The A-Series MacBook

July 2, 2025

I recently purchased an iPad with an A16 chip. Using the iPadOS 26 beta, I've been impressed with how many concurrent applications it's able to juggle. Notes, music, photos, calls, videos, browser – without breaking a sweat.

For years, I've held the opinion that the base M-series chip is all that most people need (even many people that think they need something more). As a software developer, I've found few scenarios where I'm able to stretch the limits of my M2 MacBook Air.

Using this iPad as a mini-desktop is causing me to re-examine this opinion yet again. Soon, I feel as though an A-series chip will meet the needs of most people, including myself. This coincides nicely with the rumor that Apple is creating a MacBook based on the A18 Pro, which, already smokes the M1. (Maybe that's an exaggeration – it certainly exceeds the M1.)

This makes a lot of sense! If they come in actually fun colors (sorry, Sky Blue is just another shade of gray), I'll happily upgrade (or downgrade?) from my current laptop.

An A-series MacBook, however, would further blur the lines between silicon and product families. M-series chips belong in Macs and iPads. A-series chips go everywhere: Macs, iPads, iPhones, even HomePods (at least the first generation). With iPadOS 26, software lines are blurrier as well. If you connect an iPad to an external display (and squint), it becomes hard to tell the difference between that and macOS.

This begs the question: if iPhones Pro already have a desktop-capable chips and USB3, what's stopping them from embodying iPadOS when connected to a display? Why couldn't they run both iOS and iPadOS apps, similar to how iPadOS does it? Take it a step further: what's stopping my iPhone from running macOS? (Maybe that one is a step too far.)

With the hardware and software convergence we're seeing, I feel as though this is the future. And it's very exciting.