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While technically it would be fascinating to have an ARM based MacBook - just imagine what Apple could do with more power/thermal budget - the big deal breaker

by _ph_ 10y ago

While technically it would be fascinating to have an ARM based MacBook - just imagine what Apple could do with more power/thermal budget - the big deal breaker will be the compatibility with x86 baseded code. Currently Macs are very popular because they can run (partially via VMs) basically any program written in the last decade. This is not easy to give up, especially on the MacBook Pros. There could of course be an entry level ARM MacBook. Unless of course, they make some processor which can run both ARM and Intel code, but that sounds a bit far fetched.

manmal 10y ago
They could start requiring bitcode for Mac App Store submissions, and compile things to ARM and x86 as long as they have to support both platforms. Or they could just bring iOS to their desktop class computers. Also, why not emulate x86 apps on ARM? Sure, that would be terrible for games, but might work well for most productivity apps.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  The operation system is not the problem. They for sure have a full macOS for ARM working. Its the applications. Most desktop apps are not sold via the App Store, and there are the VMs (Windows, Linux) to think about. For my work for example, I need to be able to run x86 binaries at full speed. So an ARM based Mac would not work for me.
- 90minuteAPI 10y ago
  Unfortunately, bitcode is too low level to use for cross-compiling. It's an intermediate representation that's already "on its way" to being code for one architecture. It is more useful for supporting a new CPU feature or maybe working around a compiler bug without fully recompiling.
krylon 10y ago
IIRC, Longsoon is a modified MIPS chip with extensions designed to allow running x86 code via qemu very efficiently (relatively speaking, at least). Since Apple designs their own cores, they could attempt doing something similar with ARM. Apple controls both the hardware and the operating system, so they could build such an emulation layer into the OS. I have no idea how crazy this idea is in reality, but in my imagination it could be done.

by _ph_ 10y ago

manmal 10y ago

They could start requiring bitcode for Mac App Store submissions, and compile things to ARM and x86 as long as they have to support both platforms. Or they could just bring iOS to their desktop class computers. Also, why not emulate x86 apps on ARM? Sure, that would be terrible for games, but might work well for most productivity apps.

_ph_ 10y ago
The operation system is not the problem. They for sure have a full macOS for ARM working. Its the applications. Most desktop apps are not sold via the App Store, and there are the VMs (Windows, Linux) to think about. For my work for example, I need to be able to run x86 binaries at full speed. So an ARM based Mac would not work for me.
90minuteAPI 10y ago
Unfortunately, bitcode is too low level to use for cross-compiling. It's an intermediate representation that's already "on its way" to being code for one architecture. It is more useful for supporting a new CPU feature or maybe working around a compiler bug without fully recompiling.

krylon 10y ago

IIRC, Longsoon is a modified MIPS chip with extensions designed to allow running x86 code via qemu very efficiently (relatively speaking, at least). Since Apple designs their own cores, they could attempt doing something similar with ARM. Apple controls both the hardware and the operating system, so they could build such an emulation layer into the OS. I have no idea how crazy this idea is in reality, but in my imagination it could be done.