New MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini with Apple M1 SoC: Prices in India

Apple has just introduced new versions of its popular MacBook Pro 13-inch, MacBook Air and Mac Mini computers, which are operated with the in-house Apple M1 SoC. Apple announced earlier this year that it will begin moving its entire Mac lineup from the Intel X86 CPUs, which it has used for 15 years, to internal ARM-based processors. The first of this new generation of Apple Silicon processors is called the Apple M1 and has eight cores (four high-performance and four low-power) as well as a custom integrated GPU, an image signal processor, a secure enclave and a neural engine. The Apple M1 has a new uniform memory architecture that is supposed to improve energy efficiency and is manufactured in a 5 nm process.

New MacBook Pro 13 Inch, MacBook Air, Mac Mini Prices in India

The new updated 13-inch MacBook Pro will be available from Rs. 1,22,900 with 256 GB storage and Rs. 1,42,900 for 512 GB storage. These are the same prices as the previous MacBook Pro models. Prices in the United States are $ 1,299 and $ 1,499, respectively. Both have 8 GB of unified memory. Intel-based MacBook Pro 13-inch models are also still listed. 512GB and 1TB of storage cost Rs. 1,74,900 and Rs. 1,94,900 respectively. All variants are available in silver and space gray.

The MacBook Air with Apple M1 SoC also keeps the same prices as before, with a 256GB variant priced at Rs. 92,900 in India and a 512GB model priced at Rs. 1,17,900. Prices in the US are $ 999 and $ 1,249, respectively. Intel-based MacBook Air models are no longer listed. The color options are silver, space gray, and gold.

The Mac Mini is getting a $ 100 discount and a corresponding drop in India too. The 256 GB version now costs Rs. 64,900 and the 512 GB version at Rs. 84,900. Prices in the US are $ 699 and $ 899, respectively, and silver is the only option. A single Intel variant is still listed.

Education pricing is also available for all new Macs that run on Apple Silicon. They will be available in the US next week. All new Macs are configured with 8GB of storage by default, and an upgrade to 16GB at the time of purchase costs Rs. 20,000 extra. The online Apple Store in India is already taking orders and lists November 25th as the earliest shipping date.

Features and performance of the Apple M1 SoC

Apple CEO Tim Cook said over 50 percent of buyers are new to the Mac, and 2020 was the best year ever for the product line. Apple has been making its own SoCs for iPhones and iPads for more than a decade, and has spent several years developing the Apple M1 SoC. It’s the first of a family of chips, and more powerful variants are expected in the next few years for the high-end MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Pro, as well as all new Apple models.

The M1 SoC (not to be confused with Apple’s M-series motion co-processors) is primarily designed for small size and energy efficiency. With a high level of integration, it replaces multiple discrete chips in previous generation Macs, including the CPU, I / O controls, security co-processor, and memory controller. A unified storage architecture enables all blocks to access a single storage pool to avoid duplication and to reduce latency and power consumption. Apple also used an industry leading 5nm process to package 16 billion transistors on each chip.

There are four high-performance CPU cores that Apple claims are the fastest in the world and deliver the world’s best performance per watt. With a quarter of the performance of today’s top laptop CPUs, these cores should offer significantly higher performance and deliver three times the performance of current Intel Macs. The four efficiency cores alone should be just as powerful as the current Intel dual-core CPU that supplies the MacBook Air with power, but consume much less power.

In terms of graphics performance, the device has eight GPU cores that deliver a throughput of 2.6 teraflops. Apple says it’s the most powerful integrated GPU in the world. It’s supposed to be twice as powerful as current GPUs or consumers a third as much power to achieve the same levels of performance. Software also has access to more memory than ever before.

Other features include speeding up machine learning thanks to the Neural Engine, which can perform 11 trillion operations per second, and tasks like upscaling image resolution, refreshing videos and speech recognition are dramatically improved. The safe enclave promises first-class security.

MacOS 11 Big Sur was developed to schedule tasks between the high-performance and efficiency cores. Macs with Apple Silicon, like iPhones and iPads, should wake up immediately from sleep. All Apple software has been optimized and vendors, including Adobe, are preparing updates for their offerings. Logic Pro should allow up to 3X more instruments and effect plugins. Final Cut Pro is said to run 6 times faster when rendering complex timelines. MacOS 11 will be available for download from Thursday, November 12th.

Universal Apps combines native binary versions for Apple and Intel CPUs and can be downloaded from the Mac App Store or the Internet to run on all Macs. With Rosetta 2 translation, apps developed for Intel CPUs can run seamlessly without updates. In addition, iPad and iPhone apps, including games, can run natively.

MacBook Air with Apple Silicon

According to Apple, the MacBook Air is the world’s best-selling 13-inch notebook. Tasks that were previously impossible on such a thin and light device can now be performed thanks to 3.5 times faster CPU performance, 5 times faster graphics and 9 times faster machine learning than the previous generation. The new MacBook Air is said to be faster than 98 percent of the PC laptops sold last year.

The new MacBook Air is now fanless and completely silent. It offers up to 15 hours of wireless Internet surfing and 18 hours of video playback, 6 hours longer than before.

MacBook Air 13-inch with Apple Silicon

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is said to be 2.8 times faster, with up to 5 times faster graphics and 11 times faster machine learning than the previous generation. This makes it the fastest compact pro notebook in the world. It uses active cooling to provide sustained performance in tasks like video transcoding and code compiling. The battery life is up to 17 hours for wireless Internet surfing and 20 hours for video playback. This is 10 hours more than before. This is the longest battery life on a Mac. Apple also promises studio-quality microphones for video calls or audio recordings, as well as the improved M1 camera processor for sharper video with less grain and better contrast in low light conditions. It has two Thunderbolt ports that are USB 4 compatible and can run the Apple Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution in the same design as before.

Mac Mini with Apple Silicon

The new Mac Mini is said to be up to 3 times faster than the previous version in terms of CPU performance, with a 6-fold increase in graphics performance and 15-fold faster machine learning. It is also said to be only a tenth the size of the currently best-selling desktop PC and up to 5 times faster.