The switch to x86 from PPC turned out to be such a ridiculous win in terms of overall performance and compatibility that the community's initial reaction (omg!

The switch to x86 from PPC turned out to be such a ridiculous win in terms of overall performance and compatibility that the community's initial reaction (omg! Nooooo!) was defused. Apple also did a good job with Rosetta, which they kept around for quite some time. You'll note that Intel has folks that have done binary translation of ARM in an attempt to grab some mobile market share. The same could be done on the x86 => ARM side. But it only works if the result is fast enough. We're probably still not that close today, but what odds would you take on 5 years? If most of the software folks are writing on macs is for other Apple ARM-based products, it doesn't sound so crazy to emulate x86 for people doing "server" work.