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There are certainly many signs over the last few years that point to ARM Macs. I don't mind what CPU my Mac runs on, but I am worried about how long I'll be ab

There are certainly many signs over the last few years that point to ARM Macs. I don't mind what CPU my Mac runs on, but I am worried about how long I'll be able to play older games, run the occasional Windows/Linux software, and dabble in OS hacking or low-level tinkering to add custom features, on the same machine. The seemingly gradual lockdown of macOS – mandatory "notarization", moving system files to a read-only volume, and disallowing kernel extensions in the future* – has generated some concern where before I used to just trust Apple to know what's best for everyone. I welcome the extra security as long as we can manually bypass it if we really want to, but I warily wonder if the move to ARM Macs will come with a macOS that is almost as locked-down or "sanitized" as iOS. * As mentioned during this WWDC's Platforms State of the Union.

bredren 7y ago
I have used multiple gens of the MacBook Air for web programming—often docked—most recently w the assist of an egpu. I am interested in battery efficiency, raw cpu and graphics performance and do not care to do low level tinkering on my Mac. I do expect it to be much more open to tinkering than iOS, but I also welcome the litany of security measures introduced so far and caution when it comes to executing wild code that affects my privacy. I realize this puts me further in with trusting Apple to make good compromise decisions on what is possible and the hoops they create for developers on Macos, but I trust they will mostly make the right call for me. It’s certainly been better than when I’ve had to deal with windows over the past decade.
- cheeze 7y ago
  > do not care to do low level tinkering on my Mac You may not, but many do. Those many may actually be a small minority, but it would really suck for those folks. At the end of the day, sometimes I need to run random x86/64 executables and there isn't any way around that. I could deal with a performant virtual machine.
  - gigatexal 7y ago
    Drivers are moving to userspace. What more low level access do you need other than that if you can write your own driver for things?
    - sieabahlpark 7y ago
      Boy I can't wait to write my own driver to use a program that I bought.
      - gigatexal 7y ago
        It was just an example. What applications require hardware support that isn’t baked in? Surely the Mac isn’t being used in an industrial space with niche one off instruments? The point is more things are moving to userpsace and Apple is controlling the kernel as, I think, they should.
        Fnoord 7y ago
        Kernel extensions I use out of my head. USB to ethernet dongle. Little Snitch. Karabiner. Hammerspoon. NTFS read/write driver. I really doubt they will all remain working but the dongle is hardware.
        gigatexal 7y ago
        As with all such changes there will be with time either open source or manufacturers who support the new user space / kernel lock down mode. What you’ll likely experience is temporary loss of use as things transition. In any case the benefits outside of your specific use case outweigh the headaches in just security alone.
- brian-armstrong 7y ago
  You already have to opt into kernel extensions in a very explicit way. I don't think what you mentioned about privacy is actually relevant to this dicussion.
- amelius 7y ago
  So would you be ok with a security model like iOS has, but on MacOS?
  - kraftomatic 7y ago
    I like to use my Mac as a normal *nix machine, however I have a lot more trust in my iPhone from a security POV these days. I can see a case for a much better desktop/laptop security model.
  - terramex 7y ago
    Not OP, but I certainly would not be ok with that. iOS is system build mostly for content consumption and designed for non-technical users. As such it has to be protected from both external threats (malware etc) and users themselves (social engineering, phishing protection). macOS is for me my workbench for content creation and I want it to protected from external threats but I do not want it to be protected from me. Even having to go into System Preferences and typing in my password to run unsigned apps since 10.12 is driving me crazy. When is comes to privacy, today everything is web app anyway. And to be honest I would feel my privacy would be much more secure if I could run latest version of uBlock Origin in Safari, but I cannot. For native apps I want to decide if I trust them or not. The only new thing I would love to see in macOS is easy blocking of internet access for particular apps.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      >Even having to go into System Preferences and typing in my password to run unsigned apps since 10.12 is driving me crazy. Does right clicking and hitting "Open" not work anymore?
      - tkxxx7 7y ago
        It certainly still does, but a lot of people don't know or have forgotten over the years.
- nfellaby 7y ago
  There is a significant community in the (biological) sciences that are reliant on the Mac platform as an intermediate between Windows based applications such as Office and, importantly, the often highly specific programs/scripts/applications created for Unix platforms for analysis. Ignoring these users would be a mistake. Personally, after 13 years of Macs any computer I'm buying in the near future are going to be Linux based because of the current trajectories Apple have decided to take. Just insight from a different community I guess.
  - manderley 7y ago
    Wouldn't running Windows 10 and the Microsoft Subsystem for Linux make way more sense for these users? Seems more like inertia that is keeping some on the Mac.
    - AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
      In academic environments there is often no dedicated IT department, so all support is done by the technically versed colleagues. Replacing machines with Macs has always resulted in an enormous reduction of these support calls, in my experience. Moving back to Windows would destroy all of that.
    - nfellaby 7y ago
      I agree, the Microsoft subsystem for Linux will draw many more users away from macOS in the future. When I was starting post-graduate studies/research there was no such support from Microsoft officially. However, now that there is I wouldn't be surprised if academics are more likely to consider Windows in the future for this reason. Good move from Microsoft.
  - formercoder 7y ago
    As a Mac lover of 15+ years, at least put PCs under consideration. I bought a Lenovo X1 Yoga to replace my dead MBP. It has a touchscreen, fingerprint reader with U2F support, folds into a tablet, and I do all my development in windows VSCode linked into Ubuntu on WSL. The only thing I miss is having iMessage on the desktop.
- rowanG077 7y ago
  Do you write any code? Because that is not allowed on iOS. Do you want to browse see an application and want to use it? Because that is not allowed on iOS. iOS is so far from being a useable OS that I don't think it will ever be anything more then an internet machine with light video and image editing capabilities. The last update to the ipad pro should tell you enough about what apple thinks constitutes a "professional" OS. That being said OSX running on a higher specced ipad pro CPU could be really awesome but I don't think that is what will happen.
  - sambe 7y ago
    There are IDEs on iOS.
  - cnj 7y ago
    It is allowed to write code on iOS. There are several code editors for iOS https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+code+editor https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+code+editor and Apple has even published an own app for students to learn coding called Swift Playgrounds https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ - it isn't a full-blown code editor, but it clearly allows you to write and run code. And that is ignoring cloud/browser-based code editors. That execution model (write code local, run in the cloud) makes sense with mobile devices which have limited power supply. I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone ;)
    - MagnumOpus 7y ago
      > I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone But other people might? Especially if it not a phone but a 12.5 inch iPad that is supposed to be more powerful than my 5-year-old dev laptop (and has more RAM too). > It is allowed to write code on iOS Great, so you can pen&paper your code like in the 1960s. In the 21st century, writing code includes being able to run the compiler/interpreter on your terminal to debug as well.
      - wlesieutre 7y ago
        You can run code on an iPad too, though it's more useful for on-device utilities than for writing code that you want to ship somewhere else. http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ https://scriptable.app/ https://scriptable.app/
- timrichard 7y ago
  Moving from Intel -> Arm would be a dealbreaker for me, as I presume any VST/Au/FCPX plugins would be unusable. As people using those tools typically acquire them over a period of years, the original developer isn't always going to be still around or interested in developing a port for an older product. Over the years, the investment in plugins can be much greater than the host (DAW or NLE) that they run in.
scarface74 7y ago
The seemingly gradual lockdown of macOS – mandatory "notarization" Notarization is not “mandatory”. You can still turn it off. The seemingly gradual lockdown of macOS – mandatory "notarization", moving system files to a read-only volume, So now it’s a bad thing that rogue apps can’t destroy your system. and disallowing kernel extensions in the future And they developed a way to do the same thing and improve system stability.
- phkahler 7y ago
  And they dont support OpenGL any more.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    I for one have never really felt or noticed the effects of poor OpenGL support on macOS, at all in the last 10 years. Metal seems much more compelling anyway, the Apple lock-in notwithstanding (even that is not so bad considering you can still target 4 rather popular device categories with Metal.)
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    For long spans of Mac OS X's history, Apple always shipped an incredibly old version of OpenGL. With Apple deprecating OpenGL, this isn't really anything new or interesting — that is, until the day Apple removes OpenGL, we will have the exact same situation we always had: a really old version of OpenGL. In the mean time, people have already developed ways to run OpenGL code atop Metal. A lot of game developers have already started to move their code to either Metal or these OpenGL-compatible shims in order for compatibility with iOS, so a lot of the adoption has already begun.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Just like console vendors. In fact had Apple not chosen to go with OpenGL ES on iPhone back when they released it, OpenGL would be pretty meaningless nowadays. The few people buying NeXTSTEP computers for graphics programming were doing it due to Renderman, not OpenGL.
- Reelin 7y ago
riq_ 7y ago
Perhaps what Apple wants is to keep improving their iPhone / iPads with better ARM processors (from where the make most of the money). Just remember that they don't use the regular "off-the-shelf" ARM processor. By having even better ARM processors, they can keep having and edge over the competition. One day, they might switch Mac to ARM. But I don't see that in the short term.
