---
title: "The Apple Silicon transition is complete."
date: 2023-06-06
url: https://remiam.co.uk/notes/apple-silicon-transition-complete
tags: [Apple, Apple Silicon, Industry]
read_time_minutes: 5
description: "WWDC 2023 — Apple completes the Silicon transition with the M2 Ultra Mac Pro. Reflections from three years of running ARM-based Macs in a working studio."
---

# The Apple Silicon transition is complete.

*Published 2023-06-06 · 5 min read · by Liam (Remiam)*

Apple just launched the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra. Three years to the month after the WWDC 2020 announcement, every Mac in the lineup is now on Apple's silicon. The Intel era is officially over.

Apple announced the M2 Ultra Mac Pro at WWDC this week. With it, the entire Mac lineup is now on Apple Silicon — MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, Mac Pro. Three years and a few weeks since Tim Cook's keynote. They actually did it.

## What worked

- Rosetta 2 turned out to be remarkable. We barely think about it now — most of the time, x86-only software 'just runs' and at decent speed.
- The Mac developer ecosystem moved fast. By mid-2022 nearly every tool we used had native ARM builds.
- Battery life claims held up. M-series Macs genuinely last all day on a charge in real use, not just in Apple's measured tests.
- Thermal behaviour is consistently quiet. Three years in and our Pros barely spin a fan.

## What didn't, until late

- Docker was slow for a year. It improved, then improved more, then became fine.
- Adobe took longer than they should have. Photoshop and Lightroom are finally first-class on Apple Silicon.
- External GPU support never came back, because the architecture doesn't really need it for most workloads.

> The Mac is the best laptop platform in the world, by a clearer margin than at any point in our careers. Three years ago that wasn't true. The transition delivered.

## What the Mac Pro tells us

The Mac Pro is now an Apple Silicon machine with PCIe slots and almost no upgradeable memory. That tells you everything about how Apple thinks about modularity — they don't, anymore. For 99% of users that's fine. For the high-end studio market, this is the one piece of the transition that feels like a compromise rather than a step forward.

Three years ago we wrote: 'If the chip is half as good as the rumours suggest, the Mac is about to have a five-year head start.' That looks like an understatement now. The Mac is the best laptop platform in the world, by a clearer margin than at any point in our careers.

## References

1. [Apple — Mac Pro with M2 Ultra launch announcement](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/apple-introduces-the-new-mac-pro-with-apples-most-powerful-chip-ever/)
2. [WWDC 2023 keynote](https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-events/)