The first Apple Silicon Mac computers mark a momentous occasion and the beginning of Apple’s transition away from Intel CPUs. This isn’t the first time Apple has changed CPU architectures for its Mac computers, but it may be the last. Apple is claiming huge performance gains with Apple silicon. A total of three new Mac computers were announced with two MacBook laptops and a Mac mini desktop.

The Mac, which was originally called the Macintosh computer, was based on Motorola’s 16/32-bit 68000 CPU, which was released before Intel’s first 16-bit offering, the 8086. Motorola and Apple championed a reduced instruction set computer (RISC), as opposed to Intel’s complex instruction set computer (CISC) design. Intel CPUs quickly began to surpass the performance of the 68000 series chips, so Apple transitioned to the PowerPC, a 32-bit RISC chip. By the mid-2000s, it became apparent that Intel was pulling ahead of the PowerPC as well and, in 2006, Apple finally stopped denying the cost and performance advantage offered by Intel processors and updated its entire line-up over a period of one year. Apple Silicon is another major processor transition, but one that should be much easier, since the system is entirely under Apple’s control.

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Apple announced three incredibly exciting new Mac computers, two 13.3-inch laptops in the form of updated MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, along with the new Mac mini desktop computer. What makes these new computers from Apple exciting is the inclusion of a new system on a chip (SoC) called the M1. This is based on the A-series chips that are found in every iPad and iPhone. The M1 has the benefit of all of the performance and efficiency gains that Apple has spent a decade working on, but with much more cooling potential due to the fact that it fits into larger devices.

Apple claims to have industry-leading performance with these new computers while keeping prices remarkably low. Like the A-series chips in the iPad, the new M1 allows the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro to power on wake instantly and sip power so slowly that these laptops add several hours to the battery life of the previous generation. Unlike the iPad, all of the new Mac computers offer the RAM and SSD capacity expected of a computer, with up to 16-gigabytes of memory and 2-terabytes of storage likely to satisfy most demanding projects. Performance gains of 2 to 3 times were cited, so this is a major upgrade opportunity.

Native & Legacy Mac Apps

Apple Silicon MacBook Mac mini Apple Park

At launch, legacy apps that were designed for an Intel-based CPU should run properly, even though the processor has a very different architecture. However, the performance may be lower in some cases. This is due to the need for an emulation layer that translates the Intel code to run properly on Apple Silicon. Major developers, like Adobe and Microsoft have already been working on updating their apps to run natively. Lightroom is available already and Photoshop will be updated next year, so the wait for maximum performance shouldn’t be too long.

Of course, every Apple app, including Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X, have already been updated to run native code and benefit from the gains in speed. For apps that are still compiled for Intel chips, at least a portion of the app will be converted when the legacy app is first installed, it is just not everything can be done in advance. This means older software will run a bit slower on a new Apple Silicon Mac than on a new Intel Mac. From what Apple showed at the event, the impact will be minimal and Apple claims that updating apps to work best with the new system is generally quick, requiring only a few days for most developers.

The new Apple Silicon Mac computers announced at the November 2020 event have a unique new ability to install and open iPad apps natively. This means every app in the iPad app store can potentially run on the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini, just as well as they would on an iPad. In fact, on a Mac, the faster processor, expanded memory and storage may enable better performance with these apps than ever before. Although it should be noted that Apple allows developers to opt-out of having their iPad apps appear in the Mac App Store, so it isn’t a given that every app owned will be available on a Mac, but most will by default. Those that are not, may be temporarily disabled while testing. In addition, some apps that have a web-based interface may prefer users to access via the browser, since the experience is likely to be better. The new M1-powered Mac computers are revolutionary and from comments given during the event, it seems the developers that have already gotten their hands on the new devices were blown away by Apple's new Mac experience.

Next: MacBook Air 2020 Vs. Pro: Which Is Better & Which You Should Buy

Source: Apple