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Comment by einarfd | Hacker News Reader

It looks like what Apple did was take their cellphone Arm processors. Do the minimal changes to get it to work in a laptop, and jammed that into laptops they already had. Which seems to me, to be the right strategy, but you do then end up with some weird limitations. I expect these issues to be sorted in the future generations of Apple silicon laptops.

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That's also why they updated their large sales volume, entry level to average hardware.

That will give them loads of data to smooth out the kinks out of Rosetta and the rest of software chain while having enough time to work on the M2.

I expect the first "real" Apple silicon hardware will be in November 2021 staring iMac and MBP 16.

Then 2022/2023 for the MacPro where Apple really goes all out, deprecate the last of their x86 line up but at this stage we are at the M4 and nobody cares anymore.

Yeah, like most first gen Apple gear, it's probably wise to hold off until they work the kinks out. That being said, my MacBook Air is getting a little long in the tooth so I may upgrade sooner rather than later.

I'm torn between a refurb Intel-based MBA or a new M1-based MBA. Or making a leap over to the 12" iPad Pro.

I got myself a used iPad Air 3 with a keyboard. Besides programming, I’ve yet to encounter serious limitations.

Yeah, the iPad Air is tempting, but I want a "big" screen for photo editing while traveling. If there was a 12" Air, I'd already own it.

Refurb 12" Macbook?

Wish Apple would reintroduce those with the M1. Awesome form factor, held back by Intel's anemic Core M CPUs.

I wouldn't be surprised if after migrating everything to M1 we'll end up with 12" & 14" Airs and 14" & 16" Pros.

In terms of core count (4 performance cores, 4 efficient cores, 8 GPU cores) it’s the tier of hardware used in the iPad Pro, except those are currently based on the A12 instead of the A14.

But yeah, I agree they must have a roadmap past these limitations. When we get a 16” MBP I’d bet on it having more RAM and 4 thunderbolt ports. They’ve launched the low end machines with M1 first because this is a first step in the M-processors, and it’s the first time they’ve had any sort of thunderbolt controller with this architecture.

Makes me wonder if any of these changes will make their way back to the iPad Pro. Right now they’re USB-C without thunderbolt, but the new iPad Air is getting awfully close to the iPad Pro’s territory. Thunderbolt support and being able to drive a 6K display would be an interesting differentiator.

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