New Rumors of an ARM Apple Macbook: LTE support... and a touchscreen display??
If history has taught us anything, it taught us never to underestimate Apple’s flexibility, sometimes even in the face of its own CEO’s public claims. There will always be a time when Apple goes back on its initial steps, stops, and think (different), and stuns everyone with something completely out-of-the-box, just like it did many times in its long history of pushing its own boundaries.
There is no question as to how Apple is very much a two-headed beast, with two very different personalities and ways to tackle a problem.
“Project Star” seems to represent the very definition of this phenomenon, as sources close to one of Apple’s Chinese supply chains, Pegatron, report of prototypes already manufactured since January 2018, and currently being tested, of a completely different generation of Macbooks, supposedly ready to hit the market sometime next year.
How are these laptops different? The latest rumors indicate that these new Macs will be ARM-based, support LTE connectivity, feature a SIM card slot, GPS, compass, EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) bootloader, will be water resistant, and feature a touchscreen display.
The strangest bit of news is regarding the operating system running on these new laptops, bearing model number N84. Sources reported that this device will run a derivative version of iOS, and the device itself seems to fall in the very broad category of iOS devices, although with radical differences that set it apart from the Apple iPad, and iPhone, at least according to the same sources.
It’s very possible that Apple is feeling the effects of a shift to Microsoft, as a result of the success of the Surface Pro, and it’s working towards making a device capable of fulfill the requirements of Apple users looking for a better workflow compromise between the traditional MacBook, and the Apple iPad, in the form of truly ubiquitous LTE touchscreen laptop, running a version of iOS that grants the user abilities beyond what the iPad Pro can do, yet not as broad as the Mac OS.
Another theory, however, may point to the very processor that powers these prototypes, of which nothing is known yet. Apple has already confirmed that it is indeed working on a new ARM CPU for future Mac products, with a 2020 target, possibly coinciding with the launch of the radically redesigned Apple Mac Pro. Project Star may simply be a test device which Apple may be using to test the capabilities of its brand new Intel-killing processor, in which case, specs and features of Project Star may be of little interest beyond 2020, when (or if) Apple will finally announce Macs 100% powered by Apple’s own hardware.