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Apple is reportedly planning to abandon Intel hardware by 2020

Apple’s Mac lineup is reportedly gearing up for a major hardware shift that could end up leaving some users out in the cold. According to Bloomberg, Apple plans to abandon Intel chips as early as 2020, bringing Apple’s own A-series processors to Mac hardware.

The report is a little thin, but this is huge news for Mac users, with some far-reaching implications. First, when and if Apple replaces the processors in Macs and MacBooks with its own A-series chips, that might mean Apple’s Boot Camp software — the easy-to-use installer that lets you dual-boot Windows on Mac hardware — could end up meeting an untimely demise.

Back when Macs and MacBooks ran on non-Intel processors, they were traditionally incompatible with Windows, which meant there was no easy way to run your Windows-only apps on a Mac. Even after Intel processors were introduced, there was a thriving cottage industry for emulators like Parallels which allowed users to have a Windows environment living in MacOS.

In recent years, it’s become easier and easier to just dual-boot Windows using Boot Camp, so software like Parallels hasn’t been as necessary. If Apple starts using its own processors in Macs, that could mean apps like Parallels will become a necessity for anyone who still needs to conduct part of their workday in a Windows environment. And it also means the face of Mac gaming is about to change forever.

Gaming on MacOS has never been a huge industry, but in recent years Boot Camp has given Mac gamers an easy way to get the most out of their games. Windows is better at handling GPU resources than MacOS is, especially on Macs and MacBooks with discrete graphics cards. That means you get better performance, a wider selection of games, and generally a better gaming experience overall than you could get from gaming in MacOS.

If Apple makes this switch and kicks Intel to the curb, you might see better day-to-day performance in MacOS, since Apple’s A-series chips are very capable in their own right. But the change could disrupt a number of niche software ecosystems that currently thrive in the Intel-MacOS environment.

Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
Apple Intelligence: Here’s everything we know so far
Apple Intelligence features.

Apple Intelligence is Apple's take on AI, and it looks to fundamentally change the way we interact with technology, blending advanced machine learning and AI capabilities into everyday devices.
Promising more conversational prose from Siri, automated proofreading and text summarization across apps, and lightning-fast image generation, Apple's AI ecosystem is designed to enhance user experiences and streamline operations across its product lineup. Here's everything you need to know about Apple's transformational new AI.

Apple Intelligence release date and compatibility
Apple Intelligence was originally slated for formal release in September, coinciding with the roll out of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. However, as Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported, Apple subsequently decided to slightly delay the release of Intelligence. It is currently available to developers as part of the iOS 18.1 beta release on September 19, though it's looking unlikely that Apple Intelligence will be released publicly before the official 18.1 roll out scheduled for October, per Gurman.
https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1817632719175901531
The company has specified that, at least initially, the AI features will be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, as well as iPads and Macs with M1 or newer chips (and presumably the iPhone 16 handsets as well, since they'll all be running iOS 18). What's more, the features are only available at launch when the user language is set to English.
Why the cutoff? Well, Apple has insisted that the processes are too intensive for older hardware, as they utilize the more advanced neural engines, GPUs, and CPUs of these newer chips.
Users who run an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max part of Apple's Developer program gained access to an early version of Intelligence in July with the release of iOS 18.1 beta.

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