Bad News For Fans Of Apple’s MacBook Pro
- 3 years ago
Apple may have weathered the economic and logistical impact of the coronavirus pandemic better than most last year, but it still led to a delay to the iPhone 12 family. Now history is set to repeat itself with the upcoming MacBook and iPad hardware.
It all comes down to the industry wide shortage of chips that is impacting on various components. Apple is not alone in this but its high profile will likely make it the unwanted poster child of the issue. Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li report for Nikkei Asia:
"Chip shortages have caused delays in a key step in MacBook production — the mounting of components on printed circuit boards before final assembly — sources briefed on the matter told Nikkei Asia. Some iPad assembly, meanwhile, was postponed because of a shortage of displays and display components, sources said."
The question now is the approach Apple will take with its new products. The new iPad was widely assumed to be launching in the next few weeks; while the next update to the MacBook Pro, bringing it with it the uprated and presumptively named M1X processor was penciled in for the first half of 2021, perhaps as part of the WWDC 2021 keynote.
Last year’s iPhone launch may well be the precedent we should look to. The smartphone family was announced a month later than the traditional plan, in early October rather than September. The four handsets saw a staggered released up to the end of November, presumably when there was a sufficient number to fulfil orders.
Source: Forbes
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