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MagyarReferences to M1 Pro and M1 Max show up in app logs ahead of Apple Unleashed event, new nomenclature could offer better delineation of capabilities ↺
The Apple Unleashed event is just about 24 hours away from now, and we expect to see Apple announce highly anticipated updates to the MacBook Pro lineup including new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. On those lines is also an expected successor to the Apple M1 SoC, which had garnered a lot of praise in its first iteration.
Apple has traditionally named iterative versions of its chips with the M or Z moniker, such as the A12Z Bionic and the A12X Bionic. Therefore, the natural expectation so far has been that the M1 successor would also be designated as something on the lines of an M1X. However, it appears like Apple may veer a bit away from tradition this time.
Known Apple watcher Mark Gurman has apparently received information from an app developer that the chip names could, in fact, be M1 Pro and M1 Max. In his latest Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, Gurman writes,
The aforementioned developer tells me that new MacBook Pro chips have appeared in logs under the names "M1 Pro" and "M1 Max." I'm not saying Apple will take that direction with its actual marketing names, but that's another—albeit more confusing—possibility. We'll know for sure in just about 24 hours."
While it is not clear whether Apple would indeed adopt such a nomenclature for the SoCs themselves, such a step is not entirely improbable considering that we expect to see 16-core and 32-core GPU options and possibly even 16 GB and 32 GB unified RAM variants too.
The current nomenclature though, does not lend itself to much clarity on the SoC's capabilities. For instance, we had exclusively reported before that the A12Z Bionic in the 2020 iPad Pro is just a renamed A12X Bionic with an additional GPU core after we received preliminary information about the chip's floor plan. There is no way for the average buyer to find out this difference from a mere glance at the spec sheet.
Therefore, a proper delineation such as an M1 Pro and an M1 Max step may also help developers and end-users better know what capabilities to expect from their machines instead of having to hunt down the details in the fine print. In any case, we should be knowing more in just a day from now, so stay tuned.
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