Member-only story
What’s All the Buzz Around Apple Silicon
The reason Apple ditched Intel and decided to make its own chips for the Mac
At the WWDC 2020, the Mecca for Apple developers, Tim Cook concluded the packed keynote address with a bold announcement — the transition to Apple-designed chips for the Mac. Although this has been expected for some time now, it still overshadowed all the major software updates — iOS 14, macOS Big Sur, and watchOS 7. But, why?
The Intel Affair
In 2005, in a similar announcement that shook the tech world, Steve Jobs revealed that Macs, after a decade of running on PowerPC processors, will transition to Intel processors. He credited this decision to Intel’s superior product roadmap. And for the better part of the last 15 years, Intel did not disappoint.
But in recent years, owing to a combination of Intel slacking and Apple making extraordinary progress in chip design, this partnership turned sour.
Intel, the erstwhile flag-bearer of the semiconductor industry, has been falling behind its competitors. While the company initially announced that it will ship processors made using the advanced 10nm process in 2016, it was only able to meet this goal in 2019. Meanwhile, its competitors like AMD had already started making processors using the…
