promising. And the difference between high-
spec Intel MacBooks and the new M1 chip,
which is only available in one configuration
as of 2020, was immediate: as pointed out by
developer Paul Hudson, the new M1 Mac
was able to unzip Xcode 12.3 beta in just five
minutes with just 16GB of RAM. His 64GB RAM i9
Intel-based machine, however, took 13 minutes
and 22 seconds: simply put, M1 is breakneck
fast, making Apple’s native apps and those
developed by third parties faster and more
capable than ever before.
What’s particularly exciting about the move to
M1 is that, in the years to come, competitors
like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm will have to play
catch-up, creating technologies that then push
Apple into even greater heights with its M2, M3,
and M4 chips in the years that follow. As we saw
with the first iPhone sold with an Apple chip, the
company has been able to build upon its speed
and architecture year-over-year, making more
advanced and impressive devices that just work.
Combined with industry-leading software like
iOS and macOS 11 Big Sur, which is the “next
generation of Mac,” and there’s never been a
better time to upgrade.
And it’s the interplay that Apple’s competitors
simply cannot match: until every Windows PC is
sold with a Microsoft-developed custom chip,
refined for each specific piece of hardware and
operating system, Apple has the upper hand,
making it the number one choice in PC. As early
benchmarks from John Gruber have found, what
makes M1 so threatening to chip competitors
is in how it handles macOS tasks, which are
now up to five times faster than on an Intel
chip, as Apple has built hardware specifically