Apple made more major announcements on Tuesday as part of what has been referred to as their “One More Thing” event.
Previously, the company had two other large events in the past few months, one to announce its new Apple One bundle packages and the other to release the new iPhone models.
This time, Apple announced a new MacBook Air, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the new Mac mini.
Each of these computers uses the highly vaunted M1 silicon as its processor.
Below is a brief summary of each major announcement from what should be the last Apple event of a very busy year for the company.
The new M1 chip is announced
The most impactful new piece of technology from this event was definitely the new Apple M1 arm processor that will appear in all new Macs. The chip is 5nm and has an octa-core processor, which makes its the fastest CPU core to be made to date.
Apple also maintains it has the best performance per watt as well of anything currently on the market.
The new chip also has an integrated graphics processing unit that is eight-cores which means the computer will have even better performance and take less total power.
New MacBook Air will cost $999
The company also released the latest version of the MacBook Air, which will include the new processing chip and debut at $999.
The computer is very similar in design as the previous model. However, the addition of the M1 means it will have an improved battery with up to 18 hours of videos able to be played without the computer shutting off.
This MacBook Air will also work better with certain apps that had been taxing on previous models, and games will also make use of the improved graphics and overall speed.
The ability to access storage will also be much quicker than before with the improved M1 chip.
The new MacBook Air can be preordered now and will officially be released next week.
New and improved Mac mini
Just like the MacBook Air, the Mac mini desktop will also have the new M1 processor inside of it.
The new Mac mini will have three times the performance of the previous models that used a quad-core CPU.
The Mac mini will also support both USB 4 and Thunderbolt and has the ability to connect to the Pro Display XDR at 6K quality resolution.
This model will cost $699 and has 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage internally.
Just like the MacBook Air, the Mac Mini can be preordered now prior to its release next week.
New MacBook Pro
Apple additionally released a new 13-inch MacBook Pro model that will have the M1 chip.
This upcoming model will have the longest life of any Apple release to do and will work for up to 20 hours with videos before needing a new charge.
The computer will be very efficient with video calls too, and like other models, the MacBook Pro will have a Thunderbolt USB 4 port with a high-quality 6K resolution on the display.
The M1’s camera ISP will enhance the image during video calls, as it will on the MacBook Air that was also announced today.
Apple says its Thunderbolt USB 4 ports support 6K resolution with the Pro Display XDR.
The new Mac Pro starts at $1,299 and is available for preorder now.
MacOS 11 Big Sur launches this week
Another huge announcement to round off the event was the latest operating system, the macOS 11 Big Sur.
Like everything else announced, it will utilize the M1 chips and this means even faster and efficient use of apps and software on the new operating system.
This launches on Thursday, November 12th, and we’ll take a closer look at it after it goes live here too.
