{"id":2476,"date":"2021-06-20T11:59:31","date_gmt":"2021-06-20T11:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ninetheme.com\/themes\/venam\/v1\/?p=2476"},"modified":"2022-06-26T18:02:35","modified_gmt":"2022-06-26T15:02:35","slug":"technology-series-2-macintosh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/2021\/06\/20\/technology-series-2-macintosh\/","title":{"rendered":"Macintosh by Apple – Mac Computers"},"content":{"rendered":"

After months\u2013if not years\u2013of fevered theorizing over Apple\u2019s chip roadmap for the Mac, this year\u2019s Worldwide Developers Conference, at last, gave us a tantalizing peek at the successor to the blockbuster M1<\/a>, released a little over a year and a half ago.<\/p>\n

We learned a bit more about the M2 this week when the first round of reviews<\/a> landed. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is identical to the M1 model on the outside but the inside is completely different thanks to Apple\u2019s latest chip. Benchmarks show<\/a> a nice speed boost of around 20 percent, a significant jump in graphics performance, and a very good improvement over the already-speedy M1.<\/p>\n

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But, far more excitingly, now that we\u2019ve got a second data point to work with, we can start to extrapolate a little more about the future of the M2 and when we might expect to see it make its way into the rest of the Mac lineup. (Like any professional writer, I can turn two dots into a line. Don\u2019t try this at home, kids.)<\/p>\n

Beyond M2<\/h2>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a crystal ball to see that the M2 is destined for most of Apple\u2019s consumer-level line-up, just as the M1 made its way into the 24-inch iMac<\/a> and the Mac mini<\/a>. The real question is whether, as was the case with the M1, Apple chooses to use the same version of the chip in all of those machines.<\/p>\n

In the case of the M1, Apple offered a binned 7-core GPU variant in the entry-level iMacs and MacBook Air; this time around, that low-end variant is an 8-core GPU M2, which could be a binned version of the 10-core GPU. (Though it is worth noting that the low-end M2 MacBook Air starts at $200 more than the entry-level M1 Air did.)<\/p>\n

Assuming Apple continues on a similar timeframe\u2014and it must be admitted that with the global supply chain in the shape that it is, it\u2019s hard to predict anything with reliability\u2014an M2 iMac is at the very least several months away. The real question is whether Apple will have the capacity to start shipping other M2 Macs this fall or will have to wait until next spring. The iMac\u2019s release date isn\u2019t pegged to a particular time of year and its updates often move around, appearing sometimes in the spring, sometimes mid-year, and sometimes in the fall. But if Apple is only starting to ship its first M2 Macs sometime next month, the fall may be too soon, especially with supply chain constraints. My bet\u2019s on next spring, because when it comes to rumored Apple products, always take the over\u2014products rarely show up sooner than you expect.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the wildcard Mac mini. When Apple announced the M1 Mac mini at the same fall event as the M1 Air, it also made the choice to leave the high-end Intel Mac mini in the lineup. As it now stands, it and the 2019 Mac Pro are the only<\/em> Intel Macs that Apple still sells. Much of the speculation around the replacement of that high-end Mac mini has centered on the more powerful versions of Apple\u2019s chips, like the Pro and Max.<\/p>\n

The M1 version of the Pro never made it to the desktop<\/a>. So will that change this time around? As someone who\u2019s very much in the market for an M2-Pro powered desktop, I certainly hope so (heck, it would be nice to see them in an iMac too, even if a larger model still isn\u2019t a going concern). My assessment is that Apple had to prioritize where to put the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips it had available and opted to direct them to the much more popular MacBook Pros and, in the case of the Max, the new Mac Studio.<\/p>\n

Like the iMac, a new Mac mini could show up anytime\u2014even if it\u2019s just an M2 version that sits above a cheaper M1-powered model. But looking holistically at Apple\u2019s roadmap, it\u2019s hard to imagine the Mac mini is at the top of the list for updates.<\/p>\n

Pro to the Max<\/h2>\n

What about those Pro and Max versions of the M2? The M1 Pro and M1 Max chips were introduced just under a year after the first M1 Macs, and not only were they a lot more powerful, but they also offered more configurations\u2013especially for GPU cores\u2013than the M1 did. We don\u2019t yet know how the M2 stacks up against the M1 Pro and M1 Max\u2013Apple was, naturally, very hesitant to compare them publicly\u2013but it seems likely that the next-generation Pro and Max chips will see the gains over their predecessors commensurate to what the M2 showed over the M1.<\/p>\n

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If the timeline continues apace, that would mean that M2 Pro\/Max chips will probably not arrive until (alas) next fall, an idea supported by recent rumors about redesigned MacBook Pros<\/a>. And if they do make the jump to the desktop this time around, I\u2019d still expect Apple to be prioritizing putting them in those MacBook Pros that sell so gosh darn well\u2014probably the same for a speed-bumped Mac Studio too. And of course, there\u2019s still one system hanging out there\u2026<\/p>\n

Ultra squared<\/h2>\n

Yes, the Mac Pro. Teased at the same spring event that announced the Mac Studio and its killer M1 Ultra chip, there was some hope that a revised Mac Pro would show up, appropriately enough, at a developer-centric conference. But as it hasn\u2019t, we\u2019re left with an unusual situation: Apple announced in 2020 that it expected to transition all<\/em> of its Macs to Apple silicon within two years, which it\u2019s done\u2014with the exception of the Mac Pro.<\/p>\n

But if the company\u2019s still going to try and ship a new Mac Pro by the end of 2022, there\u2019s little question of what chip will power it: it would seemingly have to be the M1 Ultra. When Apple\u2019s senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternus unveiled the M1 Ultra, he described it as \u201cone last chip\u201d in the M1 family, which seemingly rules out the possibility of an even more powerful processor.<\/p>\n

Certainly, the Mac Pro is not going to have a processor less powerful than the Mac Studio, and given that the M2 isn\u2019t even shipping yet, the Ultra version certainly doesn\u2019t seem like it would be available this soon. So the M1 Ultra it would have to be\u2014or, perhaps more likely, multiple M1 Ultras?<\/p>\n

Given that Apple is keeping the M1 Air in the lineup for now, perhaps the simultaneous existence of both chip lines isn\u2019t shocking. After all, it took well over a year for the Ultra version of the M1 to show up and it\u2019s only been around for a few months, which means it\u2019d better continue to earn its worth for all those users who invested in it.<\/p>\n

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When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After months\u2013if not years\u2013of fevered theorizing over Apple\u2019s chip roadmap for the Mac, this year\u2019s Worldwide Developers Conference,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19],"tags":[22,23,25,27,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4112,"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions\/4112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electron-store.wasimjewellers.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}