On Monday at WWDC20, Apple announced an historic transition for the Mac from Intel chips to Apple’s world-class custom silicon. The upgrade will deliver industry-leading performance and powerful new technologies. Developers can already 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 plans to ship the first Mac with Apple silicon by the end of the year and complete the transition in about two years.
Daniel Howley for Yahoo Finance:
It’s one of the most significant moves Apple has made in some time and should incentivize iPhone owners to switch from their Windows PCs to Macs.
Intel has hit a roadblock in terms of performance upgrades in recent years. The old theory of Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip double every two years, has long gone out the window.
The company sat on processors using 14 nanometer architecture for years before taking its steps to 10nm processors. Those 10nm chips finally debuted in Apple’s 2020 MacBooks, five years after Intel initially promised to launch the processors.
Apple’s own ARM-based chips for its iPhone and iPad, meanwhile, began using 7nm architecture for the company’s A12 processor, which was released in 2019…
if the ARM-based machines are able to outperform comparable Windows-powered, Intel-based systems, that would solidify Apple as the go-to machine for professionals in need of systems with serious horsepower… If Apple’s new systems live up to the hype, the switch to ARM-based processors will be the smartest move the tech giant has made in years.
MacDailyNews Take: While we’d hoped to see this transition a bit earlier, we’re happy to finally see the ball rolling!
"'Dude, you got a Dell? You poor bastard.'
With Apple about to run rings around the pretenders, laughing while expending half the battery power while doing so, the Wintel peddlers are SOL." – SteveJack
🙂https://t.co/wc1qpmaSIS#AppleSilicon #Mac #WintelPCDreck pic.twitter.com/G5zvvT1OL5
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) June 23, 2020
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