Apple's new Macs run on Apple-designed chips, just like the iPhone and iPad. Amazingly, even the $999 MacBook Air is faster than any Intel-powered Mac you can buy when it comes to single-core performance.
The entry-level MacBook Air is also quiet, since it has no fan, and can last up to 18 hours on a single charge. And the story gets crazier. In testing, the M1 chips powering these new “Apple Silicon” Macs have been shown to be faster in single-core performance (more on that later) than any other Mac ever made, including the high-end $6,000 Mac Pro. Oh, and you can run your iPhone and iPad apps on these new Macs, too.
“The A14 [iPhone CPU] is both a power-efficient smartphone chip and one of the fastest CPUs ever made, period,” writes Apple expert John Gruber. “And the M1 is faster.”
Apple has been designing its own chips since the first iPhone in 2007. Now, those chips power the Mac. The new M1 is based on this year's A14 iPhone and iPad chips, only it's designed for the Mac. The M1, like the A14, is more of a "system on a chip," meaning that all of the computer's components — the CPU, RAM, SSD for data storage, and so on — are integrated onto a single chip. Even the controllers for USB and other inputs and outputs are on the M1.
