Apple gives Macs a brain transplant with new Arm chips starting this year

Apple is redesigning its Mac computers with its own arm chips, which are similar to those it developed for its own iPhones and iPads. The move away from the Intel processors that have been used in the past 14 years is a historic change that is bothering software manufacturers, but could appeal to customers who need better battery life.

“The Mac is switching to our own Apple silicon,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple on Monday WWDC conference. However, the first arm-based Macs will be available later this year Developers can order arm-based Macs this week to start creating software.

Apple is now signaling that it has the expertise to challenge Intel in the PC segment, where chips generally consume more power but offer more processing power. The odds are that the likely benefits of arm chips – lower power consumption, lower costs, and better control over product plans – will outweigh the disruptions.

“The first thing that will do is bring the Mac to a whole new level of performance,” said Johny Srouji, senior vice president of hardware technology. Apple Mac chips also use mobile device hardware for better power management, graphics, artificial intelligence, and security hardware for secure enclave hardware.

Apple showed several key apps that were already customized for the new chips, and tried to demonstrate the performance of its arm-based Macs. It was shown how Final Cut Pro plays three simultaneous 4K video streams, performs and syncs Lightroom edits in a large catalog, and uses Photoshop to edit a large image with complicated edits. Other demos showed Affinity Photo and Cinema 4D.

With a new version of the Rosetta emulation tool, software written on Intel-based Macs can run on the new arm-based computers. There Apple demonstrated the Tomb Raider game with a screen resolution of 1080p. Apple will support Intel-based Macs for years, the company said.

It is still not clear how fast arm-based Macs will be, which products will arrive first, how much they will cost, and how good their battery life will be. “I am very disappointed that Apple has not provided many technical details to give users and developers confidence in the arm-based processor Mac experience,” said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

Later at WWDC, Apple announced that there would be a variety of arm chips for Macs of different sizes, from more efficient models for compact Macs to stronger, hotter chips that use more power on larger Macs.

Switching to arm-based Macs will take up to two years, which could outshine some products.

“We wonder if this could cause consumers to delay buying existing Intel-based Macs in the next 24 months because they fear buying an orphaned product,” Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said Tuesday Research report.

Apple’s first Mac Arm Chip: A12Z

The chips, commonly referred to as Apple Silicon, were developed by Apple, but are stronger than the A-series chips in iPads and iPhones. Apple’s specialist developer Macs will use the A12Z processor in newer iPad Pros, but Apple said aspects of this Mac Mini-like machine don’t match the Macs consumers will buy.

A new trick that the Chip and Rosetta will enable is the ability to do so Run the iPhone and iPad software directly on the new Macs.

Switching to Intel chips, Rumor has it for almost a decade, was created in the online version of WWDC. The conference is typically attended by thousands of programmers who learn about the latest changes in writing programs for Macs, iPhones, and iPads. This year, however, it became virtual due to the corona virus pandemic. Many of the programmers interested in WWDC are now faced with the challenge of re-creating their software for Arm Macs.

Computer processors are among the most complex products in the world. Billions of electronic components are carefully arranged to balance performance and power consumption. Apple’s A-series processors, which are used in all mobile devices and members of the arm-chip family, have consistently outperformed the competing arm designs used in Android phones.

Macs are influential PCs that get premium prices, but still make up less than 10% of today’s computers. Using its own arm chips gives Apple the ability to dramatically cut costs and save $ 100 to $ 150 in Mac component costs, according to Moorhead estimates.

Passing these lower prices on to consumers could help Apple compete better with Windows computers, especially among cost-sensitive buyers like students.

“I think Apple should lower its prices, but I don’t think it will,” Moorhead wrote before Apple’s announcement.

The move will affect Intel’s revenue and reputation, but a statement says it can continue to deliver technologies that “redefine computing.”

“We believe that Intel PCs, like those based on our upcoming Tiger Lake mobile platform, offer global customers the best experience in the areas they most value and the most open platform for developers, both today and in the future, “said Intel.

