Apples M1 Mac design emphasizes continuity over complexity

Apple has released the first of its new Macs with the company’s custom-designed M1 Arm processor. But you’d never know it by looking at the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini, which all look virtually identical to their Intel-based predecessors.

And that decision feels like a deliberate one. Apple made some big internal changes here, including a new logic board and a fully integrated system-on-a-chip (SoC) that replaces most of the discrete components within these new Macs. It would have been relatively easy to introduce more substantial external changes along with it.

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