Apple announced on Monday its plans to move away from Intel processors to its own ARM-based Apple Silicon in its Mac lineup.
PCGamer reports former Intel engineer François Piednoël tells them that the final breaking point in the relationship between Apple and Intel was the introduction of the Skylake architecture in 2015.
The Skylake processor platform was plagued with problems, and Apple made the highest number of complaints about the platform to Intel.
The quality assurance of Skylake was more than a problem, it was abnormally bad. We were getting way too much citing for little things inside Skylake. Basically our buddies at Apple became the number one filer of problems in the architecture. And that went really, really bad.
Apple first included Skylake processors in the 205 iMac, and also used them for the launch of the 2016 MacBook and MacBook Pro models. “Basically the bad quality assurance of Skylake is responsible for them to actually go away from the platform. […] Apple must have really hated Skylake,” said Piednoël.
While the issues with Skylake may have been a tipping point for Apple, it’s no secret that the Cupertino firm is all about controlling every aspect of its products, and began making its own processors with the 2010 iPhone and iPad, both of which used APple-produced A4 silicon.
Once the performance of the A-series chips reached desktop level and beyond, it was inevitable that Apple would eventually move its Mac platform onto its own “Apple Silicon.”