Five years of Apple Silicon: The underestimated

It was one of the most important announcements in their entire history for Apple’s Mac division: It has been five years since Apple announced that the MAC of Intel chips switched the Apple Silicon in-house. The goal of being through in two years was narrowly missed. The flagship, the Mac Pro, needed a little longer and was only changed in June 2023. But that did not change the fact that the reputation of the Mac increase to a dimensions that even long -time industry observers hardly considered possible before.

The announcement came at a time when the Mac had to take a lot of criticism. The machines equipped with Intel processors were valid with higher stress than loud and hot. The battery life could also not keep up with iPhones and iPads, which already contained Apple’s self -developed chips. The situation was tightened by Intel, which did not comply with his production timetable, which could only be updated irregularly and the increase in performance was often manageable. At the time, Apple had additional trouble due to problems with its own butterfly keyboard in MacBooks and the unclear perspective on how to proceed with the PRO devices in the Mac line-up.

A “historical day”

The “historical day”, of the Apple on the occasion of the silicone announcement spokewas therefore seen with some skepticism. Above all, some were wondering whether Apple’s own processors can really take up the X86 architecture. Or whether the change would only shift the problems. The ARM architecture on which the Apple Silicon is based promised energy efficiency, but whether it could really work to work alone did not want to believe, especially since Apple did not present any devices in that summer 2020, but only described the processor in beautiful words.

The first delicate information should provide a developer transition kit, which, in the form of a Mac Mini with A12Z Bionic Chip developers, served to be able to develop native apps for the Apple Silicon in advance. The developers later had to return the loan devices. In addition, Apple made sure that Rosetta 2 also went smoothly for the Intel architecture on the new architecture. The transition should be done as smoothly as possible. In addition to energy efficiency, the company cited the joint architecture with iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch as well as the introduction of the neural engine for machine learning on the Mac – a change that was probably wiser with a view to the generative AI, which was probably wiser for years later.

“A big litter”

When the first three devices with M1 appeared in November with the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini, even the tester of the c’t spoke of a “big litter”. The MacBook Air was even referred to as a “secret star”: “So much performance with the same consistently silent operation, you are looking for vain with Windows notebooks.” Apple has now put the latte quite high for the remaining Mac-Lineup with more powerful components “. The shimmering skepticism that this change of architecture would not quickly follow a similar AHA effect so quickly turned out to be something too pessimistic. Apple has already reached the M4 five years after announcing the change, which can put the M1 in the shade in many ways.

Now the next change is in the house. Gradually, Apple completely says goodbye to the rest of the Intel Mac. MacOS 26 TAHOE is the last version of the MAC operating system that is intended to support Intel processors. In autumn 2026, a macos will be released for the first time, which is only available for the Apple Silicon. Except for those who still own and love an Intel Mac, the grief will be limited to many Mac users.