Rexxar 7y ago
I wonder if it would be possible to have an heterogeneous processor with a mix of arm and x86 cores. (They would probably have to partner with AMD which will produce x86 chiplets for them)
- riffraff 7y ago
  Wasn't "Crusoe", the CPU Linus Torvalds used to work on, a CPU core that could run multiple instruction sets? In theory it seems you could be able to convert "on the fly" from multiple high level instruction sets to a singl low level microcode. Not sure it's a good idea tho.
  - Zhenya 7y ago
    Looks like some version of it shipped in multiple devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe
    - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      From what I remember at the time it never took off due to being expensive and having overly high power consumption. But perhaps it's an idea worth revisiting.
- rikkus 7y ago
  The RISC PC [1] was based on ARM but had a ‘guest processor’ slot which could be filled with an x86 chip amongst others. You could run Windows in a window on its own CPU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC
- npunt 7y ago
  This is roughly my hypothesis, except they'd be separate CPUs and AMD wouldn't be involved. Due to the markets Apple is in with Mac, they can't just stop using Intel altogether - they need both x86 and ARM to coexist. How it'd work - ARM SoC expands on what the T2 does today, except it now runs all system threads, any ARM native user space apps, and maybe specialty fixed function blocks that Apple throws on those chips (e.g. media encode). Meanwhile the Intel chip is a co-processor for any x86 specific user space apps, and it otherwise doesn't touch drivers or any system things. The market would be segmented with ARM chips at the lower end (MacBooks), and ARM chips with Intel co-processors at the higher end (15" MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Pro). This is equivalent to how integrated v discrete GPUs are segmented today. Over time the ARM chips get faster and faster as Intel inevitably blunders, and more and more code is rewritten as native ARM code, so that after several years the need for x86 is significantly reduced, maybe only existing as thunderbolt eCPU boxes and/or Mac Pro. And by around MacOS ~10.23 in 2026, x86 is sunsetted because remaining use cases are so minimal.
x0x0 7y ago
It would probably be affordable to put a last-gen x86 CPU alongside an arm cpu.
gigatexal 7y ago
What do you gain from it being open? Things like home brew will adapt. And this way the system gets a ton more secure. And with an ARM cpu we will get great performance but even better battery life probably. The software that we used to run will likley have to adapt and I’m sure we’ll be able to emulate x86 but the future seems to be ARM at least to Apple.
- Crinus 7y ago
  > And this way the system gets a ton more secure. Security is fine as long as the user is in control. The problem is that very often companies make decisions that take away control from the user with "security" as a "but think of the children" blanket excuse.
  - gigatexal 7y ago
    For any company other than Apple I would agree with you. There’s too great an incentive for a company to, given this lack of transparency, do something nefarious. But I trust Apple to not do this. Because it is in their best interest to be the anti-Google. To not spy is a value add for them.
    - Crinus 7y ago
      Apple made iOS which is heavily locked down, not even allowing the -ridiculously named- "sideloading" that (some of) Android allows, i'm not sure why you think they wouldn't like that sort of control on macOS. The only reason they haven't already locked down macOS like iOS is the precedence of computers not being locked down for decades, but this is exactly why they chip away that freedom little by little instead of going all-in. If they had no incentive for macOS to be locked down then they wouldn't have any incentive for iOS to be locked down either.
      - gigatexal 7y ago
        This is FUD. Apple has clearly stated that MacOS and iOS will stay separate platforms. It makes no sense to sell laptops at all if they make them into iOS style appliances as you have described.
pentae 7y ago
Of course, it's just one step further to what Apple want. Make MacBooks so much more efficient and powerful than PC competitors that theres no competition, then force everyone to use the App Store where they can get their 30% cut of another entire platform.
StreamBright 7y ago
You can run Windows/Linux on ARM.
fluffything 7y ago
On iOS you can compile code that uses SIMD instructions, but querying whether the CPU supports them is privileged, and iOS does not provide an API to do that. So if you want to write code that uses SIMD instructions depending on whether they are available, you need to use Apple math libraries, which is super messed up.
- nightfly 7y ago
  Can you try and run SIMD instructions and catch the failure if they aren't available?
- johncolanduoni 7y ago
  It’s been a while since there was an iOS device without NEON support. Unless you’re supporting something like iOS 4 (which is a whole other headache) you can use the SIMD instructions unconditionally. This is the armv6/armv7 distinction you can find in the XCode settings. For 64-bit slices of your app, you’re in even safer territory.
- stephencanon 7y ago
  arm64 CPUs support NEON unconditionally. arm64e implies the armv8.2 and armv8.3 extensions (but not SVE), notably half-precision arithmetic and interleaved complex ops. You generally should not need to do runtime selection.
mhh__ 7y ago
Binary translation emulators are pretty damn good these days, I would imagine that Apple would have to include one if they fully moved over to ARM of some description from x86

