More than two, but I think it would be very awkward to have machines from the same product category with different operating systems. Can you imagine a sales associate in the Apple store reminding customers that the MBA doesn't run Adobe software? Sounds really complicated. It would be like the 16GB iPhone doesn't run the same apps as the 32GB model.
Heck, Adobe software is such a bloated hog you might even find it runs a bit snappier on iOS!
That is exactly what I am suggesting. I don't see Apple just using ARM on a MBA. Do they really want to maintain two Mac operating systems? If they switch, they will switch them all. Maybe they create a 100 core multiprocessor version for the Mac Pro. Adobe CC needs really fast hardware. If it doesn't run on the newest Macs, I think the pros will bail to Windows. I know that it would be a viable alternative for me. Adobe CC is the gold standard and is absolutely indispensable for collaboration.
Honestly, the look and feel of Adobe CC is almost exactly the same on both platforms, Windows and Mac. Windows sucks in many ways, but the file system is ok and once you are in your app you feel right at home. Hopefully it never comes down to that and Apple and Adobe can work together to make the transition.
Of course I prefer a Mac but I simply have no choice. I have to have Adobe CC or I can't do my job.
I don't see that at all for a very, very long time. First we need to start with a low-end device and then slowly work up from there. I'd wager, that by the time there is an ARM-base Mac Pro that can match the current Mac Pro at its relative performance level in the Mac lineup, that having apps on board built entirely in Swift will have been a distance memory as Apple moving from Motorola to IBM architecture.
A lot more than that. They have OS X which runs Darwin which we can then divide into two distinct categories (Mac OS X and iOS) based on primary input methods, but iOS can be divided even further if we look at how iOS for iPhone and iOS for iPad are inherently different in how their UIs are built. Then you have Apple TV, which first used a nearly vanilla version of Mac OS X Tiger(?) and now using an iOS base with an idealized UI, and likely other core elements for the HW that is unique to it. Then you have wOS (is that iOS?), AirPort devices OS(es), the non iOS iPod OS(es), and probably some others that Apple maintains, perhaps even something they built from Darwin or Linux for certain backend services.
So why can't they have another fork for doubling or quadrupling their desktop and notebook sales by being able to eschew an expensive component for a given performance level that they can beat on their own terms?
What if something better than Adobe CC becomes available?
What if it allows you, and other similar companies, to do a better job -- significantly faster, easier at less cost.
Will you adapt?
If not, will you suffer from your competitors who have adapted?
I have already irradicated Adobe from my life, I'm not saying apps such as Affinity Designer & Pixelmator can match feature for feature (yet) but the UI is so much cleaner which increases my productivity. Plus they seem to 'just work' I don't get anywhere near the grief I used to get with the multitude of Adobe proprietary formats and bugs.
Heck, Adobe software is such a bloated hog you might even find it runs a bit snappier on iOS!
Sure great poke at Adobe but that makes no sense. If the software is bloated on Intel, then it is bloated on ARM. The only thing that would make it run faster is to un-bloat it or run it on faster hardware. But you do have a point. If Adobe rewrote CC for ARM they would have the opportunity to clean it up. Of course piling new code on top of legacy code for years is going to lead to inefficiencies but constantly rewriting everything from scratch on a yearly basis is really expensive. I know because I am maintaining some 10 year old code and I want to rewrite it but no one wants to pay me to do it.
What if something better than Adobe CC becomes available?
For me, legacy support for file formats, collaboration, cross platform compatibility, ubiquitous adoption by the industry trump any workflow improvements or cost savings. If something comes along that is so good that the whole industry switches then it is a moot point. That is what happened with inDesign vs. Quark. I'm surprised Quark is still in business. But that was was just one app and were talking about a whole suite.
What do you do when WiFi is not available or the Cloud is down?
The "x86 forever " argument is such a ridiculous defense against ARM. No one is saying Intel would be dropped the way PPC was dropped completely for x86, when PPC plateaued. We're talking about making entry-level notebooks that re hundreds of dollars less expensive than their current lineup, with very expensive Intel chips that Apple can beat.
