Apple Inc. today announced the company’s intention to move away from Intel Corp.’s chip architecture in order to lean into its own Arm Ltd.-based Apple Silicon.

Announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference starting today, all online, the move is intended to build out a common architecture for all Apple devices so that design language and app development will be seamless throughout the company’s ecosystem.

Tim Cook (pictured), chief executive of Apple, also announced the upcoming release of the newest version of macOS named “Big Sur.” This new operating system will include a visual design overhaul of the user interface and take advantage of the new Apple Silicon architecture.

“Now it’s time for a huge leap forward for the Mac,” Cook said, “because today is the day that the Mac is transitioning to our own Apple Silicon.”

This move was predicted by reports that Apple’s strategy to dominate silicon would become a shift toward its own custom chips. Although the presentation revealed very few deep technical specifications about the new chips, Cook and other presenters did reveal the long-term vision for new products and the overall Apple ecosystem built on this new silicon.

The inspiration for the new silicon comes from looking at the mobile needs of the iPhone, with which Apple sought to build silicon that pushed performance per watt as much as possible. With the iPad, another mobile device, higher performance was needed and that pushed the original line of Apple Silicon. Compared with the first iPad, the current iPad Pro is more than a thousand times faster, and that happened in about a decade.

Building on that, Apple’s new chips are aimed at providing the most performance possible while also consuming as little power as possible. To do that, the new chips will include greater efficiency, low-power technologies and scalable performance for graphics and compute. Since the move was driven by the need for chips for mobile, that means that there will be a common architecture across all product lines.

“At Apple integrating hardware and software is fundamental to everything we do that’s what makes your products so great and Silicon is at the heart of our hardware,” Cook said.

Every native Apple app in macOS Big Sur will use a new version of XCode, which has been designed with hooks and application programming interfaces optimized for the new Apple Silicon. This will also use Universal 2, a bytecode language that will run on both the Apple Silicon and Intel chips, so there will be no need to develop apps twice.

The transition to Apple Silicon is designed to be as seamless as possible and macOS Big Sur will use Rosetta 2, an emulation software that can translate apps from earlier macOS versions so that they run seamlessly on the new version. It can even handle the most complex pro apps and their plugins. Virtualization in Big Sur will also allow the execution of other operating systems, such as Linux, in order to allow a wider variety of apps.

Thanks to the common architecture, iPhone and iPad apps will also run on directly on the new Macs with Rosetta 2 under the hood, though it’s not clear how well they will work on the different form factor.

To get developers going on the new Mac architecture as quickly as possible, Apple is launching the Developer Transition Kit. These units look like little Mac Mini machines that include some powerful hardware and all the software needed to get started. Developers can sign up for access to the program today at Apple’s Developer Portal.

The transition for developers starts this week with the Quick Start Program. The overall shift to Apple Silicon is expected to take about two years, with first Apple Silicon-based Macs to start shipping around the end of this year.

“I am very disappointed Apple didn’t provide a lot of technical details to give confidence to users and developers in the Arm-based processor Mac experience,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategies. “At a minimum, the company should have put a number on the emulation performance penalty. We know Apple will profit from a reduced bill-of-materials cost, but before developers lift a finger, they should ask themselves what they get from making investments to changes any of their code.”

Even with this transition, Apple still has plans to ship further Intel-based Macs for years to come.

MacOS 11 “Big Sur” updates follow feature and app changes seen in iOS 14

The upcoming macOS 11 will be called “Big Sur,” and it will introduce an entirely new design and major updates to essential apps on the platform including a completely new design. The OS’ design refines and iterates on the iconic elements of the macOS interface. This includes the addition of easy to use widgets and notification features.

MacOS also includes upgrades to Messages, Maps, Memojis and Search that follow the updates coming to iOS 14, also announced today. Those apps will include product features such as updated iconography, sidebars, feature-organized drop-downs and other interface feature design elements for ease of use.

Mac Catalyst, a tool that allows developers to migrate an app from iPad to Mac more easily, will follow upgrades to the macOS interface that will make it simple to provide features that interact with native Mac capabilities.

All of the new features also include updates to all core macOS apps as native software that can immediately take advantage of Apple’s newly announced custom silicon. They will also tightly integrate with developer tools that will be designed to make it easy for apps to transition quickly and seamlessly to new Mac hardware as it releases.

The Safari web browser now has an average speed 50% faster than Chrome and will feature upgraded JavaScript rendering with even greater speed, according to Apple. Developers will now get access to WebExtension, which will give developers the ability to easily and safely migrate extensions for other browsers and use the App Store to add them to Safari.

The new Safari will include a raft of new privacy and security updates as well, including a brand-new privacy dashboard that will give users better control and visibility into what information is being requested and revealed.

“Apple Silicon will bring amazing technologies, industry-leading performance and a common architecture across all of our products,” said Cook. “Our OS releases will be available as developer betas today, and each of them will have a public beta starting next month. And all of them will be available to our customers this fall.”

Photo: Apple/livestream