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I think it’s safe to say the CPU architecture of the Mac is orthogonal to future restrictions Apple may put in place on MacOS (other than at the EFI level). Not

I think it’s safe to say the CPU architecture of the Mac is orthogonal to future restrictions Apple may put in place on MacOS (other than at the EFI level). Not to say that they won’t make the mistake of locking down MacOS to an iOS level in the future, but x86 has never inhibited nor does ARM specifically enable such a move for the OS.

dmix 6y ago
Plus moving desktops/laptops to ARM would require a giant effort of developer opt-in and monetary investment industry wide. I don't think company experience with mobile/tablets via the App Store is a sufficient example of buy-in to say it will be a viable choice. There's a ton of random MacOS software that would need to be ported, upgraded, or virtualized which could take a full decade to really cover the full ~99%, with the last 1%+ mostly dying off. Apple usually doesn't like running two product lines with arm/x86 options, so it would probably be some weird transition thing.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  > ...would require a giant effort of developer opt-in... I'm not sure how true that is, there are a ton of workflows that can run solely on iPads. The problem is largely physical form factor and a little bit of UX smoothing for desktop computing on bigger screens. I don't see it as a forgone conclusion that ARM Macs need to bring over the legacy software, why can't they just use what's present in iOS? If I want to design a form, I care less about the name on the app than I do about how well it works. I think a lot of desktop MacOS developers are in for a very rude awakening about how irreplaceable their apps really are.