2019 has been an exciting year for the Mac. However, Apple did not update the 13” MacBook Pro or MacBook Air to feature the new scissor switch mechanism keyboard. After years of criticism from tech journalists and people alike, the company decided to do away with the butterfly keyboard on the 15” MacBook Pro in favour of a new 16” MacBook Pro with scissor style keyboard.
Now the question is what’s next for the Mac? Of course, we can expect Apple to release an upgraded 13” MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air with stronger internals. Apart from the usual increments, the long time rumour has been that the company has been working on its own chips for the Mac for quite sometime now.
The A-series chips that power the iPhone and the iPad are extremely powerful. The A13 Bionic chip is the most powerful chip in any smartphone and the company is reportedly working on emulating the same formula on the Mac as well. Intel has been having a tough time introducing new chips and Apple has to rely on the chip-maker to supply the chips.
A break from Intel
If Apple get to work by designing and manufacturing its own chips, it would help the company reduce costs and also improve the update cycle without having to rely on a third-party supplier.
Apple has been working on bridging the gap between macOS and iOS by introducing tools like Catalysts and SwiftUI for developers to easily create apps for both the operating systems at the same time without requiring any rewrite of the code.
Also, the Mac products have been turned way too expensive in the past few years. For example, the Mac Mini started at $499 and now it starts at $799. Maybe by creating chips in-house, Apple could reduce the price of its Mac products.
