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2015 was a pivotal year to indicate Apples future direction, here’s why … 2015 is the year both the (Intel) 12” MacBook and the first iPad Pro were released.

2015 was a pivotal year to indicate Apples future direction, here’s why … 2015 is the year both the (Intel) 12” MacBook and the first iPad Pro were released. These we also both entirely new form factors for Apple (and both roughly the same size). On the Intel front, Apple saw how underperforming, short lasting battery and hot the 12” MacBook was. Then they saw how performant, long battery lasting and cool their iPad (ARM chip) was. This became an easy decision for Apple to ditch Intel when they saw how much better their own iPad Pro was relative to the 12” Intel MacBook.

ulfw 4y ago
and yet today the wonderful 12" Macbook is dead
- klodolph 4y ago
  I personally like the 12" form factor, and I own one, but I saw approximately zero of them in the wild. It's significantly lighter, I can still get work done on it, it's great for travel... and yet I can't remember seeing other people using them.
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    you may not have seen them, but they are out there (raises hand)
  - antifa 4y ago
    I want a 12" netbook, but most options are garbage or overpriced. A 12" M1 OSX netbook would be a gamechanger.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>Apple saw how underperforming, short lasting battery and hot the 12” MacBook was I sure hope they saw. They designed, built and sold the things. Would be hard to miss those issues during their development and testing, wouldn't it? It's not like Apple didn't know what they were selling.
- gumby 4y ago
  I loved my 12" macbook and would buy an Mx one in a heartbeat. It was so small I'd forget if I had it in my bag and would have to look. I traveled all over the planet and it was super convenient. I even wrote code on it. Yes it was slow but really, not terrible.
- coldtea 4y ago
  And they could do what, given that Intel was their only option at the time? Not built it? Not to mention tons of people love them...
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    They could have used lower power Intel chips. Nobody forced them to put 45W chips in a paper thin chassis, but their marketing guys really wanted to have the top of the line Intel chips in them despite the wattage. What did you expect would happen? It would be like Apple putting the chip from the Mac Studio in the Air.
    - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
      Arguably the customers forced Apple to use a reasonably performing chip vs one that didn’t perform even reasonably?
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >They could have used lower power Intel chips They could, but those were crap. >What did you expect would happen? That it would be a niche due to size, but otherwise much beloved model, whose 2022 absense is still lamented? (See comments below)
    - goosedragons 4y ago
      They did use low power chips. They had core M CPUs (later rebranded i5-i7 because OEMs). These were 4.5W TDP chips, even the best i7 in the 2017 model (i7-7Y75). The ONLY chips Intel had with lower power usage at the time were the significantly slower Atom and Atom derivatives.
philliphaydon 4y ago
The 12” MacBook was amazing? It ran windows with battery life better than macOS. It was a solid form factor. Never over heated. Great for traveling with. I miss mine.
- bnt 4y ago
  The 12” will be (in my personal memory) the best Apple product I have ever owned.
  - bartq 4y ago
    12 had amazing form factor, but it was great only for native apps, web apps were running horrible on it. But it was beautiful at that time, it was first macbook with various colors? Even once one lady at coffee shop approached me and asked what version of MacBook it was. No no... that's end of the story :)
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      I almost bought one - I had, if Apple had had one in stock when I tried to buy one. A truly faszinating device. Probably the smallest "full size" laptop, depending how you could, ever made. For sure, the weakeast point of it was the processor, which had to sacrifice too much performance to stay in the thermal budget. I guess the basic design decisions for the 12" MacbBook were made when Intel still seemed to be on track for their 10nm process. But it wasn't the only caveat with its design. It had of course the horrible butterfly keybord which would plague the Apple laptops for years and 12" is the absolute minimum screen size for doing work. I think Apple has another laptop design < 13" coming, that could be 12". The ARM processors pretty much solve the power/performance problem. The keyboard could actually be the biggest hurdle, as it increases the body thickness. But the keyboard of the new M2 Air is just wonderful, well worth whatever it adds to the device thickness. I wouldn't even be surprised, if they don't make an ultra-thin 12" MacBook but rather a 12" MB Pro, which might be slightly thicker than the Air.
