Apple Execs Talk M2 Chips, Gaming on Macs, and More in Interview

Apple’s VP of Platform Architecture and Hardware Technologies Tim Millet and VP of Worldwide Product Marketing Bob Borchers recently sat down for an interview with TechCrunch where the pair talked about the tech giant’s homemade M-series chips, gaming on Macs with Apple silicon, and more.

Millet, who has been at Apple for almost 17 years and has been building chips for 30, said the introduction of the M1 chip in 2020 was “about resetting the baseline.” That is exactly what Apple’s M-series chips have done, putting Macs in an entirely new league of performance and energy efficiency.

Since then, the company has transitioned almost the entirety of its Mac lineup (we’re still waiting on an Apple Silicon Mac Pro and iMac Pro, though) to M-series chips, along with several iPad lines as well.

Millet said that Apple was never focused on pure peak performance with the M1 chip. From the very start, the company wanted to maximize performance-per-watt and ensure its machines delivered comparable experiences when plugged in and on battery power.

“We wanted to have the ability to build a scale of solutions that deliver the absolute maximum performance for machines that had no fan; for machines that had active cooling systems like our pro class machines. We wanted to…move performance per watt to the point where we delivered real usable performance in these in a wide range of machines.”

More recently, Apple has fleshed out its M2 Mac lineup with the launch of new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, as well as a refreshed Mac mini with a choice between the M2 and M2 Pro.

“The M2 family was really now about maintaining that leadership position by pushing, again, to the limits of technology. We don’t leave things on the table,” Millet continued.

“We don’t take a 20% bump and figure out how to spread it over three years…figure out how to eke out incremental gains. We take it all in one year; we just hit it really hard. That’s not what happens in the rest of the industry or historically.”

Borchers added that Apple is building products, not parts, with the tighter integration allowing the company to really push its components.

Even though the advent of Apple silicon has greatly improved gaming performance on Macs, Apple’s machines still lag behind their PC counterparts.

However, the Apple execs noted that the company is working on remedying that, bringing Mac GPUs up to the task of gaming, improving Metal and adding support for modern APIs used in developing games, and seeding Macs to make the platform enticing for devs to put in the work of porting their games over to.

“The story starts many years ago, when we were imagining this transition,” said Millet. “Gamers are a serious bunch. And I don’t think we’re going to fool anybody by saying that overnight we’re going to make Mac a great gaming platform. We’re going to take a long view on this.”

As for anyone wondering when the best time to buy a Mac is, Millet said, “I really, with full sincerity, believe now is always a good time…Nobody should be shy about it.”

Check out the full interview with Millet and Borchers over on TechCrunch.

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