Mac on ARM depends on Office on ARM which MS is delivering... so this is credible now
I think Mac on ARM depends on a lot more than Office on ARM. Most notably for a lot of developers, any Mac will need the tools they're currently using on the Intel version. And there are hundreds of critically important ones - from compilers/interpreters for Java, C++, Python, Go, etc. to IDEs like Netbeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ. From shells to VMs to Web Servers.....provided Apple makes ARM compilers freely available, there may not be much of an issue with open source tools, but it will still take time.
Meanwhile the transition from PowerPC to Intel was relatively painless since, by that time, the Intel chips were plenty fast to run PPC apps in an emulator (Rosetta). But I'm not sure Ax is powerful enough to run x86 apps sufficiently fast. But who knows - maybe an Ax based Mac might bundle a few of those Ax chips to keep things hopping.
Apple has spent years setting up the infra structure to run Macs on other architectures. The same efforts have gone into the cell phone App Store to make sure you get the right code for your specific phone. Running an ARM based Mac will not be a big deal software wise.
Consider a few things on the software side.
One; many apps from the open source world already have been ported to ARM due to all the Linux based systems out there. Mind you this is for apps that even need porting, many simply recompile.
Two; Apple has spent years getting developers to write to API’s. If developers follow Apples guidelines many apps will port with simple recompile’s.
Three; Apple will not launch such a machine without all of its supplied apps running fully native as 64 bit apps. This puts any app that hasn’t been ported in very poor light.
Four; specialized hardware or instructions can have a huge impact in interpreters. JavaScript is a perfect example of using a specialized instruction to accelerate JavaScript code to a surprising degree. So much in fact that Apples ARM chips perform significantly better than the competition. The fact is specialized hardware be used t an instruction, a GPU or a hardware decoder, does more to distinguish a machine performance wise than the ALU.
We have every reason to expect that an ARM based Mac will be a very good performer right out of the box for the overwhelming majority of Apples user base. Most software will port rapidly if they keep the Mac system. Apps that don’t port rapidly will end up being seen very negatively in the community. The reason is simple, if you can’t port your app rapidly to an ARM based Mac you either did something wrong in your code base or you just don’t care. Either way it doesn’t look good there the average consumer when most apps are launch ready.
In the end there is a lot of irrational fear about software and an ARM based Mac. If I was Apple I wouldn’t even bother with an X86 emulator.
I would like to see glasses with blue tooth so I can just sit on my deck with my laptop and watch a movie or listen to music w/o a smartphone. Is there anything like this out there?
Mac on ARM depends on Office on ARM which MS is delivering... so this is credible now
I understand why you say that but suspect Office for Mac isn't all that important these days. I could be wrong of course, I'd like to know how many Macs as a percentage of them run MS Office these days.
Much like the Google glass fiasco the issue here is with image. I am sure that these glasses will offer many potentially cool features, but I don't want to necessarily wear these goofy glasses! Hell no. Imagine everyone wearing the same glasses? You know, Segways are really cool and are amazing technology but anyone riding one in my opinion looks like a total dick. Good luck with this one Apple, I really miss Steve.
The PPC chips were RISC type chips like the ARM chips.
RISC or CISC is utterly irrelevant. First RISC CPUs have become more CISC-like as time went on, second CISC CPUs have adopted RISC-like micro architectures. Third, and most importantly, nobody cares about CPU architecture, that’s what compilers and high level languages are for.
Key issues for adopting ARM for Macs is that the chips must have a more powerful RAM support and a more powerful IO architecture: there needs to be hardware to power/refresh tens of gigabytes of DRAM, Thunderbolt IO, etc. all of which an iOS device doesn’t need.
An A13X has more than enough CPU power for a Mac, the IO/RAM aspects are currently missing. But given that Apple does custom silicon for the Macs, that shouldn’t be a significant obstacle: they have the in-house know-how.
Much like the Google glass fiasco the issue here is with image. I am sure that these glasses will offer many potentially cool features, but I don't want to necessarily wear these goofy glasses! Hell no. Imagine everyone wearing the same glasses? You know, Segways are really cool and are amazing technology but anyone riding one in my opinion looks like a total dick. Good luck with this one Apple, I really miss Steve.
You don't even know what they look like, much less that there'd be only one style.
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For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Quest
You know, Segways are really cool and are amazing technology but anyone riding one in my opinion looks like a total dick.
Good luck with this one Apple, I really miss Steve.
Third, and most importantly, nobody cares about CPU architecture, that’s what compilers and high level languages are for.
Key issues for adopting ARM for Macs is that the chips must have a more powerful RAM support and a more powerful IO architecture: there needs to be hardware to power/refresh tens of gigabytes of DRAM, Thunderbolt IO, etc. all of which an iOS device doesn’t need.
An A13X has more than enough CPU power for a Mac, the IO/RAM aspects are currently missing. But given that Apple does custom silicon for the Macs, that shouldn’t be a significant obstacle: they have the in-house know-how.