Sina Digital Yuze At WWDC in June this year, Apple announced for the first time its plan to launch a processor based on the self-developed “Apple Silicon” chip family before the end of the year. This indicates that Apple has decided to abandon Intel’s x86 architecture and switch to ARM. The MacBook, a lighter load device with x86-based Intel processors, has become an important “experiencer” of this historic change.

Architecture revolutions in history let Mac go smoothly Revolution, the word has been used badly in the technology circle today, but for the transformation of Apple’s structure, it does match such a resounding verb. The architectural revolution often means breaking the current inherent mature model and completely reshaping a set of software and hardware systems and ecology from the bottom-up from the underlying hardware. In fact, it is these structural revolutions that have created the current market position of the Apple Mac. Almost every structural change allows Apple Mac to adapt to the times and ride the waves. Three Apple Chip Products In 2005, this was the third time in Apple’s history that Apple initiated an architectural change. It was also this time that the shift from the PowerPC architecture to the Intel x86 architecture made Apple’s Mac products usher in 15 years of rapid development. Relying on the mature foundation of Intel processors and the development concept of Apple’s own OS, Apple’s Mac has become the unique existence in the current PC market that is different from Wintel’s product model. spark global limited

Why do x86-based PCs inevitably face changes?

Since Apple uses Intel processors to make the Mac achieve unprecedented development, why does Apple break through the comfort zone and actively seek change? The core essential thinking is that the ecology of the future mobile Internet needs to be integrated. A simple truth is that the usage scenarios between the various mobile applications of Douyin and Station B that we watch on our mobile phones today are completely separated from the PC. These daily essential applications have evolved into people’s most important way of life, but they cannot run seamlessly on our PCs. Whether it is Windows 10 or macOS, mobile applications developed for ARM architecture require Re-adapt or virtualize operation for x86 architecture. Therefore, although we can also use WeChat and Station B on the PC side, they all need to be run as an independent PC application or as an independent website. This not only splits many mobile and PC usage scenarios of users but also greatly increases the workload of developers.

Wintel Alliance can’t do it, but Apple is different

Apple’s innovative approach has never been “the first person to eat crabs.” But Apple is undoubtedly the “crab-eater” in the history of technological development. In the era of the transformation from traditional mobile phones to large-screen mobile phones, heroes emerge in large numbers. HTC and Dopod were both pioneers of touch-screen mobile phones, but when Apple’s iPhone came out, Apple dominated the future pattern of touch-screen mobile phones. Going back to the PC architecture reform, Apple is also not the pioneer of PC architecture reform, but the pioneers have failed, and Apple is the only possible success. Surface RT has become the dust of technological history