In an historic day for the Mac, Apple today announced it will transition the Mac to world-class Apple custom silicon to deliver industry-leading performance and powerful new technologies. Developers can now get started updating their apps to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of Apple silicon in the Mac. This transition will also establish a common architecture across all Apple products, making it far easier for developers to write and optimize their apps for the entire ecosystem.
Apple today also introduced macOS Big Sur, the next major release of macOS, which delivers its biggest update in more than a decade and includes technologies that will ensure a smooth and seamless transition to Apple silicon. Developers can easily convert their existing apps to run on Apple silicon, taking advantage of its powerful technologies and performance. And for the first time, developers can make their iOS and iPadOS apps available on the Mac without any modifications.
To help developers get started with Apple silicon, Apple is also launching the Universal App Quick Start Program, which provides access to documentation, forums support, beta versions of macOS Big Sur and Xcode 12, and the limited use of a Developer Transition Kit (DTK), a Mac development system based on Apple’s A12Z Bionic System on a Chip (SoC).
Apple plans to ship the first Mac with Apple silicon by the end of the year and complete the transition in about two years. Apple will continue to support and release new versions of macOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come, and has exciting new Intel-based Macs in development. The transition to Apple silicon represents the biggest leap ever for the Mac.
“From the beginning, the Mac has always embraced big changes to stay at the forefront of personal computing. Today we’re announcing our transition to Apple silicon, making this a historic day for the Mac,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “With its powerful features and industry-leading performance, Apple silicon will make the Mac stronger and more capable than ever. I’ve never been more excited about the future of the Mac.”
Family of Mac SoCs to Deliver Powerful New Features and Best-in-Class Performance
For over a decade, Apple’s world-class silicon design team has been building and refining Apple SoCs. The result is a scalable architecture custom designed for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch that leads the industry in unique features and performance per watt, and makes each of them best in class. Building upon this architecture, Apple is designing a family of SoCs for the Mac. This will give the Mac industry-leading performance per watt and higher performance GPUs — enabling app developers to write even more powerful pro apps and high-end games. And access to technologies such as the Neural Engine will make the Mac an amazing platform for developers to use machine learning. This will also create a common architecture across all Apple products, making it far easier for developers to write and optimize software for the entire Apple ecosystem.
macOS Big Sur Enables Transition to Apple Silicon
In macOS Big Sur, Apple is offering a range of technologies to make the transition to Apple silicon smooth and seamless. With everything built into Xcode 12, such as native compilers, editors, and debugging tools, most developers will be able to get their apps running in a matter of days. Using Universal 2 application binaries, developers will be able to easily create a single app that taps into the native power and performance of the new Macs with Apple silicon, while still supporting Intel-based Macs. With the translation technology of Rosetta 2, users will be able to run existing Mac apps that have not yet been updated, including those with plug-ins. Virtualization technology allows users to run Linux. Developers can also make their iOS and iPadOS apps available on the Mac without any modifications.
Quick Start Program Lets Developers Get Started Today
Apple Developer Program members can start moving their apps to Apple silicon today by applying for the Universal App Quick Start Program. The program provides access to documentation, forums support, beta versions of macOS Big Sur and Xcode 12, and includes the limited use of a DTK, which will enable developers to build and test their Universal 2 apps. The DTK, which must be returned to Apple at the end of the program, consists of a Mac mini with Apple’s A12Z Bionic SoC inside and desktop specs, including 16GB of memory, a 512GB SSD, and a variety of Mac I/O ports. Developers can apply to the program at developer.apple.com, and the total cost of the program is $500.
MacDailyNews Take: We love it when a plan comes together!
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
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
Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild – and much faster/more efficient – ride! Bring on the new Apple-designed, ARM-based Macs! — MacDailyNews, June 26, 2019
Blast from the past…
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🙄 Don’t be surprised to see Apple A-series-powered Macs, either. 🙄
All it takes is a Computing 101 class to know this is not going to happen. Study CISC vs RISC and you’ll understand.
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Someone needs to take a trip to Cupertino and let them know that what they said is going to happen is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!
Maybe introduce them to a little thing called CISC vs RISC? It’s computing 101 folks! 🙂
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No no no. Going CISC to RISC is an ENTIRELY different situation. That’s specifically why a Rosetta solution isn’t even in the discussion. There’s no such thing.
