Apple to move away from Intel processors as it shifts to its own ARM architecture

At today's streamed Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) Apple announced that it has been looking to move its Mac laptops and desktops away from Intel processors and towards its own Apple Silicon. Demos at the pre-recorded event were created on Mac minis running Apple's A12 processors, identical to the ones running on the latest iPad Pros. Apple's last major architecture move was when it moved from PowerPC chips to Intel in 2005, Apple's A processors that have powered iPhones and iPads for the apst decade have shown staggering performance and great battery life. Moving the entire Apple hardware line to a unified ARM-powered architecture opens up a lot of opportunity for users and for developers.

Apple expects the transition to Apple Silicon to take around two years with the first Apple-powered Mac hardware shipping by the end of 2020 as per Tim Cook's on stage announcement. As for the majority of Mac users running on Intel, Apple says it will continue support for the foreseeable future. The advantage of Apple running its software on its own silicon include improved performance and continuous upgrade paths without the usual stalling that's happened with companies depending on Intel to iterate.

Because of the unified architecture, macOS desktops and laptops should be able to run millions of iOS apps natively on their computers. There is also the upside of powerful virtualization capabilities that allow users to run Linux or even Windows on ARM Macs in the future. 

The bad news for Intel is that it loses one of its premium customers as well as the support of software makers like Adobe and Microsoft who will focus on designing future apps for the new architecture. It will be curious to see if pricing of Apple products will be greatly affected once the transition to its own silicon takes place.