Apple Announces "3rd Transition" for macOS: From Intel CPUs to Apple Silicon

[pastrychef]

For many years I would just upgraded the OS on the day it released and I never gave it a thought. I didn’t even backup my drive!

I still do this on my hacks.

 

[Ritchie333]

I think ARMs are better chips, but when they came out, the x86 architecture was well and truly established, and by the mid 1990s, any new company not using an Intel instruction set would find themselves out of business or in trouble and struggling to catch up (quick wave to Sun Microsystems). Around 1996, people were accurately predicting Apple's demise, and it was a credit to Steve Jobs that in ten years' time he'd rescued the company from the dead and created a computer that hackers and tinkerers would like. (Well, it ran UNIX, what more do you want?)

And it's somewhat ironic that thanks to Sun / Oracle, the VirtualBox host on my work PC is the only Mac, real or hacked, that runs MacOS Catalina properly and it'll have Big Sur on it as soon as it's available.

 

[Ritchie333]

Stop worrying about compatibility and hang on and enjoy the ride! AOL is DEAD, thank goodness.

That's fine if you're a hacker who wants to try out new things. For a business, things just don't work like that - at the moment, at work we support our software on the Mac officially via Bootcamp and unofficially via Wine. We never found the time to migrate the MacOS Classic code to OSX when at least 99% of our customer base were running Windows, so there was never a business case to do it. What are we supposed to tell our customers - "sorry, our programs won't run on ARM Macs, suggest you get a PC". Or pop into any library or bank and see how ancient all their IT equipment is.

My 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 (an old work machine that my boss got pilloried for buying brand new at a similar price to what you quoted) is alive and well and about 10 feet away from me right now - it's kept up to date via dosdude1's brilliant and seminal patches, and has had everything except the logic board and CPU replaced at least once.

 

[pit512]

^ There is not only hackers and business users, that is not that binary...

 

[niteFlight]

I thought Apple would never be willing to incur the cost and the risk of this move...boy was I wrong! Unifying the code base of iOS and MacOS will be huge. I really do hope it leads to more than just cost savings. The gaping hole in this architecture is of course Boot Camp and virtualization. There is no solution that is going to let you run an operating system (and a few other very demanding types of software) through an emulation layer with any acceptable degree of performance. It will be very interesting to see the solution to this. Its not an esoteric use case either, many (I might even say most) developers need to be able to run Windows. There is of course the possibility that Apple knows a little more about the future direction for Windows than we do...

 

[trs96]

I thought Apple would never be willing to incur the cost and the risk of this move...boy was I wrong! Unifying the code base of iOS and MacOS will be huge. I really do hope it leads to more than just cost savings. The gaping hole in this architecture is of course Boot Camp and virtualization. There is no solution that is going to let you run an operating system (and a few other very demanding types of software) through an emulation layer with any acceptable degree of performance. It will be very interesting to see the solution to this. Its not an esoteric use case either, many (I might even say most) developers need to be able to run Windows. There is of course the possibility that Apple knows a little more about the future direction for Windows than we do...

Have you seen this Apple documentation about Rosetta 2 ? They aren't going to allow running x86 Windows 10 on Apple Silicon Macs in a VM. Probably not even an ARM version of Windows 10. This may be due to licensing issues with Microsoft.

What Can't Be Translated?

Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables:

• Kernel extensions
• Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms

About the Rosetta Translation Environment | Apple Developer Documentation

Learn how Rosetta translates executables, and understand what Rosetta can’t translate.

developer.apple.com

 

[pastrychef]

I thought Apple would never be willing to incur the cost and the risk of this move...boy was I wrong! Unifying the code base of iOS and MacOS will be huge. I really do hope it leads to more than just cost savings. The gaping hole in this architecture is of course Boot Camp and virtualization. There is no solution that is going to let you run an operating system (and a few other very demanding types of software) through an emulation layer with any acceptable degree of performance. It will be very interesting to see the solution to this. Its not an esoteric use case either, many (I might even say most) developers need to be able to run Windows. There is of course the possibility that Apple knows a little more about the future direction for Windows than we do...

I think that the best solution for running Win32 apps on ARM based Macs will be a port of WINE.

Anyone remember this:


I never bought this but I did buy Connectix Virtual Game Station. Lol

 

[skyz]

I personally don't think that Apple intends to stick us permanently with the "mobile device experience." I realize that it looks that way (especially as mobile has become the core of their profit margin) but, as computer users themselves, I think they realize that there will always be a need for the "desktop experience" (power/big screen real estate/easy to use input/etc). I don't have a crystal ball but I predict that, in a decade, what we will have is one powerful device (whether that be a tablet or a wearable is yet tbd) and something in the vein of the following:
1 (less likely - but it seems to me that Apple is interested in this) Augmented Reality hardware that virtually recreates the "desktop experience"

2. A desktop "dock" - that you plop your mobile device into when you sit down at your desk - plugging you in to your keyboard, mouse, monitors, and whatever other futuristic input device we haven't dreamt up yet.

It's off topic and I've a different point of view than yours, with all the wearable smart devices slowly launching and adopt by consumers, future of computing will likely back to mainframe/terminal model (VDI architecture is picking up rapidly in large corporation these couple of years). Nobody really needs a "Desktop" or even laptop if some kind of eye wear+glove mature enough to replace human interactive devices (monitor, mouse, keyboard....etc), we all have to work anytime anywhere as long as we got paid, conventional working style (going in the office, meeting after meeting talking BS, work from 9 to 5 then leave everything behind and repeat the next day...etc) will no longer relevant in post pandemic era.
There're actually hints few years back, Apple already announced they're trying to focus on services instead, meaning they foresee main portion of profit won't be generate from hardware anymore. No company will put resources to develop something non-profitable or profit margin is too low to justify it. I won't say Cook's strategy to get rid of Mac is right, but it's a correct business decision, just like they gave up pro market about 10 years ago.

 

[poles]

Intel insider claims it finally lost Apple because Skylake QA 'was abnormally bad'

Ex-Intel principal engineer, François Piednoël, believes he witnessed the inflection point three years ago with Skylake.

www.pcgamer.com

It was all along Intel.

 

[xplo]

I remember the bad old days of Windows 3.1 and 95, when MacOS was still guided by solid, sensible human interface design principles, and using a Mac was just a far more pleasant experience... Still, Mac suffered from limited hardware and software support and outrageous price premiums to go with the premium user experience.

Today, Intel and Hackintosh have addressed those problems - albeit incompletely - but Windows has also become a perfectly usable standard, and much of what set MacOS apart two decades ago has faded.

I'm already on an eight-year-old Ivy Bridge machine that's - what, two OS versions behind now? It still does everything I need. I'd planned to build a new system in 2021-2022, since this one is starting to feel a little long in the tooth, and I see no reason to change that plan; the new one should last as long, and what do I care if I don't have the absolute latest versions of software that already works just fine? I'll have plenty of time to observe what happens, and if Hackintosh is dead by 2030, that hardware will happily run Windows (I'm not deeply invested in Mac software, so no great loss) and I can say goodbye to Apple desktops.