt.

------
jeppesen-io
The MacBook 12 is my favorite laptop of all time. If Apple comes out with same
form factor with a little better performance, I'll get it in a heartbeat

------
klelatti
A price point of $800 needs to be compared with that of the base iPad pro -
currently $799. So if no change to the iPad pricing that's (at least) a
keyboard and bigger screen for $1. Seems to me that one of these values will
need to change.

~~~
viraptor
An alternative speculation: after saying effectively that iPad pro can be your
laptop, the next iPad pro will be a laptop.

~~~
sjwright
I think it's an even money that Apple Silicon will mark the introduction of
touch to macOS. In fact with Apple planning to make a big deal out of Silicon
Macs natively supporting iOS apps, I'll be surprised if these Macs don't have
multi-touch screens.

Apple has always been big on forcing app developers to rewrite UIs to the
device, like they did with the iPhone-to-iPad transition. Without touch on
Mac, many iOS apps are going to be janky as hell; an incredibly un-Apple thing
indeed.

------
opportune
If Apple actually sells it at $800 this will be huge. I assume it will ship
with some virtualization software and the real question for me is how well
that will work. Even if that doesn't work, at $800 it's definitely going to be
a better deal than chromebooks or surface laptops assuming it can do things
other than surf the web and email.

~~~
mcintyre1994
They talked a bit about Rosetta 2 in the presentation a few weeks ago, it’s an
emulator rather than virtualisation. Their main trick was that it does most of
the translation at install time instead of runtime, though I guess it’ll
depend on app specifics how useful that optimisation is. I’m guessing a
browser won’t be improved much for example while a native office package would
be. Pretty decent write up here: [https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-
mac-rosetta-2-em...](https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-mac-
rosetta-2-emulation-app-converter-explainer)

~~~
saagarjha
It’s also hardware-accelerated via special features in Apple silicon.

------
tedk-42
I've tried to look for resources around doing any real local development with
an ipad pro (a device that's already using apple silicon) and the best advice
I've found is basically hacks to get a VM running in digital ocean to do your
'compute'.

Not a huge fan of this. I'm hoping you it's not like the ARM ecosystem with
Windows where things are heavily nerfed (Surface Pro X) to the point where you
can't do anything that resembles proper development.

Proper MacOS, full full system access, ability to run docker and run golang
builds, node runtime, python etc natively and locally on the device are a
must. Native terminal app (obviously) is a must with the option of running
something like iTerm2 etc. I had a chromebook before with crostini and that
was a shitty experience for a fanless dev machine. I hope apple can do it
right.

side nitpick: i don't align with the apple haters out there who wanna pick at
things like the use of the word 'silicon' by apple.

~~~
saagarjha
> Proper MacOS, full full system access, ability to run docker and run golang
> builds, node runtime, python etc natively and locally on the device are a
> must.

You’ll get all of that, don’t worry.

------
skc
This would be an absolute game changer.

Everyone aspires to own a Macbook but either flat out can't afford one or
can't justify the price. (I'm in the second camp)

This changes all of that.

~~~
pault
This sounds like a bubble effect. None of my friends have ever expressed
interest in trading their windows laptops in for a Mac. Some of them actively
avoid Apple products with well reasoned justification.

------
captaincrowbar
Apple are usually careful not to announce new hardware until it's just about
ready to ship (with the occasional exception _cough_ AirPower _cough_ ), but
in this case (assuming the report is correct) I suspect they'll be making an
exception. Four months between announcing Apple Silicon and the first hardware
hitting retail seems far too short for developers to properly prepare. So I'm
guessing that this will be an announcement well in advance of hardware
shipping, maybe early next year, to give developers a clear target to aim for
(both a hardware target and a calendar target).

~~~
sjwright
I strongly disagree. Apple needs real hardware in stores in order to get Apple
Silicon into the hands of the long tail of Mac developer community and to
light a fire under developers to get their stuff released.

As for most "normal" customers, these first Apple Silicon devices are going to
be perfectly usable on day one—whether they're spending 99% of their time in a
web browser or running some outdated finance software through Rosetta. And
natively compiled software is going to come thick and fast over the next few
months.

As for timing, with the pandemic flattening demand for semiconductors, Apple
will have no trouble getting their supply chains running. I'll be shocked if
we don't see Apple Silicon Macs in stores by December.

------
Jemm
I really hope the name Silicon is not used officially.

~~~
lukevp
Apple Silicon is the official name for their ARM processors, it was used
heavily in the reveal at WWDC by Apple.

~~~
dbbk
I think in reporter briefings it's been said that this is a placeholder name.

~~~
saagarjha
I think they’ve been mentioning it far too often if it was.

