This is the upside of Apple's distressing tendency to burn backward compatibility. As a Mac dev who chooses to support really REALLY old machines, I've experien

This is the upside of Apple's distressing tendency to burn backward compatibility. As a Mac dev who chooses to support really REALLY old machines, I've experienced the downside of this, needing to keep dedicated retro machines just for building retro software on, and developing everything repeatedly on different generations of computer instead of having it just work the first time. This is the upside: if they want to make a quantum leap, they will absolutely do so if it benefits them, and everybody's expected to just re-buy, at Apple prices (mind you, trade-ins are a thing). Apple absolutely can afford to throw away anything that impedes them from doing what they want, and in the case of the M1 processors it's serving them really well. Turns out the fat wads of cash can be used to buy useful things, and when Apple wants to, they can CHANGE THE WORRRLLLD ;) I'm sure the PC (not necessarily 'x86') world will find ways to more or less keep up: there are plenty of people who really, really want to keep up. It's just that complacency won't cut it: PC-land has to really seriously work to not fall way behind. Good. That's best for everybody. As a lifelong Mac guy since the 68040, I'm delighted the PC world has driven Apple to these extremes, because now I get to enjoy the results.