What is Apple Silicon? Which devices does it support? What are the advantages?

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What is Apple Silicon?

During the WWDC keynote, Tim Cook announced that just as Apple transitioned Macs from PowerPC to Intel processors, they are now transitioning their devices from Intel to Apple Silicon. So, what is Apple Silicon?

At the 2020 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple made several announcements, with perhaps the biggest being the company's move away from Intel chips to its own new architecture, called Apple Silicon.

Learn about Apple Silicon

Apple Silicon brings a unified architecture across all Apple products, making it easier for developers to write and optimize software for the entire Apple ecosystem. On November 10th, Apple introduced its first Apple Silicon chip for the Mac M1, as well as new MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini supported by the M1. With the new chip and a generation of Macs built without Intel chips, Apple has finally made the transition not just talk, but a reality happening right now.

What is Apple Silicon?

Essentially, Apple Silicon is an extension of the ARM-based chip used in the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, for the Mac. This has brought all products in Apple's hardware ecosystem under the same design.

By creating Apple Silicon themselves, Apple has more control over how macOS and Mac hardware work together. M1 is the first Apple Silicon chip for Mac, bringing a tremendously powerful increase in performance and efficiency.

Advantages of Apple Silicon

Using Apple Silicon in Mac also means that Macs can now run iPhone and iPad apps. This means for the first time you'll find iOS and iPadOS apps in the Mac App Store.

- Running iPhone and iPad apps on Mac through the Mac App Store.
- Rosetta 2 allows you to run apps created for Mac using Intel chips on Apple Silicon. And sometimes apps run in Rosetta with the M1 chip perform better than with Intel chips.
- Universal apps are apps created for both Apple Silicon and Intel processors, and can be downloaded from the Mac App Store or the web.

Although the new Apple Silicon chip has not been around for long, software developers have been very diligent in adapting their apps to fit this new chip. Recently, VLC Media Player officially announced support for Apple Silicon. Refer to detailed information here.

Check out: VLC Media Player now officially supports Apple Silicon

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