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Apple’s Radical MacBook Pro Faces Multiple Problems

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Updated August 26. Article originally posted August 23.

There’s no doubt that Apple’s move away from Intel to ARM for its Mac family is an ambitious and multi-year project. As the first ARM-based machines reach consumers at the end of this year, there are three big challenges that Apple’s macOS on ARM project will face.

August 26 Update: As with any technology, there is always ‘something better’ around the corner. In a sense this is something that haunts everyone whenever they buy a new product, and arguably it’s an expected part of the transaction. What’s also expected is that the manufacturer plays fair. The new Macs in 2020 were little more than a nudge on the processors up to Intel’s tenth generation chips, and a fix for the keyboard.

Not only is Apple pushing ahead with the move to ARM processors, but new hardware and designs are expected to be introduced alongside the new architecture - Digital Trends notes not only the planned use of ultra thin bezels on Apple’s new laptops, but also the fact they have been prevalent on Windows laptops for many years.

The balance between ‘providing consumers with the best possible computer’ and ‘let’s hold this back to make our new ARM laptops look even more modern’ needs to be maintained. Right now it threatens to lean towards Apple.

August 24 update: There is also an over-arching question. What do consumers want from a laptop? Over the last few years, Apple’s answer has always focused on being thinner and lighter, taking a minimalist approach at each step. How far down that road can Apple go before it is seriously questioned? Devin Coldewey has a suggestion. A MacBook SE:

To be clear, here’s what I imagine an SE would be: a 13-inch notebook with a MagSafe power connection, USB-C ports and a headphone jack on one side, plus one old-school USB-A, HDMI out, and an SD card reader on the other. Oh, and though I suppose it goes without saying, let’s just be clear: The old keyboard, please. 

With move to ARM, Apple is (quietly) putting a hurdle in the way of adoption, giving the consumer time to pause and think about their purchase. At that point, all of the smaller issues - such as Coldewey’s consideration of the I/O ports and the keyboard - could start a chain reaction that leads consumers away from the Mac platform. Has Apple nailed what the market wants? Or would the idea of a MacBook SE 

Chromebooks

The key benefits offered by ARM processors include chips that run at a cooler temperature compared to Intel, improved battery life, and better performance …although I’ll caveat that last one; nobody has actually seen macOS on ARM running in the wild (the developer units loaned by Apple, presumably under strict NDA, do not count).

Those are also the benefits that Google pushes on its Chromebook series. Chromebooks are seen as lower cost alternatives to the traditional Windows 10 / macOS duopoly. Certainly the perception of price on the macOS laptops, event the MacBook Air with an educational discount, is that they are expensive machines.

If Apple brings in the ARM MacBooks at a lower price, the Chromebooks come into view and the comparisons will start to rise. Is Apple ready to fight in this laptop space?

(I’ve examined the MacBook/Chromebook fight in more detail here).

Windows 10 on ARM

Apple is not the only company driving towards an ARM-powered operating system for laptops and desktops. Microsoft has its variant of Windows 10 (Windows 10 on ARM) that will allow manufacturers to work with ARM processors in new computers (unlike Apple, Microsoft will be continuing its support for Intel processors).

Today this isn’t an immediate danger. The Surface Pro X is the only highly visible machine on sale that runs Windows 10 on ARM. But Apple’s incredibly public move to an ARM-based desk bound operating system is a move that cannot be ignored by other manufacturers. First mover advantage may belong to Tim Cook and his team, but can it maintain that? Or will the Windows powered competition catch up to Apple, match the ARM advantages, and the laptop world stabilises itself?

MacOS on Intel

Perhaps the biggest danger is Apple itself.

Moving to a new architecture is not an easy process. To mention a few, your core operating system has to be rewritten, the drivers used to allow the various I/O elements the low level access needed, and the APIs used by first- and third-party developers need to allow for old apps that targeted Intel machines to work as smoothly on an ARM machine.

These are things that are under Apple’s direct control and will have been worked on in private for years. As with any large project, not every combination of code, app, and machine, can be tested. Apple is moving fast, breaking things, and having the fix already in place.

App support is vital on the new ARM machines. The ultimate success will come down not to the technical abilities, but to a clean message coming from Cupertino to consumers that everything will be okay. Looking at the poor communication over issues such as the butterfly keyboard faults not being acknowledged for years or the secretive changes to iOS to throttle back the processors to increase battery life, this clear communication has not always been the case.

Hopefully Apple is not going to rely on ‘it just works’ in the hope that everyone accepts compatibility with older apps will be one hundred percent perfect.

Apple will have answers to all of these challenges. Will these be the right answers? Certainly Tim Cook and his team will think so. So will Apple’s legion of fans. But the real test will come not with exclusive developer machines or hand-picked reviewers for the first units. It will come when the ARM-based machines go on sale and the public will put the hardware to the test in the real world.

Now why Apple needs to carefully consider the name of the new ARM-powered MacBooks…

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