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I particularly don't think this is remarkable (from the software side, logistics is another thing). Most UNIX software has been portable between CPUs since at l

I particularly don't think this is remarkable (from the software side, logistics is another thing). Most UNIX software has been portable between CPUs since at least the mid-70s. Apple is doing what UNIX pioneered 40 years ago.

Longhanks 6y ago
Right. Because 40 year old UNIX is equivalent to the behemoth a Full-fledged 2020 desktop/Notebook operating system. There’s probably millions of bits and bytes that are not trivially portable and more for a single person to even grasp an overview of in his or her lifetime. There were assumedly tens of thousands of software engineers involved. But „it’s not remarkable“. Yeah.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take threads further into flamewar or break the site guidelines by being snarky. You have a good point here but it's important to make your substantive points thoughtfully. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- coliveira 6y ago
  Not really. For another example, look at Debian Linux. They have several million lines of code supported on multiple architectures. And Apple didn't do this from one day to the next, they have the OS running on ARM CPUs in one version or another for more than 10 years.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    So it’s not an impressive amount of work because it has taken them 10 years of effort?
    - coliveira 6y ago
      No, because it has been done before by much less powerful institutions.
imoverclocked 6y ago
Sort-of. You can compile it if you have the source. Commercial software (binaries) are often unable to be run outside of their target cpu and flavor of Unix though. Apple is a little different in that FAT binaries can contain multiple architectures and even binaries that are not built for the current arch are automatically run in an emulated environment. Solaris had a mechanism where one could place binaries in arch-specific folders (eg: /bin/sparcv9) and even per-arch library paths but it was definitely opt-in with varying levels of adoption. I’ve also seen some pretty fun hacks to start qemu in Linux for certain non-native executables. Still not nearly as complete/smooth/user-friendly as the fat binary/library approach.
pjmlp 6y ago
UNIX did not pioneer what other mainframes did since 1961, just some UNIX fans think it did. Luckily there are papers and documentation from the work going outside Bell Labs.

Longhanks 6y ago

Right. Because 40 year old UNIX is equivalent to the behemoth a Full-fledged 2020 desktop/Notebook operating system. There’s probably millions of bits and bytes that are not trivially portable and more for a single person to even grasp an overview of in his or her lifetime. There were assumedly tens of thousands of software engineers involved. But „it’s not remarkable“. Yeah.

dang 6y ago
Please don't take threads further into flamewar or break the site guidelines by being snarky. You have a good point here but it's important to make your substantive points thoughtfully. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
coliveira 6y ago
Not really. For another example, look at Debian Linux. They have several million lines of code supported on multiple architectures. And Apple didn't do this from one day to the next, they have the OS running on ARM CPUs in one version or another for more than 10 years.
- mcphage 6y ago
  So it’s not an impressive amount of work because it has taken them 10 years of effort?
  - coliveira 6y ago
    No, because it has been done before by much less powerful institutions.

imoverclocked 6y ago

Sort-of. You can compile it if you have the source. Commercial software (binaries) are often unable to be run outside of their target cpu and flavor of Unix though. Apple is a little different in that FAT binaries can contain multiple architectures and even binaries that are not built for the current arch are automatically run in an emulated environment. Solaris had a mechanism where one could place binaries in arch-specific folders (eg: /bin/sparcv9) and even per-arch library paths but it was definitely opt-in with varying levels of adoption. I’ve also seen some pretty fun hacks to start qemu in Linux for certain non-native executables. Still not nearly as complete/smooth/user-friendly as the fat binary/library approach.

pjmlp 6y ago

UNIX did not pioneer what other mainframes did since 1961, just some UNIX fans think it did. Luckily there are papers and documentation from the work going outside Bell Labs.