It’s Impossible to Overstate What a Big Deal the New Macs Are.

4 min readNov 18, 2020

A new processor isn’t all hype…

Ifyou’ve been in the market for a laptop at any point in the last few years, you might have noticed that new ones aren’t all that different from what you’re already used to. The speed leaps that used to come with upgrading to a new device just aren’t there anymore.

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It has other benefits, too: iOS and iPadOS apps will work on the Mac for the first time, allowing users to tap into the millions of apps in the App Store that haven’t made their way to the desktop yet. That will greatly, and immediately, expand the unique software the Mac supports, adding games like Among Us, which wasn’t previously available on Mac.

For the last decade, when you bought a computer it was likely to have a processor from just one of two companies: Intel or AMD. That meant Apple, Microsoft, Huawei, and everyone else building a computer relied on these same two companies to supply the “brains” of their devices.

Apple’s Brilliant Plan to Dominate Without Intel Processors

The company solved the chicken-or-egg problem that haunts its rivals

onezero.medium.com

By switching to processors built in-house, on its own ARM-based architecture, Apple is able to pull away from the pack: It’s no longer tied to a roadmap outside of its own control. Instead, it chooses its own destiny, able to pour its cash into the research and development of improvements, from which it alone will benefit.

The amount of risk and investment that goes into switching to processor architecture should not be understated. Switching from x86-based architecture, like that used by both AMD and Intel and has powered most computers for decades, means that all macOS developers must make changes to their apps to ensure they run properly on these new devices.

x86 and ARM use different instruction sets, which means they speak different languages. Developers must make changes to their code so that ARM processors can interpret that language and run your favorite app. The process of doing this is a lot of work in some cases, and it’s notable that at launch, Google Chrome, Photoshop, and many other popular apps won’t have updated their code yet.

But Apple has confidence in the transition, because it built a special translation layer, Rosetta 2, that allows apps that haven’t been updated for the new processors to run anyway — albeit with a performance hit. That means developers of existing apps should be motivated to update their code to run properly on ARM devices, or users might start looking for alternatives. Expect them to make the shift sooner rather than later.

Microsoft, in contrast, has released ARM-based laptops like the Surface Pro X, but its translation layer is much more rudimentary, and it doesn’t work for every app yet. That makes for a confusing experience, unless you know what’s going on under the hood, and makes it hard to recommend these new devices for most people. I wrote in March that the Surface Pro X should scare Apple, but the truth is that Microsoft should be worried about just how quickly Apple has pulled off its transition to ARM.

It’s Impossible to Overstate What a Big Deal the New Macs Are.

A new processor isn’t all hype…

Apple’s Brilliant Plan to Dominate Without Intel Processors

The company solved the chicken-or-egg problem that haunts its rivals

onezero.medium.com

Written by Sbsbsvbsah