Five years of Apple Silicon: The Underestimated

It was one of the most important announcements for Apple's Mac division in its entire history: five years ago, Apple announced that it was switching from Intel chips to its own Apple Silicon development. The target of being finished in two years was narrowly missed. The flagship Mac Pro, of all things, took a little longer and was only converted in June 2023. However, this did not change the fact that the Mac's reputation rose to an extent that even long-standing industry observers had previously hardly thought possible.

The announcement came at a time when the Mac was facing a lot of criticism. The machines equipped with Intel processors were considered loud and hot under heavy use. The battery life could also not keep up with iPhones and iPads, which already contained Apple's self-developed chips. The situation was exacerbated by Intel not keeping to its production schedule, which meant that the Mac could only be updated irregularly and the performance gains were often negligible. Apple had additional problems at the time due to problems with its own butterfly keyboard in MacBooks and the unclear perspective of how to proceed with the Pro devices in the Mac line-up.

A "historic day"

The "historic day" that Apple spoke of on the occasion of the Silicon announcement was therefore viewed with some skepticism. In particular, some wondered whether Apple's own processors could really compete with the x86 architecture in terms of performance. Or whether the change would only shift the problems. Although the ARM architecture on which the Apple Silicon is based promised energy efficiency, some people were reluctant to believe that going it alone could really work, especially as Apple had not yet presented any devices in the summer of 2020 and was only describing the processor in fine words.

The first tentative indications were to be provided by a Developer Transition Kit in the form of a Mac Mini with an A12Z Bionic chip, which developers could use to develop native apps for the Apple Silicon in the run-up to its release. The developers later had to return the loaned devices. Apple also ensured that with Rosetta 2, apps for the Intel architecture would continue to run smoothly on the new architecture. The transition should be as smooth as possible. In addition to energy efficiency, the company cited the shared architecture with the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch as well as the introduction of the Neural Engine for machine learning on the Mac – as advantages at the time - a change that was probably wiser than even Apple could have imagined at the time in view of the generative AI that would emerge years later.

"A big hit"

When the first three devices with M1 were released in November - the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini - even the tester from c't spoke of a "big hit". The MacBook Air was even described as the "secret star": "You won't find Windows notebooks with this much performance combined with completely silent operation." Apple has "set the bar pretty high for the rest of the upcoming Mac lineup with more powerful components". The shimmering skepticism that this architecture change would not be followed by a similar aha effect so quickly proved to be a little too pessimistic. Five years after the announcement of the change, Apple has already arrived at the M4, which in some respects can put the M1 in the shade.

Now the next change is imminent. Apple is gradually saying goodbye to the remaining Intel Macs. macOS 26 Tahoe is the last version of the Mac operating system that will support Intel processors. In fall 2026, a macOS will be released for the first time that is only available for the Apple Silicon. Except for those who still own and love an Intel Mac, the sadness of many Mac users will probably be limited.

(mki)