If this is true, it’s been fun Apple.
I feel like we’ve already been down this road.
However, I suppose that at this point Apple has enough money to actually do its own fabrication.
Macs are a tiny amount of PC sales and Apples own too. But this will still get a tsunami amount of coverage because its…Apple.
I know a lot of people that switched to Mac because they switched to Intel processors. Most of us will leave and return to Windows. I don’t want to even think about how Office and other third party programs will handle this transition (if at all).
Apple already designs their own SoCs. They don’t do fabrication though, they use TSMC.
Apple sells many, many more iPhones than computers, so volume wouldn’t be a problem at all. Blockers would be in performance and compatibility. While Apple’s mobile chips compete quite well with low/mid-end Intel/AMD CPUs, they don’t compete at the high-end at all. And that’s not a trivial problem to solve.
Compatibility is one spot where Apple is infamous for saying “fuck it” and telling all their vendors and developers that they’ll need to support ARM for MacOS by 2020 or they can eat a bag of dicks.
Note Windows does run on ARM now, with an x86 translation layer that actually performs OK. Nowhere near native speeds to be sure, but it’s not unusable either.
Yeah, I’m curious about this.
It seems inevitable, especially if the idea of iOS and macOS apps as some sort of universal binary pans out. Not running Windows on a Mac isn’t a deal-breaker, but I’d be curious how some of the security macOS tools I use would run.
For me, at least, this isn’t something I need to worry about unless my fairly new MacBook Pro shits the bed during the transition.
The Intel transition seemed like they did ok with Rosetta around for a few years.
This feels like another “courageous” move by Apple, in that it’s something nobody other than Apple wants.
I can’t figure out why people who would buy Macs would care about running iOS apps on them, but who knows. The reality is that iOS has pretty much all the productivity stuff you need, including MS Office, which is actually pretty good.
But for pro users? Why is Apple bothering to make an iMac Pro and a completely redesigned Mac Pro desktop if they’re going to transition to ARM?
Well, lots of iOS apps aren’t available on MacOS. But the main reason is more of a “what the hell why not?” sort of thing.
Rumors are that the pro-level machines won’t be transitioned to ARM, as it doesn’t have the performance yet. So really we’re talking about the ultraportable Macbook, the Macbook Air refresh, and maybe the lower-spec iMacs.
Well there’s talk going around about the demise of Windows, too. The next 5-10 yrs will be interesting
If there was a Linux-based laptop I had the same level of confidence in w/r/t support and tools and such for developing on (not to mention hardware/build quality), I’d ditch MacOS in a heartbeat. Sure does beat the absolute motherfuck out of Windows for my own work purposes, though.
Well, pretty soon you will be able to use Linux tools on Windows…
Yeah, but then I’m still using Windows. Which is only tolerable for the purposes of games, because stupid DirectX.
Assuming I can run the apps I want – and I’m assuming since 90% of them are Mac App Store apps it’s a safe bet* and I can get 20 hours battery life, sign me up.
Yeah, it feels like we are on the edge of a big shakeup. I’m not going to lose any sleep over the Apple SoC transition until it’s announced and there are details.
*the Github Security Tools will be a different thing
I hope they do it. It’s ambitious. Reminds me of the old Apple
I mean, I’d hate if Apple took over the entire PC market with a locked down system. But shaking up the current stagnation sounds great.
I would agree for the most part. My favorite software is Mac only (or at least primary Mac), so outside of losing Excel, it wouldn’t bug me too much. Excel would be a major hit for me though.
On the other hand, back when I have my G5 iMac, not much Windows stuff showed up on Mac. Occasionally you would get some great game ports, but it wasn’t as likely as it today where a lot of the publishers put our Mac versions. I’m not sure I want to go back to those days.
I love the idea of a future where we don’t have separate computers, we just plug our phones into a screen and keyboard for when we need more screen space. On the Apple side, this seems like a first step.
You would, I assume, use Excel’s iOS version. No idea if it’s any good, but iOS Word is fine.
It’s fine up until it isn’t. Outside of Macros, there is a lot missing from iOS word like editing styles, inserting table of contents, the references tab, etc.
Excel in MacOS is terrible compared to Windows. The only reason I keep Windows on Bootcamp is for Excel (well, and because macOS auto corrects ligature misspellings in Arabic, seriously fucking with data analysis I’m doing for a Syria-related project).
Still? They merged the codebase between Mac and Windows Office a year or two ago. It’s all the same aside from the minor OS UI differences.
They say that, but I have a pretty hefty newish iMac that still doesn’t run my larger spreadsheets as well as my 4 year old PC does. My PC can handle anything I throw at it in excel. My Mac struggles with it, even after the supposed parity update.
Anyway, Excel on iOS is perfectly fine for entering data, I would never want to design anything on it though.