The Apple–Intel architecture, or Mactel, is an unofficial name used for
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tech ...
s developed and manufactured by
Apple Inc. that use
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...
x86 processors, rather than the
PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM ...
and
Motorola 68000 ("68k") series processors used in their predecessors or the
ARM-based Apple silicon
Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture. It is the basis of most new Mac computers as well as iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple ...
SoCs used in their successors. With the change in architecture, a change in
firmware
In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide ...
became necessary; Apple selected the Intel-designed Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) as its comparable component to the Open Firmware used on its PowerPC architectures, and as the firmware-based replacement for the PC