5 ms·

It will be at least several years before you will not be able to purchase a new Intel-based Mac.

Mister_Snuggles 6y ago
From another article, Apple claims that the transition will be complete in two years. I have 2.5 years left before I will be eligible to have my work computer replaced. Depending on the exact timing of Apple's product cycles and the procurement cycle, I'll either be getting one of the last Intel Macs or a Windows machine of some description. If an Intel Mac is still available at this time, that brings other concerns - in particular, Macs are on a five-year replacement cycle at my work, so even if they are available it may not be prudent to buy one. Will it get new MacOS versions for its 5-year lifetime? Will it still get security updates five years down the road? Will the developers of the applications I use still ship x86_64 versions of their Mac applications? Because of all of that uncertainty, it may end up being a better option to just get a Windows machine when I'm eligible. Fortunately, a lot of that uncertainty should be cleared up by the time that happens. EDIT: Another remote possibility is that VMware figures out some way to fill in the gaps that Rosetta doesn't. After all, they did figure out how to do virtualization on a platform that didn't even support it.
- Nexxxeh 6y ago
  I think this may largely be a non-issue by the time it rolls around, as while software emulation of x86_64 might prove tricky, there's one thing that runs x86_64 really well. Actual x86_64 chips. This is what they used way back in the day. Apple (and others) actually made x86 (non-64) add-on cards for PPC Macs that were effectively PCs on a card to slap in a Mac. Would be relatively trivial to do the same now. PC on a PCIe card, maybe expose itself to the host as just a high speed network card. Use a Ryzen embedded chip, SO-DIMMS, job's a good-un. All the major software stuff would already work. Headless diskless iSCSI PC. Bonus feature that it also acts as a hardware dongle if you want some magic sauce MacOS software to make the process easier.

From another article, Apple claims that the transition will be complete in two years. I have 2.5 years left before I will be eligible to have my work computer replaced. Depending on the exact timing of Apple's product cycles and the procurement cycle, I'll either be getting one of the last Intel Macs or a Windows machine of some description. If an Intel Mac is still available at this time, that brings other concerns - in particular, Macs are on a five-year replacement cycle at my work, so even if they are available it may not be prudent to buy one. Will it get new MacOS versions for its 5-year lifetime? Will it still get security updates five years down the road? Will the developers of the applications I use still ship x86_64 versions of their Mac applications? Because of all of that uncertainty, it may end up being a better option to just get a Windows machine when I'm eligible. Fortunately, a lot of that uncertainty should be cleared up by the time that happens. EDIT: Another remote possibility is that VMware figures out some way to fill in the gaps that Rosetta doesn't. After all, they did figure out how to do virtualization on a platform that didn't even support it.

Nexxxeh 6y ago
I think this may largely be a non-issue by the time it rolls around, as while software emulation of x86_64 might prove tricky, there's one thing that runs x86_64 really well. Actual x86_64 chips. This is what they used way back in the day. Apple (and others) actually made x86 (non-64) add-on cards for PPC Macs that were effectively PCs on a card to slap in a Mac. Would be relatively trivial to do the same now. PC on a PCIe card, maybe expose itself to the host as just a high speed network card. Use a Ryzen embedded chip, SO-DIMMS, job's a good-un. All the major software stuff would already work. Headless diskless iSCSI PC. Bonus feature that it also acts as a hardware dongle if you want some magic sauce MacOS software to make the process easier.