Apple’s first Mac with an ARM processor will be a laptop, and it’ll be launched in November according to the latest from the rumor mill.
This comes from a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman, a well-known Apple leaker who insists: “The first Mac laptop with Apple’s own processor, among other products, will emerge at another launch in November.”
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When Gurman says ‘another’ launch, he refers to one following the big iPhone 12 event Apple (almost certainly) has planned taking place in just a couple of days, on October 13.
As MacRumors, which spotted this, observes, Gurman had previously indicated that an ARM-powered Mac would arrive by November, meaning an October launch seemed like a possibility – maybe alongside the new iPhone – but it appears that is now not the case, and it’ll be in November.
As ever, treat this with the usual caution that should be applied to any rumor, but the source has a good track record in this case.
Plentiful rumors
As noted, Gurman asserts that this first device will be a laptop, although the rumor mill can’t seem to decide what model(s) of MacBook might be coming first with ARM chips (perhaps a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or the return of the vanilla MacBook 12-inch – or some combination of the aforementioned devices).
Apple has, of course, previously promised that it will deliver one ARM-powered Mac before 2020 is out, although subsequent buzz from the laptop grapevine did theorize that perhaps issues around Covid-19 could scupper Apple’s plans and we could witness a delay until 2021. However, we’ve also heard theories of a November launch floating around at the same time, and Gurman’s fresh report underlines this possibility.
Another heavyweight Apple leaker, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, believes that we will see a MacBook Pro 13-inch launched possibly alongside a MacBook Air with ARM CPUs in the final quarter of 2020.
One obvious line of attack for Apple is to produce a highly affordable laptop to point to an obvious advantage of switching from Intel to ARM, in terms of persuading early adopters to make that big change – and there have been rumors that we could see the cheapest MacBook in years emerge. Fingers crossed on that score.
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