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The M1 Mac mini: The MacStories Overview

At today’s special event Apple announced the much-anticipated first round of Apple silicon Macs. Running the impressively fast and efficient M1 chip, Apple’s initial offering includes new MacBook Air and 13” MacBook Pro models, and an all new Mac mini.

The M1-powered Mac mini features significantly faster compute and graphics performance, two Thunderbolt/USB-4 ports, Wi-Fi 6 support, SSD storage, and significantly improved machine learning capabilities. To top it all off, the starting price has been dropped by $100.

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The M1 MacBook Air and 13” MacBook Pro: The MacStories Overview

Before today’s event, little was known about the Apple silicon Macs that the company promised to release by the end of the year. Today, during an online presentation hosted by CEO Tim Cook from Apple Park, Apple took the wraps off its new M1 chip, which powers the new MacBook Air, 13” MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.

Let’s take a look at Apple’s new laptops.

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Apple Unveils New M1 Apple Silicon Chip for Macs

During this morning’s Apple special event stream, SVP of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji unveiled the first Apple silicon chip for Mac. The company teased this chip at WWDC in June, but we’ve had to wait until today for the full details. Chip transitions are never undertaken lightly, so expectations were high for how significant the advantages of Apple silicon would be. Thankfully, the M1 chip does not disappoint.

The M1 ushers in one of the largest single-generation leaps in performance and power efficiency for Apple hardware in recent history. It is a system on a chip (SoC), meaning it has pulled multiple different chip types from prior Macs together into one package. Assembled using a 5-nanometer process, the M1 is packed with 16 billion transistors. The result is a highly power-efficient chip which can deliver impressive performance while maintaining the longest battery life ever for Mac laptops.

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Apple’s November 2020 Event: By the Numbers

Apple sprinkled facts, figures, and statistics throughout its presentation today about the new Macs it announced. Here are highlights of some of those stats from the event, which was held online from the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California.

Apple’s M1 Chip

  • Built using an industry-leading 5 nanometer process
  • Houses 16 billion transistors
  • 8 CPU cores total: 4 high-performance and 4 high-efficiency cores
    • The high-efficiency cores have a 128KB instruction cache, 64KB data cache, and shared 4MB L2 cache
  • Uses 1/4 the power compared to the latest PC laptops running at full performance
  • Performance per watt has increased 3x since 2012
  • 8 GPU cores total
    • 128 execution units, up to 24,576 concurrent threads, 2.6 teraflops, 82 gigatexels/second, and 41 gigapixels/second
  • Uses 1/3 the power compared to the latest PC laptop GPUs running at full performance
  • Features Gen 4 PCI Express and a USB-4 controller
  • 16 Neural Engine cores that can do 11 trillion operations per second

MacBook Air

  • 3x faster than the best selling Windows laptop in its class
  • Faster than 98% of PC laptops
  • Up to 3.5x faster CPU than previous model
  • Up to 5x faster graphics than previous model
  • Up to 9x faster machine learning than previous model
  • 13.3” 2560 x 1600 resolution Retina display with P3 color that has 25% more colors than sRGB displays
  • Can drive a 6K display
  • Supports Wi-Fi 6
  • 18 hours of battery life, a 6 hour increase, plus 15 hours of web browsing
  • 2x battery life on video calls
  • 2x faster SSD that can be configured up to 2TB
  • Up to 16GB of unified memory
  • 0 fans
  • Starts at $999

Mac mini

  • 7.7” square design
  • Up to 3x faster CPU than previous model
  • Up to 6x faster graphics than previous model
  • Up to 15x faster machine learning than previous model
  • Up to 2TB SSD that support 3.3GB/s sequential read speeds
  • Up to 16 GB unified memory
  • Can drive a 6K display
  • Supports Wi-Fi 6
  • Up to 60% more energy efficient
  • 2 Thunderbolt / USB-4 ports
  • Starts at $699

13” MacBook Pro

  • 2.8x faster CPU than previous model
  • 5x faster graphics than previous model
  • 11x faster machine learning than previous model
  • 20 hours of battery life
  • 17 hours of web browsing
  • 4x faster code compiles
  • Up to 16GB unified memory
  • 13.3” 2560 x 1600 resolution Retina display with 500 nits of display brightness and P3 color that has 25% more colors than sRGB displays
  • Can drive a 6K display
  • Supports Wi-Fi 6
  • Up to 2TB SSD that support 3.3GB/s sequential read speeds
  • Starts at $1299

You can follow all of our November event coverage through our November 2020 event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

Replay Apple’s November 2020 Presentation and Other Videos

If you didn’t follow the live stream or announcements as they unfolded at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino today, you can replay it on Apple’s Events site and catch the product videos on Apple’s YouTube channel.

The keynote video can be streamed here and on the Apple TV using the Apple Events app. A high-quality version should also be available soon via Apple Podcasts as video and audio podcast episodes. First debuted in September, there is also an American Sign Language version of the event, which is available here.

Apple also posted other product videos on its YouTube channel, which are embedded after the break.

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Apple Announces Availability of New M1-Based Macs and macOS Big Sur

Today Apple announced pre-order and delivery dates for the new MacBook Air, 13” MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, all of which feature the new Apple-designed M1 chip. All three Macs are available for pre-order today with deliveries starting November 17th and 18th.

Apple has also released a second Release Candidate for macOS Big Sur. The company said during its presentation that Big Sur will be available this Thursday, November 12th, which is also when we’ll publish our comprehensive review of Big Sur on MacStories as well as an eBook version for Club MacStories members.

You can follow all of our November event coverage through our November 2020 event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone 12 mini Review Roundup

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Embargoes have lifted for the first wave of iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max reviews. Preorders for the new iPhones, which opened on November 6th and won’t begin to arrive on customers’ doorsteps until this Friday, November 13th, but in the meantime, you can read about both new iPhones and watch some excellent video reviews.

As you would expect, the reviews of the Pro Max concentrate on the new camera system while the reviews of the mini focus on the new device’s diminutive size and the implications of that.

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MacStories Unwind: iOS and iPadOS 14.2, Default HomePod Music Services, and Apple Silicon Macs

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

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This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • MacStories Favorite: Doodle Jump
    • Shortcuts Requests, including a way to archive webpages as images
    • John on what running iPhone and iPad apps on Apple silicon Mac might be like

AppStories

Unwind

Apple Releases iOS and iPadOS 14.2 with New Emoji, Wallpapers, AirPlay 2 Interface, AR Face Detection, and Shazam Toggle for Control Center

Today Apple released the second major revision to iOS and iPadOS 14 since their introduction in September. The previous major update, 14.1, was largely just for iPhone 12 support and bug fixes. iOS and iPadOS 14.2 are packed with quite a few nice new additions to the operating system, and are available to the public as of this morning.

New Emoji and Wallpapers

iOS 14.2 packs over 100 new emoji, including a smiling face with a tear1, a ninja, a toothbrush, and a pickup truck. Emojipedia covered the new emoji earlier in the beta cycle, and of course Federico attempted to guess all of their official names on an episode of Connected. My personal favorite is the new mousetrap emoji, which reminds me of the leprechaun traps that my sister and I used to set up the night before St. Patrick’s Day when we were growing up.

Eight new still wallpapers have also been released in today’s update. Some are photos of mountainous regions while others are scenic illustrations. Each new wallpaper includes a variation for light and dark mode.

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