One more thing: a new keyboard?
Today Apple made a slew of big announcements as part of its One More Thing event. Apple will reserve that moniker for big announcements.
Today’s announcement was all about the transition from Intel to Apple ARM-based silicon. This transition has been years in the making, and will last another 2 years.
The Apple ARM-based M1 Chip
Little know fact is that my first out of school job was at VLSI Technology. VLSI was, together with Apple, and Acorn Computers a founding member of the Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, or ARM joint venture. That was in the early nineties.
I also remember the transition from the PowerPC chips to Intel chips. It was an important change. For years, Apple computers were different from WinTels, both because of the chips and because of the operating systems. The CPU battle was between Motorola and Intel, which Intel won. The transition was so well executed. I expect the same thing to happen here, with Universal Apps able to run on either chip, and Rosetta 2 emulation layer, allowing Intel applications to run on an ARM machine. Even iPhone apps can run on a Mac.
MacRumors coverage of the event has all the highlights
These Macs are incredible machines. I can not think of a similar complete system which is not a Mac.
And yet, while scrolling through the coverage was, all I could think of was … “What about the keyboard, Tim?” “Tell me about the keyboard!”.
Apple messed up rather big when the keyboard on their previous laptops failed. Indeed, I type this from my mechanical keyboard, connected to my MacBook Pro, as its keyboard is giving me grief. Keys no longer press down easily, and others just hang.
So much greatness packed in a new family of M1-based machines is undone by a single faux-pas in the previous system, on something as simple as a keyboard. Make it right, Tim! Give us all a discount on our M1-machine.