Macs will start the transition to ‘Apple Silicon’ away from Intel silicon in Q4, Tim Cook announced at WWDC yesterday.

The transition is expected to take two years in which time more Intel-powered Macs will be introduced. Intel-based Macs will get software updates for “years to come”, said Cook.

Apple Silicon is called ‘A12Z Bionic’. In performance it is said to be close to Apple’s 2018-vintage A12X. Both Z and X have 8GPU cores clocked at 2.48GHz.

Apple will be offering a ‘developer transition kit’ –  a Mac Mini with the A12Z Bonic chip with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

A new version of Rosetta, Rosetta 2, will allow user to run apps made for Intel Macs on Apple Silicon Macs. Rosetta 2 translates code when apps are installed or used.

For Intel the transition may be a blow to its pride but not so much to its financials. Mac revenues for Intel were 6% of its PC processor revenues which were $37 billion last year in a total Intel company revenue of $72 billion and it won’t even initially be the full 6% hit as Apple will still produce Intel-based Macs for up to two years.