Apple’s New Mac Lineup Promises Performance Boosts with New Apple Silicon
With the introduction of the M1 chip, Apple has also announced a new line of Mac computers to go along with it. Here’s what was announce at Apple’s latest event.
The first new Mac announcement was the 13-inch MacBook Air. This computer is completely fan-less and Apple claims the new MacBook Air is up to 3.5x faster than the previous generation (Kumparak, 2020). Apple also promises increased battery life, with a claim of 15 hours while browsing the web, or 18 hours while watching video (Kumparak, 2020). It has a 13.3” display, SSD support with the option to go up to 2TB, Touch ID, Thunderbolt/USB 4, and Wi-Fi 6 starting at $999 (Kumparak, 2020).
The Mac Mini is getting updated with the new M1 chip along with a decrease in base price by $100 to $699. It will have support for up to a 2TB SSD and up to 16GB of RAM (Kumparak, 2020). It features to USB-A ports, two USB-C ports (with thunderbolt/USB 4 support), a 3.5mm headphone jack, HDMI 2.0 and gigabit ethernet (Kumparak, 2020).
The new MacBook Pro built with the M1 chip boasts an increased battery life of 17 hours while browsing the web, or 20 hours of video playback (Kumparak, 2020). Like the MacBook Air, it has a 13.3” display, SSD support for up to 2TB, and up to 16GB of memory. It has TouchID, Wi-Fi 6, support for Thunderbolt/USB4, and a touch bar. The new MacBook Pro starts at $1,299 (Kumparak, 2020).
It will be interesting to see how Apple’s claims of increased performance and battery life hold up once these devices are released. If these claims are true, then the new M1 chip is a serious contender that should raise eyebrows at Intel and AMD.
Source: TechCrunch
