Various Dips for Apple’s Chips
How will Apple serve up their different Mac-bound silicon?
A report (from The China Times but translated by MacRumors) seemingly starts to bring more clarity into how Apple is thinking about the silicon roadmap with regard to the Mac. Obviously to be taken with a grain of salt, but there would seemingly be some sense in the following:
- A14: iPhones
- A14X: MacBooks
- A14T: Macs
It makes some amount of sense that the desktop-class Macs would get different chips than the laptop-class Macs because of the major difference in power consumption. But things get more murky at the edges.
Traditionally, the ‘X’ chips have been used for iPads Pro. But that could make some sense too, to have the MacBooks (the Air but also hopefully a new MacBook itself too) and iPads Pro use the same chip. The question is if the MacBooks Pro use that chip as well or the ‘T’ variety, just with some level of throttling for the power usage difference with a desktop Mac. And, does the ‘Pro’ line of Macs get a different chip entirely? Or is the ‘T’ meant for those with the ‘X’ going to lower-end iMacs, say? Unclear! But you could see a nice story starting to form:
- A14: iPhones, iPads
- A14X: iPads Pro, MacBook (& Air)
- A14T: MacBooks Pro, Macs
Alternately, you could also see a world in which we have:
- A14T: MacBook Pros, iMacs
- A14?: iMac Pro, Mac Pro
But that may be overthinking it. The ‘Pro’ line of Macs could pretty easily be differentiated by other things beyond just CPU speed/capabilities.
The real question becomes how these chips are marketed. Is it really ‘A14T’ or some other name with a bit more pizazz, a la ‘macOS Big Sur’? I could see it going either way as the numbers make it easier to know which chips are newer/better whereas everyone is now confused as to which is the latest version of macOS. At the same time, ‘A14T’ sounds downright utilitarian old school. Even Intels chips have nicknames…¹
¹ As do these Apple chips, apparently: ‘Sicilian’, ‘Tonga’, and ‘Mt. Jade’. I think Apple has to get a bit more dialed-in if they want to use those publicly though…
