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Keep in mind that there is a much larger installed base of Intel machines than any of those other transitions. Apple is unlikely to want to alienate so many peo
by hehetrthrthrjn 6y ago
Keep in mind that there is a much larger installed base of Intel machines than any of those other transitions. Apple is unlikely to want to alienate so many people. It will take several years for the percentage of Intel Mac users to fall under 50%.
I see Intel support continuing for closer to 10 years.
- Tepix 6y agoI thought the same at first, but the fact that Apple dropped x86 32bit support means a lot of old unmaintained Intel binaries are already out of the equation.
- tmccrary55 6y agoWhile I don't disagree, Apple users also seem to be the fastest to upgrade to new versions of Apple OSes and tech. They're already like 90%+ upgraded to the new macOS, etc.
- matwood 6y ago> Keep in mind that there is a much larger installed base of Intel machines than any of those other transitions. The OP asked about Rosetta2 though. How many Intel macs are out there doesn't mean much when fat binaries can support both. This is all about software moving.
- hehetrthrthrjn 6y agoThe two are connected. The more niche (or custom) software is the more resistant it is to porting. There's going to be a lot of Wintel based stuff which is a quick and dirty port from Windows with few Mac native elements. The years where Mac was Intel compatible made the platform more attractive to people who worked in a mostly Wintel environment. There is almost no incentive for those who ported software to the Mac because it was easy to now port to ARM. So there are two sides to that: those people are going to hang on to their Intel machines longer and they'll want Intel compatibility when they finally buy ARM machines. This is important to Apple because it can shrink the pool of potential customers.