The Launch of Apple Silicon: A Cautionary Tale of Timing and Perspective

If you're a company, especially one as wealthy as Apple, releasing an avalanche of completely brand new products at once is not how they roll. The analogy that I brought up earlier with NVIDIA still holds true here. If you absolutely unload some of the most incredible Apple Silicon designs on Q4 2020, your Q4 earnings are going to go crazy through the roof, but how are you going to follow that up? Investors want to see consistent growth, and if you blow everyone out of the water at the end of 2020 and then don't really have anything to follow it up with in 2021, that's going to look really bad.

As consumers, we want to see generational gains. Remember that 13-inch MacBook Pro with Intel? Forget about it. The new 14-inch Mini LED design with 16-core Apple Silicon is a fanless design with 20 hours of battery life whoa that's not realistic if you release the best product in the world then it's going to take you a long time to top that. Now, I don't want to throw too much water on the fire here because I do still think that Apple Silicon is going to be very, very significant. There's a reason I've been telling everyone "don't buy an Intel Mac right now just don't do it" and that makes this launch so difficult for us YouTubers to talk about when we're making our recommendations.

Because on the one hand, you definitely want to advise people to wait so they can maximize their budget. But on the other hand, there's always going to be something new and better around the corner, and there's not going to be one decisive moment where it's like all right everyone buy a Macbook right now this is it this is the one. There's always going to be improvements down the line, it's about in the moment where are we what's our timing scale look like and how should you go from there? And right now that means if you're shopping for a new Mac, the 13-inch MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, wait because those are the Macs that are due to get replaced. They might not be replaced with crazy radical redesigns. Don't be surprised if the Apple Silicon 13-inch MacBook Pro looks exactly the same and then a year from now we get a big redesign that is 100% possible I think that's likely so there's no one perfect time to buy a Mac. It basically comes down to a multitude of factors of you know when do you need it how long are you willing to wait how much do you want to spend and I think it's essential to keep that in mind.

Real Quick Before We Close Out

I know some people are wondering what about the October event in like five days aren't we going to find out then well it seems like we're not actually going to see Apple Silicon at that event because it's looking pretty packed. iPhone 12, AirPods, Studio, Apple TV 4K with a gaming controller homepod mini air tags maybe some updates on services that seems like a pretty full event so that kind of does leave some questions like okay well when are we going to see the Apple Silicon Mac? Are they going to be press released that seems weird right for such a monumental transition you'd think there would be an event for it so it's possible that we'll see a November event we've never had one of those before but could happen who knows so I hope this video was helpful to some people. I didn't really write out a script, I didn't have talking points in front of me I don't have anything in front of me I'm just sitting in front of a camera right now so that was a sort of stream of consciousness because I've wanted to reassure people and I've tried to talk about this in my more news leak and rumor-oriented videos before but I really just wanted to come at it head-on and talk straight into your guy's eyes and ears about why it's essential to have some perspective.

And that's exactly what I'm going to give you right now. Understanding how the cycle of technology works and getting some perspective into what is realistically possible for Apple Silicon hopefully this video calmed your nerves a little bit or gave you some perspective if it did like comment and subscribe please consider following me on Twitter at lukemiani don't forget to check out my Twitch channel and my subreddit which are linked in the description.

The Launch of Apple Silicon: A Cautionary Tale

I think one of the most significant aspects of this launch is the importance of timing. If you're shopping for a new Mac, I would recommend waiting because those are the Macs that are due to get replaced they might not be replaced with crazy radical redesigns don't be surprised if the Apple Silicon 13-inch MacBook Pro looks exactly the same and then a year from now we get a big redesign that is 100% possible.

The Cycle of Technology

When it comes to technology, there's always something new and better around the corner. Whether it's a new processor, a new display, or a new feature set, there's always something pushing the boundaries of what's possible. And as consumers, we want to be on the cutting edge of that.

But timing is everything when it comes to buying new technology. You don't want to wait so long that the next big thing is already here and you're stuck with outdated hardware. But if you buy too early, you might end up wasting money on something that's not yet matured.

