At WWDC 2020, Apple confirmed that it’s moving away from Intel’s chipsets and will be replacing them with its own silicon. The company uses its proprietary processors on the iPhone and iPad. Now, even Mac will get the same treatment.

The company is ditching Intel’s traditional so-called x86 desktop chips for Apple’s own processors based on ARM designs. The latter is already found on mobile phones and hence, Apple also showed off macOS can now run iPhone apps without a glitch. This transition means that Apple is trying to bridge the gap between a mobile, tablet, and a laptop with a singular operating system.

Besides, the shift to Apple’s own ARM-based chips gives the firm even greater control over its hardware and software. This closed and tightly controlled infrastructure ensures maximum optimization. However, Apple’s new silicon isn’t a standard processor.

It promises very powerful machines that are drastically more efficient. This means it can deliver high performance without draining your battery in an instant. Furthermore, it could bring the option of having on-board data connectivity via cellular services.

While Microsoft has been trying to shift Windows to an ARM-based architecture, the results have been mixed. Apple, on the other hand, has already ported all its apps to the new ARM-based chips, including its professional apps such as Final Cut Pro. It also showed us a live snapshot of editing on Adobe Photoshop and confirmed that Office apps are also good to go.

Apple is pushing a new Universal 2 format that allows developers to produce one app that runs on both existing Intel Macs and new ARM Macs. The company has confirmed that it’ll take two years to completely switch to ARM-based chipsets. In the meanwhile, a few more Intel-powered Macs are in the pipeline.