As a lot of you guys have probably noticed already, the tech space has been a little dry
lately in terms of new products, so because of that, there is a massive amount of hype
around Apple’s upcoming M1X Macs, which are gonna be the most significant Mac products
from Apple in many many years due to them getting completely redesigned.
However, this whole transition couldn’t have happened at a worse time, because the world is
going through a massive chip shortage, which is impacting countless amounts of companies,
and in this video, I’m gonna go through how this chip shortage has already impacted Apple,
and how it’ll be affecting the upcoming M1X Macs as well.
The first thing I wanna talk about is how things with Apple have been
incredibly weird lately, specifically a lot of recent leaks and rumors.
Many leakers like Jon Prosser were 100% sure that Apple would be holding an event on March 23rd,
where they would release a bunch of new products.
Kang, the most reliable Apple leaker out there with an almost perfect track record, also gave
us the March 23rd date, and unfortunately, Apple never sent out invites, so it’s looking like the
event is definitely not happening next week.
So there are two theories on why this would happen.
Number 1 is that Apple never planned to have a March event anyway, and they simply put out fake
news in an attempt to weed out the internal sources that are distributing these leaks.
So instead of a March event, Apple was planning to have an April event all along.
But personally, I don’t buy it at all. Apple hasn’t had an April event in around 11 years,
so it just seems weird for Apple to plan it this way from the very beginning.
Now the second theory is that Apple was planning to have a March event,
but they had to cancel it for some unknown reason, pushing it back an entire month.
I think it’s all due to the global chip shortage being much worse than many companies anticipated.
But before I get into explaining exactly what’s going on with the chip shortage,
I want to point out a couple of weird things that Apple’s been doing.
Last week, Apple stopped production of new iMac Pro models, before officially
discontinuing it altogether when the existing supplies ran out.
And then just yesterday, Apple completely stopped selling the higher-end storage models of their
21.5” iMac, which sort of signals that Apple is preparing to replace it with the rumored 24".
So there are a couple of possibilities here.
The best case scenario is that Apple is literally going to release
a new 24” redesigned iMac before the end of this month via a press release,
just like they did with the iPad Pro last year, possibly as early as tomorrow.
Another scenario is that Apple is lowering the current iMac stock
in preparation for an Apple event next month.
And the absolute worst case scenario is this: The global silicon chip
shortage is so bad that they’re delaying everything because there literally
isn’t enough chips out there for them to handle the demand from a new product release,
and this could mean that the new iMacs are unfortunately being delayed for months.
So before I share my thoughts on which one of those scenarios is most likely to happen,
as well as when we should be expecting the M1X MacBook Pro’s,
let me explain this whole global silicon shortage thing.
Anything in this world with a chip in it, which is basically all tech-related hardware,
rely on semiconductors. And most of them today are made out of Silicon wafers
which are then made into various components that go into every single tech product.
Now in terms of the whole chip shortage thing, there are a couple of different reasons for
it. The main reason is, of course, the pandemic.
Various factories around the world producing semiconductor chips
had to temporarily close down because of fears of the virus spreading.
This caused them to get further and further behind on all of their chip orders.
At the same time, the pandemic caused demand for electronic devices to blow up,
since everyone in the world had to rely on technology
much more than they had to before, with many people also starting to work from home.
And on top of that, people were also receiving stimulus checks,
and what better way to spend it than on new tech-related items.
All of this combined caused a massive spike in demand for chips, all while supply got hit by some
factories getting temporarily closed down, and ever since then, the demand hasn’t cooled down.
In fact, demand has increased due to the price of Bitcoin increasing,
which in turn caused a huge surge in demand for graphics chips that can mine the bitcoin.
That’s why all of the new graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia have been selling out instantly,
and even old graphics cards are extremely overpriced due to low stock.
Carmakers have been experiencing massive chip shortages as well.
Ford just announced that they’re closing down an entire factory in Ohio because of a lack of chips.
Last month, Tesla shut down Model 3 production for 2 weeks.
Mazda made production cuts. Many companies are cutting production, and it looks like this pain
won’t end for months, potentially through the end of the year.
So yeh, a huge surge in demand is causing a massive chip shortage,
and this isn’t the first time. This also happened back in 2010
due to massive demand for smartphones, which is when they really started to blow up.
And now, with all of that said, let’s discuss what’s been going on with Apple,
and how this chip shortage will affect the release of their M1X Macs.
If we take a look at the M1X MacBooks, we already know that Apple has delayed mass
production of them, from May or June to some time in the second half of 2021, which begins in July,
so we might not see them until sometime in the Fall.
So yeh, these shortages are already affecting the M1X Macs.
The only question is what’s going on with the redesigned iMac?
Jon Prosser says that the iMac is ready to launch at any time, and we recently saw a leak of an
ARM-based iMac within Xcode, and Apple even confirmed the existence of the machine.
And those leaks usually only come out shortly before an official release,
and there’s also the fact that Apple discontinued the larger storage
21.5” iMac models, which also usually only happens right before the launch of a new model.
And to make it even more interesting, we also got leaks from multiple sources pointing to a
redesigned iMac launching in the 1st quarter of 2021, which ends on the last day of this month.
So we could actually be seeing a new iMac getting released before the end of the month
via a press release, but on the other hand,
wouldn’t Apple want to show off the new iMac since it’s getting it’s first redesign in many months?
So it’s definitely hard to speculate on when we should expect it, but in my opinion,
I think there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing it before the end of April, but there’s a good chance
that the base model comes with the same M1 chip that we already have in current M1 Macs.
Now in terms of the future Apple Silicon Macs being impacted by the global chip shortage,
I think Apple is in the best possible position out of any company, so let me explain why.
For most Macs, Apple currently relies on Intel for the CPU chips and AMD for the dedicated graphics
chips, so any kind of chip shortages from those companies will directly impact Apple’s Macs.
For example, early last year, Apple refreshed their 13” MacBook Pro,
giving the high-end model the brand new 10th-gen chips from Intel.
But for some reason, the base $1300 model stuck with the old 8th-gen
chips even though it received some upgrades, like getting the new Magic keyboard and the Touch bar.
Later, it was revealed that the new 10th-gen Intel chips
had very low yields, and that’s why the base model stuck with the older chips.
But now that Apple is switching to their own chips, they’ll no longer have to worry about
any chip shortages at those other companies,
since Apple will also be using their own graphics chips as well.
Apple will instead be relying on TSMC, the most advanced chipmaker in the world,
and since Apple has such a good relationship with TSMC, they’ve been able to reserve
their chip production before everyone else, putting Apple in the best possible position.
And on top of that, TSMC is currently working on building a massive new facility
in April, so Apple has no worries on that front either.
The only thing Apple has to worry about is the supply of different components like RAM,
SSDs and other chips, which seem to be fine for now as far as chip shortages are concerned.
But in general, Apple is in an extremely good spot now that they’re finally ditching Intel and AMD,
so the future of Apple Silicon Macs is looking very bright,
and hopefully we’ll be seeing that new redesigned iMac before the end of next month.
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