When Apple first announced its plans for the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon at WWDC 2020, the company said it would take about two years to fully complete the process. Now there's a new report on Cupertino's Apple Silicon roadmap.
In the latest edition of his “Power On” newsletter explained Mark Gurman said he believes Apple will "barely meet" the two-year timeline for the Mac lineup to fully transition to Apple Silicon. So far, we've seen the M1 chip in the MacBook Pro, Mac mini, MacBook Air, and 24-inch iMac. As Gurman explains, the first M1 Macs were introduced in November 2020, giving Apple until November 2022 to complete the transition. Looking ahead, Gurman says new MacBook Pros with better "M1X" processors are still planned and will be released soon, while a new high-end Mac mini will follow "soon after."
Apple Silicon: Smaller Mac Pro to be released next year
In 2022, Gurman expects the iMac to be "fully redesigned by the end of next year" and that a "redesigned, smaller Mac Pro with Apple Silicon" will "also be released later next year." Apple is also planning a redesigned MacBook Air to be released sometime in 2022 with MagSafe support. Gurman also reiterates that Apple is planning yet another update to the current Intel Mac Pro, which according to recent rumors could be powered by Intel Ice Lake Xeon W-3300 workstation CPUs. The Apple Silicon-powered Mac Pro is expected to have a smaller form factor, about half the size of the current Mac Pro but with a similar design language. In keeping with this, Bloomberg previously reported that Apple is developing chips with 20-core and 40-core configurations for use in the smaller Mac Pro. If Gurman is right, the next few months are sure to be exciting in the Mac space. (Photo by Unsplash / Jay Wennington)