As Apple Silicon launches into the market, it's essential to remember that this is a new product line. It's going to take some time for developers to create software that takes full advantage of the new hardware. And as consumers, we want to make sure we're getting the best possible experience with our new Mac.

So how do you navigate this? The answer is to wait patiently and observe. Watch how Apple Silicon handles in real-world use cases. See how developers respond to the new product line. And then, when you feel comfortable that everything is settling down, it's time to make your move.

The Importance of Perspective

Ultimately, what matters most when it comes to buying a new Mac is perspective. It's essential to understand that this is just one piece of a larger puzzle. The cycle of technology is always moving forward, and there's always something new on the horizon.

So, instead of getting caught up in the excitement of the latest launch, take a step back and assess what's really important to you. What are your needs? What are your goals? And then, when the time is right, make your move.

The Launch of Apple Silicon: A New Era

As we look ahead to the future of Mac, one thing is clear: this is just the beginning. The launch of Apple Silicon marks a new era in computing, and it's going to take some time for us to get used to. But with patience, perspective, and a willingness to learn, we'll be able to navigate the ups and downs of this exciting new chapter.

So, stay tuned for more news and updates on Apple Silicon. And most importantly, remember to keep things in perspective.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso we've talked quite a bit on this channel about apple silicon it is kind of been for the past four or five months the number one thing in the apple space because whenever buying a computer at any price point of any age it's always contrasted against this oh wait apple silicon is coming for the past couple of months i've been advising people to hold off from buying intel max to just wait and see what happens and at the same time quite a lot of hype has been building for the apple silicon max that we can expect either in october or november but certainly by the end of 2020 now in today's video i want to offer a little bit of a reality check because i see quite a lot of people getting a little bit carried away so what we're going to do today is synthesize the information that we do know as well as some of my own analysis as to what i think is likely to happen and kind of just set everyone's expectations here because you know i don't want people to set themselves up for disappointment or to put the bar so high that it couldn't possibly be reached so that's the goal for today's video it's going to be a talking head video so if you want to minimize this feel free if you're tired of hearing about apple silicon i totally understand this is for the people who i think need a little bit of a reality check so let's get started so when apple announced they were transitioning to apple silicon at wwdc they gave themselves a time frame of the end of the year 2020 for launching the first apple silicon mac now that was more definite than the intel transition when they transitioned to intel they announced that wwdc 2005 and they gave themselves a year to release the first intel mac they ended up releasing the first intel mac in january 2006 so actually quite a similar time frame to what we're looking at here but there's something that i think a lot of people are missing and that is the fact that we tend to assume that with a monumental transition such as this that the max that come out are themselves going to be monumental i think that's a fundamental misconception for where we are right now with apple silicon there's sort of this assumption that what with the announcement of apple silicon and the very major design changes to mac os big sur we've all kind of thought oh something big is coming in terms of apple design and i do think that that's true but it's not going to be immediate now harking back to something that i talked about in one of my previous videos i think this was from like august or something but when apple transitioned to intel they didn't completely overhaul the designs of their products right away the imac mac mini mac pro and basically the macbook pro as well were unchanged the imac and the mac mini were identical in terms of design to their power pc counterparts the mac pro was rebranded but looked identical to the power mac g5 and the macbook pro received some slight design tweaks with a wider display and some just basically some minor minor aesthetic changes but the same overall design in fact in 2006 the first year of intel max they changed every single product over to intel without redesigning any of them so there's no reason for us to believe that apple has to redesign everything with these radical new ideas the instant that apple silicon comes out and that sort of feeds into the second misconception about apple silicon a lot of people have been saying that you know apple silicon means that all the macs are going to be fanless i mean after all you look at an ipad pro right with the a12z that thing has pre basically quad core intel levels of performance but it uses like 15 watts and is passively cooled so therefore if you scale that up to like 45 watts put it in a macbook pro oh boy there you go you've got yourself a fanless macbook but that's a fundamental misconception as arm processors scale they do need active cooling and one of the one of the pieces of evidence to support this is the 13-inch macbook pro which is going to be here either this month or next month with apple silicon is rumored to be keeping the heatsink and fan so basically