bredren 7y ago

I have used multiple gens of the MacBook Air for web programming—often docked—most recently w the assist of an egpu. I am interested in battery efficiency, raw cpu and graphics performance and do not care to do low level tinkering on my Mac. I do expect it to be much more open to tinkering than iOS, but I also welcome the litany of security measures introduced so far and caution when it comes to executing wild code that affects my privacy. I realize this puts me further in with trusting Apple to make good compromise decisions on what is possible and the hoops they create for developers on Macos, but I trust they will mostly make the right call for me. It’s certainly been better than when I’ve had to deal with windows over the past decade.

cheeze 7y ago
> do not care to do low level tinkering on my Mac You may not, but many do. Those many may actually be a small minority, but it would really suck for those folks. At the end of the day, sometimes I need to run random x86/64 executables and there isn't any way around that. I could deal with a performant virtual machine.
- gigatexal 7y ago
  Drivers are moving to userspace. What more low level access do you need other than that if you can write your own driver for things?
  - sieabahlpark 7y ago
    Boy I can't wait to write my own driver to use a program that I bought.
    - gigatexal 7y ago
      It was just an example. What applications require hardware support that isn’t baked in? Surely the Mac isn’t being used in an industrial space with niche one off instruments? The point is more things are moving to userpsace and Apple is controlling the kernel as, I think, they should.
      - Fnoord 7y ago
        Kernel extensions I use out of my head. USB to ethernet dongle. Little Snitch. Karabiner. Hammerspoon. NTFS read/write driver. I really doubt they will all remain working but the dongle is hardware.
        gigatexal 7y ago
        As with all such changes there will be with time either open source or manufacturers who support the new user space / kernel lock down mode. What you’ll likely experience is temporary loss of use as things transition. In any case the benefits outside of your specific use case outweigh the headaches in just security alone.
brian-armstrong 7y ago
You already have to opt into kernel extensions in a very explicit way. I don't think what you mentioned about privacy is actually relevant to this dicussion.
amelius 7y ago
So would you be ok with a security model like iOS has, but on MacOS?
- kraftomatic 7y ago
  I like to use my Mac as a normal *nix machine, however I have a lot more trust in my iPhone from a security POV these days. I can see a case for a much better desktop/laptop security model.
- terramex 7y ago
  Not OP, but I certainly would not be ok with that. iOS is system build mostly for content consumption and designed for non-technical users. As such it has to be protected from both external threats (malware etc) and users themselves (social engineering, phishing protection). macOS is for me my workbench for content creation and I want it to protected from external threats but I do not want it to be protected from me. Even having to go into System Preferences and typing in my password to run unsigned apps since 10.12 is driving me crazy. When is comes to privacy, today everything is web app anyway. And to be honest I would feel my privacy would be much more secure if I could run latest version of uBlock Origin in Safari, but I cannot. For native apps I want to decide if I trust them or not. The only new thing I would love to see in macOS is easy blocking of internet access for particular apps.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    >Even having to go into System Preferences and typing in my password to run unsigned apps since 10.12 is driving me crazy. Does right clicking and hitting "Open" not work anymore?
    - tkxxx7 7y ago
      It certainly still does, but a lot of people don't know or have forgotten over the years.
nfellaby 7y ago
