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The problem seems much more software based than hardware based. The Mac has lost so much software through Catalina's 64 bit transition, and that was telegraphe

The problem seems much more software based than hardware based. The Mac has lost so much software through Catalina's 64 bit transition, and that was telegraphed a decade ago. Between that, Apple's collapsing quality of documentation, seemingly having two competing development frameworks due to internal infighting, the prevalence of Electron, the loss of similarity to software for popular Linux x86 distributions, and Metal being extremely uninviting as a dev wanting to do any crossplatform work can Apple really assume the software will come for an ARM based Mac? I am very worried it wouldn't. Last time the Mac underwent a transition it ultimately made things easier for developers and there was a fairly thriving (if niche) Mac software base. There simply isn't any more. Mac gaming is going backwards at a rate of knots and dual booting to Windows is more important than ever. Large companies seem to just be abandoning Mac drivers entirely (glares at Sony dropping support for their camera software for Macs rather than transition to 64bit).

unlinked_dll 7y ago
The documentation quality is so true. Conference videos are not docs! For some of the lower level stuff, all the good documentation is marked deprecated, hidden as comments in the framework headers (curiously stripped in the online API references), in some mailing list dating back 20 years, or in a forum that requires login to read and isn't indexed by search engines. It's like if you want to write a pro media app on MacOS today you need to work for Apple or at a company that's deployed a pro media app for decades.
deepaksurti 7y ago
>> The problem seems much more software based than hardware based. - During transition from Motorola's 68k series of chips to IBM/Motorola PowerPC processors, Apple produced classic MacOS versions that could run on either platform. - During the transition from PowerPC to Intel, Apple produced Mac OS X versions that could run on either platform. - In 2005, Apple shipped special Intel build machines for devs only. I think there is a method to this madness and despite all the flaws we currently observe, which are orthogonal to the transition, I trust them to get it right, if and when it happens.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  The earlier transitions involved going from a less powerful cpu to a more powerful cpu so emulation was an option. Now, at best you are going to an equivalent cpu and at worst a less powerful cpu.
  - mrkstu 7y ago
    Depends how seamlessly they can get devs to re-compile. ARM having to emulate x86 would be definitely slower. There is no reason to believe the per-watt performance of actual ARM code won't outperform equivalent x86 chips. i.e. an A(x) Macbook Air replacement could easily outperform the Intel variant at the same power envelope, based on the observed performance of the iPad pro my wife uses.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Apple has some pretty decent IC design engineers... And ARM has fewer legacy corner cases to support and a more dense simpler to decode instruction set. Apple also has high margins so can afford to have big silicon dies with lots of logic and cache. Given all that, I think it's totally possible Apple could release a CPU with more raw performance and performance per watt than Intel/AMD. That extra performance would allow possibly emulation of x86. The emulation world is much more advanced than it was 20 years ago - dynamic recompilation could easily lead to a 50% slowdown rather than a 5000% slowdown that interpreting might be.
  - ken 7y ago
    Do you have a source for that? The thesis of this article is that it is a more powerful CPU, in terms of performance-per-watt, which is the same metric that spawned the PowerPC-to-Intel transition. The author pointed to specific ARM chips that exist today which "consume less power, about 210 watts, than a competing Xeon CPU needing as much as 400 wats, for about the same amount of computing".
trevyn 7y ago
>can Apple really assume the software will come for an ARM based Mac? This is what Catalyst is for, no? Mac software is now iPad software. Macs are now somewhat more capable iPads. The golden age of computing is over.
- Mindwipe 7y ago
  I think even the most delusional Catalyst fan would admit Catalyst is nowhere near ready for prime time and will not be in the timescale for these supposed ARM Macs to launch, if ever.
- IAmEveryone 7y ago
  Adding catalyst didn’t remove the ability to use any other UIKit, or to compile and run whatever you want in any language there is. Everything that ran before continues to do so, and it’s almost oxymoronically wrong to consider a system that is a strict superset of another less free.
  - trevyn 7y ago
    Right, and we could find ourselves in a time when any meaningful non-developer app is only available as a Catalyst app. It’s kind of how like Microsoft’s “embrace and extend” made us less free, because it’s actually “embrace, extend, and (later) extinguish”.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
londons_explore 7y ago
I'm worried that a lot of app devs might just move all the app logic to an Electron app or entirely online as a webapp... The days of desktop apps are numbered already, and this might accelerate that transition.

