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> It must be difficult to be in a management position where you obviously see the industry is moving towards ARM, but you need to orchestrate a plan in motion

by paulmd 7y ago

> It must be difficult to be in a management position where you obviously see the industry is moving towards ARM, but you need to orchestrate a plan in motion to correctly time when the customer/ developer is ready to make the switch. Apple is in a unique position to make this happen though. And they have done it before with the PowerPC->x86 switchover. Their solution has previously been to have fat binaries with both versions compiled alongside. They control the toolchain and the app store so this is not that difficult to enforce.

ryacko 7y ago
Box86 exists though. They don’t need fat binaries, they only need x86 emulation. Many x86 patents have also expired or will expire soon, so the set of instructions that need to be emulated is reduced.
- toast0 7y ago
  Emulation works as a transition layer, and they've done it before (see Rosetta from ppc->x86 and the 68k emulator from when they switched to ppc), but native binaries will be significantly faster and more energy efficient.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    Native binaries using the latest stable libraries with the latest compiler optimizations will always be faster and more energy efficient. Even the Xbox had backwards compatibility across ISAs. Somehow I doubt people will care that much about efficiency.
    - Narishma 7y ago
      They will care on a laptop with a battery.
Tinfoilhat666 7y ago
Instead of switching macOS to arm, they could promote iPadOS to laptops. They already added a file manager and advanced windowing to it.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I expect within the next five years you’re going to see some sort of convergence between Apple’s phone/tablet and traditional computer lines.
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    At least on the level of the 13 inch devices, this would absolutely make sense. The Macbook competitors nowadays offer touch and some even pen input, which the Macbook lacks, the iPad has those and plenty of cpu power and is ultralight, has no fan and is more energy efficient. The iPad Pro could replace a laptop for most usages, if were not limited by iOS/iPadOS. Personally, I would refresh my iPad much more often, without the limitations. And it is not very realistic from Apple to expect people to carry both a laptop and a tablet. So forcing the customers to choose between those device types is not very customer friendly. Actually, I am currently considering to get the Samsung Galaxy Book S, which seems to be a very interesting, ARM-powered laptop. Of course I would prefer a new iPad Pro, if not for its limitations.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      And Apple won’t maintain a whole separate hardware/software design stream. The pro-oriented users will have to accept the confines of a consumer-optimized set of designs or switch to another platform. This is already true to a degree of course but I expect we’ll see a real crossroads.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  The ironic thing is, that the question isn't so much one of hardware, but software. With the iPad Pro, Apple has an almost perfect piece of hardware, that could be used as an ultralight laptop alternative. The problem is, Apple does not allow the use of an iPad as a computer. File handling - though a little bit improved on iPadOS - is still extremely limited and even more so is the software. There are no real development environments on the iPad because of the app store limitations, there is no Termux for the iPad. Even if fully sandboxed, that could increase the productivity as a computer a lot. So the simplest way for Apple to get a ARM-based computer would be allowing the iPad to be more of a computer. Alternatively, they do it the hard way and launch ARM-based Macbooks. That would be nice too. But putting iPadOS onto a Macbook would rather go in the wrong direction. MacOS should run well on ARMs anyway.
jweir 7y ago
And the 68000 to PowerPC before that.
- FullyFunctional 7y ago
  Not to be pedantic, but you could argue it goes all the way to 6502, so they have gone though all these transitions: 6502 -> m68k -> PowerPC -> x86. Added a x86 -> Arm64 transition would hardly be shocking. EDIT: In case it wasn't clear; there are Apple II emulators for the Macintosh.

by paulmd 7y ago

ryacko 7y ago

Box86 exists though. They don’t need fat binaries, they only need x86 emulation. Many x86 patents have also expired or will expire soon, so the set of instructions that need to be emulated is reduced.

toast0 7y ago
Emulation works as a transition layer, and they've done it before (see Rosetta from ppc->x86 and the 68k emulator from when they switched to ppc), but native binaries will be significantly faster and more energy efficient.
- ryacko 7y ago
  Native binaries using the latest stable libraries with the latest compiler optimizations will always be faster and more energy efficient. Even the Xbox had backwards compatibility across ISAs. Somehow I doubt people will care that much about efficiency.
  - Narishma 7y ago
    They will care on a laptop with a battery.

Tinfoilhat666 7y ago

Instead of switching macOS to arm, they could promote iPadOS to laptops. They already added a file manager and advanced windowing to it.

ghaff 7y ago
I expect within the next five years you’re going to see some sort of convergence between Apple’s phone/tablet and traditional computer lines.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  At least on the level of the 13 inch devices, this would absolutely make sense. The Macbook competitors nowadays offer touch and some even pen input, which the Macbook lacks, the iPad has those and plenty of cpu power and is ultralight, has no fan and is more energy efficient. The iPad Pro could replace a laptop for most usages, if were not limited by iOS/iPadOS. Personally, I would refresh my iPad much more often, without the limitations. And it is not very realistic from Apple to expect people to carry both a laptop and a tablet. So forcing the customers to choose between those device types is not very customer friendly. Actually, I am currently considering to get the Samsung Galaxy Book S, which seems to be a very interesting, ARM-powered laptop. Of course I would prefer a new iPad Pro, if not for its limitations.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    And Apple won’t maintain a whole separate hardware/software design stream. The pro-oriented users will have to accept the confines of a consumer-optimized set of designs or switch to another platform. This is already true to a degree of course but I expect we’ll see a real crossroads.
_ph_ 7y ago
The ironic thing is, that the question isn't so much one of hardware, but software. With the iPad Pro, Apple has an almost perfect piece of hardware, that could be used as an ultralight laptop alternative. The problem is, Apple does not allow the use of an iPad as a computer. File handling - though a little bit improved on iPadOS - is still extremely limited and even more so is the software. There are no real development environments on the iPad because of the app store limitations, there is no Termux for the iPad. Even if fully sandboxed, that could increase the productivity as a computer a lot. So the simplest way for Apple to get a ARM-based computer would be allowing the iPad to be more of a computer. Alternatively, they do it the hard way and launch ARM-based Macbooks. That would be nice too. But putting iPadOS onto a Macbook would rather go in the wrong direction. MacOS should run well on ARMs anyway.

jweir 7y ago

And the 68000 to PowerPC before that.

FullyFunctional 7y ago
Not to be pedantic, but you could argue it goes all the way to 6502, so they have gone though all these transitions: 6502 -> m68k -> PowerPC -> x86. Added a x86 -> Arm64 transition would hardly be shocking. EDIT: In case it wasn't clear; there are Apple II emulators for the Macintosh.