There is a significant community in the (biological) sciences that are reliant on the Mac platform as an intermediate between Windows based applications such as Office and, importantly, the often highly specific programs/scripts/applications created for Unix platforms for analysis. Ignoring these users would be a mistake. Personally, after 13 years of Macs any computer I'm buying in the near future are going to be Linux based because of the current trajectories Apple have decided to take. Just insight from a different community I guess.
- manderley 7y ago
  Wouldn't running Windows 10 and the Microsoft Subsystem for Linux make way more sense for these users? Seems more like inertia that is keeping some on the Mac.
  - AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
    In academic environments there is often no dedicated IT department, so all support is done by the technically versed colleagues. Replacing machines with Macs has always resulted in an enormous reduction of these support calls, in my experience. Moving back to Windows would destroy all of that.
  - nfellaby 7y ago
    I agree, the Microsoft subsystem for Linux will draw many more users away from macOS in the future. When I was starting post-graduate studies/research there was no such support from Microsoft officially. However, now that there is I wouldn't be surprised if academics are more likely to consider Windows in the future for this reason. Good move from Microsoft.
- formercoder 7y ago
  As a Mac lover of 15+ years, at least put PCs under consideration. I bought a Lenovo X1 Yoga to replace my dead MBP. It has a touchscreen, fingerprint reader with U2F support, folds into a tablet, and I do all my development in windows VSCode linked into Ubuntu on WSL. The only thing I miss is having iMessage on the desktop.
rowanG077 7y ago
Do you write any code? Because that is not allowed on iOS. Do you want to browse see an application and want to use it? Because that is not allowed on iOS. iOS is so far from being a useable OS that I don't think it will ever be anything more then an internet machine with light video and image editing capabilities. The last update to the ipad pro should tell you enough about what apple thinks constitutes a "professional" OS. That being said OSX running on a higher specced ipad pro CPU could be really awesome but I don't think that is what will happen.
- sambe 7y ago
  There are IDEs on iOS.
- cnj 7y ago
  It is allowed to write code on iOS. There are several code editors for iOS https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+code+editor https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+code+editor and Apple has even published an own app for students to learn coding called Swift Playgrounds https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ - it isn't a full-blown code editor, but it clearly allows you to write and run code. And that is ignoring cloud/browser-based code editors. That execution model (write code local, run in the cloud) makes sense with mobile devices which have limited power supply. I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone ;)
  - MagnumOpus 7y ago
    > I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone But other people might? Especially if it not a phone but a 12.5 inch iPad that is supposed to be more powerful than my 5-year-old dev laptop (and has more RAM too). > It is allowed to write code on iOS Great, so you can pen&paper your code like in the 1960s. In the 21st century, writing code includes being able to run the compiler/interpreter on your terminal to debug as well.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      You can run code on an iPad too, though it's more useful for on-device utilities than for writing code that you want to ship somewhere else. http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ https://scriptable.app/ https://scriptable.app/
timrichard 7y ago
Moving from Intel -> Arm would be a dealbreaker for me, as I presume any VST/Au/FCPX plugins would be unusable. As people using those tools typically acquire them over a period of years, the original developer isn't always going to be still around or interested in developing a port for an older product. Over the years, the investment in plugins can be much greater than the host (DAW or NLE) that they run in.

