Apple and Intel Are Breaking Up

Close your eyes and imagine something with me for a second. Come on... close them. It is September 1999. The air is crisp and the dog days are coming to an end as my mother drives me to my new elementary school to continue my second month of first grade. I walk into my school's incredibly pristine new computer lab and my eyes shine with excitement at the sight of a completely fictional Power Mac G4 because this whole story is made up. I press the power, hear the famous Macintosh boot chime, and realize that this computer is going to change everything.

There's a lot of fuss about Apple abandoning Intel and the x86 platform in favor of ARM (which is the instruction set Apple has been using in iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AppleTV since its inception (okay, so the first AppleTV wasn't ARM, otherwise we don't talk about that (or should we talk about that? I still have mine from 2007; let me know in the comments below if you want to see a video about that)). With this supposed transition to ARM on Mac, Apple. It would presumably develop custom-designed processors like the iPhone's A-series chips, but specific to the Mac.

I think a lot of people believe that Apple's innovation has stagnated or that they're no longer trying. In the late 90s, but Apple. proved them completely wrong by developing the fastest home computer on the planet that completely crushed any Intel Windows machine of the time back in 1991-1993, Apple's chip architecture, which had been in use since the original Macintosh. 1984, he was aging rapidly. Their Macintosh line was still blazing fast and powered by the 68k family of microprocessors, but they were becoming bulkier, more powerful, and more expensive than ever. Apple was trying to squeeze as much processing power as possible out of old technology and it showed.

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computers (which are a Windows-Intel computer by the way) were less expensive, much more efficient, and were gaining ground in the speed department. Apple CEO John Sculley had commissioned an internal project called “jaguar” to develop a new RISC-based quad-core CPU designed to succeed the Motorola 68K chips. But this would mean there would be no backwards compatibility with the old software, and without the market share to force people to use the new machine, they would have created a platform that died before it was born. And in the 80s, Steve Jobs had already made this mistake with Lisa, an incredibly powerful computer that was rendered useless due to lack of software.

Fortunately, a veteran Apple engineer, Jack McHenry, saw that the new incompatible computer was doomed to fail and founded the “cognac” team. Long story short (and it really is a cool story), McHenry's team developed a RISC-based machine that was capable of running the old Macintosh 68K software with essentially full compatibility thanks to an incredible hypervisor emulator (it was one of the first computers of history). by the way) and thus the PowerPC was born. For over 10 years, Apple made hardware with an extensive software library that completely destroyed any W

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machine in its path. In fact, that 1999 G4 I mentioned at the beginning of the video was the first personal computer with a gigaflop of performance, and it made a mockery of Intel's Pentium III system in terms of operation (at more than twice the speed in many workloads). which was actually less expensive to own and operate over time than even the best Intel PCs.

The PowerPC architecture, like the 68K platform before it finally disappeared and Apple, well... Intel CPUs were more efficient per watt, ran much cooler than PowerPC, and showed much more potential going forward. And it was a good decision for numerous reasons. Sharing an x86 platform between Windows and Mac made applications easier to transfer between systems, allowed the Mac to run Windows natively through Boot Camp, allowed the Mac to integrate into the enterprise and enterprise market for the first time, allowed greater system stability. , and more. But it also had some huge drawbacks: Apple's hardware advantage that existed with PowerPC was gone.

Apple was a systems builder and the move to off-the-shelf parts limited Apple's design capabilities; required all performance benefits to be focused on software optimization as the hardware was the same as everything else on the market, the hackintosh market flourished with custom and reverse-engineered EFI cores, and Apple became beholden to Intel's update cycle. So ARM: why would Apple care to adopt it? And why should you care? 1. Apple can continue its pursuit of vertical integration and supply chain control. Apple won't wait for Intel to release new products and we won't wait for Apple to integrate those new Intel products. .

It allows Apple to have a unique market offering. No one else (at least not for a while) will be making flagship ARM computers. Microsoft has tried, albeit unsuccessfully, in part because they require backwards compatibility and enterprise support (both things Apple has a history of ignoring). . The unit cost decreases. Intel is a scam because they have an essential monopoly and although AMD is giving them a chance, they are still the de facto supplier of enterprise hardware and the prices reflect that. The price of the small 8-core Xeon tray in the new Mac Pro is $749. That's crazy. In theory, Apple could lower the price of its machines and become cost-competitive with low-margin but better-hardware PC makers.

Would the modern Apple do that? I hope so, but they could almost maintain prices and simply increase their margins. . The hardware can really be better. If Apple's current silicon is anything to go by, they have demonstrated extreme competence in chip design and continue to hire some of the best SoC engineers in the world. I don't think it's a coincidence. Now, don't expect a complete transition to happen on day one. Steve Jobs said at the 2005 Macworld keynote that moving from PowerPC to Intel would take a few years and Apple actually did it faster than expected, but I would expect the same for ARM Macs.

This new Catalyst project, which ports iOS apps to x86 Macs, is a great way for Apple to test app emulation and compilation and allows developers to get comfortable with the Swift coding language. It also allows customers who own existing x86 processors to run most of the software that will be available on ARM Macs for a seamless transition to different platforms. . It will pretty much kill off hackintosh computers, although Apple probably doesn't care as much as people think. . In theory, it will allow for much better battery life as the RISC-based system will be more efficient and generate less heat.

Maybe we can finally say goodbye to thermal throttling on Apple computers. . There are potentially huge security benefits. . There could be cross-platform app purchases as the operating systems will share similar code bases. So you buy an app on your iPhone and it also works on iPad and Mac. And if all platforms are easy to develop, the number of quality Mac apps should skyrocket. I could go on. And that's not to say this doesn't have potential downsides. There definitely are. It's a huge gamble for Apple with exponential increases in R&D with no guarantee of return, and at the end of the day, Apple is accountable to its shareholders.

They will need to maintain a competitive advantage on x86 and Windows ARM machines and continue to innovate for years to come; They can't trust Intel to do the work for them. Apple may also mistakenly seek power over compatibility and if the Catalyst transition is not smooth, things could struggle for several years, etc. But I think this future is more bright than boring. I hope Apple can shake off the often accurate stigma that they have become anti-consumer, expensive and unable to innovate. There are people who don't even know that Apple used to make the fastest computers in the world.

And as a lifelong Mac user, I hope Apple finally lives up to Phil Schiller's famous smug, dissatisfied words.