During the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote, Apple announced that beginning this fall, they will begin transitioning their Mac computers from Intel processors to Apple designed ARM Processors. This is easily the biggest change for apple since the release of the iPhone in 2007.
The Tale of the Processor
Talking processors can get into the weeds very quickly, so we’re going to try to keep this at a high level. Every electronic device has some kind of processor. On your laptop it probably has an Intel processor of some kind, you’ll hear commercials market it as “Intel 10th gen Core i5” or something similar. Intel or AMD processors running on an x86 architecture have been present in almost every Windows computer since the mid 1980’s. “x86” refers to the instruction set, or programming language, that the processor works on. Mac computers also run on Intel x86 processors, but they haven’t always. More on that in a bit. Devices like your phone run on processors with an ARM instruction set. If you have an Android phone, your phone likely has a processor marketed as a Snapdgragon processor, while Apple iPhones and iPads have what apple brands as an “A” series processor. The iPhone 11, for example, has an A13 processor. While ARM processors do the same thing as Intel processors, they do them differently, with different “instruction sets.” The operating systems, apps, and all underlying software must be written for the instruction set they are running on. An app written for Windows on an Intel processor won’t run on an iPhone with an ARM processor, and vice versa.
Apple and ARM
Apple has been making processors for iPhones and iPads for years, with the A series processor. ARM processors are a generic design, and companies like Apple or Qualcomm can take those designs and tailor them for their specific needs. Apple has been using their self designed A series processors since the A4 processor in 2010.
One of the key advantage of ARM processors over processors from Intel is efficiency. The phones and tablets that ARM processors run on are very low power devices, as battery life is the priority. But as the design of those ARM processors has matured, they have become more powerful, while keeping the power efficiency. During the keynote Apple kept touting their A series processors “performance per watt” metric as being superior to Intel. As Apple has developed the A series processors, they can, in synthetic tests, get equivalent performance to a laptop with an Intel processor, while consuming much less power.
Great, so The Switch Should be Easy
There are definite advantages to making the switch. Apple makes the A Series processors, they’re just as good as Intel processors, and consume less power, but it isn’t always that easy. As said earlier, apps aren’t able to run on different instruction sets natively, so this is a much more complicated process than just changing the processor in a Mac laptop. All of the software has to be re-written to work on an ARM processor, from MacOS itself to all of the apps we use every day. This is a big undertaking.
On the Road Again
Now, Apple has actually done this before, most recently in the mid 2000’s. from 1994 to 2005 every Mac ran on an IBM PowerPC processor. At the same WWDC conference in 2005 Steve Jobs announced that Apple would switch to Intel. The reasons provided were the same as what we heard today. Intel’s performance per watt was better, there was more battery life from Intel processors, etc. Steve Jobs laid out a roadmap of how it would work. Apple provided tools to developers to make their apps work on Intel processors. Developers could make what was called a Universal Binary, which was an app that would contain the instruction sets to be able to run on both PowerPC and Intel processors. This allowed developers to only have to write an app once, and they did not have to maintain two separate versions of apps, one for PowerPC, and one for Intel. Apple also announced a platform called Rosetta. This was something built into OS X that allowed apps made for PowerPC to work on Intel processors. This worked by creating a translation layer which told the Intel processor how to handle the PowerPC instruction set. Apps run in Rosetta were often slower and did not work quite as well, but it provided a vital compatibility layer for users who had apps that might not have been updated to work on Intel laptops. It wasn’t a perfect system, but at least it was something. Universal Binaries meant that users who bought a PowerPC laptop in early 2005 knew that they would be able to get support in apps for years, and users who bought an early Intel Mac in 2006 knew that most of the apps they use would run even if they weren’t updated yet.
Fast forward to 2020 and Apple took that playbook and has done essentially the same thing. The company announced the “Universal 2” program to allow developers to create apps that will run on both Intel Macs and A series Macs. Apple claims it will take developers just “a few days” to convert their app to a universal app. Apple also announced Rosetta 2, which will allow apps designed just for Intel macs to run on A series Macs. Apple promises that apps running through Rosetta 2 will be much faster and there will be fewer limitations. This, again, allows users who bought an Intel Mac today to know that they will be supported for years to come with Universal 2 Binary apps that work on both Intel and A series processors (very good for people who may have spend $30,000 on a Mac Pro in 2019). It also gives users who buy the first A series Macs peace of mind that almost any app they want to use will at least work, if not as well as an app designed for ARM.
