Although there were many announcements that we experienced in the last Apple WWDC, without a doubt the star announcement was that of Apple Silicon, the family of processors with ARM architecture with which, in the coming years, the apple company will gradually abandon progressive Intel chips to stay with their own integrated. First we expect a MacBook with Silicon, maybe two or three models (which most likely will not arrive together) and, later, the first iMac and / or Mac Mini equipped with the microprocessors designed by the company.
Although at the time of Silicon’s announcement most predictions suggested that we would have to wait until 2021 to see the first MacBook with Silicon, in recent months there have been several leaks, and not a few specialized analysts at Apple have indicated that the The term could be shorter than expected, to the point that it seems more and more likely that the first MacBook with Silicon will arrive earlier than the turn of the year.
The latest news on this comes from The China Times, and states that Apple is working on a Silicon MacBook equipped with an A14X processor, codenamed “Tonga” and manufactured by TSMC. If the information indicated by the Chinese newspaper is fulfilled, the autonomy of this MacBook will oscillate between 15 and 20 hours .
According to information from the supply chain and production, the first MacBook with Silicon will have a 12-inch Retina screen, will have USB Type-C connectors (to see if they end up reaching mobile devices as well) and, in a new sample of Apple’s increasingly clear commitment to mobility, it would weigh less than 1 kilogram . In case there was any doubt that the first MacBook with Silicon would be called Air, with this data those doubts would be completely dispelled.
In terms of performance, it is interesting to note that the A14X processor will also be used in the next generation iPad Pro tablet. Something that, as I mentioned with a colleague a while ago, makes me have serious doubts about whether the first MacBook with Silicon will not actually be, and in terms of performance and features, little more than an iPad with keyboard and MacOS X in instead of iPadOS. I hope I am wrong, and opinions about it like the one I read here point in that sense, but it is increasingly clear to me that the key moment to evaluate Silicon in computers, be they portable or desktop, will come with the future generation of processors, A15.
Be that as it may, rumors of a lightweight and inexpensive Silicon MacBook before the end of the year are only gaining weight . So much so that now the big question is whether its presentation in society can take place in the next keynote on September 10, in a hypothetical second event that, according to speculation, could be held at the end of September or, ultimately, in a launch that is not accompanied by an event, and that takes place in the fourth quarter of 2020.