68K to PowerPC in 1994-1998, on to Intel in 2006-2009, and to Apple silicon from 2020. The 68K emulator, Rosetta, and Rosetta 2 that enabled backward compatibility.
PowerPC
From the first 8 MHz Motorola 68000, through PowerPCs reaching 2.5 GHz and more in up to 4 cores, and Intel x86 with up to 28 cores, to Apple’s M4 Max with 12 P cores at 4.5 GHz.
As Apple was getting its first PowerPC Macs working, two engineers wrote the first native app for them. But in Mac OS X it was replaced with an inferior app.
How have the CPUs in our Macs become faster since the Macintosh 128K was launched by Steve Jobs forty years ago?
The cores in the M1 and the chip itself are thoroughly Apple designs, and work hand-in-glove with macOS using techniques like out-of-order execution and hints to optimise performance.
Processors haven’t just increased in speed and packed more transistors into a smaller space. Features such as the Neural Engine in the M1 show Apple is moving in a different direction.
Look forward to Universal Apps, which will show how well Apple Silicon Macs perform. There’s a lot of history buried in them too.
WWDC provided more pieces for the jigsaw of the Mac’s future, but there’s one significant piece still missing.
A new tool to report the architecture including 64-bit compatibility of any app, code bundle, or command tool. Free of course.
New iMacs were very welcome, but Apple is telling us about its future plans. Will these new versions only sell for the next year? What will replace them?
The Eclectic Light Company 