The Advantages
There are several advantages to Apple making this change. First and foremost, it means that the processors that run Mac computers are designed by Apple instead of Intel. Because of this, Apple has even more control than they already do over the entire ecosystem. Just like on iPhones and iPads where the hardware and software are designed together, the same will happen on Macs. This will allow Apple to get even more out of the ARM processors in future Macs. Another benefit is that Apple isn’t beholden to Intel’s road map. Intel has faced challenges in the past 3-4 years on their technologies, and as a result their processors have not advanced as fast as many would want, Apple included. Apple will also be able to leverage their products all across the line. Apple’s strategy for iPhones and iPads has been to use the previous year’s high end A series processor in lower powered/cheaper products. The 10.2” iPad for example uses the A10 processor which originally debuted with the iPhone 7 in 2016. The A10 is far from the best A series processor in 2020, but Apple uses it as a low cost option in the cheaper iPad. A future Mac lineup could potentially include the expensive laptops getting a processor first like the MacBook Pro, with the MacBook Air getting the processor made the previous year.
Apple controlling the hardware and software could also lead to interesting changes to the hardware. Macs today are constrained by the power and heat limitations of Intel processors, and having more control over all aspects of the hardware could lead to interesting new designs for the computers themselves. Thinner and lighter isn’t always the key, but imagine a MacBook air with 18-24 hours of battery life instead of the 6 or so they get today. Imagine an iMac desktop that looks like a big iPad on a stand. New hardware designs are clearly coming with this change, and Apple’s control of all aspects should lead to some fun new looks for their lineup.
The Unknown Support Period
The one unknown question is the long term support for Macs running the A series processors. Apple has generally given their phones very good support, but that support has usually capped out around 5 years. The iPhone 6S from 2015 was a surprise inclusion in the list of supported devices for iOS 14, giving that phone 5 years of support. We do not, however, know how long Apple will support laptops with A series processors with updates. Apple has so far demonstrated about 8 years of update support on Intel Macs, and I would hope that the support for A series Macs to be at least the same. However, one complication could be the use of the older processors in those Macs. There are not a ton of data points on how Apple will support newer products with older processors in them. The iPad Air 2 with the Apple A8X processor. That device was released in 2014, and it is getting iPad OS 14, giving at least 6 years of software support. But that was a new processor at time of release. The 5th generation iPad was released in 2017 with the, at the time, 2 year old A9 processor. So while the device itself is only 3 years old, it’s processor is 5 years old. That iPad will be getting iPad OS 14, so it remains supported, but we do not know how long it will get support. Only time will tell there.
Now, a device not receiving software updates will not stop working, it will of course continue to work on whatever software it runs on, but when software updates end, devices lose access to new features, and risk not being able to access new apps and services. The longer the update period, the better, and for now, that will remain a question mark.
I Hear You Like Apps
One of the more interesting results of a Mac running on the same processor platform as iPhones and iPads is that any Mac with the A series processor will be able to run iPhone and iPad apps natively. This opens up literally hundreds of thousands of apps that could be run on Macs. Now, not all of these will be ideal. An app designed to run on a phone screen may not look great on a bit expansive Mac screen, but there is a large category of apps designed for iPads that could run very well on a Mac with an A series processor. This opens up some very interesting possibilities.
What Does This Mean For The User?
For the average user buying a Mac laptop right now, nothing. If you have a mac and it breaks today, You can feel ok that if you buy a Mac tomorrow, you’ll get years of support. If you want to wait and buy one of the first ARM Macs in the fall, almost every app you want to run will at least work, if not perfectly. No one should be afraid to buy a Mac today, or tomorrow, because of this change.
What does this mean for professionals?
For a true “professional” user, someone who uses their Mac for content creation, app development, video/photo editing, etc, it is a bit less clear. Considering Apple released the very powerful (and very expensive) Mac Pro in 2019 with Intel processors, there should be very long term support for the Intel Platform. But what we currently do not know is how well content creation workflows will work on early ARM Macs. If you only use Apple made apps, it will work fine, but if some relatively obscure 3rd party tool is vital to your workflow and you’re not sure if it will get updated to support the A series processors, buying an early ARM Mac might not be the safest idea. We also, frankly, don’t know how well the early ARM Macs will perform. Will the first ARM MacBook pro be as fast as the latest Intel MacBook Pro? We don’t know for sure. I think if you can wait to buy a Mac for production purposes, it is worth waiting.
How Long Will This Take?
Apple has announced they will begin shipping A series Macs in the fall of 2020. The company has said that it intends to continue to ship Intel Macs for at least two more years, meaning that from 2020 to 2022 Apple will sell both Intel and A Series based Macs. There are also new models of Intel Macs that the company has yet to release, so Apple is not abandoning the Intel Platform in the medium term. This offers choice for users, which is something Apple does not often do. But for professionals who really do need and want the Intel Platform, you have a few years to keep buying that hardware.
Overall, this is a very exciting time for Apple. The move from Intel to ARM is the biggest change for the PC industry since, well, Apple moved from Power PC to Intel. This will have a seismic shift in the industry that we won’t fully know the end results for for several years. I can’t wait to see what the first ARM Macs look like, and I’m actually excited for the future of the Mac platform for the first time in several years.