Apple held what's likely to be its final special event of the year on Tuesday. Apple used the event, titled "One More Thing," to dive deeper into details about the company's switch from Intel processors to ARM-based Apple Silicon revamped Mac lineup, including which models would be the first to get the new chip. We also learned more about MacOS 11 Big Sur, and when it'll be available as an update to current Macs.
Here's everything Apple announced during Tuesday's event.
Apple Silicon and new Macs
In June, Apple made the announcement it would start to transition its Mac computer lineup away from Intel processors, opting instead to use its own ARM-based Apple Silicon processors. It's the same type of processor that Apple has used in its iPhone and iPad models.
Apple stated the transition would start by the end of this year, and finish in 2022. To help developers get their apps ready for the move, Apple made a Developer Transition Kit available to developers who applied. The DTK used the same processor that's in the 2020 iPad Pro, the A12Z. It included 512GB of storage and 16GB of memory.
We now know that the first Apple Silicon processor will be the Apple M1 system on a chip (SOC). That combines the CPU, GPU and memory, among other aspects, into a 5nm chip with 16 billion transistors. It has an eight-core CPU, with four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. Apple claims the M1 has two times the CPU performance over the leading PC processor. The M1 also includes an eight-core GPU, again, with two-time performance gains when compared to the latest PC laptop processor, according to Apple.
The first Mac that will be powered by the M1 chip is the MacBook Air. According to Apple,