apple is set to announce the first apple silicon mac in just a few days here's what we know
and what we don't know stick around
hey everyone welcome back to today in tech i'm Juliet Beauchamp and i'm here as always
with computer world executive editor Ken Mingis as well as macworld senior writer michael simon
i mean by and large the biggest news story of the last week is of course apple's event on november
10th i'm sure there's nothing else happening in the world except that i was just going to say
outshining even the election in the united states yeah everything else is
is is nothing it's just apple well we should but we but we should know this is at least a
week earlier than we really thought it was going to happen yeah i wasn't exactly a week we thought
the 17th thing we got on the 10th yeah whatever that's worth and and you know we don't know a lot
but we're getting some details about what we think they're going to announce including a 16-inch
macbook pro i'm kind of interested to hear about that one yeah um 13-inch air 13-inch pro 16-inch
pro those that's that's that's out of bloomberg mark german who's pretty plugged in um so that's
probably what we're going to get he says imacs are are down the road we heard um we heard that rumor
about a massively redesigned imac way back in june with a like an ipad pro type design with a very
slim bezels around curved uh sorry rounded corners on the screen xdr or all that other stuff so um
i wouldn't look for that probably next year but yeah it looks like looks like the entire laptop
line will get revamped and we also heard rumors earlier of um a new macbook which has
been retired for a couple of years now but maybe not this time around maybe that i didn't think
january or twitter march who knows yeah i'm just going to say i didn't think when they retired the
macbook that it was gone for good yeah it makes sense makes sense that they'd bring this out now
it's interesting too one of the things that sort of surprised me a little bit was that uh at least
the speculation is that there's you know also some design changes i mean it's i guess when you
think about it not a surprise depending on what apple can do with with its silicon and you know
in terms of form factor but i'm assuming they'd be relatively minor not major form factor changes but
that sort of peaked my interest yeah i mean you know it's a it's a laptop i mean there's not a
whole lot you can do with the forms cool new colors you need a keyboard you need a track set
you need a screen um the one thing the one change i would look for is a face id true depth camera
that's sorely missing from the from the mac line and i don't know why apple hasn't added it yet
with the iphone had it now for 4 generations it is perfect for the macbook you open it up you look
at the thing all the time it's it's just tailor made they have a touch id sensor which is nice
but face id for um purchasing and for obviously unlocking uh would be awesome
you mean basically like it works on like the ipad yeah right so the iphone you know the same thing
it's just you know you look built into the bezel it's a camera so you open it up and you you're
automatically logged in because it sees your face and it's it's that much quicker you don't have
to reach up and touch the the touch bar or type in your password what do we think about pricing
i mean i'd like to think that it's going to go down like a 7.99 michael you're so
optimistic well i mean i look at the pricing for apple's other things you know they still have this
reputation as being this really super high-end luxury um out-of-reach company and and you know
they're they're not that but they're also not that because like if you look at samsung for example
their galaxy note 20 ultra is 1300 bucks the apple's uh iphone 12 pro max is 10.99 and
there is there the apple's prices are extremely aggressive when you look at it in in line with
the rest of the world and the reason why is because they control the silicon samsung plate
pays a ton to qualcomm for to use the snapdragon processor google same thing in fact with google's
latest phones they said you know what we're not even using the new one because it's too expensive
we're going to use the the step down processor the 765g which also has 5g because you know
you know google can kind of get away with that because people buy it for for the android
experience not so much the speed experience but the message there is that qualcomm is charging a
lot in licensing fees to these companies for these chips and apple doesn't have that to worry about i
don't know what apple pays intel i don't know what that whole thing no one is privy to that
but i can tell you what it's less if apple's making it themselves they're already making these
chips for the iphone and the ipad it's not like they're they're building a whole new factory to
make you know uh to to to fab chips they're there so whatever apple is going to to to put inside
these macs it's going to be cheaper on their bottom line than than intel yeah whether that's
you know material or something that we don't even see i don't know what it is but i tell you what a
799 macbook air would be sweet oh yeah i'm not arguing i actually agree with you i think apple
can i think it would have the you know the room to keep those margins up because the cost
of what it's doing of building these itself with its own silicon will save it some money i'm just
not sure that apple actually will apple always loves to like add features and keep the price
