What it is: Intel recently revealed a security flaw that’s been part of their processor design for the past ten years.
Nothing in the computer world is completely reliable and secure. Usually security flaws appear in software such as in Adobe Flash or Microsoft Word. Sometimes security flaws appear in entire operating systems like Windows or macOS. What’s rare and potentially more critical is when a security flaw appears in hardware, not software. That’s because software can be patched with updates, which essentially overwrite the flawed program.
Unfortunately, the security flaw affecting Intel is part of the processor design. that means every Intel processor for the past ten years has this flaw and it’s impossible to patch a hardware flaw without essentially replacing the entire processor. Even worse, Intel will now have to redesign their future processors to eliminate this security flaw. In the meantime, every computer that uses Intel processors is at risk from this security flaw.
The only way to fix this processor flaw is to replace the processor, but that isn’t practical, so the clumsier solution is for each operating system to handle this flaw. This will likely slow down the computer by a minimal amount, but when you need absolute power and speed, such as in servers, every slow down becomes critical.
That means in the future, expect Windows, Linux, and macOS to issue updates that circumvent this security flaw. Since every modern Macintosh uses Intel processors, that means every macintosh is affected. In the PC world, that means AMD processors are more secure. Given a choice, companies can either wait for Intel to create new processors without this security flaw, but that could take several years for Intel to redesign their future processors. On the other hand, companies could simply switch to AMD processors for greater security.
Windows PC users have a choice between Intel and AMD processors. Macintosh users do not. That means until Intel fixes this security flaw in future processors, every Macintosh will be at risk and will depend on an updated version of macOS to fix this problem.
Ultimately, this is a huge problem for Intel. Complete security will always be impossible, so the best you can hope for is as few security flaws as possible. Macintosh users must wait for Apple to update maCOS to handle this security flaw. Until then, this security flaw is a huge black eye for Intel but won’t likely cause everyone to rush en masse to embrace AMD. However, this will only be good news for AMD because now they can promote their processors as not only being faster and cheaper than Intel processors, but more secure as well.
Perhaps future Macintosh models could switch to AMD processors, but most likely they will not to reduce possible incompatibility problems. (Then again, this could be a reason to push Apple into using their own ARM-based processors in future Macintosh models.) So if you have a Macintosh, you have a security flaw that you can’t fix on your own. Just keep in mind that nobody can exploit this security flaw on your computer as long as you practice good security habits to minimize the threat of outsiders accessing your computer in the first place.