- schuke 4y ago
  It’s also when Apple’s laptop speaker game left the earth. To this day no one even came near Apple.
zimpenfish 4y ago
> This became an easy decision [in 2015] for Apple to ditch Intel when they saw how much better their own iPad Pro was relative to the 12” Intel MacBook. [1] implies that the M1 development started around 2008 - although you could also read it that the M1 was 5 years in development but that sounds a bit quick and also doesn't fit with [3] in 2014 - "Apple Testing ARM Based Mac Prototypes". But there doesn't seem to be any other direct corroboration of the 2008 date that I can find. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDZyOf6CW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDZyOf6CW4 via [2] [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31778257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31778257 [3] https://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/25/arm-mac-magic-trackpad/ https://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/25/arm-mac-magic-trackpad/
- fredoralive 4y ago
  2008 is probably about the time Apple started serious work on in house CPU cores, rather than specifically the M1? The A6 chip was the first with an Apple designed core, and was released in 2012, so they would have been working on it for several years before.
  - nojito 4y ago
    You pretty much nailed it. They likely started work when they hired Johny srouji. https://www.apple.com/leadership/johny-srouji/ https://www.apple.com/leadership/johny-srouji/
  - simonh 4y ago
    2008 is the year Apple bought PA Semi, an independent chip design house, which formed the core of their semiconductor design team for Apple Silicon.
deepstack 4y ago
>>On the Intel front, Apple saw how underperforming, short lasting battery and hot the 12” MacBook was. Then they saw how performant, long battery lasting and cool their iPad (ARM chip) was. This became an easy decision for Apple to ditch Intel when they saw how much better their own iPad Pro was relative to the 12” Intel MacBook. For those who have being using Mac since the PowerPC days all have used this argument against X86 chips. As you all know, Apple actually had to switched from RISC chips to Intel X86 chips, before they switched back to ISAs chips now. Just saying performance is not the main reason to switch chip sets.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  IBM's PowerPC chips were high performance workstation chips, which means you're going to get performance and heat. In a desktop computer, you can add robust cooling, in an ultra-portable laptop, you cannot. Apple abandoned PPC after it became obvious that laptops were going to become more popular than desktops, and the G5 cheese grater Mac Pro required liquid cooling for the dual CPU chip versions. Apple moved from Intel to ARM for the exact same reason. Intel no longer cares about pursuing high performance with a low power draw. They have returned to the Pentium 4 strategy of performance via clock speed and power increases.
  - 7speter 4y ago
    Have they really gone back to the pentium 4 strategy or are they behind in process node tech and can only compete with AMD’s performance by pumping power into their cpus? I think Intel’s top priority right now is to catch up to Tsmc’s node tech to have as close to performance per watt (or beyond) parity as they can against AMD (and Apple)
    - GeekyBear 4y ago
      >Raptor Lake to Offer ‘Unlimited Power’ Mode for Those Who Don’t Care About Heat, Electric Bills https://www.extremetech.com/computing/338748-raptor-lake-to-offer-unlimited-power-setting https://www.extremetech.com/computing/338748-raptor-lake-to-... If that isn't a return to the Pentium 4 strategy, I don't know what is.
7speter 4y ago
Also, it was around this time that the chips in ipad pros were strangely getting close to intel cpu performance in benchmarks while running in thin enclosures without fans.
- alberth 4y ago
  > Also, it was around this time that the chips in ipad pros were strangely getting close to intel cpu performance Around what time? 2015? Maybe I could have been more clear in my original post but 2015 was the year the iPad Pro launched. How could the “iPad Pro were getting close to Intel performance” happen in thr first version? The very first iPad Pro was already more performant than the MacBook 12” (which also launched that same year).
  - 7speter 4y ago
    Oh Im pretty sure since the ipad pro launched or maybe the gen after, their scores in various benchmarks were getting scary close to the intel benchmarks. It mightve started maybe 30% off but with each generation the gap closed. It was increasingly clear that apples arm chips weren’t just toy chips limited to tablets and tech media talked about how it was only a matter of time before there would be an arm mac or a mac/ios convergence. Whenever Tim Cook was asked, why pretty much up until maybe a few months before the apple silicon announcement, he said there weren’t any plans to switch the mac to arm.

