RISC-y Business: What Apple Silicon Means for Mac Editors

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Apple has always had a real knack for setting the industry standard. Sure, they didn't invent the personal computer, nor the mouse, digital music player, or smartphone. But, they have implemented existing technology in such a high-quality, consistent manner that customers often demand these features in every product they purchase.

Once again, Apple is taking the initiative to push what might be the future of computer hardware with their transition from Intel processors to their own, home-grown Apple silicon.

Apple announced their transition from Intel chips to their custom ARM-based processors during WWDC 2020, triggering a firestorm of speculation from creatives and tech gurus around the world. What does the new chip design mean for software developers? How will this affect creatives using macOS? Will PC manufacturers follow suit?

While these questions may not be answered for years to come, I'd like to speculate on some of the ways this affects the video editing community and the possibilities we may see in the near future.

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Why is Apple Ditching Intel? Power, consistency, and heat management.

For years, Apple has manufactured their own processor chips for iPhones and iPads following an ARM-based RISC (reduced instruction set computing) architecture for computer processors. RISC processors divide complex instructions into groups of smaller, easily executable cycles of instructions. The result? RISC chips consistently require less power to operate, and therefore, create less heat.

Using Apple silicon in Macs targets the same effect: generate the same (or more) power with less heat.

The transition to Apple silicon will also establish a common architecture for software and app development across the entire Apple family of products, eventually including the high-end Mac Pro often favored by video editors. Mac editors may be weary of the price tag and power output of Apple silicon processors, but a more seamless experience with their iPhone, iPad, AppleWatch, and AppleTV is a benefit that's hard to ignore.

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What Can Creatives Expect from Apple Silicon? Let's be honest. Microsoft has been working on optimizing their Surface laptop for the creative community for years, and it hasn't really panned out. They released the Surface Pro X in 2019, a hybrid laptop with-pause for effect-an ARM-based processor. But reviewers felt that the Surface Pro X felt slow, not powerful enough for editing applications, and not feasible for the creative workforce Microsoft seemed so determined to attract.

So why is Apple silicon such a story? Is Apple really able to do for the editing community what Microsoft couldn't? The initial reports indicate: maybe.

With the increasing popularity of remote editing, many are looking for the

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