M1, and the future of the Mac

Undeterred by physical events not being possible, Apple held virtual events in September, October, and November this year. Exciting products arrived at all of them, not least the iPhone 12 range, but it is likely that the final one of the three will have the most profound and long-lasting effect on Apple and its customers. Because it was during the One More Thing presentation at that event that Apple unveiled Macs using its own chip for the first time. That chip is the M1 and the latest 13-inch MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini all now run using the new Apple silicon.

System on a chip

The M1 is, in fact, a system on a chip (SoC). It incorporates almost all the fundamental components of a computer, like the CPU, GPU, memory, USB controller, power management circuits, and wireless radios into