How Apple could build the ultimate MacBook with the iPad Pro’s silicon

Now that the new iPad Pro and MacBook Air are out, one thing immediately jumps out like a sore thumb: performance.

It’s comical (but weirdly satisfying at the same time) that the new iPad Pros are way more powerful than the new MacBook Air, and they even offer comparable performance with a 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro.

This kind of power — an advancement only because Apple designs its own custom A-series chips — gives the new iPad Pro performance worthy of its “pro” moniker.  

But more importantly, Apple’s own silicon paves the way towards an inevitably more exciting portable product: an “ultimate” MacBook, a computer with all of the power of a 15-inch MacBook Pro and the long battery life of an iPad Pro, in the volume of a 13-inch laptop.

This is the MacBook I’ve wanted since I bought my very first one in college many years ago.

At the time, Apple sold two lines of laptops: 13-inch plastic MacBooks and 15-inch aluminum MacBook Pros. Choosing a MacBook was pretty easy back then. 

You bought the MacBook if you only needed to do light computing like browsing the web, listening to music (streaming wasn’t really a thing back then), typing out documents, and looking at photos. Yes, it came with iMovie and GarageBand, but they really sucked running on the wimpier Intel processors and lousy Intel integrated graphics.

Anyone who wanted to do more graphics-intensive computing like editing video or drafting with CAD software ponied up the cash to spring for the 15-inch MacBook Pro for its beefier processor and more powerful discrete graphics chip.

I was a freshman and wasn’t sure what my needs would be by graduation so I went with the regular MacBook. It was smaller and lighter (only 5.2 pounds compared to the 5.6-pound 15-inch MBP), plus it was cheaper.

But even as I upgraded to different MacBooks over the years (to a 13-inch MacBook Air in 2011, then a 13-inch MacBook Pro in 2014, and then a 12-inch MacBook in 2015) and pushed all of them to their extremes, forcing them to do things they weren’t really designed to do, I’ve longed for the power of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

Every one of my MacBooks has come with compromises that I learned to accept and work around. 

My original MacBook couldn’t edit video or run Maya when I needed to for classes in senior year. The MacBook Air was lighter and more powerful than the MacBook, and had incredible battery life, but it still chugged for editing video just as YouTube starting growing, and video editing became a rapidly growing part my work.

My old MacBook Pro seemed like the solution. I bought it at a heavy discount, but with maxed out specs. However, while its Intel Iris Pro graphics are decent for exporting 1080p video, it’s virtually unusable for working with today’s 4K footage. And then there’s the 12-inch MacBook, an extremely underpowered machine that despite a very crappy processor can edit 4K video in Final Cut Pro X (albeit not very fast) and has been more versatile — and easier to carry around — than my MacBook Pro for covering events.

It’s only this year’s 13-inch MacBook Pros, with their leap to quad-core Intel processors and improved (but still not as good as discrete) graphics chips that Apple’s smaller laptop has been able to surpass the power of a 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro. In other words, the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro is about a year behind in performance compared to the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

That’s a narrowing gap, for sure. But the performance gap could potentially be even wider if Apple ditches Intel’s processors for its own silicon — a move the company could make as early as 2020.

The new iPad Pro’s insane performance is evidence enough that Apple’s custom silicon has already surpassed and will likely leapfrog Intel’s chips by an order of a magnitude in a few years.

Let’s examine the merits of the new iPad Pro again to further my prognostication. Its A12X Bionic chip scores nearly as high on both single-core and multi-core CPU tests as the 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro with 2.6GHz Intel Core i7 processor (5,053 on single-core and 21,357) as recorded on Geekbench.

I’ve compiled some charts to help show how performance from Apple’s A-series chips have rapidly increased each generation.

Here’s single-core:

And here’s multi-core:

Looking over these charts, it’s fair to extrapolate that, in two years, the A14 chip (assuming Apple continues with the “A” naming) should be as powerful as or even more powerful than even the Intel Core i9 processor in today’s top-of-the-line 15-inch MBP in both single-core and multi-core performance.

The advantages of Apple’s own silicon has been a huge differentiator between the iPhone and its Android competitors. With the new iPad Pros, the A12X Bionic sprints forward, leaving even powerful laptops in its dust.

Just imagine this kind of processing power in a 13-inch MacBook Pro. The dilemma I had at the Apple Store a decade ago — deciding between compactness versus power — would essentially be a solved problem. 

To be clear, I’m no hardware or software engineer. MacOS is no doubt more power-hungry than iOS and it’s likely that these synthetic benchmarks that suggest Intel’s chips will soon be behind Apple’s could still translate to weaker actual performance for macOS-y things. Still, the idea that Apple could potentially provide such power in a laptop with a fanless design is wildly exciting.

I mean, if Apple can provide this kind of oomph in the new iPad Pro’s super slender 0.23-inch thick (5.9mm) body, the current 13-inch MacBook Pro’s 0.59-inch thick body (14.9mm) should have more than enough room to keep the 7-nanometer A12X Bionic chip cool. And this is only by today’s chip fabrication size. In a couple of years, Apple could move to a 5-nanometer process, which would be even smaller, more power-efficient, and allow for more space for other components.

Those components could include larger batteries and keyboards that don’t need to be as thin as the controversial butterfly keys on the current MacBooks. Maybe there’ll even be room to bring back things like a new version of MagSafe and an SD card slot, or include a TrueDepth camera system for Face ID or even a touchscreen (which would require a thicker display panel like on the Surface Laptop 2).

The fact that the new MacBook Air is barely faster than the old Air from three years ago is another sign of things to come. Apple’s iOS devices are so ahead of the competition because the hardware is more integrated with the software than the Mac. Apple’s not waiting around for a chipmaker to make a chip fast enough for its needs the way Android makers have to rely on Qualcomm.

Ditching Intel’s chips will give Apple more control (not to mention better performance) when it comes time to refresh its MacBooks with meaningful updates and tangible gains for all users. Currently, Intel’s a heavy ball-and-chain holding Apple from designing the ultimate MacBook that balances thinness and power.

Apple’s releasing the new iPad Pros and MacBook Air as two separate products today, but it’s inevitable for the mobile chip innovations in the tablet to meet the MacBook form factor if you read between the lines. When that happens, the MacBook of my dreams (and maybe yours) could finally be realized.