For those of us who spend a lot of brain power thinking about where Apple is heading next, this week has been a bit of a head-scratcher. New reports from the China Times suggest that the first Mac with Apple silicon will be a tiny laptop, directly contradicting the suggestion from reliable supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that the first Apple silicon Macs would be an iMac and a 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Conflicting reports about the future of the Mac?! What’s a tea-leaf reader to do?
I wonder, though, if both of these reports can be true. And if so, the roll-out of Apple silicon potentially makes a lot more sense than it seemed before the head-spinning report from the China Times.
First things first
For years, as rumors rumbled about Apple turning to its own chips to power the Mac, the assumption was always that the most obvious ARM Mac was a tiny, fanless laptop. It would benefit from an efficient processor that wouldn’t require active cooling—all the things that Apple’s chips in the iPhone and iPad provide. And what better vehicle than the 12-inch MacBook, which was introduced in 2015 as specifically inspired by the iPad?
Read more at MacWorld.com