At Apple’s WWDC 2021 keynote, new Mac hardware was nowhere to be seen. After a seven-month stretch that brought us new M1-powered …
At Apple’s WWDC 2021 keynote, new Mac hardware was nowhere to be seen. After a seven-month stretch that brought us new M1-powered laptops and desktops, there’s still no sign of an Apple silicon Mac Pro, larger-screen MacBook Pro or 27-inch iMac. As part of its aggressive move away from Intel-powered computers, the company introduced a MacBook Air,13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini desktop using its own M1 processors in late 2020. In April 2021, the smaller of two iMac desktop models was redesigned with a larger 24-inch screen, an M1 chip and a new, colorful body. The last new Intel-powered Mac to be announced was the Intel Core i9 27-inch iMac in the summer of 2020, which was most notable for adding an excellent 1080p webcam, a version of which is now in the 24-inch iMac. But left out of the first two rounds of M1 Macs were systems for the kind of high-end creative professionals who rely on the more powerful Mac Pro or 16-inch MacBook Pro. The M1 Macs are currently limited to 16GB of RAM and don’t offer the discrete AMD graphics cards available in some Intel-powered Macs. With WWDC so focused on developers, it would have been the perfect time to introduce new Mac hardware for these power users, but it was not to be. New MacBook Pro models, potentially in 14-inch and 16-inch versions are still a possibility for this summer or later in 2021. With new MacOS updates and potential upcoming hardware in mind, here’s where each of the current Macs sit in the lineup, and who should consider buying now and who should consider waiting. With the latest M1 version, introduced in late 2020, the classic $999 MacBook Air once again became one of the most universally useful laptops you can buy.
