Why Apple (Probably) Won't Make An Arm-powered Mac

Sure, Apple could transition to ARM chips in its Macs. Here’s why it probably won’t.

- Jason Snell

With every release of a new iPhone powered by another cutting-edge processor designed by Apple, the rumbling grows. It’s amplified by the perception that the Mac is being delayed and hamstrung by the moves of the Mac’s chip supplier, Intel. It’s the theory that, one of these days, Apple is going to break from Intel and power its Macs with an Apple-designed processor related to the ones in the iPhone and iPad.

It’s a story with a certain amount of sense behind it. It seems like several Mac models have been delayed because Intel’s chips just weren’t ready in time, or weren’t ready in enough supply. The latest hubbub about the MacBook Pro being limited to 16GB of RAM (go.macworld.com/schiller touchbar) is due to Apple’s choice of a low-power Intel chipset that couldn’t handle more memory.

And it’s true, the Mac is no stranger to a processor transition. It’s happened three times in the 32-year life of the Mac, so roughly once a decade.

SWITCHING IT UP

The first was from the Motorola 680x0 series processors that powered the Mac during its first decade of life. In March 1994, Apple switched to the new PowerPC processor architecture created by an alliance of Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Older code compiled for the 680x0 processor series ran in emulation on PowerPC chips.

The second was from PowerPC chips to Intel processors, a transition that was announced in mid-2005 (go.macworld. com/intelfaq2005) and began in early 2006. Like the previous chip transition, Apple provided emulation technology— this time branded “Rosetta”—that would emulate PowerPC code on Intel Macs.