Apple Silicon: Why 'Boring' Incremental Updates Are a Sign of Success

The launch of the first M1 Macs marked an extraordinary period for Mac users. These initial Apple silicon machines, while visually similar to their Intel predecessors, delivered superior performance in every conceivable aspect.

As John Gruber observed in December 2020: "We knew this to be true: Computers could run fast and hot, or slow and cool. For laptops in particular, the best you could hope for is a middle ground: fast enough and cool enough. But if you wanted a machine that ran really fast, it wasn’t going to run cool (and wasn’t going to last long on battery), and if you wanted a computer that ran cool (and lasted long on battery), it wasn’t going to be fast. We knew this to be true because that was the way things were. But now, with the M1 Macs, it’s not. M1 Macs run very fast and do so while remaining very cool and lasting mind-bogglingly long on battery. It was a fundamental trade-off inherent to PC computing, and now we don’t have to make it."

Many users, including myself, quickly embraced these new capabilities. From the initial M1 MacBook Pro to subsequent 14-inch models equipped with chips like the M4 Max, each iteration offered significant performance gains, surpassing even professional-grade Intel machines.

Apple silicon has been an undeniable advantage for the Mac platform. Yet, with the announcement of the M5 chip, a sentiment of "boredom" or "just another boring incremental upgrade" has surfaced more often than expected.

This perceived "boringness" is, in fact, the objective.

During the PowerPC and Intel eras, Macs sometimes experienced multi-year gaps between meaningful hardware updates, as Apple depended on external partners for components. This led to issues like failing NVIDIA cards or noisy, overheating Intel iMacs. While some past Mac hardware problems were Apple's own doing (e.g., the butterfly keyboard or the prolonged stagnation of the Mac Pro), the situation has fundamentally changed.

With Apple silicon, Apple now possesses full control over the core technologies within its products—a long-standing goal of its leadership. This autonomy enables the company to deliver regular updates to its Systems-on-a-Chip (SoCs), consistently improving both power and efficiency.

A predictable update schedule naturally leads to incremental advancements. The progression from "revolution" to "evolution" is a positive development; not every release needs to be groundbreaking. This consistent, iterative improvement is how technology has evolved for decades.

It appears some individuals have short memories. Before Apple silicon, there was a collective desire for steady, predictable progress in Mac hardware, with each product line receiving regular updates instead of languishing for years. For the most part, Apple has delivered on this promise. The progress from M1 through M5 is evident in performance charts:

These charts illustrate significant gains, especially considering the typical computer replacement cycle. Apple's comparison of the M5 to the original M1 in its announcement underscores this point: for most users who don't upgrade annually, each new chip generation represents a substantial improvement.

This is precisely what was sought when Apple transitioned from Intel. To label these developments as "boring" five years in is to misinterpret the profound success and strategic intent behind Apple silicon.