But consider:
1. Apple just introduced their “starter” chip for everyday consumers. They would not WANT that chip to smoke their top-end Intel Macs, as it would cannibalize margins until the more powerful chips are ready.
2. This is a “two year transition,” with a team that has been shipping a meaningfully better chip every 12 months for about a decade.
From those two observations, I would expect that we’ll see an M1x or M2 chip in the next 12 months which nudges the 16”MBP to 20% or so better than what we’re seeing today, and 12 months after that the transition is completed with the introduction of the M3 series, where there’s an M3, M3x, and M3z for the low, mid, and max performance machines.
And when that happens, I expect the max-performance M3z is going to smoke anything else on the market.
This is not the first time Apple has had a “five-year lead” on the industry, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes Intel and AMD some time to catch up.
And frankly we should all be thrilled about that, because more competition and innovation is just going to accelerate our entire field. I can’t wait to see all the new stuff this will power over the next decade :)
