As previously announced by Apple this summer, the company is embarking on a major transition within its Mac product lineup. After almost a decade and a half of relying on Intel’s x86 processors to serve at the heart of every Mac, the company is going to be shifting to relying on its own, in-house designed Arm processors to power their now un-PC computers. At the time Apple set the start of the transition at the end of this year, and right on cue, today Apple announced the first three Apple Silicon-powered Macs: the Late 2020 editions of the MacBook Air, the 13-Inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini.
Three of the lower-end devices within the Mac family, Apple is starting small for their Arm transition. The Mac Mini is of course the smallest and most integrated of Apple’s desktop-style computers. Meanwhile the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are Apple’s two 13.3-inch laptops, focused on portability and performance respectively. Fittingly, these are also the areas where performance-per-watt is generally the most critical, as Apple is very strongly power-constrained on these platforms, and thus performance-limited as well.
