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As a very, very long time Mac user, the transition from 68k to PPC, then Mac OS 9 to OS X, then PPC to x86 was fairly smooth for the most part. Apple's relative

As a very, very long time Mac user, the transition from 68k to PPC, then Mac OS 9 to OS X, then PPC to x86 was fairly smooth for the most part. Apple's relatively firm iron grip on their ecosystem due to their vertical integration gives them a lot of latitude to make moves like this be minimally disruptive to their user base. Now this is of course often annoying and disruptive to its developer base, and I've been on that side of it too. But, Apple knows how to pull this off about as cleanly as one could expect for such a significant overhaul.

torstenvl 6y ago
Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Transitioning to x86 brought additional customers who prefer Mac but also need to run Windows or Linux or who do x86 development. Transitioning away from it may lose them.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  > Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. That's exactly what the 68K-to-PowerPC transition was: Going from a widely used architecture (Mac, Amiga, ST, and others) to a brand new one.
  - asveikau 6y ago
    I think 68K and PowerPC were both clearly much more of a dead end when they were abandoned than Intel is today. Also, I don't recall stories of Macs being able to dual boot AmigaOS, and there was nothing like virtualization in those days. There were emulators, I guess. All of those other platforms were less common than Windows is today. And there was never any threat that they would enforce sandboxing and code signing like a lot of people speculate for ARM Macs. It really does sound like the ARM Macs are going to be less capable. It would be nice if that turns out incorrect but it's sure the way it looks.
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      > Also, I don't recall stories of Macs being able to dual boot AmigaOS They weren't. Amiga 68K systems had significantly different system architecture from Apple 68K systems, most notably in terms of their graphics and audio hardware. > and there was nothing like virtualization in those days. Weeelll... there were some special-purpose tools, but they were much more special-purpose than anything we call "virtualization" today. The Amiga version of Basilisk II [1] ran 68K code directly on the host processor, for instance. Later on, there were tools like Mac-On-Linux [2] which would run PowerPC MacOS on a PowerPC Linux system. [1]: https://basilisk.cebix.net/ https://basilisk.cebix.net/ [2]: http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/ http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/
    - huslage 6y ago
      PowerPC was far from a dead-end technology when it was announced. They had a very ambitious road map and were responsive to customer needs.
      - vetinari 6y ago
        At the time of the announcements, there were G5s in the towers and G4s in the laptops. One of the big problem was, how to put G5 into laptop, as it was too power hungry and produced too much heat, and Motorola with IBM were not going to do anything about it. Moto went out of the PPC business and IBM was focusing on the servers. Ergo, it was dead end for Apple products.
- strbean 6y ago
  > None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Not sure how unique this architecture will be, but by device count, ARM architectures dwarf all others significantly. Calling it 'less-popular' is wrong.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Less popular by count of non-mobile software. Which is likely a lot of business software. Still, Mac software seems to generally keep up to date with Apple's changes. Drivers on the other hand... not so much
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- im_down_w_otp 6y ago
  68k to PPC was exactly "going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture". ARM today is waaaaaaaaaaaay more popular than PowerPC ever was, and nearly infinitely more popular than when Apple switched from 68k, and 68k was very popular back then.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    > 68k to PPC was exactly "going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture". And Apple nearly went bankrupt. (Not saying Apple is in any danger of going bankrupt, but it's not a successful transition story.)
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      Commodore (known for the Amiga line) did go bankrupt due to the death of 68k. And Atari exited the home computer biz. It was a huge issue back in the day.
  - timw4mail 6y ago
    68k was also a dead end. It was very popular, in computers, video game consoles, etc. But it also never got up to ~100MHz. Going to PowerPC was the only real option at the time.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      ...y'know, is there a reason they chose PowerPC over, well, x86?
tibbydudeza 6y ago
Also they are not afraid of ditching old stuff when they needed to move forward i.e older generation hardware (Core 2 Duo macbooks) and frameworks (Carbon, 32 bit kernel)
jdofaz 6y ago
You may have blocked out memories of error type 11 :)

torstenvl 6y ago

Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Transitioning to x86 brought additional customers who prefer Mac but also need to run Windows or Linux or who do x86 development. Transitioning away from it may lose them.

TMWNN 6y ago
> Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. That's exactly what the 68K-to-PowerPC transition was: Going from a widely used architecture (Mac, Amiga, ST, and others) to a brand new one.
- asveikau 6y ago
  I think 68K and PowerPC were both clearly much more of a dead end when they were abandoned than Intel is today. Also, I don't recall stories of Macs being able to dual boot AmigaOS, and there was nothing like virtualization in those days. There were emulators, I guess. All of those other platforms were less common than Windows is today. And there was never any threat that they would enforce sandboxing and code signing like a lot of people speculate for ARM Macs. It really does sound like the ARM Macs are going to be less capable. It would be nice if that turns out incorrect but it's sure the way it looks.
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    > Also, I don't recall stories of Macs being able to dual boot AmigaOS They weren't. Amiga 68K systems had significantly different system architecture from Apple 68K systems, most notably in terms of their graphics and audio hardware. > and there was nothing like virtualization in those days. Weeelll... there were some special-purpose tools, but they were much more special-purpose than anything we call "virtualization" today. The Amiga version of Basilisk II [1] ran 68K code directly on the host processor, for instance. Later on, there were tools like Mac-On-Linux [2] which would run PowerPC MacOS on a PowerPC Linux system. [1]: https://basilisk.cebix.net/ https://basilisk.cebix.net/ [2]: http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/ http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/
  - huslage 6y ago
    PowerPC was far from a dead-end technology when it was announced. They had a very ambitious road map and were responsive to customer needs.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      At the time of the announcements, there were G5s in the towers and G4s in the laptops. One of the big problem was, how to put G5 into laptop, as it was too power hungry and produced too much heat, and Motorola with IBM were not going to do anything about it. Moto went out of the PPC business and IBM was focusing on the servers. Ergo, it was dead end for Apple products.
strbean 6y ago
> None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Not sure how unique this architecture will be, but by device count, ARM architectures dwarf all others significantly. Calling it 'less-popular' is wrong.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Less popular by count of non-mobile software. Which is likely a lot of business software. Still, Mac software seems to generally keep up to date with Apple's changes. Drivers on the other hand... not so much
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
im_down_w_otp 6y ago
68k to PPC was exactly "going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture". ARM today is waaaaaaaaaaaay more popular than PowerPC ever was, and nearly infinitely more popular than when Apple switched from 68k, and 68k was very popular back then.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  > 68k to PPC was exactly "going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture". And Apple nearly went bankrupt. (Not saying Apple is in any danger of going bankrupt, but it's not a successful transition story.)
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Commodore (known for the Amiga line) did go bankrupt due to the death of 68k. And Atari exited the home computer biz. It was a huge issue back in the day.
- timw4mail 6y ago
  68k was also a dead end. It was very popular, in computers, video game consoles, etc. But it also never got up to ~100MHz. Going to PowerPC was the only real option at the time.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    ...y'know, is there a reason they chose PowerPC over, well, x86?

tibbydudeza 6y ago

Also they are not afraid of ditching old stuff when they needed to move forward i.e older generation hardware (Core 2 Duo macbooks) and frameworks (Carbon, 32 bit kernel)

jdofaz 6y ago

You may have blocked out memories of error type 11 :)