The Details Of Apple's Transition From Intel To ARM Macs

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's talk about Apple's plans to put new processors in Mac computers. 

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Yesterday Apple announced that they will be switching which processor goes in Mac computers. For the last fifteen years we've had Intel processors in Macs. Now we're going to get something called Apple Silicon. So what is Apple Silicon? Well, that's the term Apple is using to describe the ARM processors that go into iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and soon Macs. ARM, or A R M, stood for Advanced RISC Machine. RISC stood for Reduced Instruction Set Computing. It's a type of processor that's been around for a long time and Apple chose it to be in the first iPhone, then in the iPad, and then in the Apple TV. Apple started developing their own ARM chips a long time ago. The current generation is very powerful. An iPad Pro or an Apple TV is running pretty advanced apps with advanced graphics. So it's more than capable of taking on the task of running a Mac. 

So why does Apple not want to use Intel chips anymore? Apple started using Intel chips in 2006 and at the time Intel was outpacing power PC chips which is what Apple was using for Macs before then. But by switching to its own chips Apple can save money. It can also direct the development of the chips and not rely on another company to do it. A lot of times Macs, particularly iMacs and MacBooks were delayed because Intel was delayed in producing their new chips. Apple simply had to wait for Intel to come out with new computers. But with Apple in charge of its own CPU chips they can keep to a schedule of releases for new Macs better. It has certainly been able to do that for iPhones and iPads.

So when are we going to see the first Mac that uses ARM chips. Apple said the first one will be out by the end of this year. We don't know what that will be. Whether it will be an iMac. Whether it will be a MacBook Pro or perhaps a new base MacBook model or maybe a Mac Mini. But we'll have something by the end of the year. Now the transition is going to take two years. So through 2021 and 2022 we'll see new Macs coming out that use ARM chips. By sometime in 2022 Apple will only be producing Macs that have ARM processors in them. 

What improvements will this bring to Macs? Well, for one thing they will use a lot less power so we can see a lot longer battery life on MacBook models. This could also translate into lighter and thinner MacBooks. So maybe the same battery life but they are even lighter and thinner than they are now. We may see more frequent updates or at least more purposeful updates as Apple will have better control and know what's going on with the new processors and be able to schedule Mac releases to go along with them. 

This may also effect price. You may not see Macs at a considerably cheaper price. They just may not grow in price as fast as they would have if Apple stuck with Intel. After all they are not paying another company overhead to produce chips. Apple is doing it themselves. There is the potential that ARM processors could greatly outperform Intel and other type of processors in the future. So a few years from now it may be that Macs are significantly more powerful than Windows PCs. We'll have to see. 

One thing is for sure though. This will definitely be a big differentiator between Macs and PCs. Right now a  Mac and a PC, the hardware, is essentially the same and it has a different operating system. But with an ARM processor  at the heart of a Mac there will be a fundamental difference between getting a Mac and a PC in the hardware. If ARM processors make it much easier to do things in the future than Intel processors would have you could start to see a difference between what a Mac can do and what a PC can do. Also this will help developers having the same processor on iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, and Macs. It will make it easier to develop apps that work on all of those platforms. 

The big question is with the transition to a new processor will the apps you have now work on a future ARM Mac. Well, one part of that equation is something called Universal 2. This allows developers to create new versions of their apps that are universal. They'll run on an Intel Mac and an ARM Mac. Just one executable one thing in the Mac App Store and it will download and work on either type of Mac. As app developers come out with new versions over the next couple of years those versions would be Universal apps and will work on both. So a well maintained app will naturally start to work on both Intel and ARM Macs. A developer with an app that doesn't update it on a regular basis would have to go in and create a new version to make a universal one. Apple promises that will be pretty easy for developers. 

What happens if an app isn't updated? If you still have an old version of an app where the developer just isn't going to update it. Well, there's going to be something on these new Macs called Rosetta 2. Rosetta was part of the transition from power PC to Intel in the mid 2000s. Rosetta 2 will help with this transition and basically what will happen is it will allow you to run Intel apps on an ARM Mac. Now the old Rosetta, what it did was it emulated the old power PC chip. So you ran the app on top of an emulator which was then on top of the Intel processor. This Rosetta is actually going to translate the app. Do a kind of conversion when you install it so it will create a version that runs directly on the ARM processor. So it shouldn't be emulating, at least for most apps, while you're running it. That should be a lot better performance. Apple demoed a couple of apps running and they seemed to run pretty well.