unlinked_dll 7y ago

The documentation quality is so true. Conference videos are not docs! For some of the lower level stuff, all the good documentation is marked deprecated, hidden as comments in the framework headers (curiously stripped in the online API references), in some mailing list dating back 20 years, or in a forum that requires login to read and isn't indexed by search engines. It's like if you want to write a pro media app on MacOS today you need to work for Apple or at a company that's deployed a pro media app for decades.

deepaksurti 7y ago

>> The problem seems much more software based than hardware based. - During transition from Motorola's 68k series of chips to IBM/Motorola PowerPC processors, Apple produced classic MacOS versions that could run on either platform. - During the transition from PowerPC to Intel, Apple produced Mac OS X versions that could run on either platform. - In 2005, Apple shipped special Intel build machines for devs only. I think there is a method to this madness and despite all the flaws we currently observe, which are orthogonal to the transition, I trust them to get it right, if and when it happens.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
The earlier transitions involved going from a less powerful cpu to a more powerful cpu so emulation was an option. Now, at best you are going to an equivalent cpu and at worst a less powerful cpu.
- mrkstu 7y ago
  Depends how seamlessly they can get devs to re-compile. ARM having to emulate x86 would be definitely slower. There is no reason to believe the per-watt performance of actual ARM code won't outperform equivalent x86 chips. i.e. an A(x) Macbook Air replacement could easily outperform the Intel variant at the same power envelope, based on the observed performance of the iPad pro my wife uses.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Apple has some pretty decent IC design engineers... And ARM has fewer legacy corner cases to support and a more dense simpler to decode instruction set. Apple also has high margins so can afford to have big silicon dies with lots of logic and cache. Given all that, I think it's totally possible Apple could release a CPU with more raw performance and performance per watt than Intel/AMD. That extra performance would allow possibly emulation of x86. The emulation world is much more advanced than it was 20 years ago - dynamic recompilation could easily lead to a 50% slowdown rather than a 5000% slowdown that interpreting might be.
- ken 7y ago
  Do you have a source for that? The thesis of this article is that it is a more powerful CPU, in terms of performance-per-watt, which is the same metric that spawned the PowerPC-to-Intel transition. The author pointed to specific ARM chips that exist today which "consume less power, about 210 watts, than a competing Xeon CPU needing as much as 400 wats, for about the same amount of computing".

trevyn 7y ago

>can Apple really assume the software will come for an ARM based Mac? This is what Catalyst is for, no? Mac software is now iPad software. Macs are now somewhat more capable iPads. The golden age of computing is over.

Mindwipe 7y ago
I think even the most delusional Catalyst fan would admit Catalyst is nowhere near ready for prime time and will not be in the timescale for these supposed ARM Macs to launch, if ever.
IAmEveryone 7y ago
Adding catalyst didn’t remove the ability to use any other UIKit, or to compile and run whatever you want in any language there is. Everything that ran before continues to do so, and it’s almost oxymoronically wrong to consider a system that is a strict superset of another less free.
- trevyn 7y ago
  Right, and we could find ourselves in a time when any meaningful non-developer app is only available as a Catalyst app. It’s kind of how like Microsoft’s “embrace and extend” made us less free, because it’s actually “embrace, extend, and (later) extinguish”.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

londons_explore 7y ago

I'm worried that a lot of app devs might just move all the app logic to an Electron app or entirely online as a webapp... The days of desktop apps are numbered already, and this might accelerate that transition.