If You Have An Intel Mac, You Should Make The Move To An Apple Silicon Mac Soon
The days of Intel based Macs are over. Which means that if you still have an Intel Mac, you should strongly look into making the move to an Apple Silicon Mac within the next year or two. Now I know that this sounds harsh, but it’s true. And I am basing that on two reasons.
Reason #1: Apple has completed its transition (though I will mention that they were late in doing so) to Apple Silicon by releasing the Apple Silicon version of the Mac Pro this past Monday at the World Wide Developer’s Conference. The Mac Pro was the last Intel based Mac in Apple’s lineup. And as long as that Mac existed, it gave Apple an incentive to develop features inside macOS to support that Mac. But now that the new Mac Pro is out, and it’s powered by a M2 Ultra chip, there is zero incentive for Apple to develop any new features for Intel based Macs in their operating systems. Never mind provide any support for them in the long term. That brings me to my next reason.
Reason #2: You’re already seeing Apple deciding not to provide key features found on Apple Silicon Macs on Intel Macs. Take macOS Sonoma which was announced this past Monday at the World Wide Developer’s Conference. The following features in that version of macOS are not going to be in Intel Macs:
- Presenter Overlay utilizes a Neural Engine-powered feature called Lift Subject from Background. It places your cutout from the webcam feed over content in a presentation.
- Screen Sharing gets easier — for Apple Silicon Macs — thanks to the advanced media engine. This makes sharing more responsive over high-bandwidth connections.
- The newly abbreviated wake word “Siri” is only available for Apple Silicon-equipped Macs and AirPods Pro 2.
- Game Mode takes advantage of Apple Silicon’s SoC design by prioritizing gaming for the CPU and GPU while also reducing latency with wireless accessories.
- Made-for-iPhone hearing devices can pair directly with Apple Silicon Macs (excluding those with a base M1).
And on top of that, the list of Macs that can run macOS Sonoma is short:
- iMac 2019 or later
- iMac Pro
- MacBook Air 2018 or later
- MacBook Pro 2018 or later
- Mac Pro 2019 or later
- Mac Studio
- Mac mini 2018 or later
Keep in mind that Apple Silicon appeared in 2020. So that means that the only Intel Macs that can run macOS Sonoma are from 2018 onwards. That means that there’s maybe 2 years of of operating system support left for those Macs. Maybe three at the most. And what that also means that past a certain point, even security updates won’t be available for Intel Macs. And that would leave those Mac owners wide open to security threats that will never be fixed.
Taking both of those reasons into consideration, that makes now the time to start planning to make the switch to Apple Silicon. Because based on Apple’s previous track record with the switch from PowerPC to Intel many years ago, Apple will likely just wake up one morning and pull the rug out from under Intel Mac users and leave them scrambling for options. You don’t want to be that person. Thus it makes sense that you should start the process of making this transition while you have time and you can calmly consider your options.
June 8, 2023 at 2:33 pm
What about us folks whop use Windows 10 on the MacBook Pro 20190 model with Intel chip with Bootcamp? Is there a solution for us with the new Silicon devices? Thanks.
June 8, 2023 at 2:55 pm
There is no virtual Intel support on Apple Silicon Macs. The closest thing to running Windows is to use either Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion. The former being the easier option for most people (I use the latter as I am fully in the VMWare ecosystem, but it’s much harder to implement). But in either case, you’ll be running the ARM version of Windows. Not the Intel version.
June 10, 2025 at 9:25 am
[…] Mac, you should invest in an Apple Silicon one sooner rather than later. I’ve said this in 2023, 2024, and just recently. Now Apple has seemingly put the final nail in the coffin of Intel Macs by […]