Do you even know how the iOS App Store was created? Do you think those were x86 apps that magically ran on ARM? No! Apple made tools and people adopted them. If and when large and expensive productively app makers decide that the new, much lower entry-level Mac market is viable they will make SW. If not, someone else will, but that won't matter to its initial success, just as not even having an App Store didn't matter to the iPhone initial success, and yet I'd wager that if this does happen there will already be an App Store in place for those machines running that architecture… or do you not think Apple partners with SW developers in secret despite all the special events and keynotes to the contrary.
There's is no way that Apple is going to bifurcate their OS X market. And that's exactly what would happen.
Gee, I don't know any of this! Wow, how was the App Store created? Is there some secret I don't know about? Really, this is different. iOS was a phone, a totally different platform. It was something that no one else was doing. Apps were small things. Most still are. But we're talking about OS X. It's a different thing. It's an established platform. Apple would see that circular problem of sell enough devices, and we'll see software. But who would buy it without the software? That's the problem Microsoft is seeing with their phones. You're making a very bad assumption.
And don't say that not having an App Store wouldn't have mattered to the iPhone's success. It most definately would have, which is why we have one. Because the initial success wasn't assured. One year's sales mean little. Apple knew that to grow, they needed a store. I kept telling people here that it would come, and a lot of people didn't believe that.
It's easy to say, here, what will matter to success, or not. But that's just you talking here. The real world is a lot more difficult.
Apple has made major moves to different platforms over the years, and there's no guarantee that major developers will want to make another one, particularly if it's only for a portion of the platform, and the low end portion to boot.
What do you do when WiFi is not available or the Cloud is down?
Makes absolutely no difference except I can't email my collaborators. The software does not require the internet except once every 3 months to verify your account status. The software runs locally.
If Adobe rewrote CC for ARM they would have the opportunity to clean it up. Of course piling new code on top of legacy code for years is going to lead to inefficiencies but constantly rewriting everything from scratch on a yearly basis is really expensive. I know because I am maintaining some 10 year old code and I want to rewrite it but no one wants to pay me to do it.
That is what I mean. I'm also maintaining some old code, and no matter how much I bitch and scream, the management can't comprehend why it needs a good old fashioned re-write and won't stump up the cash. Instead they keep asking for more features, and every new feature is a hack and takes 10 times longer than it should do. Ultimately they pay WAY more than a re-write and have an inferior product ta boot!
For me, legacy support for file formats, collaboration, cross platform compatibility, ubiquitous adoption by the industry trump any workflow improvements or cost savings. If something comes along that is so good that the whole industry switches then it is a moot point. That is what happened with inDesign vs. Quark. I'm surprised Quark is still in business. But that was was just one app and were talking about a whole suite.
What do you do when WiFi is not available or the Cloud is down?
Makes absolutely no difference except I can't email my collaborators. The software does not require the internet except once every 3 months to verify your account status. The software runs locally.
Well, all of a sudden it makes a lot of sense that MS and Adobe were getting their place in the limelight during the iPad Pro presentation... By the time ARM chips will be powerful enough (and since the iPad Pro is more powerful than 80% of laptops shipped in the last 12 months, many of them used to run exactly the software you are talking about) there will be pretty powerful, desktop-class-enough for most people, apps for exactly that platform. It is just a reverse deja vu, previously we adopted desktop GUIs for touch, and now we will have touch apps being ported to the desktop. Fantasizing further... This should be OS "XI" and co-exist with OS X for the time required.
We have to be very careful of what we call Desktop class software. There is no software right now on iOS that can be called Desktop class other than in a loose way. So the video editing software is pretty good, but not equal to good Desktop software. The same thing is true for everything g else. It's all equal to software from ten years ago, maybe a bit later. But that doesn't qualify today.
I also doubt that the ipad pro, which I will be getting, is really more powerful than 80% of all laptops sold in the past year. Really, I doubt it. Apple is if anything, enthusiastic at times. We're seeing, for example that the A9 is about 50% more powerful than the A8, not 70%, as Apple states. Likely that will follow through with the A9x as well.
But it doesn't matter anyway. It's getting pretty close. I imagine that it will be as powerful as a medium level ultra low power i3, and that's pretty good, and well beyond what people imagined several years ago as to where it would be. People here, hopefully, remember that I've been saying that it will move up pretty far, so I'm not denigrating it.
