Intel flies out of Apple: In the future there will be Macs with their own processors from the iPhone manufacturer. But what was the decisive reason for this step? An insider knows more and is now unpacking.
Apple justified the Intel’s departure on the WWDC-Keynote primarily with the performance of your own processors. The A-series not only became faster and faster over the years, but with all the power in the end it also used less energy – Intel can probably not keep up in the long run, says the iPhone-Manufacturer. However, Apple has not explicitly emphasized that it will most likely even save money in the end.
The separation from Intel: Skylake was too much for Apple
However, this was probably not the only reason behind this incisive step led. François Piednoël, former chief engineer at Intel, now provides an insightful perspective. He gave it Website PCGamer an interview and revealed the real reason that got Apple’s decision rolling. The 6th generation core processors were launched in 2015 (Codename Skylake). Not a highlight for Intel, because many Intel customers had to deal with dozens of errors and complained to the chip manufacturer.
The reasons from Apple’s official point of view for the change – explained in the video:
Piednoël now gives protocol:
“Skylake’s quality assurance was more than just a problem, it was exceptionally bad. We got too many complaints about trifles within Skylake. Basically, our friends at Apple have become number one in architectural problem solving … if your customer starts finding almost as many bugs as you found yourself, that’s not the way to go. “
In short: The engineers at Apple were anything but satisfied and ultimately even did the job that Intel was supposed to do. You start to ponder and start thinking. Piednoël continues:
“For me, this is the turning point. That’s the moment when the Apple guys, who were always thinking about switching, went to look at it and said, well, we probably have to do it ourselves. ”
For Intel’s former chief engineer, this was the end of the drop that overflowed the barrel and thus the real reason why Apple now wants to go its own way. His concise essence is:
“Basically, Skylake’s poor quality assurance is responsible for actually saying goodbye to the platform.”
No dogmas: the legacy of Steve Jobs
Of course, this is not the only reason, because Piednoël also mentioned the fact that Apple has always considered switching. Only at some point will the decisive spark be needed. Apple deliberately keeps several doors open and makes a pragmatic decision in the end, dogmas no longer exist. The move to Intel 15 years ago was also such a rational consideration.
Fifteen years ago it was Steve Jobs who announced the move to Intel:
This flexible thinking once brought Steve Jobs back to the company. As a reminder: Before his second time at Apple, Jobs founded Next, which was later taken over by the iPhone manufacturer. The NeXTStep operating system first ran on its own hardware (68k), later as OPENSTEP, the system opened for other architectures such as x86, SPARC, PowerPC or PA-RISC – depending on requirements and hardware offer. NeXTStep, OPENSTEP? We know today as the clock of macOS – once also Mac OS X and OS X.
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