Now remember with macOS Catalina Apple eliminated all 32 bit apps. 64 bit apps typically are only a few years old. Around 2016, 2017. So they really aren't any old, old apps on the Mac. Anything you're running in Catalina has been updated fairly recently. So most apps that you're using with Catalina are actually fairly recent and if the app developer doesn't update the app they should still run really well using Rosetta 2. The bottom line is, though, that it should be transparent to you as a user. The apps should just work. You shouldn't have to worry about whether it's Universal, whether it's Rosetta, whether the apps has been updated or not.

Now, of course, what about virtual machines. So virtual machines typically are when you run Windows on a Mac. You can also run other things like Linux. Apple showed running Linux on a virtual machine with a new ARM Mac. The fact that they showed that, not Windows, tells us that Windows emulation, particularly Boot Camp, isn't going to be supported. Boot Camp, after all, was taking the idea that this was an Intel processor. So you can just reboot into Windows and it should work. Well, there's not going to be an Intel processor there anymore. So Boot Camp is probably dead.

Now emulation with something like parallels and VM may still be possible. After all if Rosetta can emulate an Intel processor then parallels and VM can do so as well and maybe able to run Windows using them. But we won't really know for sure until one of those company's comes out with their announcement about that. There definitely are a lot of users that use their Macs to run Windows either in a virtual machine or with Boot Camp. They're going to be disappointed they won't be able to do that anymore with ARM Macs. But then, of course, the vast majority of Mac users don't do that.

Now the flip side of that is that now since it's not an Intel chip but an Apple chip inside these chips can run iPhone and iPad apps. As a matter of fact it's so easy that Apple already has this up and going. We don't know yet how that will actually work. Whether we will be able to buy them in the App Store or maybe you have to buy them on your iPhone or iPad and then somehow transfer them to your Mac. Maybe there will be a whole different app store where you download those apps. It looks like most apps will work without any change by the developer. App that exist now should be able to run like this. They, of course, would run in a window and you have to click on them with your mouse or trackpad instead of using a touch screen. But for a lot of apps, a lot of productivity apps, social media apps, viewers, and even games this will make those apps usable on the Mac and that will be a really nice feature. So you may be loosing the ability to run Windows on your Mac but a lot of people are going to love the ability to run millions of different iOS apps on their Mac. 

So if you have an Intel Mac now how soon will it be obsolete. Well, obviously Big Sur, the new version of macOS that will come out this Fall, will run on both Intel and ARM. After all when it comes out there will only be Intel Macs for us to get. Now we can think that the next version in 2021 and the version after that in 2022 will certainly also support Intel Macs. After all Apple should still be selling those at that point. So beyond that, 2023 and probably 2024, the versions of macOS that come out will also support Intel Macs and ARM Macs, both. Now past 2024 you get iffy. Will Apple produce a macOS in 2025 that runs on Intel Macs? Maybe and maybe not. Some point, in 2025, 2026, 2027, they are going to say hey macOS now only runs on ARM Macs. 

Now that doesn't mean that you can't use your Intel Mac. You can still use it but just with the latest compatible version of macOS. Just as people do with their Macs now once the latest version of macOS doesn't work on their older Mac. So you could be looking at 2026, 2027 before you kind of loose some support from Apple but you could still continue to use your Mac for years after that before you kind of feel it's starting to get a little bit out of date and obsolete. 

So Apple is still coming out with Intel Macs. They promised some this year. So you may see some new Macs,  perhaps a new iMac, this year that uses an Intel chip. Is it worth buying a Mac now that still uses Intel? Well, with several years of pretty full support ahead then certainly it is especially if you really need one now. Some people may specifically want to get one now so they can continue to run Windows and virtualization or in Boot Camp for years to come. But one thing to consider is if you really, really want to have iOS apps on your Mac then you might be better off just waiting for an ARM Mac. Keep in mind the Mac you want might not be available for a little while. For instance if you want an iMac, maybe that won't be out for a year or two. Whereas MacBooks will be out early next year.  We just don't know what the schedule is going to be. 

But wait a minute. You might have heard that there's a Mac Mini out now that runs an ARM processor. Yeah, that's a developer version. Developers can go and request this special Mac Mini from Apple to use to test out their apps and develop them. It's using kind of the current generation of ARM processors. I would expect the first Macs to actually use the next generation of ARM processors. So you probably don't want to try and get one of these unless you're a developer actually looking to create apps. For the rest of us just wait until Apple comes out with their new machines.

So I tried to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about  the transition. If you've got a question that I didn't get to ask it in the Comments.