Decent (Tech-Illiterate Friendly) Article(s) explaining Apple Silicon transition

[Yebubbleman]

This might be a bit meta, but I consult for various friends and family with regards to their Apple needs. I'm pretty decent at explaining tech things to the tech-illiterate, but I figure I might do better with explaining what the transition is, what it all means, and why they might want to hold off buying a new Mac until after the Apple Silicon transition is in progress with actual shipping Apple Silicon Macs.

The MacRumors post/article on it is really good. I'm wondering if there's anything similar (maybe shorter in length), but even more tech-illiterate-friendly just to give said friends and family (most of whom will be in the market for the Mac models rumored to make the jump first [i.e. Air, 13" Pro, smaller sized iMac]) just so they know why I might be telling them to decide whether or not they should wait for Apple Silicon models to show up.

Anywho, if you know of such an article that you'd like, I'd love to see it! Thanks in advance!

 

[MisterMe]

This might be a bit meta, but I consult for various friends and family with regards to their Apple needs. I'm pretty decent at explaining tech things to the tech-illiterate, but I figure I might do better with explaining what the transition is, what it all means, and why they might want to hold off buying a new Mac until after the Apple Silicon transition is in progress with actual shipping Apple Silicon Macs.

The MacRumors post/article on it is really good. I'm wondering if there's anything similar (maybe shorter in length), but even more tech-illiterate-friendly just to give said friends and family (most of whom will be in the market for the Mac models rumored to make the jump first [i.e. Air, 13" Pro, smaller sized iMac]) just so they know why I might be telling them to decide whether or not they should wait for Apple Silicon models to show up.

Anywho, if you know of such an article that you'd like, I'd love to see it! Thanks in advance!

This just isn't that hard. Apple has taken the Macintosh through two processor transitions and its about to take the line through a third processor transition. For all of the caterwauling on MacRumors, each of the previous transitions were largely transparent to the user. I have not upgraded from Mojave to Catalina because I have a mission critical application that will never be updated to 64-bit. This means that I will not upgrade to Big Sur.

My issues have nothing to do with Apple Silicon. When I am ready to consign my 2015 MacBook Pro to second place, I will have settled on a replacement for my mission critical 32-bit application. I have made similar decisions several times in the past--most of them having nothing to do with the processor. This is part of life as a decades long Mac owner. New Mac users don't have decades of investments in workflows and file formats. Their new Macs will be awesome machines that just work.

 

[Jouls]

Apple has taken the Macintosh through three processor transitions and its about to take the line through a fourth processor transition.

There were just two previous cpu transitions for the Mac: 68k -> PPC and PPC -> Intel.

 

[MisterMe]

There were just two previous cpu transitions for the Mac: 68k -> PPC and PPC -> Intel.

Thank you.

 

[ascender]

To be honest, the easiest way to explain it is probably that they're taking the processors from the iPhones and iPads and putting them in to their laptops & desktops because they're better than the current options from Intel.

One of the upsides will be that all of those apps you love on your iPhones and iPads will just work on your Mac now and you can download them from the App Store.

Most users could probably make the switch whenever they next need to buy a machine, but if you do something very specialised (unlikely if they're tech illiterate), you might want to hold off.