During this morning’s Apple special event stream, SVP of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji unveiled the first Apple silicon chip for Mac. The company teased this chip at WWDC in June, but we’ve had to wait until today for the full details. Chip transitions are never undertaken lightly, so expectations were high for how significant the advantages of Apple silicon would be. Thankfully, the M1 chip does not disappoint.
The M1 ushers in one of the largest single-generation leaps in performance and power efficiency for Apple hardware in recent history. It is a system on a chip (SoC), meaning it has pulled multiple different chip types from prior Macs together into one package. Assembled using a 5-nanometer process, the M1 is packed with 16 billion transistors. The result is a highly power-efficient chip which can deliver impressive performance while maintaining the longest battery life ever for Mac laptops.
Apple sprinkled facts, figures, and statistics throughout its presentation today about the new Macs it announced. Here are highlights of some of those stats from the event, which was held online from the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California.
Apple’s M1 Chip
Built using an industry-leading 5 nanometer process
Houses 16 billion transistors
8 CPU cores total: 4 high-performance and 4 high-efficiency cores
The high-efficiency cores have a 128KB instruction cache, 64KB data cache, and shared 4MB L2 cache
Uses 1/4 the power compared to the latest PC laptops running at full performance
Performance per watt has increased 3x since 2012
8 GPU cores total
128 execution units, up to 24,576 concurrent threads, 2.6 teraflops, 82 gigatexels/second, and 41 gigapixels/second
Uses 1/3 the power compared to the latest PC laptop GPUs running at full performance
Features Gen 4 PCI Express and a USB-4 controller
16 Neural Engine cores that can do 11 trillion operations per second
MacBook Air
3x faster than the best selling Windows laptop in its class
Faster than 98% of PC laptops
Up to 3.5x faster CPU than previous model
Up to 5x faster graphics than previous model
Up to 9x faster machine learning than previous model
13.3” 2560 x 1600 resolution Retina display with P3 color that has 25% more colors than sRGB displays
Can drive a 6K display
Supports Wi-Fi 6
18 hours of battery life, a 6 hour increase, plus 15 hours of web browsing
2x battery life on video calls
2x faster SSD that can be configured up to 2TB
Up to 16GB of unified memory
0 fans
Starts at $999
Mac mini
7.7” square design
Up to 3x faster CPU than previous model
Up to 6x faster graphics than previous model
Up to 15x faster machine learning than previous model
Up to 2TB SSD that support 3.3GB/s sequential read speeds
Up to 16 GB unified memory
Can drive a 6K display
Supports Wi-Fi 6
Up to 60% more energy efficient
2 Thunderbolt / USB-4 ports
Starts at $699
13” MacBook Pro
2.8x faster CPU than previous model
5x faster graphics than previous model
11x faster machine learning than previous model
20 hours of battery life
17 hours of web browsing
4x faster code compiles
Up to 16GB unified memory
13.3” 2560 x 1600 resolution Retina display with 500 nits of display brightness and P3 color that has 25% more colors than sRGB displays
Can drive a 6K display
Supports Wi-Fi 6
Up to 2TB SSD that support 3.3GB/s sequential read speeds
If you didn’t follow the live stream or announcements as they unfolded at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino today, you can replay it on Apple’s Events site and catch the product videos on Apple’s YouTube channel.
The keynote video can be streamed here and on the Apple TV using the Apple Events app. A high-quality version should also be available soon via Apple Podcasts as video and audio podcast episodes. First debuted in September, there is also an American Sign Language version of the event, which is available here.
Apple also posted other product videos on its YouTube channel, which are embedded after the break.
Today Apple announced pre-order and delivery dates for the new MacBook Air, 13” MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, all of which feature the new Apple-designed M1 chip. All three Macs are available for pre-order today with deliveries starting November 17th and 18th.
Apple has also released a second Release Candidate for macOS Big Sur. The company said during its presentation that Big Sur will be available this Thursday, November 12th, which is also when we’ll publish our comprehensive review of Big Sur on MacStories as well as an eBook version for Club MacStories members.
PetaPixel had the opportunity to interview iPhone Product Line Manager Francesca Sweet and VP of Camera Software Engineering Jon McCormack regarding the new cameras in the iPhone 12 line. They cover the design philosophy behind iPhone camera systems, the new Apple ProRAW file type, and the enlarged sensors in this year’s iPhone cameras. PetaPixel’s Jaron Scheider writes:
Apple says that it’s [sic] main goal for smartphone photography is based around the idea of letting folks live their lives, and capture photos of that life without being distracted by the technology.
“As photographers, we tend to have to think a lot about things like ISO, subject motion, et cetera,” McCormack said “And Apple wants to take that away to allow people to stay in the moment, take a great photo, and get back to what they’re doing.”
He explained that while more serious photographers want to take a photo and then go through a process in editing to make it their own, Apple is doing what it can to compress that process down into the single action of capturing a frame, all with the goal of removing the distractions that could possibly take a person out of the moment.
The full article is well worth a read, and includes a variety of interesting quotes from the interview.
Austin Mann is back again, and this time the professional travel photographer has reviewed the camera in the iPhone 12 Pro Max. We linked to Mann’s iPhone 12 Pro review last month, but that story was focused heavily on this year’s software improvements. For the iPhone 12 Pro Max Mann has taken a detailed look at the hardware upgrades in Apple’s latest top-of-the-line camera system.
This time around Mann has journeyed through Zion National Park. The photos he gathered are gorgeous, and he had this to say of the experience:
All in all, this was one of the most unique and beautiful hikes I’ve ever been on. You really should go experience the splendor for yourself — but for now, the iPhone 12 Pro Max served as an excellent camera to capture and share this adventure with you.
Don’t miss the photos and accompanying videos, as well as Mann’s full review over on his site.
Embargoes have lifted for the first wave of iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max reviews. Preorders for the new iPhones, which opened on November 6th and won’t begin to arrive on customers’ doorsteps until this Friday, November 13th, but in the meantime, you can read about both new iPhones and watch some excellent video reviews.
As you would expect, the reviews of the Pro Max concentrate on the new camera system while the reviews of the mini focus on the new device’s diminutive size and the implications of that.
BestPhotos is a streamlined photo management app for iOS and iPadOS, which we last covered a couple years ago. The app seeks to help users clean up their photo libraries using smart searches, photo comparisons, and metadata edits. Today marks the release of BestPhotos 3.0, a major update in which developer Eric Welander has added a variety of useful new features and improvements.
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