22 Macworld • January 2022MAC
have been seriously impressed that
Intel had managed to make those
processors and that Apple had been
able to ship them in its laptops.
Bottom line: Apple’s skill in making
chips for iPads and iPhones does
translate to the Mac, after all.THERE WERE VERY FEW
GROWING PAINS
Shifting to an entirely new processor
architecture isn’t easy, but Apple
has done it to the Mac three times,
and in every case it’s acquitted
itself well. That said, there’s
probably nobody left at Apple who
worked on the PowerPC transition,
and even the Intel transition is
probably only a distant memory
in the mind of the most grizzled of
veteran Apple engineers.
And yet the streak remains intact.
In fact, I’m tempted to call the past
year painless. Compatibility has
largely been a non-issue, starting
with Rosetta 2, the code-translation
system that allows Intel-based apps
to run on Apple silicon without trouble.
Rosetta got a huge leg up with the
speed of the M1 chips, of course – it’s
a lot easier to run translated code
when it’s running on a really fast
processor – but Apple also did a good
job in letting translated apps tie intonative code that runs at full speed.
(For example, an Intel-built game
using the Apple silicon-native Metal
graphics engine may run faster on an
M1 Mac than it did on an Intel model.)
As someone who relies on a few
apps that were what Steve Jobs used
to call “laggards” – they took a long
time to run natively on Apple silicon,
or are still not there – I am happy to
report that they run just fine, to the
point where it doesn’t matter that
they’re not native. (And yet, I am
angry at those laggard developers,
because I know their software could
run much faster than it does. One of
these days they’ll release an update
and all of a sudden, those apps will
fly. I continue to wait.)
Even better, it seems like there
are very few apps that are actually
laggards. Most of my apps embraced
Apple silicon very, very quickly.
That’s down to the flexibility and
motivation of Apple’s developer
community, and to Apple for
providing them with tools to make
the transition relatively painless.THE COMPETITION DOES
NOT HAVE AN ANSWER
Apple’s long-time frenemy Qualcomm
insists that it is going to make chips
that can match up with Apple silicon –