Apple Silicon: Apple's move to ARM chips – first devices to be launched later this year
The new generation of ARM-based chips by Apple is called Apple Silicon. Expected to power all new Macs in two years, these chips are said to be faster and more energy-efficient. They also close the gap between iPhone and Mac.
Apple is moving away from Intel and will produce Macs with its own CPUs by the end of the year. They're called Apple Silicon and replace the Intel chips that all current Macbooks and Macs are equipped with.
At the keynote to this year’s World Wide Developers Conference WWDC, Apple CEO Tim Cook said: «We will continue to support and release new versions of MacOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come. In fact, we have some new Intel-based Macs in the pipeline that we're really excited about.»
This will soon be over. At the keynote speech, Cook mentioned a transition phase of two years. By switching to the ARM architecture, Apple expects improved performance as well as better integration into its own ecosystem.
ARM instead of Intel, this raises questions
The architecture of the new «Apple Silicon» chip is provided by Arm Ltd. and licensed to companies. Apple has taken this license and based its own chips on it. Apple Silicon is said to be much more power efficient than the previous mobile Intel CPUs. This is especially interesting for Macbooks, as their development has always been a balancing act between performance losses and power savings. This problem should now be solved.
Like the A-series that's built into the world's iPhones and iPads, from the A4 to the A13X, Apple Silicon is designed to be scalable and adaptable to a wide range of hardware configurations. Apple's in-house developments include the Advanced Power Management, the Secure Enclave and the GPU. As a result of the new Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC), Apple refers to «unique features» – without explaining what exactly this means. Will the Mac continue to stand out from the rest of the market in the coming years? Introducing its own chips marks the end of one of the last obstacles Apple still has on its way to developing a completely proprietary ... well, what exactly is it? An operating system? An ecosystem? An experience?
Whatever it will be, it's exciting stuff.
A gap is closing
As a result of the new architecture, iOS apps – and also those for iPadOS if you think of it as a separate operating system rather than a fork iOS – will run seamlessly and natively on the new Macs. This closes a gap in the Apple ecosystem. App developers no longer have to use APIs to bridge this gap, allowing them to develop in a simple and streamlined way.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering who hosted the keynote, claimed that the vast majority of existing apps for Intel-based machines could be modified to work in just a few days.
To make it as easy as possible for developers, Apple has developed Universal 2, a binary that's compatible with Apple Silicon and Intel architecture. Apps that aren't made for the ARM architecture can be run via Rosetta 2. There shouldn't be any disadvantages for users.
MacOS Big Sur, Version 11, is the first version of the Apple operating system that offer native support for Apple Silicon and make use of its features. The in-house apps are already designed for Apple Silicon, others will follow. Microsoft is said to be well advanced with the Office version for Apple Silicon. Adobe's Photoshop shows no major weaknesses in a demo with a 5GB image and doesn't slow down despite the large file. However, these demos should be treated with caution, as Word isn't the most demanding programme and an orchestrated demo is likely to show how everything runs smoothly.
What's not known yet is whether Apple Silicon will make it possible to move images in Word by one millimetre without creating a huge mess. Let’s hope and see.
The first Macs with Apple Silicon are expected to hit the market in late 2020. No dates have been announced yet for the launch in Switzerland.
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