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So You Thought ARM Based Macs Would Be Slow?
I think “Apple Silicon” was the important phrase you missed
I wrote what follows before the M-series machines arrived. I’ve changed the title to reflect that, but the rest is as I wrote it.
When the rumors that Apple might switch Macs away from Intel CPU’s to ARM first arrived, almost every pundit I read opined that Apple would only be able to do that on the low end; that high-end professional machines would not switch because “ARM is slower than Intel.”
If you google “Why is ARM slower than Intel”, you’ll find reams of text explaining why this is true, has always been true, and forever will be true. Unless Apple made a major error in their 2020 Keynote address, it seems that they plan to drop Intel processors from all Macs, not just the low-end consumer machines.
There are certainly reasons Apple should drop Intel. Intel processors can be painfully expensive, especially at the high end. It’s also true that although Intel does make very fast chips, the pace of change at Intel has not been satisfactory to Apple. Finally, being able to control both the hardware and the software gives Apple the ability to attain maximum performance without worrying that someone else’s design change will affect them.
