After a number of rumours, leaks and speculations, Apple announced that it will be launching new Macs powered by its own silicon at its WWDC 2020 event. The company said that it is switching to custom ARM-based silicon for the Mac line later this year. It is aiming to deliver better higher performance and better battery efficiency. Now, we could have an actual launch date for the upcoming product.
Popular tipster Jon Prosser tips that Apple is planning an event on November 17 where it could unveil the new ARM-powered Mac.
The tech giant is said to be designing a family of SoCs specifically for the Mac that will have a common architecture across all of Apple’s portfolio. Hence, making the iPhone and iPad apps run on ARM-powered Mac. Apple has also said that all apps and software that were running on Intel-based Macs will be available on the new Macs, thanks to the shared architecture and Rosetta 2 translation tool.
Rumors have also hinted at a redesign for ARM-powered MacBook. Moreover, the 12-inch MacBook could make a return with the new silicon. The new 12-inch MacBook is also expected to deliver up to 20 hours of battery life. Popular Analyst Kuo expects the Apple Silicon-based MacBook Air to go into production around later this year, for a late winter or early spring launch in 2021. We could see a redesignedMacBook Pro launch in the alleged November 17 event. Furthermore, Apple could be looking forward to bringing Face ID feature to its computers.
We have a new sales event from Best Buy, as well as more deals from Amazon
Deals. Best Buy just started a 3 day sale on Apple products for this weekend. Starting off with the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro which is $200 off for certain models like the 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD variant, leaving it at $1799. The last 15.4in MacBook Pro is up to $1050 off, leaving the Intel Core i9, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD for $3099. Best Buy also has deals on MacBook Airs and more. Moving on to Amazon, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 is $130 off for the Black variant, leaving it at $320 shipped. We also have deals on Marshall’s and Beats headphones and more.
Take a look at these hands-on images of the HTC Desire 20 Pro
We’ve been getting a lot of leaks for HTC’s upcoming device and now we have some hands-on pictures from Mr. Evan Blass. These pictures match the previous schematics we had as well as the teaser the company posted earlier this week. It shows an interesting color variant, kind of like the ones on the HTC U12 but this one is a tone of gray instead of blue. We see the triple camera array at the back as well as the physical fingerprint scanner. The leaked specs for this phone include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660, 6GB of RAM and this will be HTC’s first phone running Android 10 out of the box.
It seems that a new Samsung Galaxy S20 Lite is on the way
Back at CES, Samsung revealed their new Lite variants for the Note 10 and the S10. According to a new SamMobile report, the S20 will be getting the same treatment. The Galaxy S20 Lite is apparently under development with the model numbers SM-G780 and SM-G781 for the US and Global variants. The global variant will apparently lack 5G capabilities but the US variant will support 5G. It’s also expected to bring at least 128GB of storage and it will run Android 10 with One UI 2.5.
Samsung Galaxy Note 20 will come with a flat screen
We have a new tweet from Ice Universe that shows off some cases for the Galaxy Note 20. Both of these are for the regular Note 20 and not for the Note 20 Plus and they show off that flat display that we’re expecting which was confirmed by Ice Universe a couple of days ago. In the Weibo post, he also claims that the Note 20 will enter mass production very soon.
Apple may give us a 12-inch MacBook with an Arm-based processor
Apple will reportedly announce at WWDC that they will be moving on from Intel chips to ARM-based Macs. We have a new leak from Twitter which we should take with a grain of salt, but it actually makes sense. On the Reddit post, Fudge said that based on tidbits from supply chain sources and reports, Apple might bring back the 12-inch MacBook to be the first model with these ARM chips. He details the road Apple has gone through to, to get to these ARM processors, starting back in 2014 by adding the T1 and T2 security chips. This launch with the new MacBook would start a new phase in this project which is basically Project Catalyst which allows Mac apps to work on the iPad. According to the post they are still working on perfecting the Infamous Butterfly Keyboard for it to be on this new model. It would bring the same design from the MacBook and the processor would be of 8-12 cores. Apple is reportedly making three tiers of A14X chips and we expect this rumored Mac to bring the lower tier. The Reddit post is actually a great read (we’ll link it down below) and it goes along with my speculation yesterday on Apple bringing this MacBook back to get started with the ARM processors.
Story of the day:
BOE is allegedly having quality issues with iPhone 12 OLED displays
We’ve been hearing rumors of Apple ditching Intel chips and using its own custom ARM-based processors in Mac hardware for quite a while now. Well those rumors might turn into reality this very month. As per a Bloomberg report, Apple will announce its shift to ARM-based Mac chips later this month at its annual developer conference.
The initiative, which is internally known as Kalamata, will be announced at WWDC that starts on June 22. However, the transition will begin starting next year, giving developers an ample amount of time to prepare for the change. Unsurprisingly, the architecture of custom ARM chips that will go inside future Macs is different from Intel’s silicon.
Apple reportedly made the decision after noticing slower performance gain with the new generation Intel chips. Moreover, internal tests have shown that Macs powered by custom ARM chips offer a higher performance gain compared to those from Intel, aside from being more power-efficient too. TSMC will make Apple’s custom Mac processors based on the 5nm process.
Apple is reportedly working on at least three different custom processors, likely based on their performance tier. Notably, one of the Mac chips is based on the A14 processor that will go inside the iPhone 12 series. Aside from the main processing unit, it will also come with a GPU and a Neural Engine for handling Machine Learning tasks.