Apple seems to be dead set against the idea of having touch on the Desktop, or notebook. They've stated that a number of times. A while ago, when Apple patented a Desktop model with a swing down mount that could be used for on screen typing, I thought it would happen. But that was years ago, and we see nothing indicating that Apple has an interest in it. And there's no reason believe that even if they did, it would be for an ARM OS X computer.
You guys really need to sit back and stop saying that we WILL have this or that. It's your desire, but there is no indication that it's Apple's desire.
Just out of interest, for several years now, I've written about the idea of the Universal OS, where an app would run across all platforms a company had. Guess what? Microsoft has been doing that! And guess what? No one is interested.
You guys really need to sit back and stop saying that we WILL have this or that. It's your desire, but there is no indication that it's Apple's desire.
Just out of interest, for several years now, I've written about the idea of the Universal OS, where an app would run across all platforms a company had. Guess what? Microsoft has been doing that! And guess what? No one is interested.
It's not my "desire". I wouldn't even buy one (in the first 5 years or so anyway), but I know a few million people would. It's the economics and competition which will inevitably drive this through in some shape or form.
Nobody is interested in Microsoft because they make crap and "have no taste" I don't think the singular OS has anything to do with it It's not what you do. it's what you do WELL that counts.
Microsoft is out of the game for good IMO. Their business model is last century, and they have absolutely zero hope of gaining any ground in the crucial mobile market.
It seems like only a year ago people on here were arguing with me saying ARM chips would never come close to being fit for laptops. Funny how time and progression changes things
I didn't know the 6S was beating the MacBook in benchmarks, that's pretty impressive.
It beat the slowest laptop on its lowest frequency (1.1ghz). Still impressive, but nowhere close to a current generation i7.
I hope they give Adobe a few years notice if they plan to switch to ARM. Otherwise Apple will lose perhaps a couple million customers if it doesn't run Adobe CC. I know that doesn't sound like a lot when they are selling 6 million Macs per quarter but graphic design is a substantial and core demographic of which I am part. I'm sure there are other industries as well that are just as dependent on proprietary third party Mac software that would be difficult to rewrite for ARM. Remember how long it took for all the software to switch to Intel from Power PC? Running software in Rosetta sucked. Fortunately back then Adobe already had Intel compatible software. Who knows, perhaps their work on iPad apps will give them a jump start to port their professional titles to ARM.
This is exactly the problem. It's simplistic to think that somehow, magically, software will appear on what will be a new platform that isn't selling that well, because it's new and untried. It's also naive to think that people will but an OS X platform that will lock them out of much software. None of that software, except for some of Apple's, and a few smaller developer's will run natively. I just don't understand why people aren't thinking this out.
And if it's OS X, there will be no touch screen, because touch won't work well with OS X. That's the problem Microsoft is having with their tablets. What I found during the 2000's, was that Windows compatibles with 13-15" screens didn't work well with a Desktop OS, even though there were some concessions to using a stylus. OS X will suffer that same fate.
People forget that software under Rosetta ran at about half speed. That was with processors that were in the ball park of the preceding versions, and actually more powerful than the Power PC. Here, it will be the reverse, with the ARM devices being less powerful than the average x86 device. Will people accept software running that slowly? I don't think so.
The thing is, most Macbook users just use a browser and an email client. They have no desire to run anything particularly processor intensive. ARM is already 'good enough' for the majority of users, and any of the old dinosaur apps will just have to start from scratch. We already see Adobe/Microsoft on stage taking the iPad pro seriously, I think it's just a matter of time before a device of this kind appears.
I don't see any reason why it would happen. I do see the iPad getting more powerful. I do see apps on that getting more powerful, assuming that the Pro is successful, which is something we are all hoping for, but don't know. Remember that we were all surprised to see the rising future for iPads come to a sudden halt. Maybe Apple knows why, and what to do about it. Maybe the Pro is the real solution.
But what any of this has to do with a notebook, I don't know.
This is exactly the problem. It's simplistic to think that somehow, magically, software will appear on what will be a new platform that isn't selling that well, because it's new and untried. It's also naive to think that people will but an OS X platform that will lock them out of much software. None of that software, except for some of Apple's, and a few smaller developer's will run natively. I just don't understand why people aren't thinking this out.
