4 ms·

It's an open secret Apple keeps its options open. I just 'knew' they would have such a project after I read they bought P.A. Semi years ago. http://news.ycombi

by meric 15y ago

It's an open secret Apple keeps its options open. I just 'knew' they would have such a project after I read they bought P.A. Semi years ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2258693 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2258693 Soon. :)

masklinn 15y ago
> Soon. :) I'd still expect you to be wrong, iOS apps are unworkable on OSX and ARM processors, being significantly less powerful (though more efficient) than x86, would have a hard time translating x86 instructions to ARMv7 (à la Rosetta) with any kind of acceptable performances. ARMv7 also has very little support for 64b, which Lion mandates (dropped support for x86 and requires x86-64 instead) and ARMv8 is nowhere near ready for production chains. There would be very little to be gained from putting an ARM chip in an Air, and pretty much everything to be lost. Asking for that feels like pointless wankery.
- lallysingh 15y ago
  I'd expect that any such machine would be released as an extended iPad line, with OS X running a compat layer for iOS apps. Apps could theoretically ship as fat binaries (/again/) to work on both, but that much seems like quite a jump --- people can buy laptops now, with great battery life. It's the simplicity of iOS that drives its appeal.
  - United857 15y ago
    In fact, the iOS Simulator used by developers today is pretty much just that, with the iOS app itself + the Cocoa Touch frameworks running within a OS X process. The only difference is that simulator app builds are specially compiled for X86 instead of ARM (thus, it's not a "emulator" in the strictest sense of the word). With ARM, it'd be conceivably possible for the same iOS binary to run on both the device and the desktop simulator.
- obtu 15y ago
  Emulation would indeed kill the advantage of ARM, but I can see Apple slashing the ecosystem (again) and allowing only vetted apps that go through their OSX app store and get compiled natively.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > I can see Apple slashing the ecosystem (again) As far as I know, they have never done that without a pretty long transition period so far: * The 68k -> PPC transition had a low-level 68k emulator in PPC for a pretty long time * The OS9 -> OSX transition had Classic for emulation (until Tiger) and Carbon for recompilation (which still worked in Snow Leopard, not sure about Lion) * The PPC -> Intel transition provided Rosetta from Tiger to Snow Leopard * The 32b -> 64b transition took 4 years from 64b Cocoa introduction in Leopard (Tiger already had support for 64b headless processes, but that does not really count), and I believe Lion still has no problem running x86/32 binaries (even though 32b CPUs can't run Lion)

by meric 15y ago

masklinn 15y ago

> Soon. :) I'd still expect you to be wrong, iOS apps are unworkable on OSX and ARM processors, being significantly less powerful (though more efficient) than x86, would have a hard time translating x86 instructions to ARMv7 (à la Rosetta) with any kind of acceptable performances. ARMv7 also has very little support for 64b, which Lion mandates (dropped support for x86 and requires x86-64 instead) and ARMv8 is nowhere near ready for production chains. There would be very little to be gained from putting an ARM chip in an Air, and pretty much everything to be lost. Asking for that feels like pointless wankery.

lallysingh 15y ago
I'd expect that any such machine would be released as an extended iPad line, with OS X running a compat layer for iOS apps. Apps could theoretically ship as fat binaries (/again/) to work on both, but that much seems like quite a jump --- people can buy laptops now, with great battery life. It's the simplicity of iOS that drives its appeal.
- United857 15y ago
  In fact, the iOS Simulator used by developers today is pretty much just that, with the iOS app itself + the Cocoa Touch frameworks running within a OS X process. The only difference is that simulator app builds are specially compiled for X86 instead of ARM (thus, it's not a "emulator" in the strictest sense of the word). With ARM, it'd be conceivably possible for the same iOS binary to run on both the device and the desktop simulator.
obtu 15y ago
Emulation would indeed kill the advantage of ARM, but I can see Apple slashing the ecosystem (again) and allowing only vetted apps that go through their OSX app store and get compiled natively.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > I can see Apple slashing the ecosystem (again) As far as I know, they have never done that without a pretty long transition period so far: * The 68k -> PPC transition had a low-level 68k emulator in PPC for a pretty long time * The OS9 -> OSX transition had Classic for emulation (until Tiger) and Carbon for recompilation (which still worked in Snow Leopard, not sure about Lion) * The PPC -> Intel transition provided Rosetta from Tiger to Snow Leopard * The 32b -> 64b transition took 4 years from 64b Cocoa introduction in Leopard (Tiger already had support for 64b headless processes, but that does not really count), and I believe Lion still has no problem running x86/32 binaries (even though 32b CPUs can't run Lion)