As scheduled, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has announced the new generation of Macbooks and Mac Mini. Boasting the company’s in-house silicon chip for the first time, ending its partnership with Intel’s CPUs, the new clamshell machines offers more power, lower battery consumption, and a more streamlined process across Apple’s ecosystem. The latter practically means that users will be able to run iOS apps on the new Apple-powered machines as if you’re running them on the new iPhones. As of writing, there’s no word yet of local availability for the new devices; however, here’s how much they cost:
- Mac Mini – starts at Php37,990 – 8GB/256GB
- MacBook Air – starts at Php54,990 8GB/256GB
- MacBook Pro 13″ – starts at Php71,990 8GB/256GB
You can click on their names to see the spec sheet.
Apple M1 Chip vs Intel CPU
At the core of all the newly-announced Apple devices is the Apple M1 chip. Veering away from the traditional CPU design of Intel and other chip manufacturers, the M1 chip is now the heart of Apple’s computers that combines memory, GPU, and neural engine into one silicon. As a result, you get incredible performance with significantly lower power draw than a regular PC or last year’s MacBooks and Mac Mini.
According to Apple, the M1 chip’s 15W TDP surpasses even those with higher TDPs of Windows laptops. Dissecting the M1 chip, it houses a total of eight cores — featuring four performance cores and four efficiency cores. Additionally, there’s an up to 8-core GPU and 16-core Neutral Engine for graphics processing.
Regardless of the model you purchase, whether it’s the Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air, the new “RAM” capacity is either 8GB or 16GB across the board. Apple is calling this technology “unified memory”. Apparently, this paves the way for dramatic performance improvements and power efficiency. Since the chips are tightly integrated into one silicon, the process being shared across other parts of the chipset requires no translation that adds to power consumption.
Apple M1 chip is basically an SoC, much like the A14 Bionic in the iPhone 12 and the A12x in the iPad Pro. Knowing the fact that Apple’s operating systems use less RAM than their counterparts, it seems like RAM capacity isn’t going to be a big deal for the new machines — all thanks to Apple’s optimization.
According to Apple’s testings, the MacBook Pro can last up to 20 hours of video playback, with the MacBook Air up to 18 hours. Furthermore, only the Pro model comes with a fan for heat dissipation. Spec-wise, both the Pro and Mac Mini feature the same internals. Only the MacBook Air features a 7-core GPU. But regardless, the company shared during their presentation that the new machines can go through 6K RAW color grading and even up to 8K RAW playback without a hitch.
READ: Apple iPhone Pricelist in the Philippines – iPhone 12 Starts at Php43,990
