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Apple introduces new Macs with Apple Silicon

Scott Simmons

Apple has ended the year with yet another Apple event with their One More Thing event on November 10, 2020. You can watch the entire presentation right here. We expected lots of slick video presentations with out-of-this-world transiitions from segment to segment and that is what was delivered. I don’t get to deep into the weeds in the computer tech, I just like to have the fastest Mac I can afford. 🙂 I’ll let some Twitter chat ask a few questions that some might be wondering.

This event was about the Macintosh and the transition to Apple Silicon. This first chip designed for the Mac is the new M1 chip designed for low power devices.

The specs for the M1 look impressive. I wonder if the bigger Pro machines will get an M2 or higher clip as they add more cores and more transitions. Assuming you can get another few billion transistors in there!
I love this slides that show a lot of technical specs in small tiles. They have become a mainstay of these Apple presentations. There is a lot of things this new M1 chip looks to do well when it comes to video. A lot of this is about playing back video but hopefully it’ll all apply to video editing heavy-lifting as well.

A big part of the M1 is the latest Mac OS Big Sur. I’ll be looking forward to what they said was near instant wake from sleep like iOS devices. There were several mentions of video editing, including “edit raw video” which makes sense as video editing is one of most taxing things you’ll do on a computer. There was a mention of both iMovie and Final Cut Pro X.

We even got some DaVinci Resolve love live and on-screen as well as folks from Adobe and Cinema4D in one of the videos.

We got a DaVinci Resolve sighting early in the Apple Silicon Mac presentation

MacBook Air

The first Mac with the M1 Apple Silion is the new Macbook Air. That isn’t surprising since thin and light seems to be the perfect application for a chip with its genesis in mobile. The form factor looks the same as the last Intel Macbook Air. Maybe a new form will come to the big pro machines next year.

Final Cut Pro X got a callout in the MacBook Air presentation for editing 4K ProRes video.

They showed an image of Final Cut Pro X running on the Air and mentioned editing simultaneous streams of ProRes video. That isn’t all that shocking as ProRes is very efficient. What’s cool is they mentioned there is no fan so this will be a very quiet machine. Price is right as it starts at $999.

All the specs for the new MacBook Air.

Mac Mini

We also get the new M1 Apple Silicon chip in a new Mac Mini. Once again compact design is the king and the perfect place for this chip. The price starts at $699 and is $100 cheaper than the last version.

More specs! The Mac Mini only supports up to 16 GB of RAM so that’s a bit low for video editing but it could be a good offline machine. I know several editors who use the current Mac Mini for just that.

13-inch MacBook Pro

Finally we get the M1 in what is the most important machine for creatives and video editors, the 13-inch Macbook Pro. This is a 13 inch model and while probably not the high end machine for post-production professionals it looks like it’ll hold its own. In fact there was even a video editing highlight during the 13-inch annoumcenemt worth mentioning: it was for DaVinch Resolve and, surprisingly, not FCPX.

Apple showed this during the Apple Silicon presentation: “play back 8K ProRes footage in full quality without dropping a single frame.” That was for notebooks in the compact 3lb class.

They made it a point to point out the improved battery life. 20 hours of video playback is impressive but that’s going to be for things like watching Netflix and not playing back RED RAW footage or editing XDCAM. Prices will begin at $1299. You can order these new Macs now and they will ship next week. Big Sur arrives November 12.

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro spec graphic

I speced out a top of the line 13-inch Apple Silicon MacBook Pro and it came in at $2,299. You can also still order the Intel i5 13-inchers so they are not dead yet.

I don’t think the lack of eGPU support is that shocking. Now, if the higher power Apple Silicon chips don’t support them then I worry about the “pro” label.

Earlier this year I ditched my old iMac at my house and went with a new Macbook Pro. It’s been a great machine so far even if the fans seem to run all the time. I have been a bit disappointed in the 16-inch Macbook Pro when it comes to transcoding and encoding speeds vs my years old iMac Pro at the office I know that iMac Pro has a higher level chip but it’s old by computer standards. Will I buy a new Apple Silicon Mac? I’m sure someday but these Intel machines I have are still going strong and have a lot of life left in them. Plus, I’d wait for the higher end machines before throwing them into the deep end of post-production.

I agree with Dave’s assessment above. Current Intel Macs still have a pretty long shelf life unless Apple restricts upcoming Mac OS updates to only Apple Silicon. I think we’re quite. few years away from that. It’s also worth noting that it might be awhile before some of the tools we use for post-production are ready for Apple Silicon. While the Apple apps will undoublty be ready soon it looks like Resolve will be ready to go. We might have to wait while for Premiere Pro and Media Composer.

Speaking of Final Cut Pro X, we did get a nice image of FCPX running with a new icon in the dock.

That FCPX icon in the dock doesn’t look like your FCPX icon in your dock.

So we’ll get a shiny new FCPX soon! Probably 10.5.

If you’re interested in geeky Apple Silicon talk check out our PVC podcast where I chatted with some post-production focused Apple developers about this transition. Or give this a listen:

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