generally when they're doing a new model at least you know pretty much where they were before
they like that 30 margin yeah they'll do what they have to do to get there last year they
cut the price of the 11. this year they uh like i mean you can say they technically raised it on the
12 but they also they they brought in that that 12 mini they took out the um power adapter they
they you know they'll they'll do what they have to do to get to that 30 to 35 margin that's their
baseline they don't necessarily say okay fine we have to build a 1400 laptop let's figure that out
they say we have to build a laptop and we got to make 30 somehow now with these new chips and with
the new designs and what they're allowed to do internally with the new chip could lead to lower
prices i agree with you probably not right now but you know then again maybe they just released
the ipad air for 600 bucks that's more than last year but if you compare it to the pro it's 200
less and it's it there's a lot of similarities there meanwhile they sell a 350 keyboard for it
like i said it's it's it's about margins you kind of accessorize baby tell me about the accessories
they're not going to not make something that they want to make because it's too expensive
they they'll they'll just you know look at homepod perfect example they you know when
the time they were making it uh 299 was the price for them to hit their margin then they
cut it as the components got cheaper and now that that's selling 100 one so you know it could take
a year to get there but i do think that this will lead to macs that are extremely competitive with
not just super high-end window machines but also you know mid-range
i doubt they'll compete in in that super low 350 dollar space but i mean who knows they have
the iphone se maybe they'll they'll build like a like a plastic macbook or something and they'll um
you know sell like a 3.99 mac i don't know maybe i'm probably pretty popular any idea
you know have we seen any speculation about when these things would actually be released
i mean there was a story this morning about production being rammed up
now so by i guess by holiday time yeah i i would think you know they're they're
they they sold nine billion dollars in max last quarter so they're capable of making
a lot of these things right now like you know the pandemic has kind of uh i guess
across the world that's kind of settled so they're able to churn these things out quick
and if they're starting the production now i mean i would i would think november 10th a couple weeks
later maybe less i mean i would think i would i would guess again we're guessing here but i
would think they'd want to get get them actually into the into the stores before thanksgiving
uh yeah that makes sense yeah and you know again the a14 chip that it's going to be based on it's
going to be a little bit different but it's based on that architecture that's all done and that
that that plant is running and those chips are probably ready to go um if it's a very similar
design to the current macbook it's it's not going to take that much of a shift in production to to
put these things together listen i'm just i don't i don't know what i'm really talking about yes
i'm not an operations guy but um you know just based on my my my observations apple usually
announces max and ships them pretty quickly within like a week less maybe i'm hoping by end of
in you know if the announcement is on what tuesday the 10th then i'm hoping for like
by that following friday you know or may and maybe even immediate availability who knows
it might they might so i've just got one quick question for you guys it's
you know there's a lot that's maybe unknown about you know the specifics of when it comes to price
what have you but you know one thing that we do know for certain well nearly certain is that
at this event an apple silicon mac will be announced so are all of these additions to
the mac lineup gonna have apple silicon some of them what do you guys think
uh yeah i mean they're going to support intel for a while but um it's not going to they're not going
to make new intel macs anymore at least not from what i've understand apple to be doing so yeah all
of the all of the all the macs released on tuesday or announced on tuesday they'll all have apple
silicon they're going to have different processors from based on what i've read and what is that what
i understand like the the low end macbook air might have the same a14 that's in the ipad the
macbook pro might have an a14 i don't know x or z or whatever some some letter to distinguish
that this is faster and maybe has an extra core or two whatever however it goes but yeah they're not
going to say here's the macbook air with apple silicon and also the apple macbook air with um
without apple silicon like i don't i don't see that happening the intel's done they'll sell off
whatever they said they'll make whatever they have like the imacs obviously still have in the mac pro
until those models get replaced and they're also going to support them for years to come
but the the days of the new intel uh core 10 or core 11 whatever whatever they're up to
a net core generation whatever the heck the intel prices are on you're not going to see them in the
mac no that's it i think end of the narrow yeah it really is what's interesting about this event
is they they're so it's it's the one more thing event which if you're um steeped in apple culture
that's that's a that's a loaded term if you will steve jobs use it all the time to unveil like some
