Sources: Apple working on three Mac models, including laptops and a new desktop, with custom co-processors; new iPad to be released toward the end of the year
The company already makes many of the chips for its iPhones, iPads, Macs and Watches. — For several years …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 report is the early signal in what became Apple's longest-running hardware arc: putting its own silicon inside the Mac. At this stage the custom chips are co-processors bolted alongside Intel CPUs in three new models — laptops plus a desktop — rather than a replacement for Intel itself.
The trajectory held. By 2020, Bloomberg reported Apple aimed to sell Macs running entirely on its own chips derived from the A14, with analyst Ming-Chi Kuo independently pointing to several Arm-based Mac notebooks and desktops, and by 2021 the roadmap had widened to MacBook Pros, Airs, Mac Pros, minis, and larger iMacs. The 2018 co-processor work was the beachhead.
First-order effects
- Apple's Mac engineering shifts further in-house: the three new models carry Apple-designed co-processors for specific tasks while Intel still supplies the main CPU, and a refreshed iPad lands late in the year on the same custom-chip pipeline.
Second-order effects
- Intel's role in the Mac narrows to commodity general-purpose compute as Apple's silicon absorbs the differentiated functions — the exact split that set up the full Apple-silicon transition reported in Apple's plan to sell Macs with its own chips from 2021.
Third-order effects
- If the co-processor-first pattern holds, it ends where the later coverage says it did: a Mac lineup designed around Apple's own processors across every model, with Intel reduced to a transitional supplier — the structure visible in the 2021 planning sweep across MacBook, Mac Pro, mini, and iMac lines.
The trend: Apple's Mac strategy moved incrementally from custom co-processors beside Intel CPUs to fully self-designed silicon, using specialized chips as the proving ground before replacing the main processor outright.