Apple Says Goodbye to Intel, Microsoft Ships New Boxes
Apple's M1 chip debuts in redesigned Macs, ending 14 years of Intel inside, the same day Xbox Series X and S launch worldwide.
Two big hardware stories collided today, and they couldn’t be more different in flavor.
Apple held its “One More Thing” event and finally showed off the chip everyone’s been speculating about for months: the M1. It’s Apple’s first Arm-based system-on-chip built specifically for the Mac, and it’s landing immediately in three machines — a redesigned MacBook Air, a refreshed Mac mini, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro. That’s a fast rollout for a brand-new architecture, and it’s a genuinely big deal because it marks the end of Intel inside Macs after 14 years. Apple switched to Intel chips back in 2006, and now it’s walking that back in favor of silicon it designs itself, the same lineage that powers the iPhone and iPad.
The pitch is the usual Apple combination of performance and efficiency claims, but the more interesting part to me is what this means longer-term. Apple controlling its own silicon roadmap end to end — rather than waiting on Intel’s process node schedule — gives it a lot more flexibility to tune chips specifically for macOS. The tricky part is software: existing Mac apps built for Intel will need to run through Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer until developers ship native Apple Silicon versions. How well that translation holds up in real-world use is the thing to watch over the coming weeks. If Apple pulls this transition off cleanly, it’s a template other platform vendors will study closely. If it’s rocky, we’ll hear about it fast from developers and reviewers.
Meanwhile, new consoles hit shelves
On the same day, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S went on sale worldwide. It’s a slightly unusual choice to have a marquee console launch share a news cycle with an entirely new Mac chip architecture, but here we are. The Series X is Microsoft’s high-end box built around fast SSD storage and a big push toward higher frame rates and resolutions, while the Series S is the cheaper, smaller sibling aimed at players who don’t need 4K.
Launch day for any console is as much about supply as it is about specs, and early signs suggest demand is going to outstrip what’s on shelves — that’s been the pattern with pretty much every major console launch in recent memory, and there’s no reason to expect this one to be different, especially heading into the holiday season.
It’s a strange but fitting bit of symmetry: one company betting on custom silicon to redefine what a laptop can do, another betting on custom silicon (and a giant SSD) to redefine what a living room console can do. Chip design is having a moment across the entire industry right now, and today felt like a preview of how central that competition is going to be for the next several years. Worth keeping an eye on how both of these actually perform once real hardware gets into real hands over the next few weeks.