Two years ago, Apple made waves with its announcement of Apple Silicon, starting with the M1 chip for the MacBook. This announcement sent ripples through the tech space, mainly due to Apple’s shift to an ARM-based architecture, moving away from Intel’s x86 standard. While this initially sent shivers down the spines of developers, Apple quickly quashed those fears by shedding light on how the new chips could be leveraged for the next generation of mobile computing.
When Apple first announced the M1 chip, many were skeptical about how applications built for older Macs would work for the new chip. A silicon-level change would inevitably result in compatibility issues and badly-ported code, but Apple also changed the accompanying architecture. However, the execution of the shift put developers’ fears to rest.
From documentation to execution, the M1 chip quickly became one of the biggest game changers for Apple developers. Two years later, applications developed on Apple Silicon have become pervasive across the entire Apple ecosystem. So, the question remains: How did Apple script a convincing success story for M1 chips without breaking the compatibility of older devices?
A smooth transition
To begin with, Apple announced that the Xcode, a mainstay for Apple developers, will update all older codes to run natively without issues on Apple Silicon. For applications not developed on the platform, Apple created Rosetta2, a compatibility layer that allows x64 and x86 applications to run on the ARM-based M1 chips. This prevented the new chips from breaking compatibility with Intel-based Macs, ensuring long-term support for older laptops.
Alongside the M1 release, Apple also launched the Universal App Quick Start Program. Under this initiative, Apple provided access to documentation, forums, a developer transition kit, and beta versions of Big Sur and Xcode 12. This allowed Mac-first developers to get ahead of the curve when creating apps for the new platform. When the platform came to market, Apple released comprehensive documentation regarding the development of the new chip.
ARM development was a big reason for Apple to move to the custom-built M1 chips, as this unified the ecosystem in a big way. The new architecture brought together iPhones, iPads, and Macs under ARM, further simplifying the development process. With M1, developers could make iOS and iPadOS applications work on Macs with no additional changes. This meant that companies that had already poured resources into developing standalone apps for iPadOS could port them to M1 chips without spending additional time and money.
Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Adobe’s director of product management, said this about developing on M1. “We’ve seen extremely impressive results across our native applications, from launch through workflow, These gains are even more profound in workflows [that] rely heavily upon the deep integration with Apple Silicon.”
Developers were also surprised with the performance gains that came from using Apple Silicon. Due to the various advancements that came with the architecture like unified memory and the in-built Neural Engine, developers were able to see a 2x improvement in day-to-day tasks with no falloff in power consumption. Xcode users saw a huge improvement in compiling code, with programmers also finding ARM-specific bugs while developing on the platform.
The Neural Engine specifically was used to a great extent by machine learning developers, aided by Apple’s own focus on ML. The company has also released a software development kit called CoreML that allows developers to leverage Apple Silicon to bring optimisations to their programs. In addition to this, CoreML also enables on-device inferencing for models, as well as support for cutting-edge neural networks. This focus on enabling AI development also attracted an audience of ML developers, as CoreML was directly integrated into Xcode and offered compatibility with Python through a plugin.
Apple’s history with developers
Due to their history of creating discrete operating systems, Apple has long had a focus on attracting developers to their ecosystem. The company has created the Apple Developer program, a website hosting all of Apple’s development tools, APIs, and technical resources. It also contains documentation for Apple’s tools, and is considered a valuable resource for those in the ecosystem.
Developers have also flocked to Apple products mainly due to their well-documented and easy-to-use developer utilities such as Xcode. Apple devices are also prized by developers owing to their security and stability, as the devices barely have any attack vectors for malware or other types of viruses.
MacOS is based on the UNIX architecture, making it a breeze to set up a robust cross-platform development environment. The UNIX kernel, coupled with Apple’s easy-to-use development tools makes it easy for developers to create iOS applications.
In a nutshell, there were three main factors that solidified the developer ecosystem for Apple Silicon. First was Apple’s commitment to enabling compatibility with x86 and x64 applications through Rosetta2. Second was the ability to deploy iOS and iPad applications without additional development time, and the third was the huge performance gains that came from implementing custom silicon, along with advancements like the Neural Engine and CoreML. These factors not only made existing Mac developers’ lives easier, but also incentivised developers to switch from other platforms to Mac, scripting a success story that is sure to only continue Apple Silicon’s meteoric growth.