Apple Documents Confirm Two Mysterious New MacBooks – Forbes
Now that the dust has settled over Apple’s predictable iPhone 12 launch event, our attention can turn to something genuinely revolutionary to come out of Cupertino… next month’s launch of the new macOS on ARM MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. They’re definitely coming, as Apple’s latest documentary filings confirm.
Apple’s new MacBook Air is displayed during the company’s showcase of new products Tuesday Oct. 30, … [+]
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As reported by Consomac, the details and model numbers come from certification provided to the Eurasian Economic Commission.
Two details are worth nothing. The first is that many of the listings are for existing Mac machines. Given the upcoming release of macOS 11 Big Sur and the fact that Apple will ship the new Macs with the updated operating system these certifications for those older macs with the new code.
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Three Mac model numbers (A2147, A2158, and A2182) have been previously listed in June this year. These could be different configurations of existing models, perhaps adding in more powerful graphics cards.
Which means the five new model numbers are likely Apple’s new Macs (model numbers A2348, A2438, A2439, A2337, and A2338). Three of these look to be deskbound Macs, and two look to be MacBooks. Given certification on EEC tends to happen close to the launch date (on the order of weeks), that ties in with the discussions around a mid-November product launch for Apple’s new MacBooks.
These will be no ordinary MacBooks. They will be the first ARM-powered Macs to go on sale, meeting Tim Cook’s proclamation at WWDC 2020 that hardware with Apple silicon inside would be available to buy before the end of the year.
Hand-picked developers already have access to ARM hardware through the Developer Transition Kit. This is a modified Mac Mini using the A12X ARM chip designed for the iPad family. Distributed to allow developers to work on macOS apps under ARM, this should ensure that many key titles will be able to run natively on ARM when the laptops are released.
For everything else, the assumption is that Apple’s Rosetta 2 will emulate the x86 Intel platform sufficiently well to allow older apps to run… although at this stage there are no confirmed details on what the emulation will support.
Now read more about the challenges facing Apple around legacy macOS apps under ARM…