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> Is anyone else as absolutely amazed as I am that Apple managed to change the CPU instruction set to a completely new architecture and users barely notice? Th

• simondotau 5y ago
  Thrice now, if you include the 68000 to PPC transition that occurred prior to Mac OS X. That's a total of four CPU architectures. 1. 68000 —> PowerPC [0] a. Mac OS 9 —> Mac OS X [1] 2. PowerPC —> Intel [2] 3. Intel —> Apple Silicon [2] Or refactoring that into timespans: 1. 68000: 1984 to 1994 (10 years) 2. PowerPC: 1994 to 2006 (12 years) 3. Intel: 2006 to 2021 (15 years) Interesting tidbits: Mac OS X has been around longer than MacOS was prior to X. And the Mac has been on Intel longer than any other instruction set. For someone who has used Macintosh computers since 1985, it feels strange saying that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)