January can certainly be described as a historic month for Apple, because for a long time the first big highlight of the year always took place: MacWorld San Francisco. Held for the last time in 2009, one could always look forward to important hardware and software innovations. The event 20 years ago was particularly special because Apple was entering a new era. What was announced at WWDC 2005, namely the switch to Intel processors, has now manifested itself in the first two products. The MacBook Pro was born – and the iMac Core Duo also appeared The power of two G5 processors
The press release at the time said about the new generation of notebooks: “The MacBook Pro delivers dual-processor desktop performance in a slim notebook. The new MacBook Pro with the Intel Core Duo processor has the performance of not just one, but two G5 processors in a design that is just 2.6 centimeters thin.” But not only the interior was new, but also the name. While Apple’s notebooks were previously called iBook and PowerBook, the devices were now called “MacBook Pro” and a few months later also called “MacBook”.
15 years ago this was considered particularly thin
Lots of performance – lots of warmth
There was little to complain about in the performance of the new MacBook Pro and most users were excited about how much performance was possible in a slim computer. While this aspect is very similar to the experiences with Apple’s M1 conversion, there were also differences: The MacBook Pro was anything but cool, and anyone who used it on their lap quickly developed red spots – which, by the way, changed very little in the entire Intel era. The 32-bit architecture was also considered a minor flaw, as Apple only switched to 64-bit in the notebook sector with the Core 2 Duo in autumn 2006. This resulted in a somewhat strange picture, especially with the iMac: after a year and a half of the iMac G5 (64 bit), you now had to make do with 32 bit again.
The hardware presentation starts at 1:01:20
The reactions to the first Intel Macs
There was no “Intel inside” sticker that we feared – at least one point in which all sides showed relief or joy. Even though there were some radical opponents of the Intel switch, who Apple has been unable to please since then, approval prevailed. Apple finally has notebooks with high computing and graphics performance in its portfolio again, according to a frequently heard argument. At that time, it was not yet known that Apple was working on “Boot Camp”, i.e. official drivers for using Windows on the Intel Mac. It wasn’t much time until the next Intel Macs either. The Mac mini followed in February, the MacBook arrived in May, and the Mac Pro in August. Apple and Intel completed the switch just eight months after shipping the first x86 Mac – and therefore much faster than initially forecast.
…but soon the Intel era will be completely over
The last Mac generation with Intel chips dates back to 2020 (iMac 5K, August), since then updates have only been made with the in-house M processors. Even without Apple’s official statement last June, it would have been pretty clear what this means for system support: As of the next major release (macOS 27 in the fall), Intel will finally be over. macOS 26 Tahoe will therefore go down in Apple history as the last Intel-compatible major version.
