So, who is getting what?
I’m getting two Apple TV’s and 4 Airtags.
Maybe an AirTag for the car. 
My wife is interested in the new iMac. Nothing has attracted me, but if she gets the iMac I’ll play around with it to see how the M1 works. We are already invested in Tiles, which have worked great for us and use Rokus
Airtags and an Apple TV!
8 AirTags and a few key rings to go with them! Still waiting for the pro Macs.
On the macPro side of things what i expect is the next SoC to be a Multi Chip solution (just like what AMD have been doing for a few years now and intel are starting to do this year) this means you make multiple smaller chips and then on the package you connect them together with a very fast interconnect. This has some key advantages:
- you can scale your total number of cores without making multiple different dies by just adding more of the same dies to the package
- your dies are smaller this yield reduce the loss due to manafuating defects. (Apple pay TSMC per area so if they end up throwing away a large die that costs them a lot more than throwing away a small one) Since apple will be using the latest node form TSMC this is important as the newer nodes always tart out with higher failure rates.
(that will be used in all of the pro level products, with different products getting different number of dies on the package)
Very interesting, thank you for your insight. May I ask how this would work with the unified RAM model there currently is on the M1? It was touted as being one of the factors of speed. If you combine several chips that way, does that mean each has its own RAM, or do you think it will have to be separate for the whole assembly (making it hopefully upgradeable)?
Probably two 12.9" iPads Pro - replacing ancient iPads, one of which is the original 12.9" Pro and the other of which predates Pro.
No what AMD do is the have a central IO die on the package that all the CPU dies talk to. That IO die then handels Memory, PCIe etc. I expect apple would do the same. On package communication is fast since the package is not a regular PCB but commonly it is in fact a older generation massive silicon wafer (44nm etc) these are so old they are comparably cheap but can still provide very high quality signal transmission with low resistance (saving power).
For provide enough bandwidth (in everything other than a macPro) i expect they will use on package HMB2e (this is costly but very very fast and unlike LPDDR4x (what they are currently using) takes up a lot less space, you could easily have 4 stacks of this providing upto 96GB or even 8 stacks (iMacPro) for update 192GB. This memory would be orders of magnitude faster than any other system. (it is not possible to have socketed HBM2 so this will be connected on package to the package substrate directly not upgradable).
in the macPro i expect they will do a 2 tier memory solution were there is this memory on package a then DDR5 dims off package that if you put memory into them the cpu will change the on package memory to operate in a cache mode (to get enough bandwidth fro apples CPU and GPU cores you will need 12 or more channels of DDR5 if they have high core count cpus so that they are not memory bandwidth constrained) that is going to cost a lot! be warned the top end price of the new macPro will be quite a bit higher than the current macPro top config!
Thank you very much for taking the time to go into the details! Extremely interesting!
Arrghhh. 
But then again, most of us power users will certainly be able to live with an iMac Pro or Mac Mini… Pro… whatever they call it. A pity that RAM probably won’t be upgradeable then.
Possible macMini Pro but the issue really is bandwidth (in a small case you just don’t have enough space for that many socketed dims) The other option apple might do is create a form of high speed (right resistance) swap. Intel have optane memory that is 1/2 between ssd and ram that unlike SSD you can write to it lots and lots without damaging it apple might do this and then do some OS level smarts. For most users this is more than enough since your unlikely to have a task that needs more than 192GB of memory on its own.
Given the huge empty space that the current Mac Mini chassis affords to the M1 platform, do you think that would be doable in the current form factor?
No I expect all the Apple silicon devices that have been designed for the new chips will have their own new design.
Personally I would love the macPro mini to be effectively a macPro but just 1/3 the height but otherwise the same dimensions, this way it would still have space for a single MPX card and an additions regular PCIe card. The main issue with the macPro is very few users need all 8PCIe slots but they are paying for them (that motherboard must cost a lot to make, PCIe traces are not cheap and the PCIe switch must also cost a lot).
But what do I expect? the macPro Mini will be about the size of 3 macMinis since i expect it will have the same SoC as the full size macPro the main difference being expandability.
Think I might well replace my 21.5" iMac with a 24" M1, but need to work out how to attach the external USB-A drives I use for Time Machine and backup. Replacing those drives (4TB) with Thunderbolt ones looks to be a big additional cost. Any recommendations?
Also, I’ve always fancied a second screen to avoid having to flip between workspaces so much. Anybody now of a comparable 24" monitor that would play nicely with the new iMac (particularly that it sits at the same height and has same resolution so windows don’t do weird things when dragged from one screen to the other)? It would be nice to think that Apple would make one, but I suspect that’s entirely wishful thinking.
Thanks
Limiting repairability and upgradability further, prevents me from buying the new Macs. It is both unfriendly for users and the environment and limits the life span of devices…
Only thing that was alluring was the new Apple TV, so I’ll get one of those.
Otherwise, I was hoping for an insta-buy with the new iMac, as mine is getting a little old, but it just didn’t do it for me. I think that’s simply down to personal taste though. If I were to answer honestly, there’s really nothing it can’t do that I need it to do. The biggest strike against it is that I’d be losing some screen real estate going from 27 to 24 inches. But I keep thinking there’s got to be another one in the queue, and that other one might give me the same size screen, and it also might lose the chin, or at least look a little less… I dunno, childish? I did the whole AR thing to see what each of the new iMacs looked like on my desk at home and none of them looked good in my dark, rich-wood themed office. My original 27" Retina iMac looks great… sophisticated, even.
Eh. I’m probably just stuffy and no fun. If there’s no updated iMac Pro or whatever they’ll call it by the end of the year, I’ll probably just get boring old silver and learn to live with a white bezel.
I would say don’t worry, there’s no way Apple will let the iMac range halfway done for very long. End of the year seems like a reasonable target indeed.
Ya know, if I had the cash, I’d buy the XDR screen and just hook it up to a mac mini and call it. That would look fantastic and be just gorgeous to work with. Alas, that monitor costs twice what I paid for my last computer. Ah Apple… you learn to love it. 