New report suggests Apple is planning Mac shift from Intel to ARM in 2020

Yet another report indicates Apple is masterminding a shift from Intel to in-house developed ARM chips for its Macs and MacBooks

New reports have emerged that Apple is planning a shift from Intel to in-house developed ARM-based microprocessors for its Mac and MacBook PCs and laptops.

The reports come a day after it new evidence emerged that the company plans to make it possible for developers to write apps capable of running on both its iOS mobile operating system and its MacOS PC operating system without modification.

The latest report, which echoes claims made repeatedly since 2015, comes from online news site Axios, which reports that "although the company has yet to say so publicly, developers and Intel officials have privately told Axios they expect such a move as soon as next year".

For Intel, it added, while such a move might be awkward, it wouldn't hit the company's bottom line too much. It could, though, represent one of the first cracks in the dam, with ARM-based microprocessors from contract foundries typically much cheaper than Intel's PC and server processors.

Microsoft has already ported Windows to ARM with an emulation layer enabling traditional Windows applications to run on it - unlike the aborted Windows RT operating system that ran on the Microsoft Surface RT, but couldn't run conventional Windows apps. Apple's move, therefore, has the potential to spark a broader shift across the computer industry.

Reports this week that Apple is planning a shift from Intel to ARM have come hand-in-hand with reports of in-house initiatives to make iOS and MacOS apps cross-platform compatible.

Just last year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claimed that an initiative, codenamed Kalamata, was in the "early developmental stages" but had already been approved by senior executives at the company.

Gurman added that Apple could ship computers based on its own ARM-based processors as early as 2020, but noted that the move would be part of a "multi-step transition" in a larger effort to make iOS devices and Macs "work more similarly and seamlessly together".

That would appear to reference what Bloomberg called earlier this week Project Marzipan, the inititative to make it possible to run the same app across both iOS, an operating system that runs on ARM devices, and MacOS, which was switched from Motorola's PowerPC architecture in the mid-200s to Intel - and which could be switching again 15 years later.