when it comes to apple silicon there's there's three main aspects of these processors that apple is going to be juggling you've got performance you've got heat and you've got power consumption so if you think about it as like one of those triangle graphs you sort of have to balance how far you go in each direction because the more you want more performance the more heat and the more power you're going to consume so when it comes to in particular a laptop it's about finding a balance you want to be able to maximize performance without using a ton of power and without producing a ton of heat it would be fundamentally flawed to assume that even a 13-inch macbook pro will be passively cooled maybe eventually they will but not right away and that's another thing i said 13-inch macbook pro every time i talk about the 13-inch apple silicon macbook pro people go well what do you mean it's going to be a 14-inch macbook pro it's not going to be 13-inch why would they do that so here's the thing that we have to understand and i've been saying this for a while but it doesn't seem to have got through to a decent number of people we are expecting two apple silicon macs a 12-inch macbook and a 13-inch macbook pro 13-inch macbook pro not 14. those two products are not going to be radically new in terms of their design in fact the 12-inch macbook might even contain a butterfly keyboard that's a possibility that we're all going to have to learn to live with i'm not saying it's definitely going to happen but it's not off the table that machine is going to look very similar to the 12-inch macbook that was recently discontinued at least based on the information that we have it could be radically different but i don't want people to expect that it will be and then be disappointed when it isn't these first apple silicon macs are essentially proof of concept right when you're releasing a new product stack with such a major transition the the first and primary goal is we need to get people to accept that this is how their computers will be that doesn't necessarily mean changing everything if you change everything then you don't necessarily leave yourself a ton of room for improvement i mean look at nvidia right this is something that nvidia has been famous for in the past couple of years why give you absolutely everything when in two years we then have to top it now granted this is a transition which means that apple needs to sell people that it's a worthy transition so if they were to just switch to apple silicon and keep performance roughly in line with the moderate performance gains we've received on intel not really change the design and basically keep the user experience the same if they were to do that people would say okay great so you're using your own processors but it doesn't make much of a difference so the first apple silicon max are going to be significantly more powerful i do a hundred percent expect that the new max will be more powerful and probably have better battery life and consume less power overall i think that's the main angle that they're going to be taking look more battery life more power so let's talk a little bit about what exactly the new apple silicon processors are going to look like well from what we've seen it seems like we're going to get an 8 and 12 core variant so the 8 core variant would be very similar to an a12z or x but based on the a14 bionic instead of the a12 bionic as you would expect so those will have four performance cores and four efficiency cores same layout that we've come to know and love and then for the 12 core chip we can expect that to be most likely an option in the 13-inch macbook pro which will have the upgraded cooling capacity to actually be able to use that and that one will be eight high performance cores and four efficiency cores so that one i'm expecting will be very very powerful this 12 core is going to be like their big break for this generation but that being said it's probably going to look exactly the same or extremely similar to the the macbook pro that we currently have i think it's possible that this apple silicon macbook doesn't even so much as change the bezels that's a possibility folks now i don't have any insider information to to corroborate this but the fact is we don't have any information on the design more than likely that means that's because there isn't a lot of information out there because the design isn't changing very much so a lot of people have been have been saying oh no luke you're you're stupid there's not going to be a 13-inch macbook pro they're going to 14-inch there will be new designs there most likely is a 14-inch macbook pro in the works as well as a new 16-inch macbook pro with a different design but they're not going to be right away that's probably going to be wwdc or later in 2021 maybe even 2022. we don't know right apple doesn't release a ton of new stuff all at once just absolute avalanche of completely brand new products that's not how they roll the nvidia analogy that i brought up earlier still is true here right if you're a company especially a company as wealthy as apple you need to basically space out your upgrades because if you let's say q4 2020 you just absolutely unload some of the most incredible apple silicon brand new design crazy performance as much as you could possibly pack into those computers your q4 earnings are going to go crazy through the roof but how are you going to follow that up investors want to see consistent growth if you absolutely blow everyone out of the water at the end of 2020 and then you don't really have anything to follow it up with in 2021 that's gonna look really bad so and i understand that you know as consumers we want to see the generational gains