@imikejackson
"Um, Tim Cook said the transition is complete by the end of next year in his part of the keynote. They will NOT create a release of macOS 11 whatever that will install on x86 based computers after that time. Tim didn't sugar coat it or talk in abstracts. He talked in absolute terms."
Of course that makes perfect sense because no one, including Apple, expects a customer who bought a $5,000 Intel iMac or $20,000 Intel Mac Pro today to be able to use it with more than one version of macOS. They expect people who bought a new iMac or Mac Pro today to throw it in the garbage after 1 year.
Fairly sure that *none* of us have access to the inner workings of Apple and what they expect. We debate topics here on the forums. But let's just lay out some items that will come to pass, as stated by Apple, in some finite amount of time.
* Apple will still sell Intel based machines for another 2 years.
* Apple will start selling Apple Silicon based machines by the end of this year.
* Apple will continue to support Intel based machines for a finite amount of time into the future
* Apple will *stop* supporting Intel based machines at some point in the future with some future release of macOS.
At this very specific time of writing that is what we were told by Apple. We have their past transitions to use as reasonable timelines and evidence as to what is very likely going to happen for new equipment.
Your current machine, barring a hardware failure, will continue to run your current software stack *forever*. What is going to change at some point in the future is that you will most likely *not* be able to get an upgrade for your favorite piece of software as that software developer will either charge a price you don't want to pay or have minimum system requirements that does not include your hackintosh. I don't know when that will happen for some random hackintosher. We will each hit our wall at some point.
We are talking years though before that really starts to happen for most of us. Some will hit it sooner than others. A lot can happen in those intervening years. Maybe someone does come up with a board that has an ARM on it that is powerful enough to run macOS. Maybe the community figures out how to run macOS on an ARM design. I think one of the major obstacles will be getting past Apple's security measures like T2 chips. I don't see Apple completely locking down macOS like they do the iPhone/iPads but I see it as a reasonable obstacle to get around. Let's look at the rest of the major system components to see what problems might occur.
First the obvious ones that don't matter: Case, Power Supply, Optical Drive.
CPU: Apple Silicon has its roots in ARM, but have they changed it enough?
RAM: Apple would most likely use industry standard RAM.
GPU: Apple will definitely use an in-house GPU design, lets call this Apple Silicon Integrated GPU. They will need something faster in all likely hood. I don't see any reason (based on history) for them to turn away from AMD. They will contract with AMD for a custom high end GPU chipset that will not be sold on to consumers. AMD will certainly sell something close to consumers but not that exact one. Will it matter like in the current cases for AMD GPUs? Maybe? Maybe not.
Wireless, BlueTooth: Probably will stick with something from Broadcom since they have not moved off of that in the past. BUT they are starting to make their own U1 wireless chips and it would surprise me if they stayed out of the 802.xx and BlueTooth forever. My context was something "built into" or "internal" to a hackintosh system. Somebody will come up with a USB 802.xx/BlueTooth device that runs perfectly fine on Apple Silicon based systems.
SSD/Hard Drive: Apple will continue to make their own SSDs using their own controllers. Any other SSD/Hard drive should still continue to work on Apple Silicon based systems. We will still have to hack in the TRIM support. Spinners still work out of the box.
I intend to use my hackintosh until I can't. Due to my reliance specific kinds of software that forces me into the latest macOS systems my time will come sooner than most hackintoshers. So let's make the most of these years that we have left.