Apple-Intel divorce to be final next year

After twenty years, it's Intel outside

Apple's macOS operating system will drop support for Intel chips next year, marking the end of a twenty-year relationship.

At its Worldwide Developer Conference 2025, the iBiz confirmed that its forthcoming macOS 26 Tahoe release this fall will be the last to support Intel chips.

"Apple Silicon enables us all to achieve things that were previously unimaginable," said Matthew Firlik, senior director of developer relations, during the Platforms State of the Union keynote. "And it's time to put all of our focus and innovation there. And so, macOS Tahoe will be the final release for Intel Macs."

Apple began using Intel processors in 2006 with the release of a MacBook Pro sporting an Intel Core Duo chip. At the Macworld Conference in January of that year, then-Intel CEO Paul Otellini appeared on stage with then-Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs.

"One of the biggest reasons that we decided to switch to using Intel processors is because what drives us is wanting to make the best personal computers in the world and it became very clear that the way to do that was to use some of your newest technology that you'd be rolling out this year," Jobs said to Otellini at the time.

But the computing requirements for mobile devices were already changing the way the tech industry thought about processor design and energy efficiency. Performance per watt had become an issue around the turn of the millennium in datacenters and in high-performance computing. And it became a broader concern with the arrival of the iPhone in 2007 and the Android devices that followed. Around that time, major datacenter operators like Google made the case [PDF] for an even greater focus on performance per watt.

Hardware based on Arm's architecture has tended to have better performance per watt than Intel x86 hardware, at least in [PDF] some [PDF] studies [PDF]. And Apple took note. With the arrival of WWDC 2020, Apple announced the beginning of the end of its Intel partnership – it would start using its own Arm-based silicon.

By 2021, Arm declared, "Performance Per Watt is the New Moore’s Law."

Intel never quite managed to answer Arm-based silicon in the mobile market nor to respond to Nvidia in the GPU market. Its strategic blunders over the past two decades led to the ouster of former CEO Pat Gelsinger in December 2024.

In hindsight, Apple's decision to part ways with Intel looks prophetic. But it has also been slower than the Mac maker suggested.

When Apple announced its initial crop of products running Apple Silicon, it said the transition would take two years. But Intel-based machines like the 2019 Intel Mac Pro and the 2018 Intel Mac Mini were still being sold until 2023.

What's more, Apple generally makes security updates for macOS available for three years after release. So Intel hardware under macOS 26 Tahoe should linger at least until late 2028. ®