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I suspect that only going ARM on a few models could be detrimental. The risk is creating a niche within a niche. If they move everything, as with previous arc
by soneil 6y ago
I suspect that only going ARM on a few models could be detrimental. The risk is creating a niche within a niche. If they move everything, as with previous arch moves, it's "do or die" for third-parties.
But if, eg, MacBook Air turns into MacBook ARM but MacBook Pro remains Intel - this would be a very difficult schism. Many publishers might look at it as being pro customers staying on Intel and cost-sensitive customers on ARM, which could damage adoption.
The risk is having no carrot and no stick - not entirely dissimilar to Itanium's problem.
- wtallis 6y agoApple's primary carrot and stick here will be the Mac App Store. Whether they split the product line between ARM and Intel, or go for a full transition to ARM, they'll mandate that apps on the App Store be universal binaries. The challenge as usual will be ISVs that don't distribute through the App Store and want to drag their heels (eg. Adobe, who always prefers ignoring Apple's roadmap in the hopes that they won't have to update their own code).
- scarface74 6y agoAdobe has ported it’s software from 68K to PPC to OS X (Carbon) to x86 (Carbon) to x86 (Cocoa) over the years. Not to mention that they are shipping an iPad version already.
- wtallis 6y agoAs I recall, Adobe was unwilling to abandon Carbon until Apple promised that Carbon wouldn't make the 64-bit transition. And even then, Adobe was pretty slow: Creative Suite on Windows started including 64-bit versions in 2008 and required a 64-bit CPU starting in 2010, but the last CS version for Mac in 2012 was still all 32-bit. When Apple dropped 32-bit support in 2019 after a two-year warning period, parts of Adobe Creative Cloud on macOS were still not ready. Even Adobe's transition from PPC to Intel took 15 months after Intel Macs started shipping and 22 months after the x86 Mac dev kits were publicly announced (though I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe had a heads-up if not actual dev kits even before Apple publicly announced their Intel transition). And let's not forget all the fuss Adobe made when the rest of the world was ready for Flash to die. This company has a history of being very defensive about their technical debt.
- saagarjha 6y ago> Apple's primary carrot and stick here will be the Mac App Store. …which has historically been fairly terrible at being either.