------
mgh2
It is exciting as a new technology, but from a business standpoint... I
suspect specs will be in par with the failed 12inch macbook, with this being a
price corrected product, a 1st prototype, and as a strategy improvement
parallel to Microsoft’s failed ARM launch.

~~~
monadic2
A) the first device of any product line is not the one to watch for consumer
reactions. It's for developers and early adopters. I would not expect this to
be a commercial success.

B) the 12 inch macbook is probably my favorite device, though I really hope
they keep the top line of keys. It's so thin, the battery lasts forever, and
somehow it performs better than my xps 13 running linux (in interaction
latency, not computational throughput).

~~~
riffraff
but the first intel macbook was a hit, wasn't it? The 13" sold for 1000$ and
worked like a charm, which was surprising.

~~~
monadic2
The 13” was a great laptop too. The 12” I have has a single usb-c port and a
headphone port, which I suspect is a big reason it didn’t take off.

It’s soooo light though, I still love it.

Finally, I think the risks here are far more clear than a new laptop form
factor.

------
adammunich
Can they really trademark the name of an element? That seems absurd.

~~~
duskwuff
I don't see any real suggestion that they'd do so. Apple has referred to their
hardware in developer documentation as "Apple Silicon" \-- possibly to avoid
trademark issues with ARM? -- but I expect them to use the same naming scheme
they use for their iOS application processors (like "Apple A16X") once they
have a product ready for market. MacWorld's use of phrases like "Apple's
Silicon processor" is likely to just represent confusion on the part of the
journalist.

As an aside, I have a very hard time believing that Apple would reenter the
networking industry. Consumer wireless access points are a commodity product
at this point -- it'd be difficult for Apple to present a compelling premium
option, especially when many consumers are satisfied with the one that came
built into their cable modem.

~~~
skohan
> possibly to avoid trademark issues with ARM

I suspect it's more of a branding/positioning thing. ARM has an association
with low power devices like smartphones, and Apple wants to position this as
something new, exciting, and better than x86.

~~~
jurmous
Apple Silicon encompasses more than the ARM CPU. It also includes an Apple
GPU, Apple Neural Engine, Secure Enclave and more. If you only point to the
ARM part you overlook most of the other parts of the chip. The CPU cores are
like less than 25% of the layout?

Layout of the A12: [https://cdn.iphoneincanada.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2018/10/A12...](https://cdn.iphoneincanada.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2018/10/A12_575px.jpg)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I mean, by that logic, does calling a modern intel cpu x86 discount the
integrated graphics, which are also very significant?

------
wayanon
Would a device like this be more powerful than my early 2015 MBP?

~~~
Joeri
Yes. The A12Z in the ipad pro is already 25% faster is in single core and 50%
faster in multicore than the highest end i7 in the 2015 macbook pro according
to geekbench 5.

Given that the chip in macbooks will be a lot faster than the A12Z, it could
very well offer twice the multicore performance.

~~~
bitL
> geekbench 5

Now try some math workload on A12Z, i.e. real-world stuff and weep. Most of
the die space on x64 CPUs is spent on caches and SSE, so if you cut them out
to be more power-friendly, you lose performance in high-end applications.

~~~
jki275
What makes you believe Apple doesn’t know this or has removed them?

~~~
bitL
A12Z is still using ARM 8.3 instruction set, therefore no 2048-bit SVE2 for
math. Their L1 cache is also 2x smaller than on Zen 2 - that gives them a
massive power advantage. I'd wait out this generation of ARM-based notebooks
and go with their next CPU that should have SVE2 implemented.

It's not like anything faster than Pentium J is needed for Office, browsing or
even front-end development, so in that segment their first gen should be good
enough and maybe even better than i3/i5.

~~~
floatboth
SVE is a niche HPC thing just like AVX512. For most applications NEON (aka
AdvSIMD) is more than enough.

------
klelatti
It will be interesting to see if the MacBooks are first Apple products to use
the TSMC 5nm process. Might make sense given the lower volume when compared to
iPhones.

------
bluedino
It better have more than one port. Remember why people didn’t buy the 12”
MacBook?

~~~
_ph_
One main advantage of going to their own silicon is, that Apple is no longer
dependant on the decisions of Intel, what kind and number of ports the machine
should have. Then designing USB-C/Thunderbolt support, they can add as many
ports as they want to the chipset. For the MacBook, 2 ports would be nice, as
we have today on the MB Air. However I don't think the ports were the biggest
reason that people didn't buy the 12" MB. The Intel CPUs were just too
constrained when running in a machine without a fan, the Apple Silicon should
improve upon this a lot. The butterfly keyboard didn't help things either.

~~~
GekkePrutser
I don't think Intel is the reason for the few ports though... No other intel
laptop has such few ports. It's Apple's own minimalism (and their extremely
lucrative dongle business)

~~~
_ph_
Yes and no. The problem is, the chipsets limit the number of thunderbolt ports
you can offer without adding separate interface chips. That is why many other
laptops come with one or two thunderbolt ports too. What Apple could have
done, is offering plain USB ports etc., which the chipset would support. But
as Apple wants all ports to have the same capabilities, they were quite
limited by the maximum amount of thunderbolt ports supported.

