Apple could be heading towards a major transition for its laptop business. The company is reportedly planning to get rid of Intel chips from future Mac devices, replacing them with custom-made chips in 2020. The hardware maker already uses its own, proprietary chips for its iPhone, iPad, and other hardware products.
Apple moving away from Intel chips isn’t just about a simple processor change. The move could involve a huge transition for the software that powers the Mac. Apple will likely start to slowly move away from macOS and switch to iOS for these new Mac devices, possibly powered by Apple-made ARM processors. The project, internally codenamed Kalamata, could also involve Apple introducing a convergence of both the worlds. In fact, Apple is expected to bring iOS apps to the Mac this year, and it may just be the first step towards the next-gen Mac devices.
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For Apple, moving away from Intel chips will not only allow it to cut down production costs, but it will also give the company more control over its hardware, possibly allowing for faster innovation with low-level hardware features. The performance of these devices will obviously be an issue for many of Apple’s professional customers, but it’s highly unlikely Apple will completely switch to ARM processors in all of its Mac products at once. For Intel, the change could have a major impact on the company’s business, despite the fact that Apple isn’t the top buyer of its chips. Intel’s shares are, however, plummeting very quickly after the news broke.
skane2600
<p>This sounds to me like a very bad idea. I think vendors would approach converting their MacOS applications with the same enthusiasm they showed for converting to UWP apps. </p><p><br></p><p>It's hard to imagine that Mac users are chomping at the bit to run iOS programs – they probably already own an iPhone. Not much point in having both a Mac and an iPhone if the former brings no unique value to the table.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#258988"><em>In reply to Oreo:</em></a></blockquote><p>I don't think the 32 bit to 64 bit transitions within the same CPU family are really representative of the difficulty of a Intel to ARM transition. You have to go back to the PowerPC to Intel transition in 2006 to compare and even then it took years of emulation before most of the third-party programs caught up. A lot has changed since then (including Apple's leadership) and it's unclear if vendors will see the effort to make a conversion as a "must do" the way they did when the only competition was Windows.</p><p><br></p><p>In the short term of such a transition I would expect a similar performance penalty on Intel/Mac programs running in emulation as we see with Windows on ARM. Both companies have smart people who are trying to solve fundamentally the same problem.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#259035"><em>In reply to Oreo:</em></a></blockquote><p>People love to throw around the phrase "from the exact same codebase" but usually it's meaningless. To be legitimate it would mean that not a single line of code or a single resource file is different between multiple targets of the same product. Of course, there's some shared code as has been the norm for decades, but that doesn't mean supporting different versions is trivial.</p><p><br></p><p>I had no expectation that Windows developers would be interested in releasing Mac apps although this change could potentially discourage iOS developers from doing so if they think the traditional MacOS is going away.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#259391"><em>In reply to Oreo:</em></a></blockquote><p>What conversion efforts (whether X86-64 to UWP or to iOS) have in common is the lack of fully featured versions. That suggests either that not enough Intel-based code was applicable to the target platforms or there's a fundamental disconnect between the UIs or capabilities of the old platforms vs. the new (a kind of "square peg in round hole" problem).</p><p><br></p><p>At least in the case of the MacOs (if it's not altered in the transition) it would be unlikely to suffer from the latter problem since the capabilities and UI paradigms wouldn't change. The question is whether Apple could resist the temptation to tweak the functionality of the new ARM-based OS to, for example, enable iOS apps.</p>
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#258853"><em>In reply to BrandonMills:</em></a></blockquote><p>Agreed. I see them coming out at WWDC with their version of Universal apps, basically iOS apps able to run or be ported to MacOS as the start. Then a slow migration to a new CPU that is not ARM but closer to ARM than to x86 Intel.</p><p><br></p><p>Apple will also make tools to make the migration of x86 Mac apps easier to the new CPU Mac apps.</p>
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#258868"><em>In reply to Daekar:</em></a></blockquote><p>Exactly where did it say they were going to use ARM??? It only said they were going to make their own chips and not use Intel, possibly by 2020.</p><p><br></p><p>Even if it was ARM or ARM like their latest A11 is faster than the Intel CPU in their 13inch MacBook. The A11 is restricted by the format, meaning you can only make it so powerful in a phone case, with no active cooling powered by a small battery. In computer they should be able to make them powerful, using more power, using active cooling. </p>
shameermulji
<blockquote><a href="#258889"><em>In reply to davidblouin:</em></a></blockquote><p>When it comes to product / roadmap leaks related to Apple, Mark Gurman (former founder of 9to5mac, and now at Bloomberg) is the real deal. He's by far the most accurate, more so than many "Apple Analysts". If he reports that this is happening, it's credible.</p>
Bats
<p>They should've codenamed it Andromeda. Why not? Google then Microsoft did it ! (lol)</p>