Finally, Apple announced to be moving its future MacBooks onto its native ARM-based chips. This move was called by Tim Cook as “historic day for the Mac” since parting ways from Intel is official. The company is now asking developers to quick start their works on apps to make them compatible for its ARM-based chip. The first MacBooks with Apple’s native chip will be coming by this year’s end.
There have been numerous leaks on Apple making its chip for years and is planning to shift away from Intel gradually. And it’s true. Touted as Project Kalamata previously, Apple has today confirmed its plans of migrating the future MacBooks away from Intel chips to its in-house silicon chips. These should be giving higher performances with far less battery consumption, as per Apple.
Reasons hinted for parting ways from Intel is because the chipmaker wasn’t able to catch-up Apple’s pace. Intel has been slow in producing and also missing innovations in recent days. Apple blamed Intel for missing so many opportunities in past too and waited for a perfect time to cut off. And here is it. The official call in WWDC 2020 is when Apple confirmed making MacBooks on its in-house made ARM-based silicon chips.
This doesn’t mean it’s exclusively using the new chips and even says that only a few MacBooks in early days will have these chips embedded in. Apple said a new MacBook with its chip would arrive by this year-end, and the total transition may take at least two years span. Until then, it would be Intel chips its high-end MacBooks.
A big change this new chip brings is the support for iOS and iPadOS apps! Yes, the fresh in-house chips will now support all iOS and iPadOS apps on macOS, thus giving users more power and options. Further, it’s asking developers to begin works for tuning their respective apps to support the new chip. Calling it as Quick Start, Apple is offering developers the Developer Transition Kit, that contains 16GB RAM + 512GB ROM, macOS developer beta with Xcode and Apple TV!