Soli

headfull0wine said:

If I may ask, how many of you who are expressing the need keep x86 are currently using a MacBook or MacBook Air?  What percentage of that 35% of AI readers would that be?  And what percentage of the total Mac user base would that be?

I think the vast majority of coffee shop surfers wouldn’t even notice the difference. Only that there are more of them because the price point would be a bit lower. 

ARM based Macs will be a bottom-up endeavour rather than a top down. Apple is happy to run 2 versions of IOS. It would likely be equally happy running 2 versions of Mac OS. 

Pro laptops and all desktops would remain x86 while the consumer level mobile machines move to ARM. Heck, they could even make an entry level  iMac on ARM for schools and such. Maybe we would even see the return of the $500 Mac Mini. 

👆

I’m not in the market for an ARM-based Mac and will likely use an Intel-base MacBook Pro for as long as possible, but so many people here see ARM + Mac and think Apple is coming for their Mac the way Obama came for everyone’s guns. 

gutengel said:

I'm curious to know which credit score bureau Apple is gonna check before approving the card. I froze everything after the Equifax hack.

Me, too. I have it all locked down. It's annoying when you ask the financial officer of a company when you're buying a car which one they use and they have no idea. It's also annoying when they don't know about the one-time PIN option for accessing your credit, but that part may simply be a limitation of their SW so I've had to unlock it for a day which is only a very, very small potential risk.

MacPro said:

ravnorodom said:

Why not? Instead of reinventing the wheel.

That said I hope they are quietly doing exactly that in the background.

Steve Jobs was very clear about how Apple shouldn't "think different" for its own sake.

From Q&A session at WWDC 1997:
(start at 9m:22s)
Jobs: "I think the wisdom here is not say that we gotta invent everything ourselves […] I think this whole notion of being completely proprietary has really hurt us. […] There's a lot of smart people that don't work at Apple, too."
Some Guy: "The only thing I'd like to add is that Apple be perceived as different otherwise we're just like everybody else."
Jobs: "No, I don't think it's good that Apple is perceived as different. I think it's important that Apple is perceived as much better. If being different is essential to doing that we have to do that, but if we can be much better without being different then that would be fine with me."

PS: In true Jobs fashion the "Think Different" campaign launched later that year.

jeremy c said:

@damk, agreed. There are linux tools that a lot of us use in macOS that would require porting over to ARM from x86.

What "linux tools" are you referring to that are not part of any Linux distro that is ARM compatible?

1) I see no layout or settings change, like the addition of WPA3, which I've noticed is a setting option with macOS 10.15 Catalina.

2) The AirPort Extreme I updated was a decade old!  I think the iPod was still Apple's biggest seller. An AirPort Extreme design (not generation) that has been discontinued for 6 years. When I saw this article I happened to be over at the house of someone's house whom I gifted an old 3rd gen 802.11n earlier this year. I pulled it out of my tech closet and dusted it off after years of sitting idle because they were paying a monthly fee to their internet provider for a clunky router that wasn't any more useful than this decade old AirPort. How many companies are doing that? How many of these are even in use?