Apple will soon switch from Intel to ARM in its Macs, but does that mean you should pull the trigger on a first-generation ARM Mac? We lay out the pros and cons.
Apple has taken the plunge. It’s officially beginning the transition away from using Intel processors in Macs. By the end of 2020, the first Mac with Apple Silicon will be shipped, with the rest of the line transitioning over the next two years.
Whether it’s a new MacBook Pro or iMac, should you wait to buy one of these newfangled Apple computers over the current Intel options?
It’s usually a good idea to avoid buying first-generation products. They tend to be experimental, rife with reliability problems, and more limited in scope than its predecessors. That’s why buying something like the first Samsung Galaxy Fold isn’t smart. Let the early adopters weed out the potential issues and buy the next generation.
That conventional wisdom could certainly be applied to these new Apple Silicon-based Macs. There are plenty of issues that could arise, even from the limited information we have at the moment.
The first problem is the designs themselves. We don’t know much about what designs these first Apple Silicon Macs will be. We know a mini-LED,14-inch MacBook Pro is in the works, as is a redesigned iMac — and rumors say these could be the first Macs we see. These are exciting products in themselves, and Apple says the transition to ARM will allow for fresh, new designs.
Mac fans are likely wary of such new designs. While iterations on the iPhone or iPad design have been well-received, the same can’t be said about the Mac in recent years.
The butterfly keyboard is a good example. Apple decided its users wanted a more stable keyboard key, so completely redesigned its laptop keyboards to meet this objective. The result, though, was an unreliable key mechanism that Apple never fixed. If you dived straight in and bought a Mac equipped with a first-generation butterfly keyboard, you would have been in for an unpleasant shock. Ultimately, Apple had to abandon the butterfly keyboard altogether.
