After discontinuing the series last year, Apple seems set to revive the 12 inch MacBook this year, with a twist. The news comes from China Times, which claims that a supply chain report has unveiled the company’s plans to announce a 12 inch MacBook later this year with Apple’s own ARM processors.
The 12 inch Retina display MAC is supposed to be powered with the A14X processor, which will also see a debut in this year’s iPad Pro variant. The processor, codenamed Tonga, will support a USB C type interface, and last anywhere from 15 to 20 hours per charge due to ARM’s power saving approach.
The industry had been preparing for Apple to make the move from Intel to in house processors from a long time now. At WWDC, the company finally announced its plan to start production of its own ARM chips using TSMC’s 5nm process, adding that the company will launch its first devices powered by the technology later this year. Moreover, Apple added that it will become Intel independent in just 2 years which means that any Apple device you own right now will have an ARM variant by 2022.
The company had also promised better performance and better power saving thanks to ARM’s low power consumption.
It was being speculated that the first Mac with ARM processor would be the 13 inch or a newer 24 inch version. However, this new report suggests a different strategy, and one that no one had expected.
The report also states that Apple is making progress on in house GPUs as well, and will probably seek to get rid of AMD after Intel. The company has already ended support for AMD GPUs in the macOS Arm 64-bit operating system-a testament to Apple’s aim of becoming independent from the industry. The report claims that the new GPU, which is supposed to launch next year, has been named Lifuka, and uses the same 5nm production process as the A14X. It has tile-based deferred rendering technology that allows application developers to extract more from the chip.