we want to see you know remember that 13 inch macbook pro with intel forget about it 14 inch mini led 16 core apple silicon and guess what fellas it's a fanless design with 20 hours of battery life whoa that's not realistic if you release the best product in the world then it's going to take you a long time to top that now that being said as i mentioned earlier i do i don't want to throw too much water on the fire here because i do still think that apple silicon is going to be very very significant and there's a reason that i've been telling everyone hey don't buy an intel mac right now just don't do it and that's what makes this launch so difficult for us youtubers to talk about when we are making our recommendations because on the one hand you definitely do want to advise people to wait so they can maximize their budget but on the other hand you know there's always going to be something new and better around the corner and there's not going to be one decisive moment where it's like all right everyone buy a macbook right now this is it this is the one there's always going to be improvements down the line it's about in the moment where are we what's our timing scale look like and how should you go from there and right now that means if you're shopping for a new mac 13-inch macbook pro or macbook air wait because those are the macs that are due to get replaced they might not be replaced with crazy radical redesigns don't be surprised if the apple silicon 13-inch macbook pro looks exactly the same and then a year from now we get a big redesign that is 100 possible i think that's likely so there's no one perfect time to buy a mac it basically comes down to a multitude of factors of you know when do you need it how long are you willing to wait how much do you want to spend and i think it's important to keep that in mind and just real quick before we close out i know some people are wondering what about the october event in like five days aren't we going to find out then well it's seeming like we're not actually going to see apple silicon at that event because it's looking pretty packed iphone 12 airpods studio apple tv 4k with like a gaming controller homepod mini air tags maybe some updates on services that seems like a pretty full event so that kind of does leave some questions like okay well when are we going to see the apple silicon max are they going to be press released that seems weird right for for such a monumental transition you'd think there would be an event for it so it's possible that we'll see a um a november event we've never had one of those before but could happen who knows so i hope that this video was helpful to some people i i didn't really write out a script i didn't have talking points in front of me i don't i don't have anything in front of me i'm just sitting in front of a camera right now so that was a sort of stream of consciousness because i've wanted to reassure people and i've tried to talk about this in my more news leak and rumor oriented videos before but i really just wanted to just come at it head on and talk straight into your guy's eyes and ears about why it's important to have some perspective and to to one not get your hopes up to not get your hopes down and and three just to to really understand how the cycle of technology works and and get some perspective into what is realistically possible for apple silicon hopefully this video calmed your nerves a little bit or gave you some perspective if it did like comment and subscribe please consider following me on twitter at lukemiani don't forget to check out my twitch channel and my subreddit which are linked in the description and i'll see you all in the next video uhso we've talked quite a bit on this channel about apple silicon it is kind of been for the past four or five months the number one thing in the apple space because whenever buying a computer at any price point of any age it's always contrasted against this oh wait apple silicon is coming for the past couple of months i've been advising people to hold off from buying intel max to just wait and see what happens and at the same time quite a lot of hype has been building for the apple silicon max that we can expect either in october or november but certainly by the end of 2020 now in today's video i want to offer a little bit of a reality check because i see quite a lot of people getting a little bit carried away so what we're going to do today is synthesize the information that we do know as well as some of my own analysis as to what i think is likely to happen and kind of just set everyone's expectations here because you know i don't want people to set themselves up for disappointment or to put the bar so high that it couldn't possibly be reached so that's the goal for today's video it's going to be a talking head video so if you want to minimize this feel free if you're tired of hearing about apple silicon i totally understand this is for the people who i think need a little bit of a reality check so let's get started so when apple announced they were transitioning to apple silicon at wwdc they gave themselves a time frame of the end of the year 2020 for launching the first apple silicon mac now that was more definite than the intel transition when they transitioned to intel they announced that wwdc 2005 and they gave themselves a year to release the first intel mac they ended up releasing the first intel mac in january 2006 so actually quite a similar time frame to what we're looking at here but there's something that i think a lot of people are missing and that is the fact that we tend to assume that with a monumental transition such as this that the max that come out are themselves going to be monumental i think that's a