Apple’s third Mac chip transition

Apple previously changed the Mac chip families, first from Motorola 68000 family processors to PowerPC chips in 1994 and then to Intel chips in 2006. Each time it made the transition with emulation software easier to enable programs which were developed for the previous chip design that runs on the new Macs, but with significant performance costs.

One aspect of the transition will be easier for Mac customers this time: Most of the software we use runs in a web browser. Web developers who create websites like Google.com or web apps like Facebook.com generally don’t need to know or worry about which processor a computer is running on.

So if you’re using Gmail for email and Microsoft Outlook 365’s online word processor, arm-based Macs are less of a nuisance.

Recreate Mac software

Programmers will have different difficulties in re-creating their arm-based Mac software while still supporting Intel-based Macs that will continue to be used for years.

Developers who are firmly anchored in the Apple warehouse and who use the Xcode programming tools and the Swift programming language will find it easiest with Arm Macs. Programmers who transition their iPad apps to Apple’s MacOS versions using Apple’s Catalyst approach should also have it easy.

“The vast majority of developers can get their apps up and running in just a few days,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering.

However, many programs, especially those like Adobe Photoshop, that are designed to run on Windows, often use different tools and languages. For example, web browsers are usually written in the C ++ language. More work will be needed there. While Apple’s Safari browser will be available on Arm-based Macs from day one, it may take longer for other versions to become available.

Some developers are excited. “This means more innovation and better performance, not just in terms of speed but also in terms of battery life,” said Jayson Lane, developer of the Quick Draft Note app. He admits that developers of high-performance software for jobs such as sound, photo and video editing will find it harder to switch to poor. For simpler apps like his, “the arm transition is surprisingly easy … maybe as easy as clicking a checkbox.”

Software is sometimes carefully tweaked to run as quickly as possible on a particular chip design, but programmers have had time to adapt software development tools like Clang, which are supported by both Apple and Google, to arm designs, said James Sanders, analyst at 451 Research.

“Improvements in arm support in the Clang compiler over the past two years should alleviate the optimization problems,” he said.

For the new Macs, low-level software called drivers must also be rewritten, with which a computer device can communicate with components such as network chips and accessories such as printers. This can lead to support gaps for third-party hardware, and older products may never work with the new Macs.

Arm chips are getting faster

Some fear that Mac Arm chips are not fast enough to make the emulation useful. A worrying example is a number of Windows laptops that use Qualcomm’s arm chips. “It works very well in terms of functionality, but the performance for apps you need / want, like Chrome, Photoshop or Acrobat Reader, makes it an unusable solution,” said Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft’s former Windows leader and now partner at Venture Kapitalgesellschaft Andreessen Horowitz, said in a blog post before the transition.

Apple advertises its new Rosetta emulation software, but shows that its Arm Macs are powerful enough to handle the emulation with ease. “It’s great what Rosetta can do with existing games,” said Andreas Wendker, vice president of tools and frameworks at Apple.

Intel has struggled to improve the performance of its chips in recent years, while Apple has continued to develop its A-series of chips – a hundredfold improvement since the product line began, Apple said on Monday. The core feature of the chips, the speed of a single thread of computer instructions, has increased every year. And Apple has added new circuitry to accelerate graphics and software for artificial intelligence.

A British company called Arm licenses designs to companies like Qualcomm, but also licenses its chip instruction set – the collection of command software that can be used to control it – to companies like Apple that design their own designs. This leaves room for companies to build more powerful processors than those used in most phones when they are ready to pay for physically larger chips and accept designs that use more power.

One such example is Fujisu’s A64FX processors, which power the world’s fastest supercomputer. Another reason are the Graviton processors from Amazon, an inexpensive alternative to Intel chips for servers in their enormous business with Amazon Web Services. These chips are based on Arm’s Neoverse designs for data centers with servers.

“Apple isn’t the only one examining Arm for more powerful scenarios,” said Sanders.