And if it's OS X, there will be no touch screen, because touch won't work well with OS X. That's the problem Microsoft is having with their tablets. What I found during the 2000's, was that Windows compatibles with 13-15" screens didn't work well with a Desktop OS, even though there were some concessions to using a stylus. OS X will suffer that same fate.
People forget that software under Rosetta ran at about half speed. That was with processors that were in the ball park of the preceding versions, and actually more powerful than the Power PC. Here, it will be the reverse, with the ARM devices being less powerful than the average x86 device. Will people accept software running that slowly? I don't think so.
I don't think either myself or anyone else in this discussion is suggesting to run a Rosetta like translation. The 'lock out' just isn't a big deal for most people. Not everyone is a power user, in-fact people like yourself likely only make up 20% of the market (and I think that's being generous). Don't worry, OSX is not going anywhere just yet. Still likely a good decade or more before it finally kicks the bucket. By then it will have morphed and you won't even tell the difference anyway.
Do people assume that Adobe doesn't use the Cocoa frameworks? I'm pretty sure they rewrote that years ago.
If there are ARM processors for the lower end macs the developers, in theory ( and by and large in practice) can just compile to a FAT binary. In fact Apple is encouraging, but not yet demanding outside watchOS, that devs compile their apps in llvm bit code and upload that to the App Store. Since Apple thinks strategically these days ( see auto layout coming a few years before the 6) that means something. If they enforce Mac App Store uploads as bit code then they can just release an ARM based machine with working apps on that day.
Not that Intel will go away. The bit code can be compiled to either binary -- ARM or Intel -- by the App Store and the result made available for download on either machine. Intel will stay because of Windows compatibility and the power of their top end chips.
I hope they give Adobe a few years notice if they plan to switch to ARM. Otherwise Apple will lose perhaps a couple million customers if it doesn't run Adobe CC. I know that doesn't sound like a lot when they are selling 6 million Macs per quarter but graphic design is a substantial and core demographic of which I am part. I'm sure there are other industries as well that are just as dependent on proprietary third party Mac software that would be difficult to rewrite for ARM.
Not just proprietary stuff. There are millions of software developers (like me) using Java on Macs. We know Jobs had no love for that language and didn't allow a JVM on the iPhone. If Apple is trying to get content creators to adopt an ARM based laptop, they'll have to rethink their position on this issue.
The article makes it sound like upgrading to 2GB ram had a significant power impact.. which is incorrect. a 1.35v memory chip bank thats 2gb takes same power as a 4 or 8 GB bank of memory.. Memory had NOTHING to do with power usage.
Apple has not 'struggled' with power as much as made strategic decisions with power and how to manage it. My iPhone 6 right now out runs the majority of Android phones, and my iPhone 6s Plus will last a few days.
It takes power to run chips that are half utilized no matter what. In a desktop or laptop, it's not quite as much of an issue since unused memory gets used as system cache (eg disk cache, since mechanical drives take more power.) But in a phone or tablet, there's more at stake, since you can power the NAND on and off as often as you need to, thus reducing the need to read-cache any of it.
However when it comes to CPU cores, running all the cores full-out comes at a penalty of running the cores at a lower speed. Otherwise the thermal limits are rapidly exceeded. So if you have 2 1.5Ghz cores and suddenly increase that to 4 or 6, those cores get clocked down to like 1.2Ghz.
That's why you often see "single threading" benchmark scores that don't mathmatically multiply when multicore is benchmarked. Plus there are situations where Android devices cheat benchmarks on purpose and turn off their power-saving during a benchmark.
Plus you have the GPU to consider.
So it's great to have more cores, but if the software environment is barely using them, it's much the same problem as people who buy a SUV but only ever drive it in the city with themselves as the only driver/passenger. Almost nothing out there on the client-end is multithreaded in any significant way. At most, Source, Unreal and Unity might make some use of it, but they're not yet doing multithreaded drawing. Not till DX12/Vulkan at least.
It seems like only a year ago people on here were arguing with me saying ARM chips would never come close to being fit for laptops. Funny how time and progression changes things
I didn't know the 6S was beating the MacBook in benchmarks, that's pretty impressive.
