Apple’s rumored move to ARM-based Macs aims for a world of continuous connectivity

28 February 2020 by Steve Blum
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Technological tipping points are easy see in the rearview mirror – do you remember what the world was like before the iPhone? – but hard to spot in advance. One might be on the way. A well respected analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, who works for TF Securities, predicts that Apple will start using ARM-based chips it designs and makes itself in Macintosh computers.

According to a story on Apple Insider by Malcom Owen

Kuo forecasts that Apple will be using a 5-nanometer process at the core of its new products 12 to 18 months’ time. As part of this, Kuo believes there will be a “new 1H21 Mac equipped with the own-design processor”…

Shifting over to an ARM-based chip would also give some context to Apple’s decision to move away from supporting 32-bit apps in macOS Catalina, as well as Apple’s work on Catalyst. In theory, this could allow Apple to use the same chips in the Mac as it does in iPhones and iPads, reducing its overall costs and enabling apps to be more usable throughout the entire Apple ecosystem.

It would be the first time a major personal computer maker abandons processors built on Intel’s 40 year old x86 architecture, and switches to chips based on ARM designs. Other hardware companies have dabbled with ARM-based servers and PCs – like Blackberry and Palm dipped their toes into the pre-iPhone smartphone market – but if he’s right, Apple will be the first to 1. shift an entire line of mainstream computers off of Intel and onto ARM, and 2. build a complete smartphone-tablet-computer-consumer device ecosystem around a single chip architecture.

There’s a broadband angle to this move, too. If the Apple device universe collapses into a single, integrated hardware and operating system platform, with the only distinction between devices being form factor and peripheral functions like sensors and telephone network access, then its value will be maximised by giving those devices seamless access to a common set of data, content, applications and services via persistent and ubiquitous connectivity.

It’s one thing to rely on file and data syncing across a family of products, as Apple does now, but it’s quite another to build a costly lineup of hardware, software and content on top of the assumption that connectivity can be taken for granted anywhere you go.