The era of the all-new Apple Silicon Mac has arrived. The first line of new Apple M1-powered hardware—the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini are now available for order on Malaysian shores, starting from MYR2,999. Promising amazing performance, efficiency, and battery life (for the MacBooks), the new Mac hardware has stirred plenty of buzz in the Mac-dom and tech industry alike.
Little chip. Big leap.
The Apple M1 marks the first Apple Silicon to grace the company’s Mac hardware family. It kicks off Apple’s baby steps in its two-year transition from Intel to ARM-based Apple Silicon. It’s worth noting that Apple isn’t new in designing and developing chips, having proven its mettle in its iPhone, iPad, iPod and Apple Watch product lines over the past decade.
The M1, while its first effort for the Mac, has already stirred considerable interest in the industry and perhaps ruffled some feathers. Built on the cutting-edge 5nm manufacturing process, the chip packs some 16 billion transistors.
For starters, it features an 8-core CPU consisting of four high-performance core and four high-efficiency cores. Being a SoC, it integrates CPU, graphics, I/O, memory, security, and more. The eight core CPU work together to deliver the world’s best CPU performance per watt.
In terms of graphics, the eight-core GPU delivers 2.6 teraflops of throughput and can run nearly 25,000 threads simultaneously. This shames even some discrete notebook graphics.
Learn more about the Apple M1 in this previous post.
Apple M1 Macs here we come
While they’re supercharged under the hood, Apple chose to retain the overall design of the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini. There is no distinction between the Apple Silicon and Intel versions.
The MacBook Air gains amazing battery life, six hours more in fact, for a total of up to 18 hours. The thermal performance of the M1 also enables the MBA to run cool without a fan.
The MBA retains the 13.3-inch Retina display (2560×1600) and offers up to 16GB of unified memory, up to 2TB of NVMe m.2 SSD storage, Wi-FI 6 and Thunderbolt 4 (USB 4).
Thanks to the Neural Engine in the M1 chip, the FaceTime HD camera purportedly delivers clearer and sharper images.
The MacBook Pro 13”, on the other hand, offers up to 16GB of memory, up to 2TB of superfast flash storage and up to 20 hours of battery life. It also comes with a Touch Bar as standard, aside from Touch ID.
The pro Mac notebook is also available with 10th Gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processors.
The most affordable M1 Mac you can get right now is the Mac mini, starting at just MYR2,999 for the 8GB memory and 256GB SSD model. The 512GB SSD model comes in at MYR800 more. The mini can be custom configured with up to 16GB of memory and 2TB SSD storage.
The Mac mini comes two Thunderbolt (USB 4) ports, HDMI 2.0 port, two USB-A ports, Gigabit Ethernet port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It also features Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.
The little Mac desktop is also available with 8th Gen Intel Core i5 processor.
Across the board, the new Macs run macOS Big Sur, built from the ground up to support Apple Silicon.
Pricing and availability
MacBook Air
- Apple M1 (7-core GPU), 8GB memory + 256GB SSD storage – MYR4,399
- Apple M1 (8-core GPU), 8GB memory + 512GB SSD storage – MYR5,399
MacBook Pro 13”
- Apple M1, 8GB memory + 256GB SSD storage – MYR5,599
- Apple M1, 8GB memory + 512GB SSD storage – MYR6,399
- 10th Gen Intel Core i5 with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, 16GB memory, 16GB SSD storage – MYR7,999
- 10th Gen Intel Core i7 with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, 16GB memory, 1TB SSD storage – MYR8,799
Mac mini
- Apple M1, 8GB memory + 256GB SSD storage – MYR2,999
- Apple M1, 8GB memory + 512GB SSD storage – MYR3,799
- 8th Gen Intel Core i5 with Intel UHD Graphics 630, 8GB memory + 512GB SSD – MYR4,599
To purchase, head over to Mac – Apple (MY)
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