Sources: Apple aims to sell Macs with its own chips starting in 2021 and is working on three Mac processors based on the 5nm A14 chip in the next iPhone
- New processors to be based on iPhone designs, replacing Intel — Transition will be gradual, start with less-powerful computers
Context & Ripple Effects
The groundwork was visible for years: back in 2018 Bloomberg reported Apple building three Mac models with custom co-processors, a quiet first step toward owning more of the Mac's silicon. This report makes the endgame explicit — three full Mac processors derived from the iPhone's A14, replacing Intel outright.
The arc then moved fast: an Arm-based shift announced at WWDC, Apple Silicon MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros targeted for spring 2021, and by late 2021 Apple and TSMC were reportedly planning 3nm Mac chips with up to 40 CPU cores. The through-line is Apple collapsing the phone-Mac divide into one chip pipeline.
First-order effects
- Intel loses its last major captive design win as Apple's low-power Macs move first to in-house A14-derived chips, shrinking Intel's premium laptop socket count starting in 2021.
- Apple's Mac roadmap decouples from Intel's tick-tock cadence, letting Apple ship Mac processors on its own schedule alongside the iPhone's annual A-series cycle.
Second-order effects
- TSMC becomes the structural winner, capturing both Apple's iPhone and now Mac wafer demand and deepening the foundry's lead that later shows up in the reported 3nm Mac plans.
- Rival PC makers face pressure to answer with their own differentiated silicon or Arm designs rather than commodity Intel parts, since Apple can now tune performance-per-watt at the OS-chip boundary.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, consumer computing consolidates around vertically integrated chip programs — Apple controlling architecture, software, and packaging from iPhone to Mac Pro — while merchant CPU vendors compete mainly for the non-integrated remainder.
- A successful gradual transition would normalize Arm-class architectures in mainstream desktop and pro computing, eroding x86's default status for general-purpose PCs.
The trend: Personal computing is consolidating around vertically integrated, mobile-derived silicon pipelines, with Apple's Mac transition the clearest test of whether Arm-class chips displace x86 at scale.