Charting a path for Apple’s move away from Intel

iPhone’s success and its unique identity was predicated on the ingenuity and simplicity of iOS and the ecosystem that it later brought along but equally responsible was the silicon powering all the tricks that made us fall in love with the device in the first place. Ever-since its inception the A series SoC by Apple has been leaving its counterparts far behind in both raw performance and performance per watt making it a beast that doesn’t guzzle battery juice. And, now the very same formula is making its way to Apple’s Mac platform.

But, since the inception of the ‘Apple Silicon on Mac’ idea to the current date, there must have been a time and place when the Cupertino giant felt confident enough to pivot away from its long-time silicon partner, intel, and move all the silicon sorcery in-house, just like it did with iOS devices.

So, when and at what point was it amply clear that the decision was cemented and presented to us in broad-day light but most of us were oblivious to its reverberations due to our obsession with the next best thing.

I think using the powers of hindsight I have got a bunch of dates for you that might make the picture a bit more clear.

2014 — Meet the world’s first 64-bit ARM chip

The seventh of its generation and the first of its kind, the iPhone 5s takes the world by storm by introducing to the world the first consumer ready 64-bit ARM processor.

But, while the world gets busy in determining the merits and demerits of squeezing a 64-bit custom designed ARM chip into a derivative iPhone 5, Apple was busy charting the future with its A7 SoC.

The iPhone 5s was the first mobile device in the world to come out with a 64 bit processor and it started a transition in the iOS device arena where soon other iOS devices would follow suit.

2016 — the end is nigh for 32-bit apps

Only the nerds might remember this.

iOS 11 was both an operating system and an ultimatum.

Developers were asked to update all of their apps to support the 64 bit architecture or their apps won’t run on the new and shiny OS delivered in the fall of 2016.

2016 is also the year when we get the first taste of Apple Silicon on a Mac in the form of a T1 Chip that was present on the system to make the platform more secure and to help mitigate some of the security issues found with Intel’s processors. Also, it acted as a secure enclave for the inbuilt fingerprint sensor.

It was soon followed by the T2 which was first presented on the iMac Pro(2017).

2019 — ending the reign of 32-bit apps on macOS

macOS Catalina was to Macs what iOS 11 was to iPhones and iPads.

The end of all 32-bit apps on the Mac platform. If you had an app and macOS mattered to your business, then you didn’t really have a lot of options. It was either update your apps to support the 64 bit architecture or be left behind.

But, this wasn’t the only major update. The WWDC 2019 event also saw the introduction of Catalyst.

Catalyst made it possible for developers to run their iPad apps on macOS with little to no modification.

Note — The name catalyst itself implies bringing about change in a rapid fashion.

2020 — the dots connect

If you are thinking how all of the above connects then you need not look any further than the WWDC 2020 event.

There’s a reason why macOS Big Sur comes with the macOS 11 moniker insted of being called macOS 10.16. This is a new era for the fruit company’s oldest OS and the redesign that’s eerily similar to its mobile cousins wasn't even the biggest announcement. Apple Silicon wasn’t anymore an open secret. What was surprising though was the road map for the transition which finally made sense of all the announcements made in the previous years.

Now, of all the announcements, the ones that explained Apple’s insistence for moving all iOS apps to 64 bit (ARM-64) architecture and doing the same on macOS (Intel x86–64) are the announcements of Universal 2 and Rosetta 2.

iOS and macOS run on different platforms but moving both of them to a 64-bit system would make it easier for Apple to implement something like Universal 2 along with Rosetta2 without having to worry about their 32-bit predecessors/counterparts. Universal 2 a successor to Universal which made the transition possible from power pcs to intel, while Rosetta 2, as the name implies, is a successor to Rosetta which enabled power PC apps to run on Intel based Macs. Oh, how history repeats itself!

Universal 2 would make it possible for executable code to run natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel based Macs, while Rosetta 2 will enable developers to run existing executables on future Apple silicon.

So, for all those developers who’d like to take their sweet time with the transition and those who’d like to build their apps from scratch for the new Apple Silicon, they can! And, they wouldn’t have to worry about their apps running on the old or the new. Add to that the huge plethora of iPad apps would bolster the Mac App store strength not only in numbers but also in quality.

The first of many Apple Silicon Macs would arrive in late 2020 and we can rest assured that the camp will be split with folks holding pitchforks or bouquets, either way, it’s going to be an interesting new journey.