It looks like Apple could officially announce its plan to stop using Intel processors in its Macs and MacBooks, in favor of its own chips, as early as WWDC 2020, which begins June 22.
The news comes from Bloomberg, which has apparently heard from people familiar with the plans. If true, this means that developers of Mac apps (WWDC is primarily aimed at devs) will have time to adjust their apps before the first Macs with the new processors launch in 2021.
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It’s long been an open secret that Apple is thinking of shifting away from Intel processors for its Macs and MacBooks and creating its own chips, like it does with the iPhone and iPad.
In fact, it’s likely that whatever processor Apple cooks up for the MacBooks and Macs of 2021 and beyond will be based on the same tech used for iPhone and iPad processors, and which is licensed from Arm Ltd.
Bad news for Intel
This will be the first time in the history of Macs when they run on Apple-made processors, and it’s a big blow for Intel, which has provided the CPUs for Macs and MacBooks since 2005.
With Apple making up around 10% of the PC market, that’s a substantial loss of revenue for Intel, though it still dominates laptop and desktop processor sales – for the moment, at least.
Other manufacturers, including Microsoft, Samsung and Lenovo, have also debuted laptops with ARM-based processors, as well as offering an increasing number of devices that come with AMD processors as well.
We’ve been waiting to hear more about Apple’s processor ambitions for its Mac and MacBook devices for a while now, and it seems we’ll be finding out more very soon.
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