Apple announced at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2020 that the Mac will transition from Intel to Apple Silicon over the course of two years. As part of the transition, the company released the first batch of Macs powered by M1 chip – the first Mac chip based on the ARM architecture.
“We’re partway through the transition, and we’ve got a lot more to do,” said Tim Cook. “We’re in the early days of a two-year transition, but we’re excited about what we see so far.”
High performance, high efficiency
The M1 chip now powers the MacBook Air, the 13” base MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini. All of these machines have shocked the industry with their high performance without consuming much power. Apple talked at length about how its new processors offer high performance per watt. As the chips are efficient, they do not generate much heat either.
The M1 MacBook Air does not have a fan but is able to offer higher performance than the previous Intel based MacBook Air. The M1 chip is very different compared to the Intel based chips which were used in the previous generation Macs. The M1 chip packs high performance cores and high efficiency cores similar to the A-series chips used in the iPhone and the iPad.
The new M1 Macs have been very popular with the people as well. The machines offer high performance without any thermal throttling issues as the ones found on the previous Intel Macs. As a result, sales of Mac computers have risen since the introduction of the M1 Macs in November 2020.
“If you look at the switcher [from PC to Mac],” said Tim Cook, “if you look at the new-to-Mac, and new-to-iPad, those numbers worldwide are about half of the purchases coming from people that are new. So the instal base is still expanding with new customers.”
