Grampa is rambling, be quiet!
The transition from 68K to PPC saw older software supported in one form or another for about 5 years. The transition from RISC to x86 worked in about the same way. I expect x86 to be unsupported by Apple from 2025, though the big factor in that will be how fast M1 is adopted. This matters in more ways that one -- devs will not be planning any new releases on x86, beginning now. Updates will slowly vanish as well for established titles. Many of your favorites applications will never transition to M1 at all as devs have long moved on. We've seen all this before.
Of course the presentation numbers were inflated, as all tech companies do that. It remains that, from a processor architecture point of view, components-on-a-chip has some serious efficiency gain potential, so I can buy that battery life extension.
As well, Intel never maent integrated GPUs to be full gaming or design platform. They were a very nice convenience, that's it. Makes no difference on the PC side as anyone serious has dedicated GPUs, but for Apple products where thermals are such a major issue, it was a big problem. Taking ownership of the GPU and putting it in the core resolves many issues and ensures at least decent performance, probably more.
I can see the idea behind ram on the core for added performance as well, but when Apple sells a monopolized 8gb increase for $200USD, that feels like major sucks to me for the future. The new Apple M1 models are entirely disposable, almost consumables, exactly like the iPhones have become, and that's probably part of the plan.
As attractive as they may be, the M1 Macs are not designed for me at all. I like to tinker and upgrade and increase capabilities over time, not buy, use and thow to the recycling two years later. I like to buy Gen -1 or Gen -2 and tweak them up to current standards. You can no longer do that with M1. So Hackingtosh forever - though the OS will need a LOT more tweaking than porting between x86 code.
Finally, it is only a matter of a few years, since these are so un-upgradable, for a whole lot of M1 cores to be available on the second hand market, even if Apple chokes other source of supply. That opens the gate to some great possibilities, knowing how incredibly creative folks here and elsewhere can be when driven!
- Pat, currently working on a Z420 gamebox.