Apple preps for Mac Pro, Air laptop revamps

Apple MacBook Pro laptop computers sit on display at the company's Williamsburg store in the Brooklyn borough of New York. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Mark Kauzlarich.
Apple MacBook Pro laptop computers sit on display at the company's Williamsburg store in the Brooklyn borough of New York. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Mark Kauzlarich.

Apple is preparing to release several new Mac laptops and desktops with faster processors, new designs and improved connectivity to external devices, accelerating the company's effort to replace Intel chips and leapfrog rival PC makers.

The overhaul encompasses a broad range of Macs, including Apple's higher-end laptop, the MacBook Pro; the laptop aimed at the mass market, the MacBook Air; and its desktop computers, the Mac Pro, iMac and Mac mini, according to people familiar with the matter.

Redesigned MacBook Pros are expected to debut as soon as early this summer, followed by a revamped MacBook Air, a new low-end MacBook Pro and an all-new Mac Pro workstation, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter.

The company is also working on a higher-end Mac mini desktop and larger iMac. The machines will feature processors designed in-house that will greatly outpace the performance and capabilities of the current M1 chips, the insiders said.

Apple plans to launch the redesigned MacBook Pros in 14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes. They'll have a redesigned chassis, magnetic MagSafe charger and more ports for connecting external drives and devices. Apple is also bringing back the HDMI port and SD card slot, which it nixed in previous versions, sparking criticism from photographers and the like.

Apple last week said the new 24-inch iMac will be available in stores on May 21. The shares were mostly unchanged on the news.

PC shipments jumped 32% in the first quarter, Gartner said last month, the fastest year-over-year growth since the firm began tracking the market in 2000. Apple was the fourth-leading seller with 15% of the U.S. market, an increase from 12% in the quarter a year earlier, and 8% globally.

The Mac line of products has been a growing contributor to the company's revenue, generating $9.1 billion in Apple's January-March quarter, or 10% of total sales.

Apple last fall started replacing Intel processors with M1 chips, based on the same technology in the iPhone and iPad. Those eat less power and let the Mac run the same apps as the mobile devices.

Now more powerful iterations of the company's silicon are coming to the Mac line. They'll have more graphics and computing cores, boosting speeds for everyday tasks and such intensive work as video editing and programming.

For the new MacBook Pros, Apple is planning two different chips, codenamed Jade C-Chop and Jade C-Die. Both include eight high-performance cores and two energy-efficient cores for a total of 10, but will be offered in either 16 or 32 graphics core variations.

This will be the first time professional Macs get in-house main processors. Eventually the company will stop selling the high-end Intel MacBook Pros.

Apple has also been working on a more powerful version of the Mac mini with the same chip as the next MacBook Pro.

It's expected to have four ports versus the pair available on the current low-end version and to sit above the current entry-level M1 Mac Mini. Apple could delay or cancel the new mini's launch -- as it has in the past -- but eventually the company will likely replace the Intel-equipped version it now sells.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

The new Mac Pro has been in the works for several months and is expected to look like a smaller version of the current design, which was launched in 2019, Bloomberg News has reported. Apple has also been working on a larger iMac with in-house processors, but development of that version was paused months ago in part to let Apple focus on releasing the redesigned 24-inch model this month.

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