Apple heralds new Mac era with in-house M1 chip

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Ushering in a new era of Mac computers, Apple on Tuesday announced that the new MacBook Pro laptop, MacBook Air and Mac Mini will house its own Silicon chip called M1 -- the most powerful chip created ever for PCs and laptops. The new 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,299, the new MacBook Air begins from $999 while Mac mini with M1 chip starts $699. The India pricing will be revealed at a later date. Both MacBook Pro and MacBook Air will also come with macOS 11 Big Sur -- designed to work on the new hardware - and offers a customisable Control Centre where the users can toggle brightness, Do Not Disturb, and other settings of their choice.

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is 2.8 times faster with graphics that are up to five times faster than the previous generation. It offers an unmatchable battery life of up to 17 hours of web browsing and 20 hours of video playback -- 10 hours longer than before. The 2020 MacBook Air is also powered by Apple's new M1 processor which are Arm-based CPUs. The eight-core M1 is a 5nm processor based on the A14 Bionic chip.

Apple said the new MacBook Air is faster than the "98 per cent of PC laptops sold in the last year." The device will give 15 hours of web browsing and 18 hours of video playback on a single charge. The new MacBook Air comes with a 13.3-inch retina display, up to 16GB memory and 2TB storage. The new MacBook Air starts at $999 and $899 for education. Apple claimed the new Mac mini is up to 60 per cent more energy efficient, thanks to the M1 chip.

The company also claims the device has a "3 times faster CPU" and "6 times faster graphics," with options for up to 16GB RAM and up to 2TB SSD. With Big Sur and M1, Mac users can run a greater range of apps than ever before. All of Apple's Mac software is now Universal and runs natively on M1 systems. With industry-leading performance, powerful features, and incredible efficiency, M1 is Apple's first chip designed specifically for the Mac

The M1 SoC is optimised for Mac systems in which small size and power efficiency are critically important. M1 is the first personal computer chip built using cutting-edge 5-nanometer process technology and is packed with an astounding 16 billion transistors, the most Apple has ever put into a chip. It features the world's fastest CPU core in low-power silicon, the world's best CPU performance per watt, the world's fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer, and breakthrough machine learning performance with the Apple Neural Engine.

As a result, M1 delivers up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning, all while enabling battery life up to 2x longer than previous-generation Macs. With its profound increase in performance and efficiency, M1 delivers the biggest leap ever for the Mac.

"There has never been a chip like M1, our breakthrough SoC for the Mac. It builds on more than a decade of designing industry-leading chips for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, and ushers in a whole new era for the Mac," said Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.

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