ulfw 4y ago

and yet today the wonderful 12" Macbook is dead

klodolph 4y ago
I personally like the 12" form factor, and I own one, but I saw approximately zero of them in the wild. It's significantly lighter, I can still get work done on it, it's great for travel... and yet I can't remember seeing other people using them.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  you may not have seen them, but they are out there (raises hand)
- antifa 4y ago
  I want a 12" netbook, but most options are garbage or overpriced. A 12" M1 OSX netbook would be a gamechanger.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>Apple saw how underperforming, short lasting battery and hot the 12” MacBook was I sure hope they saw. They designed, built and sold the things. Would be hard to miss those issues during their development and testing, wouldn't it? It's not like Apple didn't know what they were selling.

gumby 4y ago
I loved my 12" macbook and would buy an Mx one in a heartbeat. It was so small I'd forget if I had it in my bag and would have to look. I traveled all over the planet and it was super convenient. I even wrote code on it. Yes it was slow but really, not terrible.
coldtea 4y ago
And they could do what, given that Intel was their only option at the time? Not built it? Not to mention tons of people love them...
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  They could have used lower power Intel chips. Nobody forced them to put 45W chips in a paper thin chassis, but their marketing guys really wanted to have the top of the line Intel chips in them despite the wattage. What did you expect would happen? It would be like Apple putting the chip from the Mac Studio in the Air.
  - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
    Arguably the customers forced Apple to use a reasonably performing chip vs one that didn’t perform even reasonably?
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >They could have used lower power Intel chips They could, but those were crap. >What did you expect would happen? That it would be a niche due to size, but otherwise much beloved model, whose 2022 absense is still lamented? (See comments below)
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    They did use low power chips. They had core M CPUs (later rebranded i5-i7 because OEMs). These were 4.5W TDP chips, even the best i7 in the 2017 model (i7-7Y75). The ONLY chips Intel had with lower power usage at the time were the significantly slower Atom and Atom derivatives.

philliphaydon 4y ago

The 12” MacBook was amazing? It ran windows with battery life better than macOS. It was a solid form factor. Never over heated. Great for traveling with. I miss mine.

bnt 4y ago
The 12” will be (in my personal memory) the best Apple product I have ever owned.
- bartq 4y ago
  12 had amazing form factor, but it was great only for native apps, web apps were running horrible on it. But it was beautiful at that time, it was first macbook with various colors? Even once one lady at coffee shop approached me and asked what version of MacBook it was. No no... that's end of the story :)
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    I almost bought one - I had, if Apple had had one in stock when I tried to buy one. A truly faszinating device. Probably the smallest "full size" laptop, depending how you could, ever made. For sure, the weakeast point of it was the processor, which had to sacrifice too much performance to stay in the thermal budget. I guess the basic design decisions for the 12" MacbBook were made when Intel still seemed to be on track for their 10nm process. But it wasn't the only caveat with its design. It had of course the horrible butterfly keybord which would plague the Apple laptops for years and 12" is the absolute minimum screen size for doing work. I think Apple has another laptop design < 13" coming, that could be 12". The ARM processors pretty much solve the power/performance problem. The keyboard could actually be the biggest hurdle, as it increases the body thickness. But the keyboard of the new M2 Air is just wonderful, well worth whatever it adds to the device thickness. I wouldn't even be surprised, if they don't make an ultra-thin 12" MacBook but rather a 12" MB Pro, which might be slightly thicker than the Air.
schuke 4y ago
It’s also when Apple’s laptop speaker game left the earth. To this day no one even came near Apple.