scarface74 7y ago

The seemingly gradual lockdown of macOS – mandatory "notarization" Notarization is not “mandatory”. You can still turn it off. The seemingly gradual lockdown of macOS – mandatory "notarization", moving system files to a read-only volume, So now it’s a bad thing that rogue apps can’t destroy your system. and disallowing kernel extensions in the future And they developed a way to do the same thing and improve system stability.

phkahler 7y ago
And they dont support OpenGL any more.
- Razengan 7y ago
  I for one have never really felt or noticed the effects of poor OpenGL support on macOS, at all in the last 10 years. Metal seems much more compelling anyway, the Apple lock-in notwithstanding (even that is not so bad considering you can still target 4 rather popular device categories with Metal.)
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  For long spans of Mac OS X's history, Apple always shipped an incredibly old version of OpenGL. With Apple deprecating OpenGL, this isn't really anything new or interesting — that is, until the day Apple removes OpenGL, we will have the exact same situation we always had: a really old version of OpenGL. In the mean time, people have already developed ways to run OpenGL code atop Metal. A lot of game developers have already started to move their code to either Metal or these OpenGL-compatible shims in order for compatibility with iOS, so a lot of the adoption has already begun.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Just like console vendors. In fact had Apple not chosen to go with OpenGL ES on iPhone back when they released it, OpenGL would be pretty meaningless nowadays. The few people buying NeXTSTEP computers for graphics programming were doing it due to Renderman, not OpenGL.
Reelin 7y ago

riq_ 7y ago

Perhaps what Apple wants is to keep improving their iPhone / iPads with better ARM processors (from where the make most of the money). Just remember that they don't use the regular "off-the-shelf" ARM processor. By having even better ARM processors, they can keep having and edge over the competition. One day, they might switch Mac to ARM. But I don't see that in the short term.

Rexxar 7y ago

I wonder if it would be possible to have an heterogeneous processor with a mix of arm and x86 cores. (They would probably have to partner with AMD which will produce x86 chiplets for them)

