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Your last point may be a bit of an understatement. It's going to absolutely annihilate x86 virtualization on the Mac. Like, I don't think parallels or VMware wi
by huebnerob 9y ago
Your last point may be a bit of an understatement. It's going to absolutely annihilate x86 virtualization on the Mac. Like, I don't think parallels or VMware will even attempt to write an x86 emulator for ARM, they'll just pack up and leave.
But the Mac thrived for a very long time without x86 compatibility, and it can do the same again, virtualization was always kind of a happy accident for us anyway.
- Bud 9y agoParallels and VMWare will just abandon their primary market? No they won't.
- 0x0 9y agoMaybe not Parallels, but VMWare Fusion always seemed like a skunkworks side-project that almost got killed off at least once. Their cash cow is enterprise hypervisors, not $60 consumer windows emulation, unfortunately. (Fusion has been serving me very well for windows and .NET development purposes so far)
- huebnerob 9y agoThey can try, but you can't get blood from a stone. Emulating x86 on ARM is going to give you grotesquely low performance, it's arguably not even the same category of problem that they currently solve (virtualization, not emulation). One thing they could run with is ARM-on-ARM virtualization, which is a more direct (heh) parallel to what they do on Intel now, but ARM hypervisors are less mature, and their practical applications, less readily apparent.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoDidn't Parallels start off with an Intel emulation before Apple switched to x86.
- huebnerob 9y agoThere was "Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac" which was x86 emulation for PowerPC but performance was abysmal.
- hug 9y agoVMWare's primary market is not Fusion. VMWare's primary market is vSphere -- and you don't run vSphere on a MacBook.
- vbezhenar 9y agoThere's Windows for ARM, so important Windows applications will be recompiled to ARM and those who stay behind probably can take that performance hit.
- archagon 9y agoExcept, like, all the games.
- snowwrestler 9y agoIIRC Windows games already sucked on Mac hardware, even booting natively.
- archagon 9y agoThe hardware isn't top-end by any stretch, but you still have the back catalogue of pretty much the entire history of PC gaming, plus less demanding (but still un-emulatable) indie games — to say nothing of eGPU use for modern gaming. (And even without an eGPU, I can still play Overwatch and CS:GO on my 2013 MBP at 60fps on low settings.) If my Steam library couldn't come with me, there's no way I'd get an ARM Macbook.
- vbezhenar 9y agoWhat's so special about games? Sure, old games might be abandoned, but supported and new games probably will be compiled for ARM as well. Of course it depends on whether ARM will be a commercial success and there will be sizeable number of ARM laptops.
- archagon 9y agoBut old games are the classics of the genre! Imagine if switching platforms meant you couldn't watch movies made from 1960 to 1990 anymore. Also, game companies lose source code all the time, and they often aren't interested in recompiling the code that they still have. (This comes up whenever compatibility-breaking iOS updates happen.) Frankly, I'd be surprised if even a game like Overwatch got an Arm port.