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Wouldn't it be similar to the PowerPC -> Intel transition or is there something that makes this more complicated? That one worked pretty well with the Rosetta e

by dewey 6y ago

Wouldn't it be similar to the PowerPC -> Intel transition or is there something that makes this more complicated? That one worked pretty well with the Rosetta emulation layer.

wmf 6y ago
Last time, Apple switched to the "industry standard" architecture with all the benefits that entails; now they're switching away from the (current) "standard".
- dewey 6y ago
  All iPhones are ARM based chips for a long time already, so it's not something that's completely new to them and by the number of devices it can probably be called a current industry standard too.
  - kspacewalk2 6y ago
    That's exactly the difference - iPhones define the industry (co-)standard. Macs do not. They simply don't have the market share.
    - nojito 6y ago
      They don’t need to. It’s all about building the platform that is simple for developers. They will be able to hit desktop -> mobile in one shot.
- andrekandre 6y ago
  my guess is, apple feels that in the near future, "industry standard" → ARM, and thats one of the reasons <insert hockey puck analogy here> they are moving...
majormajor 6y ago
That transition was greatly assisted by the huge performance difference between Intel and PowerPC especially for the laptop chips that most users were using. It took developers a long time to have stuff fully ported, but it wasn't a huge deal - if you switch to a chip that's twice as fast and take a 50% hit on the emulation layer, you haven't lost much. I'm very curious to see stuff that isn't first- or second-party already-natively-recompiled stuff works. There's a lot of quality-of-life Mac native apps that I like, that aren't backed by a bunch of dev resources.
- scarface74 6y ago
  There is just the opposite precedent for the 68K to PPC transition. My 6100/60 (PPC 601/60) was about the speed of a 68030/25Mhz Mac when running emulated software. It was actually slower than my upgraded 68030/40Mhz Mac when running emulated code. My Mac was less than half the speed of top end 68K Macs. The PPC Macs couldn’t emulate a 68K floating point unit at all.

by dewey 6y ago

Wouldn't it be similar to the PowerPC -> Intel transition or is there something that makes this more complicated? That one worked pretty well with the Rosetta emulation layer.

wmf 6y ago

Last time, Apple switched to the "industry standard" architecture with all the benefits that entails; now they're switching away from the (current) "standard".

dewey 6y ago
All iPhones are ARM based chips for a long time already, so it's not something that's completely new to them and by the number of devices it can probably be called a current industry standard too.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  That's exactly the difference - iPhones define the industry (co-)standard. Macs do not. They simply don't have the market share.
  - nojito 6y ago
    They don’t need to. It’s all about building the platform that is simple for developers. They will be able to hit desktop -> mobile in one shot.
andrekandre 6y ago
my guess is, apple feels that in the near future, "industry standard" → ARM, and thats one of the reasons <insert hockey puck analogy here> they are moving...

majormajor 6y ago

That transition was greatly assisted by the huge performance difference between Intel and PowerPC especially for the laptop chips that most users were using. It took developers a long time to have stuff fully ported, but it wasn't a huge deal - if you switch to a chip that's twice as fast and take a 50% hit on the emulation layer, you haven't lost much. I'm very curious to see stuff that isn't first- or second-party already-natively-recompiled stuff works. There's a lot of quality-of-life Mac native apps that I like, that aren't backed by a bunch of dev resources.

scarface74 6y ago
There is just the opposite precedent for the 68K to PPC transition. My 6100/60 (PPC 601/60) was about the speed of a 68030/25Mhz Mac when running emulated software. It was actually slower than my upgraded 68030/40Mhz Mac when running emulated code. My Mac was less than half the speed of top end 68K Macs. The PPC Macs couldn’t emulate a 68K floating point unit at all.