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https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/22/apple-confirms-mac-transition-to-arm-cpus/
🙂
Who are you even talking to?
You! 🙂
Thanks for reading!
This is going to leave all other computers in the dust – Think of the battery lie on laptops and just the sheer speed they are going to have. Watching the demo show Photoshop and Final Cut Pro running at super fast speeds on an iPad chip is amazing. No more shitty Intel chips and their faulty security.
Absolutely. It gave me much joy to find those old oh-so-wrong posts and recycle them today 😉
This will be really great for Mac performance (especially graphics performance for those of us using the anaemic Intel integrated chips).
But with iOS apps being able to run on macOS unmodified, I’m worried that the quality of Mac apps will decline because many developers will just shovel their apps and assume that people will be happy with them on macOS with iOS interfaces.
Finally, what’s the whole deal with virtualisation? They didn’t really describe it in much detail: all we saw was Parallels running Linux, no mention of what architecture was being emulated. Did they beef up the built-in hypervisor in macOS? Will it run Windows? Will ARM Macs be able to “Boot Camp” other ARM OSes, or will we have to jailbreak them?
Seriously. I can run Linux on my water bottle, that’s not exactly a big achievement. Until we see whether (and how well) it can run Windows, I’m not sold in the least.
There will be a temptation to develop apps for the lowest common denominator – the iphone. If that is the case then Mac Apps will suffer.
and that’s why there are only iPhone apps on the iPad…
Besides which, wise developers will be using SwiftUI to provide distinct user experiences on each platform.
Good stuff Apple ! But seriously, who will buy an intel based Macbook if you can get one with Apple Silicon?
All those who remain skeptics about performance, including myself. All what I saw was a marketing speech: no numbers, no performance tests, etc. (Why !?)
Until I get a real comparison based on numbers that show how Apple silicon performs, these new ARM based Macs are -for me- just big iPhones. Sorry for my skepticism, but I don’t buy marketing speech… unless it is based on performance facts and numbers.
There aren’t any performance facts and numbers because there are only development systems in existence. The performance on those systems is significantly slower than it will be on the optimized Apple silicon Macs that will only go on sale five or six months from now, so why would Apple make the current performance public? As soon as the developer systems (basically modified Mac mini’s with the current generation of iPad SOC) are distributed, preliminary figures will leak around the NDA. They won’t mean much.
The results will mean a lot to me! because I always wondered how macOS from the desktop would run on the iPad, and seeing benchmarks and observational “feel” of the performance (as presented at WWDC) assessed by some professionals of this nature will separate the men from the boys as far as the operating system is concerned. It will also give a bit of hope to those who can imagine what “they can do when they aren’t even trying” to what is the possibly greatest transition in Mac’s history
Couple Q’s:
Will they be able to increase the performance because power is way more available by upping the clock speed and shunting power requirements to the supporting chips? or run it on the iPad clock speeds to show the apples for apples comparison? (couldn’t resist !-)
Will they be able to stop throttling the cores because the cooling system can now be gigantic! (compared to the iPad) with heat sinks vents and a fan to boot?
Will having 16GB ram just rip when coupled directly with the processor? instead of two or three? or can they solder the SSDrive to the processor and have a terabyte of ram?
Increase the performance over the iPad because power is way more available
All those who remain skeptics about performance, including myself. All what I saw was a marketing speech: no numbers, no performance tests, etc. (Why !?)
Until I get a real comparison based on numbers that show how Apple silicon performs, these new ARM based Macs are -for me- just big iPhones. Sorry for my skepticism, but I don’t buy marketing speech… unless it is based on performance facts and numbers.
Buying opportunity, Apple has served up a big slow pitch, that if you are long you should hit it out of the park by buying more shares and staying long easy money….
Like OS X, iPod, iPhone, A Series CPU, iPad, Apple Maps, Apple Watch, Apple Pay, Apple Car play, and now Apple Silicon easy money…. And note the Geeks are in a rage across all tech sites about Apple Silicon….
I am a noob so forgive these questions. I am not certain anyone will know the answers yet. Will Apple Silicon work with Thunderbolt 3/4 or will we be left USB-C/USB4? Will Apple Silicon work with AMD GPUs if the Apple GPU comes up short running graphic/compute intensive applications?