Apple Moving Mac's To ARM

[Robin]

So after being long rumoured Apple confirmed the other day that from the next generation of Mac's they will be running on ARM based Apple Silicon, the biggest change since the jump from PowerPC to Intel in 2006.

Thoughts on this? For many considering a Mac right about now, is it a good idea to buy something which could be obsolete in months or might it actually be a good idea for backwards compatibility and the relative (compared to what's coming) openness of the ecosystem.

 

[Crash]

I suspect Intel support will continue for many years to come with just the shear user base it has. Apple is selling a lot more computers under Intel years than when they were using PowerPC chips. Like everything in technology, it's probably worthwhile to wait until the second generation when much of the bugs are ironed out before adopting. As well, being able to run Windows natively via Boot Camp is still a really nice ability.

The Mac that I'm typing on right now is about 8 years old and I've been debating upgrading. I might buy the final iteration of Intel MacBook Pro so that I retain the x86 architecture and compatibility and still have years of computing life ahead of it.

 

[Grayfox]

I suspect Intel support will continue for many years to come with just the shear user base it has. Apple is selling a lot more computers under Intel years than when they were using PowerPC chips. Like everything in technology, it's probably worthwhile to wait until the second generation when much of the bugs are ironed out before adopting. As well, being able to run Windows natively via Boot Camp is still a really nice ability.

The Mac that I'm typing on right now is about 8 years old and I've been debating upgrading. I might buy the final iteration of Intel MacBook Pro so that I retain the x86 architecture and compatibility and still have years of computing life ahead of it.

Their software under PPC was less refined, plus they didnt have ipod, iphone and all this other ijunk either.
Apple has become more of a fashion icon since their PPC days too.

Question is will the software companies that write software like photo, video editing or similar write software for the ARM architecture.
Going from Windows to MacOS while still using x86-64 is simple compared to going from x86-64 to ARM.

Will they see the need to justify it?

 

[Robin]

I suspect Intel support will continue for many years to come with just the shear user base it has. Apple is selling a lot more computers under Intel years than when they were using PowerPC chips. Like everything in technology, it's probably worthwhile to wait until the second generation when much of the bugs are ironed out before adopting. As well, being able to run Windows natively via Boot Camp is still a really nice ability.

The Mac that I'm typing on right now is about 8 years old and I've been debating upgrading. I might buy the final iteration of Intel MacBook Pro so that I retain the x86 architecture and compatibility and still have years of computing life ahead of it.

I would hope Apple does honour a reasonable amount of support going forward. It is worrying though that in late 2009 Apple released the last PPC compatible OSX, only 3 years after the last PPC released product. There is however a lot of support out there for the Intel era vs an unknown ARM future going forward and being an early adopter isn't a good idea for Apple's first stab at this.

 

[Lain]

Now that macOS will be running on ARM, the thing that would really interest me is an iPad that ran macOS... and Big Sur has lot of UI refinements that seem to prepare it for touchscreen usage, so it's not impossible. Hell, since iOS (and by extension iPadOS) are based on macOS, I don't see any reason why an iPad couldn't potentially switch between macOS and iPadOS on the fly, akin to Windows' tablet mode... except it'd actually be good.

In any case, I'm pretty excited to see what the ARM future has in store for the Mac, even if it doesn't mean macOS running on iPads. I'm not necessarily planning on buying a new MacBook in the immediate future, but if I were, I'd probably opt to wait for a compelling ARM model rather than picking up one of the last x86 models.

 

[BobK]

So is there going to be an iRaspberry iPi?

 

[Crash]

Question is will the software companies that write software like photo, video editing or similar write software for the ARM architecture.

I think they will. It's clear the mobile space is going towards, if not already, ARM based. Even the Surface Pro will have an ARM based family member.

I would hope Apple does honour a reasonable amount of support going forward. It is worrying though that in late 2009 Apple released the last PPC compatible OSX, only 3 years after the last PPC released product. There is however a lot of support out there for the Intel era vs an unknown ARM future going forward and being an early adopter isn't a good idea for Apple's first stab at this.

I agree that PPC died very quickly. I don't know if I expect Apple to continue significant software upgrades for Intel based machine a decade after the switch over is complete. My current machine did get 7 years of upgrades until OS 11 Big Sur phased it out.