fundamental misconception for where we are right now with apple silicon there's sort of this assumption that what with the announcement of apple silicon and the very major design changes to mac os big sur we've all kind of thought oh something big is coming in terms of apple design and i do think that that's true but it's not going to be immediate now harking back to something that i talked about in one of my previous videos i think this was from like august or something but when apple transitioned to intel they didn't completely overhaul the designs of their products right away the imac mac mini mac pro and basically the macbook pro as well were unchanged the imac and the mac mini were identical in terms of design to their power pc counterparts the mac pro was rebranded but looked identical to the power mac g5 and the macbook pro received some slight design tweaks with a wider display and some just basically some minor minor aesthetic changes but the same overall design in fact in 2006 the first year of intel max they changed every single product over to intel without redesigning any of them so there's no reason for us to believe that apple has to redesign everything with these radical new ideas the instant that apple silicon comes out and that sort of feeds into the second misconception about apple silicon a lot of people have been saying that you know apple silicon means that all the macs are going to be fanless i mean after all you look at an ipad pro right with the a12z that thing has pre basically quad core intel levels of performance but it uses like 15 watts and is passively cooled so therefore if you scale that up to like 45 watts put it in a macbook pro oh boy there you go you've got yourself a fanless macbook but that's a fundamental misconception as arm processors scale they do need active cooling and one of the one of the pieces of evidence to support this is the 13-inch macbook pro which is going to be here either this month or next month with apple silicon is rumored to be keeping the heatsink and fan so basically when it comes to apple silicon there's there's three main aspects of these processors that apple is going to be juggling you've got performance you've got heat and you've got power consumption so if you think about it as like one of those triangle graphs you sort of have to balance how far you go in each direction because the more you want more performance the more heat and the more power you're going to consume so when it comes to in particular a laptop it's about finding a balance you want to be able to maximize performance without using a ton of power and without producing a ton of heat it would be fundamentally flawed to assume that even a 13-inch macbook pro will be passively cooled maybe eventually they will but not right away and that's another thing i said 13-inch macbook pro every time i talk about the 13-inch apple silicon macbook pro people go well what do you mean it's going to be a 14-inch macbook pro it's not going to be 13-inch why would they do that so here's the thing that we have to understand and i've been saying this for a while but it doesn't seem to have got through to a decent number of people we are expecting two apple silicon macs a 12-inch macbook and a 13-inch macbook pro 13-inch macbook pro not 14. those two products are not going to be radically new in terms of their design in fact the 12-inch macbook might even contain a butterfly keyboard that's a possibility that we're all going to have to learn to live with i'm not saying it's definitely going to happen but it's not off the table that machine is going to look very similar to the 12-inch macbook that was recently discontinued at least based on the information that we have it could be radically different but i don't want people to expect that it will be and then be disappointed when it isn't these first apple silicon macs are essentially proof of concept right when you're releasing a new product stack with such a major transition the the first and primary goal is we need to get people to accept that this is how their computers will be that doesn't necessarily mean changing everything if you change everything then you don't necessarily leave yourself a ton of room for improvement i mean look at nvidia right this is something that nvidia has been famous for in the past couple of years why give you absolutely everything when in two years we then have to top it now granted this is a transition which means that apple needs to sell people that it's a worthy transition so if they were to just switch to apple silicon and keep performance roughly in line with the moderate performance gains we've received on intel not really change the design and basically keep the user experience the same if they were to do that people would say okay great so you're using your own processors but it doesn't make much of a difference so the first apple silicon max are going to be significantly more powerful i do a hundred percent expect that the new max will be more powerful and probably have better battery life and consume less power overall i think that's the main angle that they're going to be taking look more battery life more power so let's talk a little bit about what exactly the new apple silicon processors are going to look like well from what we've seen it seems like we're going to get an 8 and 12 core variant so the 8 core variant would be very similar to an a12z or x but based on the a14 bionic instead of the a12 bionic as you would expect so those will have four performance cores and four efficiency cores same layout that we've come to know and love and then for the 12 core chip we can expect that to be most likely an option in the 13-inch macbook pro which will have the upgraded cooling