Overview
- Apple began its shift in June 2020 and shipped the first M1-powered Macs in November 2020.
- Across generations, CPU gains of roughly 10%–30% per cycle and GPU improvements have culminated in a base M5 that is about twice as fast as the original M1.
- Apple added neural accelerators to the M4 for CPU-side AI tasks and extended them to GPU cores in the M5 to reflect how AI software actually runs.
- Average annual Mac revenue rose from about $25.5 billion in the five pre-transition years to roughly $33.7 billion during the Apple silicon period.
- Apple redesigned the lineup with models such as Mac Studio as the Mac Pro’s advantages narrowed, and today the chip mix is uneven, ranging from an M1 MacBook Air sold at Walmart to an M2 Ultra Mac Pro, an M3 Ultra Mac Studio, widespread M4 models, and a base MacBook Pro on M5.