As part of WWDC last week, Apple announced that it will be switching to its own custom-designed processors for Macs starting later this year. As part of this transition, the company is allowing developers to apply for a modified Mac mini with an A12Z chip and 16GB of RAM to develop and test their apps on a Mac with Arm-based architecture.
As noted on Twitter and in the MacRumors forums, some developers are now beginning to receive this Mac mini, which is officially known as the "Developer Transition Kit."
/article-new/2020/06/mac-mini-developer-transition-kit-photo.jpeg?lossy)
Apple promises that its Macs with custom chips will have industry-leading performance per watt. Apple said it plans to ship the first Mac with its own silicon by the end of the year and complete the transition in about two years. One of the first Apple Silicon Macs will be a redesigned 24-inch iMac in late 2020, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Apple said that it will continue to support and release new versions of macOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come, and it also confirmed that it still has some new Intel-based Macs in development in the interim.
How many new transition kits would fit in the old transition kit? pic.twitter.com/mG0iTkJ4cY — Adrian Thomas 🇪🇺 (@adrianthomas) June 29, 2020
Transition Party @equinux #Apple #DTK Apple silicon #bigsur pic.twitter.com/OttdZocTWE — Till Schadde 🛴 (@TillSchadde) June 29, 2020
Top Rated Comments
What we saw was a relatively demanding x86 game running smoothly under Rosetta 2 on ARM hardware. Even if it's at 1080p and low settings that's fairly incredible. Anyone familiar with the PPC-Intel Rosetta will tell you binary conversion performance was nothing like that, especially regarding AAA 3D games at the time.
What you're basically doing is judging a French man by how spotty his German grammar is. The fact he speaks German fluently at all is impressive!
Wait until a high end Mac game is released that's actually compiled for the ARM chip before judgment. And then this is only an iPad CPU for the dev kit! We can expect a real ARM Macs to be a lot more powerful.