The First Macs with Apple Processors Will Arrive By the End of the Year

Rumors that Macs would switch from Intel processors to being powered by Apple’s own silicon have been flying for several years now, but finally, the Cupertino-based company has confirmed it is going to finally make the switch. Apple promises its own silicon will give the mac a whole new level of performance with higher performance at lower power consumption. To show this off, Apple demoed a Mac computer powered by the same A12Z Bionic chip found in the latest iPad running an early version of macOS Big Sur. What's more, Apple demoed its prototype machine running heavy-duty applications like Adobe Lightroom, where the system quickly auto-toned an image faster than we’ve ever seen on an Intel-powered system. In Photoshop, Apple's chip easily rendered a file with hundreds of layers of seagulls. Lastly, the Apple silicon-equipped Mac also had no trouble smoothly scrubbing through high-resolution footage in Final Cut Pro. Beyond the raw processing power that Apple’s silicon delivers, these new chips also come with powerful GPUs. During the conference, there was a demo of a Mac running Tomb Raider at Full HD (1080p) resolution at a smooth frame rate that looked close to 60 frames per second. Of course, this demo was also running through a layer of translation from the Intel-based game to play on Apple's new ARM-based architecture, so we're not looking at this new chip's completely raw graphical prowess. With the Mac switching over to a common architecture shared by all of Apple’s other devices, it should be easier for developers to create software compatible with all of the company’s devices such as the iPhone, and iPad. Apple says it has already made all of its own apps, such as Messages and Photos, compatible with the new architecture. For any third-party applications, Apple has rolled out a new Rosetta 2 to help users transition over to the new hardware. Anyone familiar with switching over from a PowerPC to Intel Mac may recall Rosetta's somewhat shaky ability to translate apps efficiently. But the Cupertino company says Rosetta 2 offers faster performance and can translate apps the first time you install them. Apple promises the first systems equipped with its own silicon will arrive by the end of the year. Meanwhile, moving all Mac’s over to Apple’s silicon will be a two-year process. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Kevin Lee is IGN's Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

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