capacity to actually be able to use that and that one will be eight high performance cores and four efficiency cores so that one i'm expecting will be very very powerful this 12 core is going to be like their big break for this generation but that being said it's probably going to look exactly the same or extremely similar to the the macbook pro that we currently have i think it's possible that this apple silicon macbook doesn't even so much as change the bezels that's a possibility folks now i don't have any insider information to to corroborate this but the fact is we don't have any information on the design more than likely that means that's because there isn't a lot of information out there because the design isn't changing very much so a lot of people have been have been saying oh no luke you're you're stupid there's not going to be a 13-inch macbook pro they're going to 14-inch there will be new designs there most likely is a 14-inch macbook pro in the works as well as a new 16-inch macbook pro with a different design but they're not going to be right away that's probably going to be wwdc or later in 2021 maybe even 2022. we don't know right apple doesn't release a ton of new stuff all at once just absolute avalanche of completely brand new products that's not how they roll the nvidia analogy that i brought up earlier still is true here right if you're a company especially a company as wealthy as apple you need to basically space out your upgrades because if you let's say q4 2020 you just absolutely unload some of the most incredible apple silicon brand new design crazy performance as much as you could possibly pack into those computers your q4 earnings are going to go crazy through the roof but how are you going to follow that up investors want to see consistent growth if you absolutely blow everyone out of the water at the end of 2020 and then you don't really have anything to follow it up with in 2021 that's gonna look really bad so and i understand that you know as consumers we want to see the generational gains we want to see you know remember that 13 inch macbook pro with intel forget about it 14 inch mini led 16 core apple silicon and guess what fellas it's a fanless design with 20 hours of battery life whoa that's not realistic if you release the best product in the world then it's going to take you a long time to top that now that being said as i mentioned earlier i do i don't want to throw too much water on the fire here because i do still think that apple silicon is going to be very very significant and there's a reason that i've been telling everyone hey don't buy an intel mac right now just don't do it and that's what makes this launch so difficult for us youtubers to talk about when we are making our recommendations because on the one hand you definitely do want to advise people to wait so they can maximize their budget but on the other hand you know there's always going to be something new and better around the corner and there's not going to be one decisive moment where it's like all right everyone buy a macbook right now this is it this is the one there's always going to be improvements down the line it's about in the moment where are we what's our timing scale look like and how should you go from there and right now that means if you're shopping for a new mac 13-inch macbook pro or macbook air wait because those are the macs that are due to get replaced they might not be replaced with crazy radical redesigns don't be surprised if the apple silicon 13-inch macbook pro looks exactly the same and then a year from now we get a big redesign that is 100 possible i think that's likely so there's no one perfect time to buy a mac it basically comes down to a multitude of factors of you know when do you need it how long are you willing to wait how much do you want to spend and i think it's important to keep that in mind and just real quick before we close out i know some people are wondering what about the october event in like five days aren't we going to find out then well it's seeming like we're not actually going to see apple silicon at that event because it's looking pretty packed iphone 12 airpods studio apple tv 4k with like a gaming controller homepod mini air tags maybe some updates on services that seems like a pretty full event so that kind of does leave some questions like okay well when are we going to see the apple silicon max are they going to be press released that seems weird right for for such a monumental transition you'd think there would be an event for it so it's possible that we'll see a um a november event we've never had one of those before but could happen who knows so i hope that this video was helpful to some people i i didn't really write out a script i didn't have talking points in front of me i don't i don't have anything in front of me i'm just sitting in front of a camera right now so that was a sort of stream of consciousness because i've wanted to reassure people and i've tried to talk about this in my more news leak and rumor oriented videos before but i really just wanted to just come at it head on and talk straight into your guy's eyes and ears about why it's important to have some perspective and to to one not get your hopes up to not get your hopes down and and three just to to really understand how the cycle of technology works and and get some perspective into what is realistically possible for apple silicon hopefully this video calmed your nerves a little bit or gave you some perspective if it did like comment and subscribe please consider following me on twitter at lukemiani don't forget to check out my twitch channel and my subreddit which are linked in the description and i'll see you all in the next video uh\n"