Papermaster's decision to move from IBM to Apple Inc. in 2008 became central to a court case considering the validity and scope of an employee non-compete clause in the technology industry.

During those fifteen years he worked closely with IBM's PowerPC architecture[7] and microprocessor,[9] which Apple had adopted for its line of Macintosh computers.

Spending five years working specifically with PowerPC and becoming an expert on IBM Power microprocessors chips and the Power ISA,[7] Wired reports that “Papermaster was a key player in developing the PowerPC chips used in [early] Macs.”[6] Papermaster moved from microprocessors to become vice president of the Blade Development Unit in October 2006.

[5] Although the device proved popular, issues such as a slow release of a white version and reception flaws with the antenna resulted in controversy.

[26] Also in 2017, Papermaster announced that AMD would continue to develop hardware using both its new Vega graphics architecture and its older Polaris system.

[26] Papermaster is periodically asked to comment on industry trends such as Moore's Law Plus,[29] immersive technology,[11] and machine intelligence.

[31] He has also written articles for publications such as Dark Reading,[30] ET Tech,[32] Forbes,[33] IEEE Test & Design Magazine,[34] Inc.,[35] and Network Computing.

[39] In 2017 he spoke at the Strategic Materials Conference,[40] and he also gave a talk on Moore's Law Plus at the IEEE Industry Summit on the Future of Computing in 2017.

[42] Papermaster is a member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Olin College Presidents Council, and the advisory board at Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas.