What about the applications you already own? Enter Rosetta. New applications bearing the Universal symbol will run natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Mac computers. The emulator was included with macOS Tiger, and could also be run in Snow Leopard, giving developers plenty of time to convert their apps, or users plenty of time to find alternatives. Rosetta allowed Intel Macs to continue to run apps written for PowerPC. Of course, it’s very likely that Apple will create an emulator, just as it did when the company made the switch from PowerPC to Intel.

Without pro apps, you can’t have a pro machine. Apple could pitch this as the most advanced MacBook, giving it premium appeal, before other Macs follow.īut there’s one big reason this is unlikely – why the first ARM-based Mac will almost certainly be a low-end one, like an entry-level MacBook Air: software compatibility.Īpps will have to be converted to run on the new architecture, and that will take time – especially for big pro apps like Photoshop. In theory, then, the first ARM-powered Mac could be, for example, a MacBook Pro. Why the first ARM-powered Mac won’t be a pro machine The different architectures make it difficult to predict the relative power of an ARM-based Mac against an Intel one, but there’s no reason in principle why an ARM-powered Mac couldn’t be more powerful than some of today’s machines … This lines up with previous timeline reported from Bloomberg, which cited late 2020/2021 timeframe, and other reports from publications like analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. We’ve been wondering for years when we might see the first ARM-powered Mac, and a Bloomberg report today suggests that it will be next year.Īpple is set to release its first Mac based on a custom ARM chip next year, according to Bloomberg.

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