Your MacBook Pro Is Dying, Long Live Your MacBook Pro – Forbes

By the end of this year, Apple will have a MacBook Pro on sale that is powered by an ARM-based processor of Apple’s own design. It will offer the macOS laptops a new lease of life and a chance for Tim Cook and his team to redefine what it means to be an Apple laptop. 

And that means that the current MacBook Pro lineage has reached the end of the line. In its place will be (with a nod to Douglas Adams) a new laptop that will be almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the MacBook Pro that it is named after.

The biggest change has been heavily trailed and developed. Apple confirmed that it would be switching the Mac platform away from the Intel-based processors it has been using since 2006, to its own design of ARM-based processors. Although not yet confirmed, the expectation is that the upcoming A14 processor designed for the iPhone 12 will pick up an X variant that will be used in both the next-generation iPad Pro, and the first MacBook Pro with macOS on ARM laptop due to be released later this year.

The question of older apps built for the Intel platform running on the ARM platform has not yet been answered publicly. It’s a problem that Apple will be acutely aware of, and there will be a significant amount of time and resources invested in this project. Many of the initial impressions of the new macOS platform will be guided by how wide, stable, and fast running Intel apps on an ARM machine will be. 

As the new platform gathers pace, developers will switch their attention away from the legacy versions to focus on the latest updates on the new platform. No doubt some updates will be backported to Intel, but there will be a distinct ‘before’ and ‘after’, and the MacBook Pro is squarely in the ‘before’ side of things.

It won’t just be third-party developers who will take this view. Apple will be focusing on pushing the ARM platform forward and taking advantage of the ARM feature set to differentiate the platform. No doubt key features to keep Intel machines hooked into Apple’s cloud will be backported, but the part of the appeal of moving to ARM is the advances that can be made in hardware and software that are not possible on the older platform.

The possibilities of integrating the macOS platform into iOS and iPadOS to a greater degree is going to be an easier proposition with the three platforms running not just on the same architecture, but the same chipset. The lines between the Mac, the iPhone, and especially the iPad and iPad Pro are going to become blurred. It’s something that is already influencing the UI of macOS 11; the move towards an iPadOS like interface is clear. 

The MacBook Pro is a workhouse laptop that millions rely on both for work and for pleasure. As a standalone computer it can work outside of Apple’s pervasive cloud of services. It does not lock away the file system, limit media sources, or restrict access to payment services. It can sideload applications without the developer requiring Apple’s permissions (although the notarisation requirements for one-click installs are making that less attractive).

As Apple moves towards an integrated platform and bringing its laptop range closer to the closed world of its smartphone and tablet devices, the Mac platform will move away from the powerful vision of computing that Steve Jobs implemented. Tim Cook’s tightly controlled mobile platform is drawing it in.

Cook’s Apple is ready to pull the trigger on a move that will accelerate this process, and it is the move to ARM. The MacBook Pro that many love and rely on is going to see a significant change that will change what it means to be a MacBook Pro.

Your old MacBook Pro is, in technological terms, about to die. The new laptop will still be called the MacBook Pro, but it’s going to be a different beast.

Now read more about the long-term support that Apple should consider for existing Mac owners…