riffraff 7y ago
Wasn't "Crusoe", the CPU Linus Torvalds used to work on, a CPU core that could run multiple instruction sets? In theory it seems you could be able to convert "on the fly" from multiple high level instruction sets to a singl low level microcode. Not sure it's a good idea tho.
- Zhenya 7y ago
  Looks like some version of it shipped in multiple devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    From what I remember at the time it never took off due to being expensive and having overly high power consumption. But perhaps it's an idea worth revisiting.
rikkus 7y ago
The RISC PC [1] was based on ARM but had a ‘guest processor’ slot which could be filled with an x86 chip amongst others. You could run Windows in a window on its own CPU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC
npunt 7y ago
This is roughly my hypothesis, except they'd be separate CPUs and AMD wouldn't be involved. Due to the markets Apple is in with Mac, they can't just stop using Intel altogether - they need both x86 and ARM to coexist. How it'd work - ARM SoC expands on what the T2 does today, except it now runs all system threads, any ARM native user space apps, and maybe specialty fixed function blocks that Apple throws on those chips (e.g. media encode). Meanwhile the Intel chip is a co-processor for any x86 specific user space apps, and it otherwise doesn't touch drivers or any system things. The market would be segmented with ARM chips at the lower end (MacBooks), and ARM chips with Intel co-processors at the higher end (15" MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Pro). This is equivalent to how integrated v discrete GPUs are segmented today. Over time the ARM chips get faster and faster as Intel inevitably blunders, and more and more code is rewritten as native ARM code, so that after several years the need for x86 is significantly reduced, maybe only existing as thunderbolt eCPU boxes and/or Mac Pro. And by around MacOS ~10.23 in 2026, x86 is sunsetted because remaining use cases are so minimal.

x0x0 7y ago

It would probably be affordable to put a last-gen x86 CPU alongside an arm cpu.

gigatexal 7y ago

What do you gain from it being open? Things like home brew will adapt. And this way the system gets a ton more secure. And with an ARM cpu we will get great performance but even better battery life probably. The software that we used to run will likley have to adapt and I’m sure we’ll be able to emulate x86 but the future seems to be ARM at least to Apple.

Crinus 7y ago
> And this way the system gets a ton more secure. Security is fine as long as the user is in control. The problem is that very often companies make decisions that take away control from the user with "security" as a "but think of the children" blanket excuse.
- gigatexal 7y ago
  For any company other than Apple I would agree with you. There’s too great an incentive for a company to, given this lack of transparency, do something nefarious. But I trust Apple to not do this. Because it is in their best interest to be the anti-Google. To not spy is a value add for them.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    Apple made iOS which is heavily locked down, not even allowing the -ridiculously named- "sideloading" that (some of) Android allows, i'm not sure why you think they wouldn't like that sort of control on macOS. The only reason they haven't already locked down macOS like iOS is the precedence of computers not being locked down for decades, but this is exactly why they chip away that freedom little by little instead of going all-in. If they had no incentive for macOS to be locked down then they wouldn't have any incentive for iOS to be locked down either.
    - gigatexal 7y ago
      This is FUD. Apple has clearly stated that MacOS and iOS will stay separate platforms. It makes no sense to sell laptops at all if they make them into iOS style appliances as you have described.

pentae 7y ago

Of course, it's just one step further to what Apple want. Make MacBooks so much more efficient and powerful than PC competitors that theres no competition, then force everyone to use the App Store where they can get their 30% cut of another entire platform.

StreamBright 7y ago

You can run Windows/Linux on ARM.

fluffything 7y ago

On iOS you can compile code that uses SIMD instructions, but querying whether the CPU supports them is privileged, and iOS does not provide an API to do that. So if you want to write code that uses SIMD instructions depending on whether they are available, you need to use Apple math libraries, which is super messed up.

nightfly 7y ago
Can you try and run SIMD instructions and catch the failure if they aren't available?
johncolanduoni 7y ago
It’s been a while since there was an iOS device without NEON support. Unless you’re supporting something like iOS 4 (which is a whole other headache) you can use the SIMD instructions unconditionally. This is the armv6/armv7 distinction you can find in the XCode settings. For 64-bit slices of your app, you’re in even safer territory.
stephencanon 7y ago
arm64 CPUs support NEON unconditionally. arm64e implies the armv8.2 and armv8.3 extensions (but not SVE), notably half-precision arithmetic and interleaved complex ops. You generally should not need to do runtime selection.

mhh__ 7y ago

Binary translation emulators are pretty damn good these days, I would imagine that Apple would have to include one if they fully moved over to ARM of some description from x86