Still, Apple’s done it before – twice – first from Motorola 68000-series processors to PowerPC and then from PowerPC to Intel.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for ZDNet:
Apple’s probably in the best position it’s ever been to make the switch… There are a lot of very good, compelling even, reasons why Apple should cast Intel aside and go it alone in the processor world.
Apple would be free of Intel and could set its own pricing and be in total control of its supply chain… Apple’s chips are also powerful and efficient, and iPad Pro silicon will soon outperform the Intel Core chips that is found in the MacBook Pro. Looking at the past few years, iPad Pro silicon has seen benchmark performance improve by almost 50 percent year-on-year, compared to less than 20 percent for the MacBook Pro. Battery performance is also phenomenal, and that too is improving at a tremendous rate…
My guess — and right now it is little more than a guess — is that the MacBook Air would be a good place for Apple to showcase what an ARM processor could do.
MacDailyNews Take: Or, conveniently, the MacBook makes its triumphant return as the first Mac powered by an Apple-designed ARM processor.
We’ve been anticipating ARM-powered Macs for quite a long time now and we can’t for the the process to begin!
Apple has been, for years, building strength in the enterprise via BYOD and the rise of mobile which Apple ushered in with iPhone and iPad. “Compatibility with Windows” is not nearly as important today as it was even a few years ago… We expect to see Apple begin the ARM-based Mac transition with products like the MacBook and work their way up from there as the apps are brought over to ARM via Xcode and as the rest of the world continues to throw off the Microsoft Windows shackles into which they stupidly climbed so many years ago, lured, wrongly, solely by Windows PC sticker prices. – MacDailyNews, June 19, 2019
Think code convergence (more so than today) with UI modifications per device. A unified underlying codebase for Intel, Apple A-series, and, in Apple’s labs, likely other chips, too (just in case). This would allow for a single App Store for Mac, iPhone, and iPad users that features a mix of apps: Some that are touch-only, some that are Mac-only, and some that are universal (can run on both traditional notebooks and desktops as well as on multi-touch computers like iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and – pretty please, Apple – Apple TV). Don’t be surprised to see Apple A-series-powered Macs, either. — MacDailyNews Take, January 9, 2014