Apple has long been rumoured to be working on ARM based Macs. It was sometime around 2012 that the first set of rumours started trickling down. However, none of the rumours actually materialized but it looks like 2020/2021 will actually be the year for ARM Macs.
ARM chips have a variety of advantages over Intel chips as they are very power efficient meaning better battery life and also they do not require fans to keep the chips cool. Apple has been building its A-series chips for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV based on the ARM chip architecture for years now.
Apple has made great strides by using ARM chips – its chips are considered the most powerful in the industry. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips are considered inferior to Apple’s A-series chips. The iPad Pro which uses Apple’s A12X and A12Z chip is considered to be faster than 95% of the computers in the world, according to Apple.
Intel has been struggling to make major performance bumps while also making their chips power efficient – there has also been some compromise. However, Apple has been able to handle its chips magnificently – they are powerful but also not that power hungry.
Noted Apple analysts and leaksters like Jon Prosser, Mark Gurman, and KGI Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo have all reported that Apple will release Macs equipped with ARM chips very soon. However, the question is whether Apple will discuss this major shift during its annual developers conference WWDC which is scheduled to be held on June 22.
Apple’s macOS apps are written for Intel’s x86 instruction set. It will take time for developers to rewrite all the apps for the ARM architecture. While we do not know whether Apple will talk about ARM macOS during WWDC, it would however be a wise thing to do.