Apple Event, November 2020; Pre-Event Thoughts

The big news for this event will be the introduction of Apple Silicon. The fact that they’re using “one more thing” in the announcement for the event is, I think, in itself significant, as well as indicative of how Apple views today’s announcements as a milestone in the history of the Mac. I’m truly expecting mind blowing announcements today.

Apple’s chip team will be the star of today’s show, but they’ve deserved more praise than they get for years now; they’re massively under appreciated. The A14 that they’ve just introduced in the new iPad Air and iPhones is significantly faster than most new PC notebooks and Chromebooks. They’ve been years ahead of their competition for many years at this point, putting out new chips every year that are only rivaled by their own chips from the previous year. Qualcomm, in the smartphone industry, simply cannot keep up. Apple is about to jump years ahead of Intel in the PC market.

Just look at some of the benchmarks from the Developer Transition Kits that run macOS on a chip that they originally designed for iPhone (the A12, from 2018) and optimized for iPads (the A12Z, which is exactly what’s in the DTKs). Imagine what they’ll be able to when they really put their weight behind notebook and desktop chips.

On that note, there‘s been speculation about whether Apple will announce notebooks or desktops, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or two of each. The AR graphic from Apple’s event page certainly seems to indicate that new MacBooks will be present; I’m hoping we will see the 12” MacBook from 2015 — which remains Apple’s most impressive notebook from a design perspective — reincarnated.

Recent leaks also seem to indicate that we may see AirTags today, but that’s an interesting possibility because AirTags aren’t a product that couple naturally with Macs; they’re iPhone accessories. We’ll see; maybe they see enough potential in AirTags to let them be the “one more thing” after they announce the Apple Silicon Macs.