Apple today completed its transition to Apple silicon three years after it announced it would officially ditch Intel for its entire Mac lineup in favor of in-house chips. At WWDC 2023 today, Apple announced an updated version of the Mac Pro, which was the last remaining Intel-based computer in the lineup.
As of June 2020, the company announced it would take “around two years” to transition its entire Mac lineup to Apple silicon. The M1 chip was initially paired with updated 13-inch MacBook Pro, 13-inch MacBook Air, and Mac mini models in November 2020, marking the beginning of the transition. The company has since then expanded its chip lineup with higher-end variants and redesigned the Mac line entirely.
Aside from the base chip, Apple offers three other variations in the M series: Pro, Max, and Ultra. Each chip in each line of chips provides increased performance, with the high-end Ultra chip being the most powerful. Today at WWDC 2023, Apple announced the M2 Ultra chip, rounding out the M2 line. Apple announced the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips in January.
Over the course of two years, Apple announced a redesign of the iMac, MacBook Pro, and the all-new Mac Studio. The new designs were enabled thanks to the efficiency of Apple silicon chips and were previously not possible due to the thermal nature of Intel processors.
In March 2022, Apple teased that an Apple silicon-based Mac Pro was still in development, but didn’t say when it would be released. As a result, Apple’s Mac Pro still held a stale spot in its lineup, as several Geekbench scores for the smaller and significantly cheaper Mac Studio with M1 Max and M1 Ultra chips surpassed the $10,000+ machine.
