Posts Tagged → arm

Microsoft’s M1 Moment

Microsoft has made a big deal about releasing its newest lineup of ARM-based PCs, which appear to be testing in the same ballpark as the M3. With the arrival of the M1, Apple caught the rest of the industry with its pants down. To compete, Microsoft needed an ARM-based platform, which it had been working on for a long time but really wasn’t ready for prime time.

This new lineup feels like a response to Apple’s M1 chip. In terms of processing, they appear competitive with the base M3 chip in performance. Moreover, several manufacturers are getting ready to adopt this platform with hardware that will be released as early as next month. That means there will be tablets and PCs with similar attributes to Apple silicon but running Windows. Microsoft is branding them as Copilot + PCs, with an emphasis on AI (like everyone else seems to be doing these days).

The above link contains videos and links to manufacturers, so if you’re curious about this, I recommend checking it out.

The net result of this will be that we get a lot of new hardware that runs in the ballpark with the M3 MacBook Air. It will be running Windows, but ultimately I think the competition will be good for Apple, and maybe encourage them to take a few risks with the types of platforms they use with their M-series SoC.

ARM-Based Macs Appear Inevitable

This week, Mark Gurman posted that Apple will announce a transition to ARM-based Macs at WWDC later this month. It is interesting how those of us on the outside have slowly arrived at the term “inevitable” concerning Apple putting a variant of the chip it makes for its phones and tablets in its computers. I think it will be an easy case to make to Apple customers.

By making their own chips, Apple cuts out a middle man, giving them more flexibility on price and raising their profit per unit. Moreover, no longer does Apple (or its customers) have to wait for Intel manufacturing delays to get sorted out before Apple can ship new Macs.

The most significant benefit, however, will be battery life. With a decent-sized battery and a power-efficient A-series chip, Apple could easily double (or triple) laptop battery life. I hope Apple looks at this as an opportunity to dramatically increase battery life and not dramatically decrease weight (by keeping existing battery life and just removing more of the battery).

It is interesting that while the existing Apple A-series chips are powerful, they’ve got nothing in a class that could power the iMac Pro or Mac Pro. Will Apple scale up the A-series for their more power-hungry Macs or stick with Intel for those. My money’s on former and not the later.

If you run Windows on your Mac, this probably isn’t good news. In your shoes, I’d buy one of the last Intel-based Macs and spec it up, so you’ve got several years of use in the tank.

Either way, I sure hope the rumors are true, and we get some news in a few weeks at WWDC. An ARM transition for the Mac is the kind of thing that pushes all my nerd buttons. If you’d like to learn more about this, former Apple engineer David Shayer wrote up a detailed breakdown of the hypothetical ARM transition over at TidBITS.