Apple Executives Talk About M1 Chip, Touchscreen Macs And More In New Interview

Apple’s first Macs equipped with Apple Silicon M1 chips were introduced earlier this week and will be in the hands of customers by next Tuesday. In the middle of the post, Craig Federighi, Apple’s chief marketing officer, John Ternus, vice president of hardware engineering, and Greg Joswiak, chief marketing officer, spoke to each other. The independent to discuss new Macs.

When announcing the new M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook mini, Apple had some bold claims about their speed compared to older Macs and PCs, and performance tests last night proved those claims to be true. Newer Mac models are faster than any other Mac in single-core performance and outperform many high-end machines, including the 16-inch MacBook Pro Retina, in multicore performance.

When it comes to performance, Federighi says Apple has “passed” and the M1 chip has turned out to be better than Apple thought. Apple executives were shocked at the battery life figures.

“We have passed the mark,” said Federighi. “You have these projects where sometimes you have a goal and you’re like, ‘Well, we got closer, that was good. […]

“We’ve started to collect the battery life numbers, and we’re like, ‘You’re kidding. I thought we had people who knew how to estimate these things “.”

According to Ternus, during the development process it became clear that the chip was doing more than expected. The Apple teams were “so passionate and excited” about the chip that they kept pushing and optimizing.

On the name, Joswiak said that “M1 makes a lot of sense for a Mac chip” because Apple aims to use letters that make sense. A-series chips used in iOS devices mean ‘Apple’, and headphone chips use H. “We’re brilliant marketers that way,” Joswiak said.

With the MacBook Pro, “MacBook Air” and Mac mini all using the same chip at varying prices, Federighi says the main differentiator is thermal capacity. The ‌MacBook Air‌ does not have a fan and uses passive cooling, while the MacBook Pro has an active cooling system for faster performance.

Apple’s entire line of Macs will switch to “Apple Silicon” chips over the next two years, and for Intel Macs, Apple executives have said they trust the machines to do the job. to which they are intended. Federighi said Intel Macs are running Big Sur and will be a “big part” of Apple’s attention for “many years.” Apple expects the transition to be “seamless” as Apple has experience after the transition from PowerPC to Intel in 2006.

While there are no design changes, Ternus said the new Macs “make a statement” with their performance and provide a “great base” for starting the transition.

“And, you know, we usually don’t want to just change the design just to change a design – we have a great platform here, we have a new one. [processor], we can marry them into something really spectacular. And that was the thought behind it. “

With macOS Big Sur, Apple somewhat merges iOS and macOS and allows iPhone and iPad apps to run on the Mac, allowing developers to build a single app for all platforms. Apple executives have continuously said they have no plans to merge the iPad‌ and Mac, and this continues to be the case despite the launch of universal apps. Federighi said there is no secret plan to change how the Mac works and that Apple is not targeting a touchscreen Mac.

“We live with iPads, we live with phones, our own sense of aesthetics – the kind of openness and lightness of the interface – the fact that these devices now have large retinal displays. All of these things led us to the design for the Mac, which we found the most comfortable, in fact not related to touch.

Federighi said Apple designed and evolved the look of macOS in a way that felt comfortable and natural in a family of devices, and something like touch wasn’t even envisioned from a distance. “It’s just that they all feel like the natural instantiation of the experience for this device,” Federighi said. “And that’s what you see, it’s not a sign of a future change in input methods.”

The full interview with Federighi, Joswiak and Ternus is worth seeing and can be found at The independentwebsite.