3 ms·

Apple are usually careful not to announce new hardware until it's just about ready to ship (with the occasional exception coughAirPowercough), but in this case

Apple are usually careful not to announce new hardware until it's just about ready to ship (with the occasional exception coughAirPowercough), but in this case (assuming the report is correct) I suspect they'll be making an exception. Four months between announcing Apple Silicon and the first hardware hitting retail seems far too short for developers to properly prepare. So I'm guessing that this will be an announcement well in advance of hardware shipping, maybe early next year, to give developers a clear target to aim for (both a hardware target and a calendar target).

sjwright 6y ago
I strongly disagree. Apple needs real hardware in stores in order to get Apple Silicon into the hands of the long tail of Mac developer community and to light a fire under developers to get their stuff released. As for most "normal" customers, these first Apple Silicon devices are going to be perfectly usable on day one—whether they're spending 99% of their time in a web browser or running some outdated finance software through Rosetta. And natively compiled software is going to come thick and fast over the next few months. As for timing, with the pandemic flattening demand for semiconductors, Apple will have no trouble getting their supply chains running. I'll be shocked if we don't see Apple Silicon Macs in stores by December.
valuearb 6y ago
Apple is happy to preannounce entirely new product lines, like AirPower. It never pre-announces new versions of current products, see: Osborne disaster. And developers already have Apple Silicon development machines, see WWDC announcements.
plorkyeran 6y ago
The devkit is already pretty close to something I'd consider acceptable as a primary machine without any work from non-apple developers at all. Firefox and Chrome really need native builds, but the emulation is good enough for most programs even with the devkit having a CPU that's two generations behind what's expected to ship in the real thing.

sjwright 6y ago

I strongly disagree. Apple needs real hardware in stores in order to get Apple Silicon into the hands of the long tail of Mac developer community and to light a fire under developers to get their stuff released. As for most "normal" customers, these first Apple Silicon devices are going to be perfectly usable on day one—whether they're spending 99% of their time in a web browser or running some outdated finance software through Rosetta. And natively compiled software is going to come thick and fast over the next few months. As for timing, with the pandemic flattening demand for semiconductors, Apple will have no trouble getting their supply chains running. I'll be shocked if we don't see Apple Silicon Macs in stores by December.

valuearb 6y ago

Apple is happy to preannounce entirely new product lines, like AirPower. It never pre-announces new versions of current products, see: Osborne disaster. And developers already have Apple Silicon development machines, see WWDC announcements.

plorkyeran 6y ago

The devkit is already pretty close to something I'd consider acceptable as a primary machine without any work from non-apple developers at all. Firefox and Chrome really need native builds, but the emulation is good enough for most programs even with the devkit having a CPU that's two generations behind what's expected to ship in the real thing.