Preview of Apple November Events – Apple Silicon MacBooks, AirPods Studio,...

Apple plans to host its “One more thing” product event on Tuesday, November 10th via live stream starting at 1:00 p.m. EST / 10:00 a.m. PST. After Apple presented the Apple Watch 6 and iPad Air 4 in September and the iPhone 12 family in October, Apple’s Mac product range is facing a major overhaul.

Even knowing the main event, Tuesday’s product launch still has some puzzles pounding the specific details of what we’re likely to see. Here’s what to expect when you listen to the live stream One More Thing on Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. EDT.

Apple Silicon MacBook Air und MacBook Pro

In case you don’t remember Apple’s announcement this summer – a lot has happened lately, so who could blame you – the company announced plans to build laptops around its own CPUs, dealing a devastating blow to Intel . This is the same approach that Apple has taken to great success with its iPhone and iPad lines of products.

The initiative called Apple Silicon is slated to begin this fall with the first Macs powered by ARM processors. Apple plans to provide ARM-based chips for each of its Mac products to replace the Intel processors currently in use. The entire transition takes about two years. The first Macs switch to Apple Silicon this year.

The goal: Providing laptops with comparable or better performance than Intel laptops with better energy efficiency at the same time. And the first Apple Silicon MacBook benchmarks look promising.

Rumors suggest that laptops will come first in the transition to ARM chips. So that’s what we expect on Tuesday. The latest rumor about Apple’s laptop plans suggests three new MacBooks based on Apple Silicon.

Bloomberg reports that on Tuesday we will be getting a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro, both of which will be available in 13-inch configurations with the new processors. A 16-inch MacBook Pro could also be available for Tuesday. These machines will reportedly run on the same A14 processor Apple recently introduced for both the iPhone 12 and iPad Air 4.

With Apple continuing to plan to roll out Intel-based Macs for the entire Mac lineup during the transition to Apple Silicon, it’s possible that more computers will be included in Tuesday’s announcement. A 13-inch MacBook Pro with an Intel processor, in particular, might be in the works, though we wouldn’t envision this model getting much stage time.

Apple hasn’t released a new 12-inch MacBook in a while. The product is optionally not even listed on the Apple website. However, some rumors suggest that Apple might revive this particular laptop with an ARM-based processor.

There have also been reports of an Apple Silicon-based iMac, as well as a Mac Pro that is much more compact than the current version. Both desktops are unlikely to make their debut on November 10th. Apple is likely to focus on laptops early on because the performance requirements aren’t as far away from mobile devices as tablets.

How will Apple Silicon improve Mac performance?

Expect many improvements over the Intel chips currently powering Apple laptops, and not just because Apple still only has 10th Gen Core CPUs on some of its notebooks, while top-of-the-line Windows models have chips 11th generation use by Intel. The A14 uses a 5 nanometer process that is said to allow it to operate more efficiently than Intel’s 10 nm Tiger Lake chips.

The move to Apple Silicon will also bring Apple’s neural engine to the Mac, which is intended to improve machine learning capabilities. (Think, for example, of the way the iPhone handles photo processing with ease.) Apple has also touted benefits such as advanced power management, a powerful GPU for running pro apps and games, and a secure enclave for better privacy.

Using the same processor in iPhones and iPads means apps made for those mobile devices should now run natively on Macs too. This expands the software you can use on your Macs and could make developers more ready to develop for the platform.

macOS Big Sur

The latest version of macOS was also announced at Apple’s developer conference and has been in beta since the summer. Apple has promised a release for macOS Big Sur in Fall 2020, and the same thing we said before about the calendar that has run out of weeks applies here.

Expect Apple to use a Mac launch event to give us more information about the macOS Big Sur release date – unless the final update falls on us during the event itself.

With Apple rarely sticking to one thing even at an event called One More Thing, we’d expect other products on stage to be among the Silicon MacBook models. And Apple certainly has a choice of some rumors to be announced on Tuesday.

We waited for the last two Apple product events to see the AirPods Studio. These are wireless over-ear headphones that complement the rest of Apple’s AirPod lineup. We expect the AirPods Studio to have noise-canceling features, but it’s unclear if they’ll be ready in time for this year’s holiday season. Some rumors suggest that the same production delays that pushed the iPhone 12 version back could result in the AirPods Studio not launching until 2021.

Another possible candidate is an updated version of the Apple TV set-top box. It’s been a while since Apple updated the Apple TV 4K, and a new version could potentially include Apple’s A12X Bionic chip if rumors about the product prove correct. (Another wilder rumor suggests an Apple TV with an A14 chip that offers console-like performance, all the better for streaming Apple arcade games.)

It’s certainly in Apple’s interest to remind us that there are TV set-top boxes too – the Apple TV Plus streaming service has only just become one, and all of the people who got free subscriptions over the past year may need a reason to stick to the young people serving.

It’s also about Apple AirTags, the long-rumored key finder device that is said to work with the U1 Ultra Wideband chip in recent iPhones. Such a product seemed better suited to the iPhone 12 launch event, and the fact that the new iPhones are here and an Apple-made key finder doesn’t tell us that rumors that this device will be pushed back to 2021 are likely to be true.