While I think it would have been very convenient to add at least one USB-A
style port and perhaps a dedicated HDMI port to their machines, I quite agree
how nice it is, that all USB-C style ports do have the same capabilities.

------
gre
I want a touchscreen too.

------
jasonlfunk
Who knows if these pricing rumors are real, but what’s interesting is that if
everyone keeps talking about how these machines are going to be quite a bit
cheaper, Apple might be forced to actually make them cheaper than they would
have otherwise. If they come out with more expensive ones, it’ll be a bad
look.

------
staycoolboy
There's a reason why Apple hired hundreds of chip designers away from
Portland's Intel site and set up a chip designer center in Portland.

------
nakazl
Awesome. But I want a laptop that costs $2500, has a 4:3 Flexview screen, the
old IBM keyboard and does not look like an ugly fashion accessory.

And I don't like LED backlight:

[https://ledstrain.org/d/680-eyestrain-in-macbook-
pro-2018](https://ledstrain.org/d/680-eyestrain-in-macbook-pro-2018)

------
dbcooper
The $999 MacBook Air comes with a core i3. Where is the purported $200 cost
saving coming from?

Edit:

According to the WSJ $75 to $150 per Mac could be saved.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/apple-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/apple-
is-the-newest-chip-giant-in-town-11592910000)

>The new Mac processors will shave $75 to $150 off the cost of building a
computer, estimate analysts, who say Apple can pass those savings on to
customers and shareholders.

~~~
rimjongun
Apple silicon.

~~~
dbcooper
How much is an i3? Surely well under $200.

~~~
ksec
A saving of $100 from BOM would translate to $200 reduction in SRP. Remember
this isn't just CPU, but CPU + Chipset and other smaller components.

Apple could easily make that saving and more. You can also look at iPad Pro
selling price as reference.

~~~
beagle3
This. Also, there is a possibility Apple is willing to forego some profit
(make only 70% rather than 100% profit) as a strategy to seed the market in
order to give developers an incentive to adopt ARM faster.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Their push into services would be helped by having more volume products. I'm
suspect this is why the iPhone SE was priced so low.

------
GekkePrutser
Lol $800. This is Apple we're talking about. Just the logo on the front will
cost $800 (just joking). But really, this is way below Apple's normal pricing.

It would cannibalise the iPad Pro very much too, considering the price of
those + keyboard stand is much higher.

Unless they deliberately give up some of their huge margins in order to get
these in circulation ASAP, I don't see this happening. The first ARM will be a
premium product for them. I don't think it will carry a budget price. No
MacBook has been this cheap since the MB Air 11" which was a really
underpowered 1.4Ghz / 2GB RAM model.

~~~
valuearb
Apples Mac margins are in the 15-30% range. They will price to maintain those
margins, so if they can build a viable $800 MacBook at those margins they will
take the additional market share.

The iPad Air was a $500+ tablet until they were able to build a $299 model at
same margins.

~~~
GekkePrutser
But 15-30% is huge in the computer market. 10% is normal to consumers and much
less to enterprise customers that demand deep discounts.

I doubt they'd keep the same margin if they really offer it at $800. I don't
think they'd save that much by cutting intel out, especially if you factor in
R&D. Pretty sure they're cutting into their margins at that price, but it
would be good for them to get ARM in the hands of consumers so that developers
have a reason to work on it.

~~~
valuearb
It’s huger than you think, the rest of the PC makers are stuck between 1-4%
net profit margins.

But their pricing isn’t going to be greatly influenced by R&D costs, it’s
going to be driven by hardware costs. Those R&D costs are ongoing expenses,
Apple is always working on new technologies. A rough rule of thumb is retail
is twice hardware costs. Most Intel CPUs cost between $200 and $300 each,
while Ax processors in iPads and iPhones cost less than $100 each. And another
big factor is the SOCs for Apple Silicon will integrate lots of capabilities
that require separate cards or coprocessors on current Macs, including high
performance GPUs, the T2 security chip, etc.

So it’s reasonable to think Apple will be saving $100 to $200 in hardware
costs for the Apple Silicon “equivalents” of their current lineup (Equivalents
in positioning, but faster, slimmer and longer battery life versions). That
directly translates $200-$400 lower retail prices, which Apple will use to
drive higher sales volumes. That will spread R&D, Design, Marketing, Sales,
Admin, and Support over more units, supporting spending more to promote and
sell them and more on design and R&D in the future.

