Oh, it has been a tough couple of months for leading chipset maker, Intel. All Intel-powered devices are currently facing security threats (Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities), while Qualcomm has yet to take off as a desktop computing chip; it is mainly on mobile devices.
Apple is now said to be poised to go full throttle in the chip making business. As a matter of fact, the next soon-to-be-launched MacBook computers will not be powered by Intel; as it has been the case lately. This news is particularly bad for those of us who enjoy Apple solid hardware running Microsoft’s Windows. It is not clear yet if Apple’s chips will also support Windows; but I will not bet my money on it, judging by precedence.
Bloomberg publishes that Apple will, before the end of this year, release two new MacBook laptops and one iMac computer. They will all be powered by Apple’s new co-processors. These processors will be nothing like the previous ones Apple used to make.
To be clear, the chips were made by third-party chip makers like the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The new chips will not be outsourced, but Apple will roll up its sleeves and do all the dirty work by itself.
You might want to remember that Apple has been poaching Qualcomm employees, and that suggests the company could be working on its own sets of modems for its next generation of MacBook and iMac computers.
This development could also mean the MacBook and MacBook Pro, which have not been updated since 2015 could be up for a major overhaul on their successive release. Well, the fancy Touch Bar was introduced in 2016, but I don’t know if that counts as a major update to most MacBook users. When they do finally make some upgrades, Apple wants it to a statement, and what better way to achieve that than have them run on chipsets made by the company itself?