#CAN YOU BUY THE MAC OS FOR INTEL CPU MAC#
But most Mac developers have already done iOS development, so they're familiar with Arm. Sure, from a developer perspective, there will be a lot of work. We can expect a similar experience in the move to Arm. In fact, with the exception of a few app incompatibilities and slowdowns due to emulation, most Mac users back in the day had no idea what processor family they were running on - it was just a Mac. While there were certainly growing pains behind each of these transitions, Apple has done a surprisingly good job of making processor family transitions mostly painless for the average user. It's hard to believe, but Macs have been on Intel longer than they have been on any other processor architecture. Ten years later, in 1994, Apple began its migration from 68000-based computers to Power PC-based machines.Įleven years after that, in 2005, Apple announced its switch to the Intel x86 architecture. The very first Mac, model M0001, launched in January 1984 running a Motorola 68000 processor. First, this is not Apple's first processor-change rodeo. ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan wrote a helpful piece just last week that will take you through all of that.īut I do want to make a few points. I'm not going to do much of a deep dive into Arm and what it means for Mac. If Apple is announcing a new processor architecture that will obsolete current Macs, should you still buy a current-model Mac, which is shipping with that soon-to-be-obsolete architecture? Architecture migrationĪll that leads to the conflict that headlines this article. So that's rumor #2: a new iMac, almost undoubtedly Intel-based. We're looking at a possible spec bump, retirement of the execrable hard drive/SSD "fusion" drive, and a new look, maybe even with new display technology. Since the iMac has looked pretty much exactly the same for a decade, this is potentially big news. The second rumor is that Apple is getting ready to introduce a new iMac, possibly with a redesign. The idea is that Apple's Arm-based processors for iPhones and iPads are ridiculously fast, and with Apple's desire to control all of its supply chain, the move to Arm seems inevitable.
We've been intermittently discussing the possibility of Macs moving off of the Intel family to Arm since at least 2017 (and possibly earlier). ZDNet's intrepid team of reporters and analysts have already written numerous articles about the first big rumor of WWDC: that Apple is finally going to announce a switch from Intel to Arm processer.Īlso: Apple to move Mac to Arm CPUs: What you need to know
The laptops on this list can keep you online and working longer when you need to be unplugged. The best laptop with the longest battery life We review Apple's M1 Ultra-powered Mac StudioĬan digital dollars be as anonymous as cash? Using Russian tech? It's time to reconsider the risks. When the boss gets angry at employees' Teams habits