5 ms·
Mac devs, has Apple started doing anything that could show they're preparing to port Mac OS to ARM in the near future? I have this feeling Apple will "inevitab
by devx 13y ago
Mac devs, has Apple started doing anything that could show they're preparing to port Mac OS to ARM in the near future?
I have this feeling Apple will "inevitably" put Mac OS on its own ARMv8 chips once they get "powerful enough" to sustain a "full OS" like Mac OS (they might wait until A8 or A9 to do that), and then sell like a $700 Air-like machine with keyboard and a larger screen than iPad, that would still be very profitable for them, because of how little an ARM chip costs compared to Intel Core chips.
But I'm also certain Apple wouldn't do that if Mac apps wouldn't be easily ported to the ARM architecture. That's why I think Apple missed a big opportunity to ensure any Mac Store app is cross-platform between x64 and ARMv8 by default. But have they done anything recently under the hood that could make that possible anyway in the future?
- mikeash 13y agoI don't think there will be any advance signs. Nearly all of the CPU-specific stuff is common between Mac OS X and iOS, since that's generally in the kernel and low-level userspace libraries. The high-level stuff has been through multiple architecture transitions in the past few years (PPC->i386->x86-64) and any inadvertent architecture-specific assumptions in it has probably been ferreted out by now. Mac OS X is likely ready to go on ARM right now, with just a push of a button to build it. I'd be utterly shocked if Apple weren't maintaining an ARM build of OS X internally. If and when Apple decides to make an ARM-based Mac, we will probably only know it when it actually shows up, because the groundwork is fairly solid. The only thing that's lacking is encouraging third-party developers to cross-compile, and given Apple's famous secrecy, it's highly unlikely they'll give any advance warning just for that.