Apple has already used M1 for iPad, so using CPUs across product-lines are is nothing new to Apple. It would make lots of sense for Apple to use the more efficient A16 Bionic in laptop designs, for greater battery times and “unplugged” usage.
Reasons for:
- Outperforms M2 in power efficiency… More performance/watt. Equals a cooler machine with longer battery times.
- Gives MacBook instant 5G internet-anywhere access due to the chipset 5G abilities.
- cost-effective to use the same chip across more devices for better cost/production management.
Resons against:
- A16 provides Less performance and cores than M1/M2, especially on the GPU-side.
- Power efficiency is getting less and less priority when consumers want desktop-class performance on portable devices.
The argument for and against the lower TDP A16 vs the higher TDP M2 in a laptop – would be similar to the current argument posed for and against a lower TDP M2 versus a faster but higher TDP Intel 12th or 13th Gen CPU