Because they are still very far apart. The A9's geekbench scores only put it within reach of a 7-year old desktop or a 4 year old subnotebook. That's barely impressive.
The Windows compatibility and the current trend of "wrapping" Windows games with a fork of Wine to put the game on a Mac isn't going to make Apple suddenly abandon the x86 platform.
You're not going to see Apple "Switch" OSX again. Microsoft already tried that, and got spanked for it. What you're going to see instead is everyone produce iOS software, and the "iPad" be allowed to cannibalize the low-end subnotebook's because arguably those devices are expensive and unusable anyway when current Adobe and Game software wants CPU and GPU parts that are 4 times more powerful. All iOS hardware needs is a way to use the same 12 button game controller on all the OSX/iOS platforms without needing to pair them over and over again.
Comments
More than two, but I think it would be very awkward to have machines from the same product category with different operating systems. Can you imagine a sales associate in the Apple store reminding customers that the MBA doesn't run Adobe software? Sounds really complicated. It would be like the 16GB iPhone doesn't run the same apps as the 32GB model.
Heck, Adobe software is such a bloated hog you might even find it runs a bit snappier on iOS!
I don't see that at all for a very, very long time. First we need to start with a low-end device and then slowly work up from there. I'd wager, that by the time there is an ARM-base Mac Pro that can match the current Mac Pro at its relative performance level in the Mac lineup, that having apps on board built entirely in Swift will have been a distance memory as Apple moving from Motorola to IBM architecture.
A lot more than that. They have OS X which runs Darwin which we can then divide into two distinct categories (Mac OS X and iOS) based on primary input methods, but iOS can be divided even further if we look at how iOS for iPhone and iOS for iPad are inherently different in how their UIs are built. Then you have Apple TV, which first used a nearly vanilla version of Mac OS X Tiger(?) and now using an iOS base with an idealized UI, and likely other core elements for the HW that is unique to it. Then you have wOS (is that iOS?), AirPort devices OS(es), the non iOS iPod OS(es), and probably some others that Apple maintains, perhaps even something they built from Darwin or Linux for certain backend services.
So why can't they have another fork for doubling or quadrupling their desktop and notebook sales by being able to eschew an expensive component for a given performance level that they can beat on their own terms?
What if something better than Adobe CC becomes available?
What if it allows you, and other similar companies, to do a better job -- significantly faster, easier at less cost.
Will you adapt?
If not, will you suffer from your competitors who have adapted?
I have already irradicated Adobe from my life, I'm not saying apps such as Affinity Designer & Pixelmator can match feature for feature (yet) but the UI is so much cleaner which increases my productivity. Plus they seem to 'just work' I don't get anywhere near the grief I used to get with the multitude of Adobe proprietary formats and bugs.
Heck, Adobe software is such a bloated hog you might even find it runs a bit snappier on iOS!
Sure great poke at Adobe but that makes no sense. If the software is bloated on Intel, then it is bloated on ARM. The only thing that would make it run faster is to un-bloat it or run it on faster hardware. But you do have a point. If Adobe rewrote CC for ARM they would have the opportunity to clean it up. Of course piling new code on top of legacy code for years is going to lead to inefficiencies but constantly rewriting everything from scratch on a yearly basis is really expensive. I know because I am maintaining some 10 year old code and I want to rewrite it but no one wants to pay me to do it.
What do you do when WiFi is not available or the Cloud is down?
There's is no way that Apple is going to bifurcate their OS X market. And that's exactly what would happen.
Gee, I don't know any of this! Wow, how was the App Store created? Is there some secret I don't know about? Really, this is different. iOS was a phone, a totally different platform. It was something that no one else was doing. Apps were small things. Most still are. But we're talking about OS X. It's a different thing. It's an established platform. Apple would see that circular problem of sell enough devices, and we'll see software. But who would buy it without the software? That's the problem Microsoft is seeing with their phones. You're making a very bad assumption.
And don't say that not having an App Store wouldn't have mattered to the iPhone's success. It most definately would have, which is why we have one. Because the initial success wasn't assured. One year's sales mean little. Apple knew that to grow, they needed a store. I kept telling people here that it would come, and a lot of people didn't believe that.
