When Apple announced their transition to ARM for the Mac lineup this past June, it sparked very different reactions. Some are afraid Apple is turning their MacBooks into a new generation of netbooks, while others look at the future of Macs with excitement. I belong to the second category.
What we have seen lately in the world of Apple silicon in the iPad Pro is performance catching up to the levels of the MacBook Pro 13″.
Take a look at the Geekbench comparison below.
The iPad Pro is performing very similarly to the MacBook Pro 13″ with an Intel Core i7-processor. That is quite an achievement, but let me point out that the MacBook Pro 13″ is fan cooled. The iPad is passively cooled. And this is with the A12Z Bionic processor. And the A14 Bionic was just announced and put in the 2020 iPad Air, and it’s said to be around 30% faster than the A12 Bionic.
Imagine a fanless MacBook Pro 13″, or imagine what kind of performance we could see with a fan cooled Apple Silicon chip in a MacBook Pro, or even better, a Mac Pro.
It’s going to be a transition for all developers to get on board, but Apple has gone though this a few times in the past, first in the early 90’s when they went from Motorola to IBM PowerPC, and then again in 2006 when going from PowerPC to Intel. This time should be even smoother given that developers have already been running software on the ARM-equipped iPhone and iPad models over the past decade, and Apple has had a lot of time to work on their tools to make sure it will be a smooth transition. For many developers it may even just be a quick recompile.
At first it may a relatively slow start, but having that kind of control over the hardware, Apple won’t have to wait for Intel to release suitable hardware, and they can add the hardware features they need at a much faster rate. Over time it could allow for tighter integration between macOS and iOS, and a real boost in performance, security and power efficiency over the entire line of Macs. I’m more exited about the future of the Mac than ever before!