Apple this week announced plans to switch from Intel processors to ARM chips on the Mac, which the company calls “Apple Silicon Mac.” That’s not a surprise since the Mac ARM project was rumored a long time ago, but one of the main reasons for this transition would have been recent problems with Intel.
François Piednoël, a former Intel engineer, said PCGamer that Apple has been dissatisfied with Intel processors since the introduction of the Skylake architecture in 2015. The report claims that Intel’s Skylake processors had various problems at the time, and that Apple was the customer with the highest number of complaints about the architecture.
Skylake’s quality assurance was more than a problem, it was abnormally bad. We were getting too many appointments for little things within Skylake. Basically our friends at Apple became the main archiver of problems in architecture. And that was very, very bad.
Apple first used Skylake processors with the 2015 iMac, and then the company also released 2016 MacBook and MacBook Pro models with the same processor architecture. “Basically, Skylake’s poor quality assurance is responsible for them leaving the platform. […] Apple must have really hated Skylake, ”said Piednoël.
It is no secret that Apple had the Mac pipe affected by Intel on multiple occasions, but personally I don’t think that is the only reason for the transition to the “Apple Silicon Mac”. Apple has always been a company that values the integration of hardware and software, and that is only possible when you have control over everything that is inside a device.
That is why the company started manufacturing its own chips from the Apple A4 in 2010, which equipped the first iPad and iPhone 4. There were already rumors and speculation about when Apple would abandon Intel in favor of its own processors. It was something that would happen sooner or later.
Apple chips in the iPhone and iPad have shown that they can offer better performance and security while maintaining energy efficiency. The transition on the Mac was no longer a question of “if”, but of “when”.
Still, although the transition is not over, Apple says the company plans to launch new Mac models with Intel processors.
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