American tech giant Apple has launched on November 10 its first Mac computers that are run on its state of the art new M1 processor, reports the Verge.
The M1 chip run computer is called ‘MacBook Air’. Other new devices of the tech mammoth are set to feature the Arm-based CPUs.
According to reports, the eight-core M1 is a 5nm processor based on the A14 Bionic, the chipset that powers the iPhone 12 and iPad Air lines.
The M1 chip powered device release is the first step in Apple’s transition away from Intel processors which are being used for Apple’s computers since 2005. The company expects the process to take two years.
Apple claims that the chips would deliver better performance and power efficiency than its Intel competitors. But the biggest advantage of Arm systems is that they’ll be able to run iOS and iPadOS apps natively on macOS.
The new MacBook Air starts at $999, and $899 for education. It is set to be available from this November 17 this year but pre-order is going on.
As per the Apple authority statement released at its ‘One More Thing’ event that the M1 contains four of the world’s fastest CPU cores, paired with four high-efficiency cores — an effort to balance performance with efficiency.
It also claims that the chip offers the world’s best performance per watt of any CPU, and enables instant wake speeds.
The company claims MacBook Air users or other devices with M1 chip will get 15 hours of web browsing and 18 hours of video playback to a charge. It says users will be able to extend video calls up to twice as long. There’s no fan inside, so it should run noiselessly as well.
The report also states that in terms of specs, the new Air comes with a 13.3-inch Retina display with P3 wide color gamut support, a scissor-switch keyboard, and up to 16GB of memory and 2TB of storage. It supports Thunderbolt, USB 4, Wi-Fi 6, and Touch ID.
The laptop comes with the same 720p camera as its predecessor (a lower resolution than modern iPhone and iPad cameras), but Apple says it’ll deliver better results with the new chip.
