20 years of Intel Macs: Why Apple switched, and why it switched again

Article excerpt

Apple's shift away from Intel processors culminates with macOS 26, marking the end of a 20-year chapter that began in 2006 when the company abandoned PowerPC chips. The last Intel-compatible Macs will receive security updates for two more years, though Rosetta, Apple's translation layer enabling Intel software to run on Apple Silicon, will linger in some form beyond that. This transition mirrors Apple's earlier processor swap: both moves traded compatibility concerns for performance gains and tighter hardware-software integration, yet both required years of overlap to avoid abandoning existing users.