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Apple's shift to ARM Mac from Intel at WWDC will define a decade of computing
- ddingus 6y agoApple being able to migrate across CPU types is notable. They've done it how many times now? Just musing on that fact, and the impact it has on their thinking.
- wsh 6y agoThree times (MC680x0 to PowerPC to x86), so far, or more if you also count the 24-bit to 32-bit and 32-bit to 64-bit transitions.
- ddingus 6y agoI didn't realize there was a 24 bit to 32 bit. Was that the 68K to PPC transition?
- Camillo 6y agohttps://lowendmac.com/2015/32-bit-addressing-on-older-macs/ https://lowendmac.com/2015/32-bit-addressing-on-older-macs/
- ddingus 6y agoThanks! Yeah, I passed this part of Mac history right by.
- mrlonglong 6y agoBad memories there. Programmers would stuff crap in the high 8 bits of the pointers. Not so good once running on 32 bits!
- ddingus 6y agoOuch! That seems both tempting, because the buts are right there, unused. ...and a bad idea, because at that time people had to know the address space was going to expand.
- ggm 6y agoMicrosoft will be spending money reimplementing office and I wonder if they'll stop at the minimal electron wrap around o365? Adobe Photoshop, Ableton, AutoCAD
- mdtusz 6y agoI imagine Photoshop will be relatively quickly made available, and maybe even Ableton, but based on how most engineering software progresses and develops and how much slower engineers themselves are to use modern tools, I can't imagine any cad software will be ported for ARM within the decade.
- mister_hn 6y agoAnd bugs, bugs everywhere
- ggm 6y agoI'm hoping apples investment in llvm pays back here. I wonder if the sw Devs are hoping for funds to cleanly reimplement in.. (name newer language but probably rust here)
- pier25 6y agoIf Apple is indeed moving to ARM I think it’s fair to assume Adobe is already working on it. The mac is as good as its ecosystem.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoI wonder if they'll stop at the minimal electron wrap around o365 They will be relying on Electron getting ported first, which will be reliant on Chromium and Node and goodness knows how many packages on NPM. I suspect it will be easier to toggle whatever switch Apple provides in XCode.