Developers Begin Receiving Mac Mini With A12Z Chip to Prepare Apps for Apple Silicon Macs

As part of WWDC last week, Apple announced that it will be switching to its own custom-designed processors for Macs starting later this year. As part of this transition, the company is allowing developers to apply for a modified Mac mini with an A12Z chip and 16GB of RAM to develop and test their apps on a Mac with Arm-based architecture.

As noted on Twitter and in the MacRumors forums, some developers are now beginning to receive this Mac mini, which is officially known as the "Developer Transition Kit."

mac mini developer transition kit photo

Image Credit: Axel Roest

Apple promises that its Macs with custom chips will have industry-leading performance per watt. Apple said it plans to ship the first Mac with its own silicon by the end of the year and complete the transition in about two years. One of the first Apple Silicon Macs will be a redesigned 24-inch iMac in late 2020, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Apple said that it will continue to support and release new versions of macOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come, and it also confirmed that it still has some new Intel-based Macs in development in the interim.


Popular Stories

Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock Light

iOS 19 Leak Reveals All-New Design

Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app. Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
2024 App Store Awards

Apple Explains Why It Removed TikTok From the App Store in the U.S.

Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action. Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
2024 iPhone Boxes Feature

Apple Changes Trade-In Values for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and More

Thursday January 16, 2025 6:45 am PST by
Apple today adjusted estimated trade-in values for select iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models in the U.S., according to its website. Some values increased, while others decreased. The changes were not too significant, with most values rising or dropping by $5 to $50. We have outlined some examples below: Device New Value Old Value iPhone 15 Pro Max Up to $630 U ...
Generic iOS 18

Everything New in iOS 18.3 Beta 3

Thursday January 16, 2025 12:39 pm PST by
Apple provided the third beta of iOS 18.3 to developers today, and while the betas have so far been light on new features, the third beta makes some major changes to Notification Summaries and also tweaks a few other features. Notification Summary Changes Apple made multiple changes to Notification Summaries in response to complaints about inaccurate summaries of news headlines. For...
iOS 19 Roundup Feature

iOS 19 Rumored to Be Compatible With These iPhones

Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr. The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models: iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max iPhone 15 iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 14 iPhon...
airtag 4 pack blue

AirTag 2 Launching This Year With These 3 New Features

Sunday January 19, 2025 8:11 am PST by
After a four-year wait, a new AirTag is finally expected to launch in 2025. Below, we recap rumored upgrades for the accessory. A few months ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple was aiming to release the AirTag 2 around the middle of 2025. While he did not offer a more specific timeframe, that means the AirTag 2 could be announced by the end of June. The original AirTag was announced...
iPad Pro vs iPhone 17 Air Feature

Here's How Thin the iPhone 17 Air Might Be

Friday January 17, 2025 3:38 pm PST by
For the last several months, we've been hearing rumors about a redesigned version of the iPhone 17 that Apple might call the iPhone 17 "Air," or something along those lines. It's going to replace the iPhone 17 Plus as Apple's fourth iPhone option, and it will be offered alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. We know the iPhone 17 Air is going to be super slim, but...
apple power beats pro 2

Powerbeats Pro 2 Coming Soon: Apple to Announce Them 'Imminently'

Sunday January 19, 2025 8:25 am PST by
In September, Apple said that it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and it appears the wireless earbuds are coming very soon. Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the Powerbeats Pro 2 in regulatory databases last month, Gurman said Apple is...

Top Rated Comments

Chundles Avatar
60 months ago

Amazing results? It was at 1080p and looked horrible.
It was being translated on the fly by Rosetta 2. Wasn’t running natively. The fact that it ran at all is amazing.
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Cookie18 Avatar
60 months ago

Are the DTK supposed to be representative of low-end Macs, mid-level or high-end Macs? Just asking because in the Keynote they emulated Maya/Tomb Raider to amazing results (given that it is beta hardware/software).

People who did the DTK in 2005 may be able to shed light on how those machines were, for comparison.
They’re not supposed to be representative of anything. They’re for developers to convert their apps to Apple Silicon Mac OS. The chips inside of these are two years old at this point. Whatever we end up getting will be significantly more powerful. This isn’t even close to what we will actually be buying.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GadgetBen Avatar
60 months ago

FYI Running benchmark tests on the DTK is forbidden by Apple and much more. ('https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-start-program/Developer-Universal-App-Quick-Start-Program.pdf')
Yeah but this isn't going to stop people.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
JPNMac Avatar
60 months ago

Given how fast the iPads are with only a few gigs of RAM, I'll be interested to hear how these minis perform with 16 gb.
FYI Running benchmark tests on the DTK is forbidden by Apple and much more. ('https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-start-program/Developer-Universal-App-Quick-Start-Program.pdf')
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
WannaGoMac Avatar
60 months ago
All these negative comments about performance of a 2 year old CPU setup to port apps?? Are this many people negative or just ignorant? Feel free to be as negative as you want when the actual first computers come out, until then just chill the heck out.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tevion5 Avatar
60 months ago

Amazing results? It was at 1080p and looked horrible.
Guys people are really missing the point of that demo if that's what they're taking away from it.

What we saw was a relatively demanding x86 game running smoothly under Rosetta 2 on ARM hardware. Even if it's at 1080p and low settings that's fairly incredible. Anyone familiar with the PPC-Intel Rosetta will tell you binary conversion performance was nothing like that, especially regarding AAA 3D games at the time.

What you're basically doing is judging a French man by how spotty his German grammar is. The fact he speaks German fluently at all is impressive!

Wait until a high end Mac game is released that's actually compiled for the ARM chip before judgment. And then this is only an iPad CPU for the dev kit! We can expect a real ARM Macs to be a lot more powerful.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)