It's easy to say, here, what will matter to success, or not. But that's just you talking here. The real world is a lot more difficult.
Apple has made major moves to different platforms over the years, and there's no guarantee that major developers will want to make another one, particularly if it's only for a portion of the platform, and the low end portion to boot.
What do you do when WiFi is not available or the Cloud is down?
Makes absolutely no difference except I can't email my collaborators. The software does not require the internet except once every 3 months to verify your account status. The software runs locally.
If Adobe rewrote CC for ARM they would have the opportunity to clean it up. Of course piling new code on top of legacy code for years is going to lead to inefficiencies but constantly rewriting everything from scratch on a yearly basis is really expensive. I know because I am maintaining some 10 year old code and I want to rewrite it but no one wants to pay me to do it.
That is what I mean. I'm also maintaining some old code, and no matter how much I bitch and scream, the management can't comprehend why it needs a good old fashioned re-write and won't stump up the cash. Instead they keep asking for more features, and every new feature is a hack and takes 10 times longer than it should do. Ultimately they pay WAY more than a re-write and have an inferior product ta boot!
Almost ...
Ahh ...
Didn't now that!
We have to be very careful of what we call Desktop class software. There is no software right now on iOS that can be called Desktop class other than in a loose way. So the video editing software is pretty good, but not equal to good Desktop software. The same thing is true for everything g else. It's all equal to software from ten years ago, maybe a bit later. But that doesn't qualify today.
I also doubt that the ipad pro, which I will be getting, is really more powerful than 80% of all laptops sold in the past year. Really, I doubt it. Apple is if anything, enthusiastic at times. We're seeing, for example that the A9 is about 50% more powerful than the A8, not 70%, as Apple states. Likely that will follow through with the A9x as well.
But it doesn't matter anyway. It's getting pretty close. I imagine that it will be as powerful as a medium level ultra low power i3, and that's pretty good, and well beyond what people imagined several years ago as to where it would be. People here, hopefully, remember that I've been saying that it will move up pretty far, so I'm not denigrating it.
Apple seems to be dead set against the idea of having touch on the Desktop, or notebook. They've stated that a number of times. A while ago, when Apple patented a Desktop model with a swing down mount that could be used for on screen typing, I thought it would happen. But that was years ago, and we see nothing indicating that Apple has an interest in it. And there's no reason believe that even if they did, it would be for an ARM OS X computer.
You guys really need to sit back and stop saying that we WILL have this or that. It's your desire, but there is no indication that it's Apple's desire.
Just out of interest, for several years now, I've written about the idea of the Universal OS, where an app would run across all platforms a company had. Guess what? Microsoft has been doing that! And guess what? No one is interested.
You guys really need to sit back and stop saying that we WILL have this or that. It's your desire, but there is no indication that it's Apple's desire.
Just out of interest, for several years now, I've written about the idea of the Universal OS, where an app would run across all platforms a company had. Guess what? Microsoft has been doing that! And guess what? No one is interested.
It's not my "desire". I wouldn't even buy one (in the first 5 years or so anyway), but I know a few million people would. It's the economics and competition which will inevitably drive this through in some shape or form.
Nobody is interested in Microsoft because they make crap and "have no taste" I don't think the singular OS has anything to do with it
It's not what you do. it's what you do WELL that counts.
Microsoft is out of the game for good IMO. Their business model is last century, and they have absolutely zero hope of gaining any ground in the crucial mobile market.
This is exactly the problem. It's simplistic to think that somehow, magically, software will appear on what will be a new platform that isn't selling that well, because it's new and untried. It's also naive to think that people will but an OS X platform that will lock them out of much software. None of that software, except for some of Apple's, and a few smaller developer's will run natively. I just don't understand why people aren't thinking this out.
And if it's OS X, there will be no touch screen, because touch won't work well with OS X. That's the problem Microsoft is having with their tablets. What I found during the 2000's, was that Windows compatibles with 13-15" screens didn't work well with a Desktop OS, even though there were some concessions to using a stylus. OS X will suffer that same fate.
