Steve Jobs died more than a decade ago, but his genius still pervades the tech industry. Forget the technology: the Apple co-founder taught other executives that, whatever was going on inside the casing of a smartphone or under the hood of a computer, the only thing that mattered to consumers were products and experiences that he liked to call “magical”.
So it has come as something of a surprise to see Apple give such prominence at its recent events to the technical performance of its in-house chips. The company first came up with its own processor design for the original iPad more than a decade ago, but its silicon prowess has really come to the fore since 2020, when it began replacing Intel processors in the Mac with its M1 chips.
Since then, it has delivered performance gains that have blown away the competition. Two larger versions of the M1 followed, before Apple this week yoked together two of its biggest M1 chips to power a new, pricey workstation aimed at video-editing professionals.