APPLE’S M-SERIES CHANGING THE
GAME
When Apple announced its irst M1-powered
devices in late 2020, the company received
an overwhelming amount of praise from
technology fans and professionals. Tom’s Guide
said that the chip “was a computing revolution”
ofering “remarkably fast performance”
over its predecessor, and TechRadar said,
“If Apple wanted to launch something
revolutionary, it certainly managed that.”
Early data from January 2021 found that the
rise in work from home and the introduction
of the M1 chip helped Apple ship 6.9 million
Macs in the fourth quarter of last year, up from
the 5.2 million it shipped in the same 2019
period, with the M1 chip reportedly one
of the biggest pulls. And with Apple now
slowly reworking its entire Mac range with new
design language, such as the 24-inch iMac
announced earlier this year, 2021 looks set to
be a bumper year for the company’s computing
sales - all thanks to M1.
But what’s perhaps even more interesting
is the impact the M1 chip has had on the
wider technology landscape, and how a more
fragmented manufacturing environment
could lead to even greater levels of innovation.
Microsoft, for example, reacted to the launch of
the M1 chip by conirming plans to work on
its own Surface ARM chips to compete with
Apple, and several others, including Google,
have conirmed their own ARM intentions.
Things really start to get interesting, though,
when you look ahead to the future and the
launch of the M1X or M2 chip, which has
reportedly entered production ahead of