People forget that software under Rosetta ran at about half speed. That was with processors that were in the ball park of the preceding versions, and actually more powerful than the Power PC. Here, it will be the reverse, with the ARM devices being less powerful than the average x86 device. Will people accept software running that slowly? I don't think so.
I don't see any reason why it would happen. I do see the iPad getting more powerful. I do see apps on that getting more powerful, assuming that the Pro is successful, which is something we are all hoping for, but don't know. Remember that we were all surprised to see the rising future for iPads come to a sudden halt. Maybe Apple knows why, and what to do about it. Maybe the Pro is the real solution.
But what any of this has to do with a notebook, I don't know.
This is exactly the problem. It's simplistic to think that somehow, magically, software will appear on what will be a new platform that isn't selling that well, because it's new and untried. It's also naive to think that people will but an OS X platform that will lock them out of much software. None of that software, except for some of Apple's, and a few smaller developer's will run natively. I just don't understand why people aren't thinking this out.
And if it's OS X, there will be no touch screen, because touch won't work well with OS X. That's the problem Microsoft is having with their tablets. What I found during the 2000's, was that Windows compatibles with 13-15" screens didn't work well with a Desktop OS, even though there were some concessions to using a stylus. OS X will suffer that same fate.
People forget that software under Rosetta ran at about half speed. That was with processors that were in the ball park of the preceding versions, and actually more powerful than the Power PC. Here, it will be the reverse, with the ARM devices being less powerful than the average x86 device. Will people accept software running that slowly? I don't think so.
I don't think either myself or anyone else in this discussion is suggesting to run a Rosetta like translation. The 'lock out' just isn't a big deal for most people. Not everyone is a power user, in-fact people like yourself likely only make up 20% of the market (and I think that's being generous). Don't worry, OSX is not going anywhere just yet. Still likely a good decade or more before it finally kicks the bucket. By then it will have morphed and you won't even tell the difference anyway.
If there are ARM processors for the lower end macs the developers, in theory ( and by and large in practice) can just compile to a FAT binary. In fact Apple is encouraging, but not yet demanding outside watchOS, that devs compile their apps in llvm bit code and upload that to the App Store. Since Apple thinks strategically these days ( see auto layout coming a few years before the 6) that means something. If they enforce Mac App Store uploads as bit code then they can just release an ARM based machine with working apps on that day.
It takes power to run chips that are half utilized no matter what. In a desktop or laptop, it's not quite as much of an issue since unused memory gets used as system cache (eg disk cache, since mechanical drives take more power.) But in a phone or tablet, there's more at stake, since you can power the NAND on and off as often as you need to, thus reducing the need to read-cache any of it.
However when it comes to CPU cores, running all the cores full-out comes at a penalty of running the cores at a lower speed. Otherwise the thermal limits are rapidly exceeded. So if you have 2 1.5Ghz cores and suddenly increase that to 4 or 6, those cores get clocked down to like 1.2Ghz.
That's why you often see "single threading" benchmark scores that don't mathmatically multiply when multicore is benchmarked. Plus there are situations where Android devices cheat benchmarks on purpose and turn off their power-saving during a benchmark.
Plus you have the GPU to consider.
So it's great to have more cores, but if the software environment is barely using them, it's much the same problem as people who buy a SUV but only ever drive it in the city with themselves as the only driver/passenger. Almost nothing out there on the client-end is multithreaded in any significant way. At most, Source, Unreal and Unity might make some use of it, but they're not yet doing multithreaded drawing. Not till DX12/Vulkan at least.
Because they are still very far apart. The A9's geekbench scores only put it within reach of a 7-year old desktop or a 4 year old subnotebook. That's barely impressive.
The Windows compatibility and the current trend of "wrapping" Windows games with a fork of Wine to put the game on a Mac isn't going to make Apple suddenly abandon the x86 platform.
You're not going to see Apple "Switch" OSX again. Microsoft already tried that, and got spanked for it. What you're going to see instead is everyone produce iOS software, and the "iPad" be allowed to cannibalize the low-end subnotebook's because arguably those devices are expensive and unusable anyway when current Adobe and Game software wants CPU and GPU parts that are 4 times more powerful. All iOS hardware needs is a way to use the same 12 button game controller on all the OSX/iOS platforms without needing to pair them over and over again.