big thing at the end of the keynote just when you thought it was over we have one more thing for you
um i i i don't know if it necessarily means anything other than the fact that this is the
third event of the fall and like oh by the way we have one like this is the one more thing the apple
mac but it could also mean that there's other things coming out with the width of computers
maybe those toes airpods studio maybe the air tags that we've heard about for for months and years um
we'll see you know possible just max i would be surprised i mean my gut tells me they really want
to focus on apple silicon and the mac lineup and i and the reason for that is anything else that
they announce would likely get lost in the noise you know around around the new max so i guess
we'll find out there okay if it's like a pair of high-end airpods that they don't really expect to
sell in major numbers anyway maybe they'll drop that first and then go to the max but
yeah it's going to be very mac heavy it's going to be very demo heavy it's going to be a very
craig federighy heavy which is awesome because i could i like that that's my favorite part of
the show we missed him at the iphone in the apple watch event so it'll be good to have him back um
we'll hear about big sur and how this all plays what we'll hear about the new rosetta
and how the old map old mac apps run we'll hear about how ipad apps can run now that
there's a lot for apple to get into so yeah if it's an hour which is what they've been
50 minutes of it's going to be about this maybe even all of it because i'm ready i'm ready yeah
i mean let me tell you about this than i that i was the iphone 12 because for one we knew a
lot about the iphone 12 for two this is this is a big deal you know apple is going to be the first
for the first time in in its in its you know it's a long history of making computers it can really
do whatever it wants to do it's not beholden to uh the speeds and the timeline and the roadmap
of someone else with the exception of some you know components here or there
that aren't a big deal if you control as as it's as it's shown with the iphone and the ipad if you
control the processor you can do some pretty amazing stuff so i'm interested to see what
i don't know if we'll see it on tuesday but within a year or maybe two there's going to be some some
some pretty cool things happening with the mac you know before we go real quick slightly random i uh
thought here you were talking about pennsylvania no no no no no it's actually about the iphone 12
pro um and components that's what made me think about it i just wondered if you'd seen that uh
you know apparently the uh the pro 12 uh the 12 pro is is more popular than apple thought it's
running out of parts and it's having to like you know cannibalize some ipads for power management
chips yeah it's it's sort of a surprise and and again it reinforces the point you were just making
is that once apple is not as reliant on outside um companies for these parts it gives it much
more flexibility both in terms of design and you know how it does what it does release schedules
it's no longer tied to other companies and in this case in particular intel so yeah it's
gonna be interesting to watch what it does yeah and you know the the processor is obviously the
the heart of the thing the the brains of it like you think that's the thing that you need to start
with and if intel isn't isn't i mean you know for all for all intents and purposes intel never
really lived up to the promise apple it started that way but intel's intel's really dragged its
feet it's still on i think 11 nanometer process like it's it's really it's even been trumped by by
amd now in in in a lot of cases and it's you know it's they're struggling a bit and losing apple
isn't going to help that you know when apple especially if these computers
like are mind-blowingly fast which they very well could be because the iphone is
intel's intel has a lot of a lot of searching to do right now they got to figure stuff out
they already they they whiffed on on the 5g modem that they were they were building for
apple basically and they that fell apart um their their desktop pcs aren't aren't you know industry
industry-leading or as industry-leading as they once were and now they're losing apple isn't
the biggest client they have by any stretch but they're apple when apple jumps ship people notice
so um there's a lot of storylines ahead for this this is i mean i think it's suffice to say this is
apple's last processor transition after now this is the third major one and is it like whatever
however long the mac is alive or around they're going to have apple silicon processors so this is
like we can bank on this being it with intel you weren't quite so sure this is it apple's
the mac now this is the future and forever of the mac yeah i'm curious to see where it
goes so you're saying this is the biggest news to emerge out of the u.s this week this year oh for
sure this this week this this this year um yeah okay transformative well thank you both so much
for calling in and chatting with me i'm sure we're going to have obviously much more information next
week after the event so we can check back then and if any of our viewers here have any questions
about apple silicon i'll be linking a few previous episodes of today in tech that ken mike and i
discussed apple silicon on so that'll give you some background info if you're curious thank you
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interested to hear your thoughts thanks again for watching and i'll see you next time you