zimpenfish 4y ago

> This became an easy decision [in 2015] for Apple to ditch Intel when they saw how much better their own iPad Pro was relative to the 12” Intel MacBook. [1] implies that the M1 development started around 2008 - although you could also read it that the M1 was 5 years in development but that sounds a bit quick and also doesn't fit with [3] in 2014 - "Apple Testing ARM Based Mac Prototypes". But there doesn't seem to be any other direct corroboration of the 2008 date that I can find. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDZyOf6CW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDZyOf6CW4 via [2] [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31778257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31778257 [3] https://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/25/arm-mac-magic-trackpad/ https://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/25/arm-mac-magic-trackpad/

fredoralive 4y ago
2008 is probably about the time Apple started serious work on in house CPU cores, rather than specifically the M1? The A6 chip was the first with an Apple designed core, and was released in 2012, so they would have been working on it for several years before.
- nojito 4y ago
  You pretty much nailed it. They likely started work when they hired Johny srouji. https://www.apple.com/leadership/johny-srouji/ https://www.apple.com/leadership/johny-srouji/
- simonh 4y ago
  2008 is the year Apple bought PA Semi, an independent chip design house, which formed the core of their semiconductor design team for Apple Silicon.

deepstack 4y ago

>>On the Intel front, Apple saw how underperforming, short lasting battery and hot the 12” MacBook was. Then they saw how performant, long battery lasting and cool their iPad (ARM chip) was. This became an easy decision for Apple to ditch Intel when they saw how much better their own iPad Pro was relative to the 12” Intel MacBook. For those who have being using Mac since the PowerPC days all have used this argument against X86 chips. As you all know, Apple actually had to switched from RISC chips to Intel X86 chips, before they switched back to ISAs chips now. Just saying performance is not the main reason to switch chip sets.

GeekyBear 4y ago
IBM's PowerPC chips were high performance workstation chips, which means you're going to get performance and heat. In a desktop computer, you can add robust cooling, in an ultra-portable laptop, you cannot. Apple abandoned PPC after it became obvious that laptops were going to become more popular than desktops, and the G5 cheese grater Mac Pro required liquid cooling for the dual CPU chip versions. Apple moved from Intel to ARM for the exact same reason. Intel no longer cares about pursuing high performance with a low power draw. They have returned to the Pentium 4 strategy of performance via clock speed and power increases.
- 7speter 4y ago
  Have they really gone back to the pentium 4 strategy or are they behind in process node tech and can only compete with AMD’s performance by pumping power into their cpus? I think Intel’s top priority right now is to catch up to Tsmc’s node tech to have as close to performance per watt (or beyond) parity as they can against AMD (and Apple)
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    >Raptor Lake to Offer ‘Unlimited Power’ Mode for Those Who Don’t Care About Heat, Electric Bills https://www.extremetech.com/computing/338748-raptor-lake-to-offer-unlimited-power-setting https://www.extremetech.com/computing/338748-raptor-lake-to-... If that isn't a return to the Pentium 4 strategy, I don't know what is.

7speter 4y ago

Also, it was around this time that the chips in ipad pros were strangely getting close to intel cpu performance in benchmarks while running in thin enclosures without fans.

alberth 4y ago
> Also, it was around this time that the chips in ipad pros were strangely getting close to intel cpu performance Around what time? 2015? Maybe I could have been more clear in my original post but 2015 was the year the iPad Pro launched. How could the “iPad Pro were getting close to Intel performance” happen in thr first version? The very first iPad Pro was already more performant than the MacBook 12” (which also launched that same year).
- 7speter 4y ago
  Oh Im pretty sure since the ipad pro launched or maybe the gen after, their scores in various benchmarks were getting scary close to the intel benchmarks. It mightve started maybe 30% off but with each generation the gap closed. It was increasingly clear that apples arm chips weren’t just toy chips limited to tablets and tech media talked about how it was only a matter of time before there would be an arm mac or a mac/ios convergence. Whenever Tim Cook was asked, why pretty much up until maybe a few months before the apple silicon announcement, he said there weren’t any plans to switch the mac to arm.