I think most observers have been expecting an “M1X” for Apple's first pro-oriented ARM Macs, so an M2 already would be a surprise.
The M1 was available on Nov. 17th, 2020. The article states that the chip is entering mass production, and due for release sometime in 2H. This could easily be released a year after the M1, if not 13 months later.
But now we know that it was always intended to be a real player (it's in the iMac and iPad Pro).
So this news is interesting to me because now it seems to cut back the other way that maybe the M1 was designed for a short shelf life.
In a world where Apple is controlling so much of its silo, "normal" design and building deadlines will be upended.
Which is a weird take when you consider the thermal issues that Intel macs were plagued with. It's almost like the chassis was designed with 10w of dissipation in mind which Intel couldn't operate within, but the M1 could easily.
I had assumed that Apple designed for the M1 and then fit Intel chips into those designs.
At the time of the Intel transition, Apple had already gone through the process once before with 68k to PPC. It had to be clear to the long-game thinkers at Apple that this cycle would keep repeating itself until Apple found a way to bring that critical part of its platform under its own control. Intel was riding high in 2006, but so had IBM in 1994.
Within two years of the Intel transition, Apple acquired P.A. Semi. The iPhone had barely been out for a year at that point, and still represented a fraction of the company's Mac revenue – and while it looked to us outsiders like the acquisition was all about the iPhone and iPad, in retrospect, a long-term replacement for Intel was almost certainly the endgame all along.
but with the 2016 line of macs, it was obvious that apple was expecting faster, smaller, cooler, more power efficient 10nm chips from intel, and intel fell flat on their face delivering. it's not clear how far before that that apple knew intel was flubbing, but 2014 seems a reasonable assumption given product development timelines. as intel's downward trajectory became clearer over the following months, along with the robustly upward trajectory of apple silicon, the transition became realizable, and eventually inevitable.
as an aside, i'm using a beat up 2015 macbook pro and eagerly awaiting the m2 version as its replacement, seeking to skip this whole intel misstep entirely.
After the PowerPC fiasco and IBM leaving Apple high and dry, I have zero doubt that there was a contingency plan always under way before the ink even dried on the PA Semi acquisition, but it wasn't probably a concrete strategy until about the third time in a row Intel left Apple high and dry on a bed of empty promises.
Apple has so much experience with processor transitions they don't have to stay on ARM either. And they have the capital to move somewhere else if it makes enough sense to them. I find it highly unlikely - but if it made sense it would be highly probable :)
I'm pretty sure that's what this is, rather than a next-generation ("M2") chip. It will likely have the same cpu core designs as the M1, just more of them. And possibly paired with the new, long rumored "desktop class" Apple GPU.
As to what Apple's choice of marketing name, that's entirely arbitrary. (For what it's worth, my guess is they're ditching "X" suffixes and will designate higher spec variants with other prefix letters e.g. the "P1" chip.)
An M2 name implies some architectural differences like extra cores or more external bandwidth. I'd be totally happy with an M1x with some tweaks like more external connectivity and more memory.
Which, for me, would be quite perfect. The only reason I'm holding back this purchase is the 16 GB memory limit.
So Apple will just have to wait to get my money until fall (or whenever they announce the successor to the 27in iMac).
Having said that, Apple does have something of a history of pushing out v1 of a product that sets a high bar for everyone else to try and catch up with, then immediately pushing out a v2 that raises the bar well above where everyone else was aiming.
Overall though, it's awesome that the Macs now get to benefit from the vast investment going each year into making faster/better CPUs every year, for hundreds of millions of new iPhones.
Unless they are going to use this same CPU for the Mac Pro, this is right on schedule.
Main reason being the M1 was a more proof of concept and rushed out (despite being as good as it turned out to be). The M2 will be a more refined M1 but with notable improvements such as LPDDR5 support - akin to AMD's Zen1 and Zen+ releases.
On the other hand, there could be a M1X being readied for release in the upcoming June WWDC. It may be architecturally older than the M2 but still superior performance on a big cores differential, e.g. M1 only has 4 big cores and 4 small cores, the M1X just needs more big cores to be notably more performant.
All highly speculative of course, will have to find out in about a month.
I don't mind upgrading every other year. I just want the upgrades to be meaningful.
If they would have released the new iMac with a bigger panel so there were options for the 27" as well as the former 21" then my mother would be rocking a new iMac next month.
I know they said up to two years for the transition but I want to transition now :)
M2 is probably based on the Arm v9 ISA and has been in design for years.
Well, if that is indeed a stop gap then I can't wait to see their first "real" chip :)