The Fifth Age Of Macintosh: What Happens If Apple Dumps Intel?
Apple uses its own purpose-designed CPUs for its iPhones and iPads, built around the ARM architecture. An article reported by Ian King and Mark Gurman, published by Bloomberg yesterday, says that the company wants to do the same for Macs and could start shipping computers with the new CPUs instead of Intel chips as soon as 2020.
As usual with such stories, the details are sourced to “people familiar with the plans” and Apple has declined comment. But I give this rumor a lot of credibility. Any such move would require the company to bring Mac developers into the loop as early as possible, so they can prepare their apps. If Apple is planning to do that at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (which opens on June 4), then we’re now within that window of time where I would expect the pool of people who have access to that information to have expanded to include possible blabbermouths.
More than that, however, the move emphatically makes sense. Apple’s consumer desktop strategy since the introduction of the iPad has sounded out as clearly as the first five notes of “Shave And A Haircut” and at this point, the response “TWO BITS!”–in the form of an ARM-based Mac–seems inevitable. It’s compatible with so many of Apple’s goals and frustrations.
